Three weeks after Ron turned sixty, his
doctor told him to lose fifty pounds.
“Your blood pressure is through the roof,
Ron,” the doctor said, “and your cholesterol is none too pretty.”
Later that evening, when Ron called his
son Cliff and told him about what the doctor had said, Cliff suggested he make
some videos about his weight loss journey and put them on the internet.
“That way, other people will know you’re
trying to lose weight, and you won’t be able to quit so easily,” Cliff said.
From the time on the clock Ron knew Cliff was biking home from work right now,
and his son’s voice, traveling from San Francisco to New York in less than a
second, sounded strange and altered, as if it had passed through another
dimension in order to get here. “Your viewers will hold you accountable and
cheer you on at the same time. And I think that’ll be good for you, you know,
with Mom gone.”
Hearing this Ron started to tell his son
how unnatural the idea of a diet felt to him, of how, as the youngest of seven
brothers, the dinner table had been a battlefield when he was growing up, and
that if he didn’t eat as much as he could as fast as he could, there wouldn’t
have been anything left on his plate the next time he looked down. But before
Ron could finish saying this, his son cut him off.
“I know, Dad, I know,” Cliff said, a car
horn blaring on his end. “You’ve told me about your dinnertime war stories a
thousand times. I just hope you’ll use some of that tenacity to get healthy
this time. Because it’s important. Me and Brandon are worried about you, living
in that big house all by yourself.”
Hearing the genuine concern in his son’s
voice, Ron realized he owed it to his boy to at least try the idea. So he
bought a web cam, hooked it up to his computer, and searched the internet for
instructions on how to set up a YouTube channel.
The first few videos didn’t get many
views. Maybe twenty or so per video. But after a while some more people started
watching. That part wasn’t too hard. The real challenge was the diet itself.
Because with Connie gone, Ron could eat whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted
to. And despite what Cliff had said, there was nothing Ron’s viewers could do
to stop him each time he lumbered into the kitchen to make his fourth peanut butter
and jelly sandwich of the night.
#
A few weeks later, someone in the
comments of one of his videos told him about something called the grapefruit
diet. Since Ron had gained weight in the past few weeks instead of losing, he
decided to look into the grapefruit thing. After all, Cliff and Brandon would
be flying in for Christmas next month, and if he still looked like this when
his son walked through the door, Cliff would know in an instant that he’d
skipped out on the dieting.
So he searched the internet for the
grapefruit diet. According to the article he found, the grapefruit diet allowed
the dieter to eat and drink as much as he wanted, whenever he wanted to, as
long as it was grapefruit. Fresh grapefruit, frozen grapefruit, sliced, diced,
juiced, anything. He liked the sound of that. Since his wife had been taken
from him twenty years too early, he’d had it with removing things from his
life. So a diet that allowed him to eat as much as he wanted, whenever he
wanted to, sounded like a gift from the gods.
He started the grapefruit diet the next
morning.
It was hell.
Four days into the grapefruit diet he
stopped eating. He couldn’t take it anymore. Dying of starvation would’ve been
less painful than taking another stinging bite of that burning pink demon
flesh.
For the next three days he didn’t eat a
thing. This wasn’t too difficult during work hours at the bank, but once he got
home each night, the minutes passed with the speed of a glacier carving through
a continent. To survive the long evenings alone, he took to the internet and
read about his favorite subject: mythology. Greek, Roman, Norse, Celtic. Ever
since he was a kid, he had loved the stories of the squabbling gods, the
magical creatures, and the honorable heroes. At the time these stories had
helped him feel better about his own turbulent home life, because if the most
powerful beings in the universe acted this way, violently punishing their
children, dishonoring their families, and betraying their brothers and sisters,
then it wasn’t as bad when everyone in his own family did those same things to
each other. Though he hadn’t talked to any of his brothers in over twenty
years, he realized that these stories were the only reason he had stayed in
contact with them for as long as he had.
#
When Ron woke up the next morning, his
fourth consecutive day of not eating, he found a giant in his bedroom. The
giant stood nearly eight feet tall, and he wore a long red robe of rough, thick
fabric. A beard the color of wet earth clung to the giant’s chin, but the rest
of his face lay hidden behind the heavy cloth of his red hood. In addition to
this, Ron saw a bubbling stone cauldron floating just above the floor near the
giant’s feet. From the cauldron rose the delicious smells of roasted pork,
baked potatoes, and freshly churned butter.
Before Ron could react to this sight, the
giant started speaking. He introduced himself as the Dagda, one of the gods Ron
knew from the stories of Celtic mythology. Soon Ron realized the giant was
probably just a hallucination of his calorie-deprived brain, so he climbed out
of bed, slipped past the rambling Dagda, and went into the kitchen for a well
deserved breakfast.
When he got there he found nothing in the
fridge but grapefruits. Following this he went back into his room and started
to get dressed to go out. It was only a few minutes after nine on Sunday
morning, but he knew the CVS just outside the neighborhood would be open, and
that was good enough for him.
While Ron sat on the edge of his bed and
got dressed, the Dagda kept talking. He talked about the race of gods he ruled
over, the Tuatha Dé Danann; his cauldron of plenty that never runs dry, the
Coire Ansic; and how he traveled to this small town in upstate New York to lend
his aid to the starving Ron, who had not eaten in three days. Then he pointed
at the cauldron at his feet and offered Ron all the roasted pork, baked
potatoes, and freshly churned butter he could eat.
As hard as it was to refuse the offer,
Ron politely declined and walked to the front door. He figured it was a bad
idea to take food from a hooded giant who mysteriously appeared in his bedroom
overnight.
Outside, the sharp November air gnawed at
the end of Ron’s nose, the tips of his fingers.
For a moment Ron considered climbing into
his silver Honda and driving to the CVS, but then he turned to the end of the
driveway and decided to walk. If his mind was messed up enough to be seeing
Celtic gods, then it was probably not a good idea to be driving anywhere.
It was a cold, quiet morning. A milky fog
floated in the air, and gravel crunched softly underfoot. To Ron’s right the
Dagda hovered just above the ground, his cauldron of plenty swaying lightly in
the fog.
As they walked down the hill to the end
of the neighborhood, the Dagda spoke about his cauldron of plenty. He talked
about how its ladle was large enough to hold two men, about how no human had
ever walked away from it unsatisfied. After this he looked down at Ron and once
again offered an endless feast of roasted pork, baked potatoes, and freshly
churned butter. When Ron declined, the Dagda offered the feast a third time,
and then described the food on offer. In great detail he talked about the
tenderness of the pork, the heartiness of the potatoes, the creamy fat of the
butter. As delicious as everything sounded, Ron ignored the bearded god and
kept walking.
For the next few minutes Ron thought
about his departed wife Connie, his concerned son Cliff, and the empty house waiting
for him at the top of the hill. He tried to think of a way he could survive in
that house by himself for the next twenty years, but everything he imagined
involved him burying his loneliness under a mountain of unhealthy food. And as
his doctor had made clear last month, that was no longer an option.
Minutes later the Dagda stopped talking
and rested his massive hands on Ron’s shoulders. In a booming voice he
announced that Ron had passed the supreme test of courage and could now enter
Tír na nÓg, the Celtic otherworld of eternal youth, joy, health, and plenty.
From here the Dagda explained that his offers of endless feasts had been a test
to challenge the courage and resolve of the starving Ron, and by refusing all
three of these offers, Ron had proved his worthiness. Now the Dagda pointed at
a wall of fog at the end of the street and told Ron to walk in that direction.
“There you will meet a beautiful woman
with golden hair,” the Dagda said. “She will offer you a silver apple branch.
Take the branch, and she will lead you to Tír na nÓg.”
Since the place the Dagda had pointed at
was the direction he was already going, Ron followed the Dagda’s instructions
and walked through the fog.
Moments later Ron stepped through the
front door of the CVS. A skinny high school boy with frizzy blond hair stood in
one of the aisles, stocking candy bars on an endcap. When he sensed Ron staring
at him, he turned around and held out a 3 Musketeers candy bar. The silver
wrapper gleamed in the fluorescent light.
“Need one of these?” The boy said.
“I think I’ll take two, just in case.”
Ron said.
#
Thirty minutes later, with two silver
candy wrappers balled in his pocket, Ron stepped into his house and closed the
door behind him. Now that he was finally alone again, he walked into the
kitchen, grabbed a pen and paper, and called his son Cliff. By the second ring
Ron realized it was not yet seven a.m. on the west coast, but he stayed on the
line anyway. This call was too important. He didn’t want to hang up and let
this feeling slip away.
Cliff picked up on the fourth ring.
“Sorry to call you so early son, but I’ve
had a weird morning.”
“What happened? Is everything okay?”
Cliff said, his voice breathless and urgent with concern.
“Everything’s fine, I’ll tell you about
it later, but listen. Can you give me an idea of what I should be eating in
order to get healthy? Because they’re crazy, all these people in the comments
of my videos. Everything they say is crazy, and I don’t even know where to
start.”
Steve Gergley is a writer
and runner based in Warwick, New York. His fiction has appeared or is
forthcoming in A Minor, After the Pause,
Barren Magazine, Maudlin House, Pithead Chapel, and others. In addition to
writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music.
