Walt by Ian Stoba Page A

scarcely think of anything else during the long hours he spent one each day in his little boat.
    As the other three stamp-lickers were already married, he had no alternative but to pursue Leonore or perhaps die wondering about her tongue. She herself did not seem overly enthusiastic about Walt. It took him some time to convince her that he was indeed serious about marrying her. It took some time after their initial encounter for her to do anything but run to her house and hide at the slightest hint of Walt’s proximity.
    His curiosity remained strong, though, and ultimately overcame her repugnance. She never actually agreed to marry Walt, but she did after some time become civil, and finally affectionate. This was the undoing of their romance; finally, after months of wondering, pursuing and fantasizing, Walt actually kissed Leonore. Her mouth tasted like paste. Her tongue was swollen and covered in cuts from the serrated edges of the stamps.
    After their first, and only, kiss, Walt told Leonore that he was breaking off the engagement and wanted nothing more to do with her. Walt then walked down to the beach where his boat was kept, threw himself into it bodily and sobbed. If he had looked back towards Leonore’s house, which he didn’t, he would have seen her stand there for a long moment before walking away, confused.
    Walt remembered all these things as he walked up the familiar path to the house that Leonore shared with her mother, Mrs. Wilkins. He remembered, too, the times that he had run to the house breathlessly behind Leonore, only to see her flee inside the door, slam it, then run to the windows and slam shut the shutters.
    As much as he wanted to speak to Mrs. Wilkins, he felt the he was not ready just yet to face Leonore again.
    So, with no better idea coming to him at the moment, he decided to walk home.
    Walt lived in a shack. The walls had been built from the planks of a sailing ship that had run aground off Tristan sometime in the mid-eighteenth century. Time since then had allowed gaps to open between the planks so that Walt, if he were so inclined, could peek out unobserved from any of at least a dozen spots in his little home.
    His housetop was a comical imitation of a roof. Sometimes he felt that it let in more rain than it kept out. Most of Walt’s pots and all three of his pans, as well as all but one of his cups, were spread on the floor in an unsuccessful battle against the besieging rain. Next to Walt’s canvas cot was stacked a rather large and messy pile of sweaters. The climate of Tristan leaned heavily in the direction of cold and wet, so that Walt, with his creaking and leaking little shack, found that he always had to wear at least two sweaters to bed. Now that he was home and feeling the chill of the wind more than when he had been out, he pulled a grey wool sweater over the two similar ones he was already wearing. The continual dampness combined with Walt’s penchant for decaying wool sweaters gave the shack a smell very much like that of a wet sheepdog.
    Walt built a fire in his wood-burning stove that provided heat as well as a cooking surface for the shack. With the music in his head still playing nonstop, he prepared a meager supper.
    Composing himself, he carried a steaming plate of less savory parts of fish to his simple table. The music was really beginning to get to him now. He remembered his sleeplessness the previous night and wondered what would happen when he tried to lie down on his cot tonight. He took a bite of his food. He had a thought that would no doubt have occurred to most people sooner: he wondered if he could be losing his mind. The enormity of this thought took Walt so much by surprise that he dropped his fork. Fortunately for Walt he did not know that one of the earliest and most accurate signs of impending madness is that one may feel that he is losing his mind.
    He picked up his fork. He carefully drew and released three deep breaths. He then took another bite