As Samuel McCord regards his past,
his memories are angels of lightning and storm, sweeping his mind's eye over flashes of pain through the mists of his epic life.
The dying of his mother and sister.
His murder of his own father.
Discovering the true face of Elu.
Losing him to a strange limbo.
Riding beside his new family, the Texas Rangers.
Losing that family as he turns his back on the Alamo to rescue a small boy from kidnapping Comanches.
At the age of fifty, having his blood mingled with that of the Angel of Death. Never aging from that moment on.
An eternal old man.
Loving the mysterious, undying Meilori Shinseen. Losing her to his compulsion to rescue lost children and battered women.
A man with no home of his own, making his night club, Meilori's, a home for all the frightened street orphans and hollow-eyed women that cross his path.
But it is a dangerous home, whose back hallways, some say, lead to Hell itself. Samuel himself remains silent on the subject.
Some say he has seen too much to believe in a loving God.
Others say he wants to believe but cannot.
Still others whisper his silence is because he is already damned.
"I move in all kinds of circles, meet all sorts of people. I learned engraving from a counterfeiter, accounting from a swindler.
A succubus once tried to teach me the tango. But nothing doing. I didn't have the hips for it."
- Samuel McCord
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Love the line about how he doesn't have the hips for the tango.
ReplyDeleteMadeleine's song really evokes New Orleans for me. Sure, I'm an outsider who's never been there, but it fits my image or feel for the place.
I write in CREOLE KNIGHTS that Madeleine sings at Meilori's. :-)
DeleteThanks for visiting and caring enough to chat with me. It gets rather lonely here sometimes. :-)
Like Sam McCord, I love that song by Madeleine. I have other music by her, too. McCord and Peyroux, two of my faves, one virtual, one real. Thanks for the musical interlude, Roland.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of you when I added Madeleine to my post. Sam has almost become real to me. :-)
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