Homecomings are rife with hullabaloo, druthers and drithers, fundlers and skundlers, and other such quirks and oddities which make so little sense to the soul. Ward felt what seemed like a thousand different strains of emotion yank and pull and touch his heart, so many in fact he had almost no notion as to how to contort his face, or comport generally, or where even he ought to point his toes when at last he stepped through the front door of his city tenement.

 

“Queer, wild, whirly-dhirlies, these feelings I’m feeling,” muttered Ward to himself, speaking in the cadence of the birdsong he’d plucked out of the forest during his time in solitude. Though surrounded by woodland critters, and arachnids, worms, and zipping unidentified bugs bearing the snouts of horses and the wings of monarchs, since leaving the city he had known himself to be alone. The comforts of conversation, which priorly had assailed him in the bluntness of their utter ubiquity, did not seal themselves in the mouths of the wind, the lungs of the trees, the voicebox of skying thunder. Nei. And though Ward tried to teach the otters the English language, as they seemed impressively promising vessels given the dexterity of their jaws, and beginning not with the alphabet, but with baseline phonetics rooted in vowels, among the otters unfortunately it did not take. 

 

“Home is the tome is the home, where buildeth the tome,” Ward sang. He laughed and smiled his rueful masterful smile, tearing away the bindle from his back and casting it aside atop the dusty ottoman in the foyer. His bare feet, hairy and dirty and stippled with roadside rubble, danced their way toward the back porch and rattled the floorboards so and so created such ruckus and rabble that Ward remembered what it felt like to worry about displeasing one’s neighbors. In the forest, he’d had no neighbors to trouble. 

 

Ward peered cheerfully out the tall windowpane of the glass door at the city and its bustle. Though it was what some might consider a dreary day–rain-soaked, sun-blotted, charcoal-clouded–Ward espied neither celestial collusion nor colorful conspiracy nor common coincidence in the dull atmosphere which greeted him then after so many years away. 

 

“Happenstance,” Ward whispered, admiring the climb of an oily pigeon. The bird circled the balconies of The Centennial, thought otherwise, approached the spire of The Ghole instead, thought otherwise again, then stuck the landing on one of the rusted maroon arms of one of the city’s dozen or so bridges. Ward stood there, a mere fleck amongst the cold and largely-squatting skyline, and lamented that he could not observe it as he might have preferred to from a more distant vantage. 

 

The man closed his eyes and meditated. He felt weird, subtle groundshocks, the thrum of trains careening round the bends of their rails. Weird and subtle, that, then: smelled no weird and subtle melange of city stench however: sour pupil-clattering smoke caused by plod, intense sewer waft, the drifting heaviness of chemical-laden riverwater, propane, grilled onions, the very sear on the undesirables clinging to the aluminum walls of the sink’s drainpipe. Ward gasped, refocused. Find the goodness, thunketh the venerable Ward, Master Compiler of Stories to he and himself. Borrowed, but: surely it’s true the world is nothing more or less than whatever it is we make of it. He plugged his nose and opened his ears, hearing the walloping high and joyous whoops of children playing in the nearby yard. Beyond, in each honk of every car horn he imagined the character of the driver, their many duties, their passenger load, and found himself empathizing with the simple plights and delights of living a civilian life. Close by, he heard hidden pipes fritz and glitch, belch and bellow, spit up the water gushing through their guts; ready finally to unleash a hot torrent on some tub floor. 

 

“Perhaps, the man is dirty.” Ward chuckled. The Master Compiler himself certainly was. Moved by the actions of his neighbor, Ward tugged on the knob of the radiator below the sill which in turn let go a hiss. He ambled over to the bathroom. Flimsy di-colored floral-patterned wallpaper, in there. And a small book-sized mirror set below his gaze which forced him to bend to view himself. He snatched the towels from the breezeway and then stripped before turning on the shower faucet. The plumbing thudded and hemmed and hawed, ancient, interwoven patchwork, ‘twas, as also it had gone unacceptably unused for so long. The clustered pipes knitted together by their screws and nails and washers wobbled before gasping to life, then shuddered forth the loamless flowing citywater. Ward climbed inside the shower, addressed the curtain, adjusted the shower pressure of the showerhead, and then began to mull over the veracity of his filth, watching it all unspool and spread hither and thither across the tub floor before collapsing down the loud, sucking drain. 

 

Filth, thunketh the venerable Ward to he and himself. What more about filth is there to discuss that hasn’t been discussed already? Hm. Well, then. How about a joke!?

 

Ward pondered over the prospect until inspiration struck with unexpected lucidity:

 

“What do you call a circumscised tree?” He asked the loofah dangling from the faucet.

 

No response.

 

“No idea, either. I’m stumped.” Ward chortled. He wracked the fine fetters of his mind again and discerned a second joke; clearer and perhaps even filthier than the first:

 

“A raven returns to its nesting tree and, without looking, pulls its wings in and reaches for its native branch. The bird goes down before the willow instead. Why?”

 

The loofah remained silent, to Ward’s dismay.

 

“Phantom limb syndrome.” Ward said with a smile. Then, he frowned. Too much pretext. The set-up is longer than the punchline. A filthy joke, sure, but potent? Nei.

 

He chanced one final stab at a joke:

 

“What’s better than two saplings at once?” Ward asked. 

 

The loofah coughed up a pint of water and squinted at Ward. 

 

“Tree.” The loofah said in exasperation. “But everybody knows that.”

 

“Maple.” Teased Ward in reply, sickest of all. 

 

“Less talking, more scrubbing.” The loofah said before returning to its normal, inanimate state.