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Reading, Writing, Pondering: Big Life Themes, Literature, Contemporary/Historical Issues |
 Welcome to the 14th century, in a farflung outpost of the Holy Roman Empire, and a new Convent outpost of the terrrifically powerful Roman Catholic Church. Sound historically dull? Hopefully not so--for this is NOT an ordinary 14th Century Convent. Back after a six-year hiatus.... From NaNoWriMo historical Supernatural novels in Scotland, Michigan, South Alabama and historical horror in Standwood Station, GA-to the Phantom Northern Woods-to singlehandedly refighting the American Civil War-to exploring Social Justice and standing for First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution-we deal out horror, Supernatural, Historical, fantasy, mystery, and more. We do not fear outspokeness. And always, always, always, We Do History. Find it here. We write it. We read it. We hold strong opinions. We orate. Meanwhile, whether we're writing or just reading, we love to rave about books and authors right here!  |
| from The Phantom Logging Operation Chapter 2 I decided it was not yet time to start playing possum, nor to wimp out and be cowardly. Rennald was closer-the turnoff to the Rennald Road only 5 miles to my east-so I turned left and headed east first. Right then it was only about 2 o'clock of the afternoon, plenty of time to check Rennald and then turn back toward Knox and The Big Forest beyond, and still be home, parked in my driveway, and inside my cabin before dark. For some reason, the thought of being abroad tonight just skittered me. I could drive all the way out to Rennald and back in near the time it would take me to go to Knox. Just the idea of driving toward The Big Forest skeered me-just skeered me today-but then if I did drive to Rennald first, when I came back this way it would be later in the afternoon-and maybe I wouldn't have the courage to try for The Big Forest-I was not sure now that I ever would. Then I remembered how my Daddy had braved the Hun Hordes in the Big War, and how he had died keeping my country safe. I remembered how Mamma talked to me about how Daddy was so brave during the Great Depression too, working at menial maintenance jobs, travelling whenever and wherever Testament Corporation told him he had to, being away from Mamma and me, just to keep our roof over us and keep us fed and clothed-and I knew I couldn't be such a weakling and disrespect everything my Daddy ever stood for. I sat no longer resisting at the end of the drive. Instead, I put the Merc in gear and headed right, to the west, toward Knox and The Big Forest which I now so feared. Chapter 3 I sped in the direction of Knox, knowing the faster I arrived the faster I could conclude this investigation and head for home. There were 3 more borders of perennials to plant, after all; wood to chop-nights were still cool and would be through June; and I needed to work on insulating the cabin. I had just finished constructing it, as the property had held only one very old, shabby, collapsed house, sitting about a half mile farther back into the land than did my cabin. I had looked it over when I first arrived, and deemed it not worth the extreme efforts of trying to repair it, nor the extensive cost of materials. Hardly enough lumber was left intact to reconstruct one wall of a single room, the flooring was almost all the way through, the foundation only dirt, and the chimney in several chunks of charred brick. Seemed a shame to waste the site, already laid out as it was, but then I was only one person, and a job that size-repairing and virtually replacing and entire homestead would have been more than I thought I could handle. So I decided to leave that site alone, and instead I chose a plot a ways back from the road, and to the East a bit, to build my cabin. I pitched the tent I'd brought along from Champaign, rolled out my sleeping bag, and on the nights that were just too chilly-which were most nights, curled up in the back seat of the Mercury. All of this passed through my mind as I sped on toward The Big Forest, and all of it faded away as an old black Chevy truck passed me in the opposite direction, driven by a dead black man, and came to a stop in the middle of his lane, waiting while a scrawny white hound crossed the road. “Rory,” I reminded myself. “You already know this guy-by sight-you've seen him passing up and down the road a hundred times since you first started work on the cabin, remember? Many times he's even thrown up his hand at you.” That was right-but this is the first time I'd noticed he was already dead. Maybe he wasn't earlier-on the other hand, maybe he had been all along. That truck, I would say, was about 9, maybe 10 model years old. Geez, my own Merc was 8 model years old. His Chevrolet was older than that, I thought. He must be coming from Knox, I thought-or maybe (though I really hoped that wasn't the case) from The Big Forest. Nothing else lay out this way, on this road. To get anywhere- to any bigger town-you had to go east and then south to Collins Junction, and from there, gee, you could get to Trenton, Troy, even eventually Madison Mills! But on the virtually untravelled highway on which I lived, it was Knox and then The Big Forest to the west, the turnoff to Rennald (another tiny town) a little east of me, and then east of that, the road to Collins Junction. I couldn't even remember any farmsteads or isolated houses on this road-that is, houses sitting out by themselves without farms. Far as I could think, it was just my new cabin as far as housing, unless I had missed some houses set back up in the woods somewheres. Chapter 4 Just about as soon's as I had passed the Dead Man in his black Chevrolet truck, a roar behind me made me spin to see. I glanced first toward the sound, then toward the lane, hopin' that scrawny white hound had moved on. No squealing rubber, no bawlin' dogs, so I guessed he'd made it on across okay. That dead black Chevrolet was out of sight already too. Gee, the road sure was fillin' and emptyin', fillin' and emptyin', somethin' fierce this afternoon. The source of the racket pulled into the far lane and roared up beside me. A flatbed truck loaded with an old, old Chevrolet sedan-what used to be called a “gangster wagon”-my Daddy would surely have recognized them on the streets of Kenosha when he worked maintenance for Testament Logging Corporation-flashed by me, but not before I saw the driver, yet another burnt husk, leaning forward and lookin' toward me. Despite there bein' no flesh on that skull, I swear I could feel it smilin' and glowin'. As it sped up and passed, I saw the sedan had been badly burnt too; it looked like a blowtorch had played over it and blistered off all the paint. This had really been a bad day for me all around, and it was barely three o'clock. Thankfully I had planted my perennial beds; I doubted I would accomplish anything more today. A storm threatened to be breaking over The Big Forest, so I determined to ride only as far as Knox, stop in at the small general store there for some provisions, and then get myself back home. The next few miles were uneventful, but the approaching storm darkened the day considerably. The little store stood on the opposite side of the road, just the near side of Knox, and as I glanced in both directions to pull across the road, I saw that the tall-sided wooden bed truck loaded with tree crowns and pulp wood castoffs was parked at the far end of the gravel lot beyond the store. At an angle to the road, all I could see was the end of the truck and a peek at the side. I hoped-strongly hoped-that the burnt driver was in the truck, or gone, or just a hallucination, and that I would NOT encounter him in the store. I parked on the near side of the store, climbed out, and strode toward the door. As I approached, it opened and an old geezer walked out, nodded his grizzled head at me, spat a chaw out into the lot, and clambered over to the old rocker at the far end of the porch. Inside was shady and musty-smelling, and a layer of dust seemed to overlay all the shelves and merchandise, even the plank flooring. Well, no matter; the canned goods I could wash at the pump before opening them, and as long as the flour and sugar and corn meal came in canisters, they should be safe enough to use. I selected the cans and canisters I needed, added some hardware and tools, and carried the load to the counter where I began to lay it out while checking around for the clerk, nowhere to be seen. As I glanced toward the back room's doorway, a woman rose up right in front of me, behind the counter, as if she had just lifted up from the floor on a trap door with spring. |
| Merlin Olsen, former star of the Los Angeles Rams, actor and FTD spokesperson, has died at age 69, of mesothelioma, the cancer which is I think best known through advertising by personal injury law firms as a cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. RIP Merlin! The maternal grandmother of my grandson's kindergarten teacher had a stroke a couple days ago, and is not expected to live on. I asked my daughter the lady's age; she didn't know, but said the teacher is my daughter's age. I said, "Well the grandmother must be older than I then," and my daughter gave me a wise response: "Mamma, even two year olds can have strokes." Yes indeed, we live in a world bounded on each end of life by mortality. RIP. Today's free read: THE PHANTOM LOGGING OPERATION a Novel by Archie Standwood Book One: The Testament Corporation Chronicles (because it's not just logging, after all) Prologue: The Phantom Northern Woods Tales are set in an alternate historical probability, in which The Northwest Territories were divided differently than in our own “consensus reality.” In this reality, The Northwest Territories became Wisconsin and Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Each existing state is called by its full name: “State of-” as in State of Wisconsin, State of Michigan, State of Illinois. In The Phantom Northern Woods, there are three states where today only Michigan and Wisconsin stand: one state between them, like an inverted triangle, heavily forested, bordering Canada to the North-the State of Algonquin. It is this state which harbors the infamous “Big Forest.” In The Phantom Northern Woods, each existing state is called by its full name: “State of-” as in State of Westerley, State of Minnetonka, State of Illustrian. There are three states where today only Michigan and Wisconsin stand: one state between them, like an inverted triangle, heavily forested, bordering Canada to the North-the State of Algonquin. It is this state which harbors the infamous “Big Forest.” Chapter 1 The faded-red 1928-style cab yanked behind it a long unwieldy flatbed of precariously loaded pines. Within the darkened cab, shadows shifted and drifted, fluttering aside at the last moment of view to reveal what I'd already suspected: the log truck possessed no driver. Both the driver's seat and the passenger side were empty, yet the headlights glowed like twin eyes of some bird-of-prey, and the truck barreled down my road, headed east toward Collins Junction. Well, I assumed the destination would be Collins Junction, the county seat, the only town of any size anywhere in our county. It was the only community still with a sawmill- even if it ran only three days a week. I stood by the corner of my newly built log home, keeping I hoped well out of sight, peeking at the cab and praying that whatever was not inside would not see me. To the southwest, in the direction from which the log truck had appeared, was only the little town of Knox, really more of a village. A mile or two further back began a vast empty pine forest, extending way West and North, a combination of original timber and second growth from the logging boom of the 1920's, when timber was an extraordinary industry in our state. Back then the mill in Collins Junction had run six days a week, three shifts a day, so my Daddy had told me. But when the logging industry collapsed in 1932, the loggers took to riding the freights as hobos, or disappeared out to the Southwest, toward Arizona and California, hoping for work, or at least for heat, which is an event that occurs here only in July. I hadn't realized any new logging operations had begun near The Big Forest; nearly as long as I'd been alive (I'd been born in 19-Ought-30), the old operations had been closed and by now, in 1957, all remaining traces were eradicated from sight by new forest growth and old roots. I didn't remember the old access road into the forest being locatable, either, so it was a mystery to me as to where this bizarre log carrier could have manifested from-or why. I decided to take a little ride out toward Knox, and see if I could find any new operations between there and my land. I lived 12 miles east of Knox and from my house, east and southward, Collins Junction was another 25 miles. Back nearly directly south was Rennald, but the turnoff for it was 5 miles east of me. Perhaps that strange truck was headed there. Yet my amazement was not yet to end. As I turned from the southwest corner of my house, where I had just finished planting a row of perennials- the corner toward the Knox Road-I heard yet another loud, raggedy, engine approaching. Expecting that perhaps the phantom log truck had circled around on some unexplored back road and returned, I looked toward the east, but suddenly my attention was impelled in the opposite direction, from which the driverless log truck had first appeared. Approaching was a square wood-sided truck, also red, paint faded almost to the point of exhaustion, engine laboring as if on a steep climb-although our road had no grade at all; and once again, this truck possessed no driver. Ah, but this one did include a passenger, a dark-complected male bundled in a dark green jacket, golf cap pulled down over his brow, apparently staring out the passenger window so that I could not see his face; nor really, did I wish to. This was becoming way too spooky for me. My heart urged me to race back inside the cabin and lock all the doors and windows, but my mind insisted there must be a logical explanation, if only I could find it. I yanked the keys out of my left-hand jeans pocket and juggled them in the air for a moment, trying to decide which of my organs to heed. Finally, mind won out, so I jogged along the side of the cabin, across the back lot, and up to my '49 Mercury coupe, parked at the far end of the driveway from the road, just ahead of the property's wood lot. I jumped in, gunned the engine, and backed up sufficiently to turn around, then headed down the drive. Just as I came within sight of the road, I heard another motor approach, and hoving into sight was a similar square wood-sided truck, this one loaded with pulp wood leavings-the crown branches from cut logs. A really upsetting sight in the cab met my eyes: this time there was a driver (the first had contained no one; the second no driver, just a passenger), a burnt husk himself-yet he drove, and he turned his eyeless gaze upon me, then suddenly floored his gas pedal and roared west in the direction of Knox and the Big Woods, belching gray exhaust fumes from the sawed-off tailpipe. The afternoon had progressed from strange, to bizarre, to unbelievable. I didn't know whether to pull out on the road, turn west toward Knox and the Northern Woods beyond, turn east toward Rennald, or beyond, Collins Junction, or back up the long drive, run inside the cabin, and lock the doors, pulling down all the window shades. I was beginning to wonder why I had insisted on moving here after my divorce in February. When my wife of 8 months had run off on me, claiming a blackjack dealer down in Vegas as her new toy, I signed the divorce papers the sheriff's deputy bought me, packed the little I owned into the Merc, and headed for the property my Daddy had left to me when he passed over in May of '41, that came fully into my possession two years ago when my Mamma died of a painful, lingering bone cancer. I hadn't ever used it, had not even seen the land, for when Daddy enlisted in September of 1939 in the Canadian Air Force, Mamma had carried me to Champaign, State of Illinois, where she still had people, and I had grown up there. I'd married late, at age 26, but I guess I still wasn't wise enough to choose well. I liked my mechanic job at Joe D's Garage, going to church on Sunday mornings, and a beer or two on the back porch on a Saturday evening. Leill liked the high life, or so she said, and eight months into the marriage she was off to Vegas like a shot. More power to her; I packed and went home to the land that Daddy had given me. According to what my Mamma told me before she died, I actually had grown up in this region: I wasn't quite sure where was my birthplace here, for Mamma had never actually specified. But she had told me often that when I turned two, Daddy had moved us from this section of the County down to Rennald. That was the year the Logging Operations here in The Big Forest had shut down. Daddy had logged in the eastern stretches of The Big Forest, for the Testament Logging Corporation out of Madison Mills, about 50 miles distant, and it were a good-paying job for the times, least until the Great Depression rolled in with its suicides and bank collapses, and everything in our world just turned upside down. As far as I knew, I also still held title to that little tract of land; Daddy had built a 3-room cabin on it just before the wedding, and Mamma had birthed me there. They had managed to hold on once the Depression started; Daddy was real skilled with his hands, so when the timber boom collapsed in 1930, he was able to stay on with Testament Corporation by working for them as a travelling maintenance man, going from site to site and keeping all their equipment in good repair. For some reason unknown to me, Testament did not suffer in the Depression as many of the logging and mining firms did. While other firms collapsed, or filed bankruptcy, or just disappeared, while owners threw themselves out of high office windows, or ate their pistols, or just disappeared, Testament Corporation persevered, even thrived, as if the Great Depression was instead for Testament an economic boom time. The timber operation near Knox in The Big Forest was closed, but the main plant in Madison Mills kept right on running, and Daddy sometimes had to go as far as Kenosha, over West in State of Wisconsin, to do a job of repair work. Most of the time, Mamma said, Daddy would travel down to Trent, or over to the sawmill at Collins Junction; about once a month or so he'd be called in to work at the Main Plant in Madison Mills, and sometimes he might be up there for a week or two. He and Mamma had given up the rural homestead in 1932, when I turned two and the Logging Boom collapsed, and moved to Rennald, to a house right at the edge of town that Daddy built himself (for he was handy that way, both with house carpentry and with furniture-making, and just with all kinds of woodwork. I often dreamed that if he had lived on and not died in the Second Hun War, he and I could have owned a furniture-making, cabinetry, wood-working business together, up here in the Northern Woods. In 1936, Daddy was asked to move up to a full-time position in maintenance at the Madison Mills main plant. I was only 11 when Daddy died in the Europe War; he enlisted in September 1939, with the Canadian Air Force, right as soon as Hitler invaded Poland. I was 9 and a half then, and it was then that Mamma moved us to Champaign, since her folks had already both passed away also-though I did not know when, nor did I remember them, so I supposed it was before my birth. Testament Logging Corporation sure was on my mind these last few moments, ever since I had seen that first bizarre log truck with its missing driver. None of the three odd trucks had any kind of markings or insignia; I had heard no sounds of saws or digging or axes; there was no reason to think anything was happening down to The Big Forest. No reason to think-yet I knew. I knew. |
| The U.S. Government has successfully repatriated an apparently stolen artifact to its country of origin: Egypt. A formerly unidentified sarcophagus was caught by an alert and clever Miami Customs Inspector, who noticed its lack of documentation and reported it accordingly. http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/africa/north/US-Returns-Ancient-Sarcophagus... This morning I completed The Phantom Logging Operation, one day short of three months since I began it on Dec. 12. That's WAY too long  . A novel per month is much better. Karen Wiesner, a prolific author in multiple genres, recommends “first draft in 30 days,” and in fact, has written a book for Writer's Digest Books, entitled:First Draft in 30 Days: a novel writer's system for building a complete and cohesive manuscript, published 2005. From The Phantom Logging Operation Chapter 42 Nothing would do now, but that I confront Testament Corporation, after first locating an attorney who would be willing to go to bat for me on this. I pulled the pocket spiral from my pocket and reached for a pen on the table, then started on a new list, headed “URGENT.” First, in the morning drive to Collins Junction, find a bank other than the one holding the account to which the Testament lease remittance fees were paid (the First Stoneforth Bank & Trust of Collingham County), and open a new checking and a new savings account. Second, go to First Stoneforth Bank and remove almost all of the funds within my Savings account there, and then deposit them in the two new accounts, mostly in the Savings to draw interest. Second, I would ask around in the Junction to discover if any other attorneys specializing in civil practice and estates were located there. If not, I would have to expand my search, but for certain, tomorrow I would find a lawyer. Likely not in Madison Mills, true enough, since Testament Logging Corporation was headquartered there; but I would go as far as Kenosha if I must. That would be mean an overnight stay; but if Attorney Benton Squires was the only one in the Junction, and Madison Mills' spate of attorneys proved to be all hand-in-pocket with Testament, I would just have to go farther afield. It would be worth it, just to spit in the eye of Testament Logging Corporation and to break its purported putative control of my life. I needed to find an attorney right away to record a new Will for me. But tonight, I could write up a holographic will. I had no witnesses, but hopefully it would tide me over until I could locate an attorney tomorrow who had no ties to Testament. Perhaps I could get Todd to witness it tomorrow-no, Todd was too bound to Testament, for jobs the Tow Division pulled in. Testament paid him way too highly, above and beyond the work actually done, to ever think he would block them. Now I was even beginning to ponder whether he had hired me for weekends and part-time on weekdays, not because of my sterling diesel mechanic abilities and the glowing reference recommendation letter from Joe Burton of Joe's Garage in Urbana, but because I was, all unbeknownst to me, currently Testament Corporation's pet duck. Clearly finding and reading my purported Last Will and Testament had had the effect the County Tax Assessor's notices, the plat maps, and dealing for the past week in the Land of the Dead had not: my innocence was destroyed, my eyes had been opened, and now cynicism ruled. I wondered what my Mamma would say about all this, then I remembered that Mamma must have known something of it, maybe a lot of it or even all of it, because quite obviously I could not have been Testament Corporation's only fair-haired boy. I was not born until February 1930, and the first instance of my name being used or my signature being forged was February 1932, when I just turned two. So clearly Daddy-or maybe even Mamma-had to have been Testament's choice of pets, before me. Although there were still many sets of papers to read through, I knew now that tomorrow would be a very long, very emotionally difficult day. I remembered that I also needed to contact somebody to exhume Mamma's casket in Champaign and move it here to the old Calhoun Family cemetery. I would need to see the Seventh Day Adventist pastor in the Junction about performing a memorial service at the grave for the re-interment. I had originally thought to ask Attorney Squires to handle the exhumation, transfer, and re-interment, but that was now out of the question. Perhaps I would even have to drive back to Champaign to file papers there with the County, requesting Mamma's exhumation and transfer. I really hoped not; but I would do whatever I had to, in order to return her to the family plot. For my beloved Mamma I would do what I needed to do, no matter how difficult or trying. |
Chapter 40 It was time, I decided, for a nice, leisurely, well-thought-out dinner. Now, what were my choices? Well, I had no meat or fish set aside-the Toddley twins saw to that, every time I laid some in at the Ice House-and it being Sunday evening, the butcher in Rennald would be closed. There just might be a grocery open in Collins Junction, but that wouldn't be fresh meat or fish, not the way Butcher Tony's would be, and I didn't feature driving that 25 miles each way-50 round trip-just for supper, when I had to go down there tomorrow anyway, on business with Attorney Squires. What did that leave? Biscuits, pancakes, flapjacks-and oh! I could make hash browns. So it was breakfast for supper yet again. I pulled out my pocket spiral notebook and added an item to tomorrow's list: stop in at Tony's butcher shop first thing in the morning when I drove to Rennald to gas up at the Gas 'n' Go, ask him to lay in either a chunk of lamb, or trout if he got some in during the day; then check with Todd to see if he had any work for me this week, and to get my bonus pay from the Testament Tow Division job, if it came in earlier tomorrow than three PM. Laundry too: I'd get that done while in Rennald. Putting the notebook away, I proceeded on my suppertime breakfast, eschewing coffee for flat lemonade, then went to get the files back out of the Merc to look through over the meal. I didn't find any surprises this time looking through the file notices from the Tax Assessor's Office. Having already come to terms with the fact that I owned vast tracts of land, perhaps seemingly all adjacent-that was another item to add to the list for tomorrow, a visit to the County Offices to read the plat map-looked like Madison Mills would have to be put off for yet another day-I found nothing new of import in the notices, even though this time I went through each carefully. After all, I now knew, approximately, where the plots were, and I knew that I, by inheritance, owned land in The Big Forest. What I still didn't know for sure was if “Euphonia,” the name on the foundation stone in the center of the front of the ruins behind the old Calhoun family cemetery, signified just the homestead that presumably had been there, or the area itself-the home, and lot, and whatever portion I guessed the Calhouns had owned there; or did “Euphonia” have a wider ranging meaning? THAT I didn't yet know, but I surely intended to quiz Attorney Benton Squires on that point tomorrow-along with much else. Supper eaten, I stood up to clear the table and wash up after myself, as a slow twilight twinkled into existence. Then I carried all the files into the front room and placed them on the table, checked the front door lock and bolt, checked all the windows, then went outside to verify I had locked up the car, and that the tool box was locked and the wood pile covered securely with tarp. All that verified, I closed and locked and bolted the back door and went into the bedroom to undress and take a quick lukewarm shower. All the regional horrors aside, I did live alone in the country and did not like being closed up in the indoor privy without all the entrances and windows being locked. Afterward I quickly dressed in my pajamas-if called to the work of The GreenHouse it would only be a matter of minutes to change, made sure all my soiled laundry was loaded in the two baskets to carry down to the Washerette in Rennald tomorrow, then returned to the front room after fixing another glass of lemonade. Mindful of my mother's household etiquette, I placed a coaster on the table before setting down the glass, and then I made sure it was sufficiently distant from the files in case of spills. Checking out the curtain proved night was coming on too fast to use the natural outdoor light to read, so I let the curtain drop and then turned up the lantern, settling in to open first the envelope from the Attorney. I was so glad I was sitting in the armchair beside the table when I started to read the Attorney's files. Here were copies of the Plat Maps I had seen earlier this afternoon, suddenly attached to the property tax notice forms from the County Assessor's office in Collins Junction, when none had been included when first I opened the Assessor's envelope. There were the papers and savings book for the Bank account about which Attorney Squires had notified me on Wednesday afternoon: the current total was sizeable and astonishing, but when I referenced the dates, I saw that the account had been opened in my Daddy's time: February 1932, the month I turned 2, the month Daddy inexplicably moved Mamma and me to Rennald to live in the house at the edge of town, backing on to fields. I say inexplicably now, because although at the time I was too young to realize anything other than, perhaps, that I no longer saw my grandparents all day, every day. Now as an adult I realized that moving to town in the month of my second birthday, seemingly unexpectedly, after I had been born and raised in my grandparents' cabin in The Big Forest, as had my Mamma before me, and her father, and so on back up the Calhoun line to the first set of Calhouns emigrating, in companionship with Knutsons and Cloverdales-all three clans tautly intertwined-to the New World, to the Northern Woods and specifically, to The Big Forest-moving away from “Euphonia,” completely out of The Big Forest, and into the town of Rennald, which did not abut on The Big Forest-was completely unexplained. But more suprises remained. Attorney Squires had informed me that this Bank account was in my name, and so I saw it was. However, I had never signed for it; certainly when it was opened in the month of my second birthday I was both unaware and unable to write or read. I pulled the signature cards out of the bank envelope and took a closer look. I had brought in Mamma's magnifying lens from the Merc earlier when I carried in the files, and despite the crack in it from the Cemetery this afternoon (and how did that happen, I wonder, if I found it lying atop the folded plat maps on a fallen gravestone?) I was able to see clearly enough with it to examine the signatures on both cards. One card was clearly newer, and appeared to be perhaps five years old, which would have been 1952, when I turned twenty-two; the older card apparently had been made out when the account was opened. It was dated February 7, 1932; I turned two on the 19th of that month. On the newer card was only “my” signature, above the signature of a bank officer-Edwin A. Jackson. Of course, I had not signed it, since I neither lived in the area in February 1952, nor knew nothing about the account. However, the bigger surprise was on the older card. Faded as it was, its paper stock a sort of dull beige now instead of the newer card's strong tan, the signature line for account-holder held “my” signature (at least, it carried my name in script not mine on that line) but beneath it, faded almost to obscurity, I could just make out another name-my father, Edison Donald Lewes. The bank officer's signature was in Spencerian copperplate, much more classical than the signature on the February 1952 signature card, and read “Edgar L. Jackson.” Presumably the two bank officers, then, must have been father and son, or uncle and nephew, being as how the two cards were dated twenty-two years apart. Putting aside for later consideration of the Bank account signature cards and of the sudden inexplicable move from my maternal grandparents' homestead in The Big Forest to the town of Rennald, I dove on into the files. I still had a file folder from the attorney to finish perusing, and then Mamma's papers in the box still awaited as well. I had a full evening's viewing ahead of me, it seeemed. I decided another pot of coffee would be a wise idea; if necessary, I could sleep in a while in the morning as I was not expecting the Toddley twins. I went to the kitchen and fired up the wood stove, for the evening was turning cool, and put the coffee pot on to perk. While I waited for it, I pulled aside the curtain on the back window and gazed out into the evening. All was quiet, though from the corner of my eye, off to the right, I saw a shimmer of light through the line of pines. When I turned my head to look more closely, I saw nothing. My brain immediately told me to forget it [it's just The GreenHouse, Rory, never mind now!] and so I turned back to the whistling percolator. With a hot cup of coffee, and my thermos washed out and then filled up too, I returned to the living room. The kitchen wood stove's heat was nicely filtering into the front room, and I opened the bedroom door to let the heat waft in there too. Even Spring nights could be cold this far North, this close to the encroaching Big Forest. Seating myself in the armchair, for a moment I thought I heard an engine groan on a grade, but when I looked around the curtain, I saw no vehicles nor lights, and the road appeared normally flat. I picked up the attorney's file folder in one hand and my coffee cup in the other, twisting till I made myself comfortable, and set the file on my lap. As I opened the folder, a distant train whistle rang out to the North, far back in the distance. From the direction of the sound, I knew the train sounding it would have to be passing within the confines of The Big Forest, which certainly made no sense. As far as I knew, Testament Corporation had never run a railway through The Big Forest, and if Testament hadn't done it-well, it had never been done. After I shifted the Bank envelope to one side, the next item in the file folder was a thick ivory-colored envelope on fine expensive paper stock. My name was typed across the center; under that was first the address of the home my Mamma and I had rented in Champaign, State of Illinois; then beneath that my address in Urbana when Leill and I were married, and finally on the fourth line down, “New Knox Road, Village of Knox, County of Collingham, State of Algonquin,” which I guessed was meant to constitute my current address-although I received my mail at a Post Office box down in Rennald, and that address was not included on this envelope. The upper left-hand corner read: Benton Q. Squires, Esq. Attorney-at-Law Civil & Estate Practice Courthouse Square Annex-2nd Floor Collins Junction, State of Algonquin” That surely was a lot to fit on an envelope: five letters for the return address, plus four lines to fit my name and three addresses. I found myself almost surprised that the address of the home in Rennald where I lived from age two to age nine and a half, and the title of my grandparents' homestead, “Euphonia,” had not been appended as well. No matter: the envelope was sealed, yes; but it bore my name as addressee, and I was mightily certain that Attorney Benton Q. Squires had kept back at least one copy of the contents, and probably of this envelope as well, with all its address variations. So naturally and logically, I set the coffee cup back on the coaster, and proceeded to open the envelope. Oh, how I wished from that moment on I had not! For contained inside, very simply, was a Will in triplicate-the Last Will and Testament of one Rory Donald Lewes, dated February 19, 1952-my twenty-second birth date-and signed by me. Like the Bank account, my signature completed and verified a Will I had never composed, never requested, never considered-a final Will and Testament bequeathing everything I owned, every last jot and tittle of land, property, buildings, vehicles, every last cent in that Bank account-to Testament Logging Corporation of Madison Mills, State of Algonquin. Chapter 41 Suddenly, I wasn't scared any more. I wasn't frightened, I wasn't horrified, I wasn't terrified. The events of the last week dropped away as if I had never been terrorized nor tormented by the horrors. I was FURIOUS! How dare-Testament Logging Corporation-or any business, firm, Attorney, individual of any stripe-DARE to ORDER MY LIFE FOR ME! I, Rory Donald Lewes, scion of Calhouns and Knutsons, would not accept this! This was MY life, and although it had not always been a happy one (I had lost my Daddy at age nine-and-a-half, my mother only two years ago, my wife of eight months ran off three months earlier, for the last week I had lived among The Dead and the Scary) but it was still MY life to live as I pleased, as long as I did no harm to any one else! I lived a peaceful, proud, morally upright life; I always had and I intended to always do so. Even now, my move to this land had not appreciably stirred the waters of the area culture. No! I had helped: I worked for Todd's Garage on weekends, sometimes during the week, when Todd needed a good diesel mechanic-which I was-and by doing so I helped Todd's business and I helped the farmers in the area, and the few truckers, who needed diesel repairs and maintenance and otherwise would have had to travel the additional twenty or so miles to Collins Junction, the County Seat. Now with the construction of the Plant Nursery, I would be of additional benefit to local homesteaders AND farmers, as I planned to offer a much more extensive range of products for both than the little General Store down at Knox could provide. I would be helping out the Store also, if I could persuade Old Bat Aunt Jennie to go in with me on joint trips to Madison Mills for supplies and merchandise, and to work out some kind of arrangement where I could supply items she didn't offer for sale, and she could possibly also expand her line of merchandise available. So my living here was good for everyone, or at least for many, and I would not be run off, I would not be hoodwinked by Testament Logging Corporation and its tame pet attorney, I would live my own life as I saw fit, and so be it. I, Rory Donald Lewes, son of Edison Donald Lewes and Maggethe Knutson Calhoun Lewes, had decided so. This would stop-this ordering of my life for me. I was angry about the Bank account, yes-I did not like receiving funds I had not earned. Of course, in a sense the remittance fees for lease of my lands was earned-but then, I had never agreed to lease any land to Testament Logging Corporation, and the way I now felt, I never would agree. In fact, I would find an attorney in the morning-no, not Benton Squires, Pet Attorney on Retainer for Testament Corporation-nor Attorney-at-Law Richard Layles Carnathy, Esq., of Madison Mills, he who had sent the original letter to me which had been addressed to my row duplex in Urbana. Attorney Layles specifically billed himself as Counsel for Testament Corporation, so I knew immediately he would be no use at battling the Corporation which made his career viable. No, what I needed, and what I now determined to find, was an attorney who did not walk on the Corporate side, who was not a pet monkey in the pockets of the far-ranging Testament Logging Corporation, who did not cower and grovel at the feet of whatever-whoever-powered the Testament Logging Corporation engine. I would find an attorney with fire in his heart and clarity of vision in his soul, a man-or woman-who would understand my need for divergence from the Testament web, my struggle to run my own life as I saw fit, an individual who would fight for my right to remain myself, Rory Donald Lewes, in perpetuity. This land was MINE, inherited from my mother and my father, MINE to bequeath to my heirs, should I ever produce any; and if I produced no heirs, then mine to bequeath as I wished, to an individual, a group, to charity, or however I chose-which would NOT and NEVER be, to Testament Logging Corporation nor its subsidiary corporations nor its assigns. |
| Two of the “supercentenarians,” living folks over 100 years old, passed away in one day, on March 7, 2010-Sunday. One was nearly 115, the other nearly 114. The first was the remaining second-oldest living in the world and oldest in the U.S.; the second was the oldest living black person and fifth-oldest in the world. http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/two-of-worlds-oldest-people-mary-josephine... http://grg.org/ http://grg.org/Adams/E.HTM March 9 Free Read: from The Phantom Logging Operation Chapter 39 - - - I had come to my wits' end-once again. I only knew that I must either stop running like a skeert rabbit, every time some horror twitched, or-well, frankly, it was that or die. My Daddy didn't back down before the Hun Hordes-and he died trying. But he died bravely and I could too, and would if that became necessary. This runnin' and hidin' and scurryin' up under the bed type of behaviour wasn't me. Yes, I had grieved when Leill ran off in February; yes, I still grieved for my Mamma's death, and that were back fifteen months ago, in February of '56, before I'd met and married Leill Birmingham of Carbondale, State of Illinois, in a marriage that had lasted only eight months. But this wasn't grievin', this wasn't sorrow at the loss of loved ones-now, this was just plain skittishness and fear, and I would not have it-not any more. I was a man, only twenty-seven years old granted, but still a man, not a mole, not a field mouse, so why was I runnin' and hidin' like a vole tryin' to outdistance a predator hawk? This behaviour wasn't like me. Good golly, when I first moved up here to the Northern Woods Territories in February, homesteaded this close to The Big Forest, close enough I could see the edge of it waverin' and tricklin' in the distance, like a heat mirage on an August highway, I wasn't a-feard then! I slept in the back seat of the Mercury on cold nights, and when the weather grew a little warmer, I pitched an old Army surplus tent at the end of what would become my driveway, and tossed in my old sleeping bag and more or less slept out under the stars: no fear of lynx or bobcat, nor mountain lion nor bear (and we were far enough North, I believe, for bears). Not frightened by the night calls of owls, the chirping of crickets, the slither of grass snakes. Not frightened at all until last Tuesday afternoon, scarce a week ago, when I planted perennials all day, planted them happily, encircling the perimeters of my newly erected cabin-happy and content until I saw the Log Truck-without a driver. I worked every night-except Saturday midnight to Sunday midnight-with a dead black farmer who passed over seven years ago, a burnt husk who worked like the dickens building walls and liked to slyly grin at me, and another man whose life status I didn't know-but I did know by now he worked for Testament Corporation, and that right there put his status, affinity, and allegiance in doubt. Still, he was a very helpful worker-all three were-and I could not have gotten as far on the Greenhouse as I had if I had been forced to work alone at night. I might have been able to work on it on Sundays-but then again, probably not. I realized also (and had very quickly into the process) that these three were not working on the Greenhouse to help me-they were working to get the Greenhouse up and running, available, sitting wide open, empty and ready for me to-what? Plant seedlings for nourishment, to sell at the Plant Nursery I was building behind the cabin? Become an amateur botanist and cross-hybridize crops? Raise orchids? (In THIS climate? Said the smarter portion of my brain) Well, I didn't know-YET-what I was to do in the Greenhouse. Initially I had plotted out the Plant Nursery in such a way that the Greenhouse would take up the entire East side and extend as far into the Nursery as I deemed necessary; after all, it was better to enlarge the Greenhouse first, as I could always extend an additional room to the opposite side of the Nursery building, or to the rear. Actually, the space marked out for a Greenhouse on the East side of the Nursery was still in place; so I guessed I would go ahead and apply plastic to its walls and over its section of the roof. I could always grow regular plants and seedlings in there, while I worked in the Nursery during the day. I was certain whatever went on in the Greenhouse on the adjoining plot-now atop a tor-would not occur during the daylight hours, so I really needed to have a Greenhouse in which to grow plants for my business, did I not? Surely so, I told myself, and considered the matter settled. I did not consider that “my” normal Greenhouse inside the Nursery might be a “conflict of interest” in the viewpoint of the Greenhouse on the tor. Well, I had an extraordinarily long day planned for myself tomorrow: a trip down to Collins Junction to beard Attorney Benton Squires and get some more answers; a trip on to Madison Mills, another fifty miles, to locate the offices of Testament Corporation and its many-tentacled subsidiaries; and then back to Rennald to pick up my bonus payment from Todd's Garage for the Saturday afternoon work on the Testament Tow Division job on that old farm truck. While in Rennald I'd do a load or two of laundry, since so far my cabin lacked electricity-though I really needed to check with the County REMC and find out, if I could, when they would run poles out this way. Electric light and power would sure be an enormous help in running the Plant Nursery (though probably not The Greenhouse) and wouldn't I be thrilled to have electric heat next winter! |
Chapter 38- - - Deeper into The Big Forest drove I, feeling now under impetus, under some kind of deadline. I had work to do here in The Big Forest, I had all these files and papers to peruse, I had to finish the Greenhouse-quickly. I had to travel to Madison Mills and discover what I could of the nature of the elusive yet ubiquitous Testament Corporation. Why all this had to be accomplished-now-was yet another mystery to me. I only knew I must, and soon. Deeper and deeper into The Big Forest I headed, and I began to notice branch roads leading off in various directions to the left and right of this road, which seemed to increasingly narrow at the same time it increasingly curved. I slowed to about 25 mph, just in the rare event that some other vehicle might be approaching me, though I heard no sounds, not even birdsong. I could not see around most of the tight, twisting curves, so I wished to take no chances. On some of them, passing a passenger car or pickup would have been a tight adjustment, but if I encountered a log truck, I would surely have to find some room to pull over. I was not anxious to encounter such an experience, so I kept to my slow speed and cocked my ear to the open window, to be prepared just in case. The road seemed to keep angling right, although it was difficult to discern any direction due to the constant curves. However, I had been cautious to stay on the road by which I had entered The Big Forest, so that I could find my way out again. Glancing down at the gas gauge (thankfully it worked properly), I saw I still had half a tank, and besides I always kept two five-gallon metal cans in the trunk, full. Nevertheless I would turn around soon, could I just find a stopping place, and return, unless the road soon appeared to lead on back out of the woods. I kept moving and followed a particularly sharp turn to the right. I had no watch of course but I estimated I had been traveling more than half an hour since I first entered The Big Forest. I had gotten only maybe five minutes into the woods when I encountered the “vision” or whatever it was of the girl I took to be Alice, and nearly spun off the road. So I had driven possibly twenty-five minutes to a half hour since that point. (Rory, I thought, did you consider looking at a map before entering this?) No of course I had not, I had as so often acted without thinking, and now here I was, not lost, but far deeper into The Big Forest than I had intended. Just then out of the corner of my right eye I spotted a tree, or thought I did, that seemed to have a face, mouth impossibly wide in a scream, eyes terrorized, and just a hint of fine-textured hair just the brownish side of dark blonde. I blinked and looked over again, and could not even find the tree I had been watching. Then back at the road, which suddenly curved precipitously to the left, for a sudden change; if I had not looked back when I did, I probably would have left the road, as I almost had earlier. Just beyond this left-hand snaky curve was an open plot, not carved out of the forest so much as seeming to grow there naturally, and it was bathed in sunlight, oddly enough, and carpeted with leaves rather than with pine needles. Very strange, inside a pine forest. It did however, provide a place to pull over, and after checking the road ahead, I did so, pulling on to the hard dry ground and stopping the Merc. This would be a lovely spot to go over these papers, I thought, and I reached over and rolled down the passenger window as well, then the rear window on the driver's side. Surely there weren't bears here, or if there were, they would announce themselves in time for me to crank up and roll back out onto the road and be away before they reached me. Other than that, I'd just spend a few enjoyable moments sitting in the Merc in the sunshine and read these papers, then I'd back up and go out the way I came; or possibly, since the road had so persistently wound to the right, except for the one left-hand curve I had just negotiated, I might just go on through. Surely by now I was considerably East of where I had begun, at Knox. I pulled the papers and files and envelopes out, and then something impelled me to take a walk, farther back across this beautiful little clearing, almost a meadow. Something on the farther side compelled me. I could see nothing, for beyond this meadow of leaves and wildflowers stood a line of trees, maple and oak and birch, not the pines that lined the road to either side and filled up the content of The Big Forest. As I walked, I now began to hear birdsong, crickets, the rustle of small mammals like voles or field mice through the trees. That was the first sign of living nature I had encountered in The Big Forest, beyond the trees themselves, and that thought reminded me that I had encountered, still, as yet no signs of logging-no second growth or third growth plantings, no tree-cutting, no blazes painted on the sides of firs to indicate which to cut first. It all looked like primeval growth to me, except for this inexplicable clearing-it looked natural but not logical. Anyway, I decided to hike a little further back in, turning first to lock the position of the Merc in my mind so I wouldn't get lost, and thought again I saw a flutter of white-dress, sash, or ribbon, through the trees on the opposite side of the road. Then when I blinked, again nothing, so I turned back and proceeded on, again noting the tree line and making sure I walked straight back and not on a diagonal or curved path. Now it occurred to me I should have brought my compass, but just as I thought so the line of trees broke and in front of me appeared another clearing, but this one was not inhabited. On a slight rise about fifty feet from me stood the stone foundations of a building, quite probably a home at one point-the rise was sufficiently high enough to block the view beyond so that this became my horizon temporarily. Between that hill, with its foundations and leaning rear chimney, lay the frontispiece of this view: an antique family cemetery, rife with stone angels and tilted granite headstones from which age had obliterated all semblance of meaning. A cherub-infant-sized-lay tumbled off in a corner to the right. That side and the rear perimeter held a rusty wrought-iron fence with sharp impaling points at intervals, but the left side and front had no fence. Perhaps on those two sides the iron had collapsed, or perhaps something had pushed it loose. (WHAT?) I walked further on, hoping some stone here might be solid enough and limned enough to sit on for a bit, while I read these pesky papers, or perhaps the foundation stones would be wide enough for me to sit comfortably. As I approached the front of the boneyard, I saw that yes, indeed, this side had at one point had a fence, and it had been pushed over so it lay inside the plot. I walked gently, and very cautiously, atop it till I reached the inside of the graveyard, and began to study the headstones. Many of them, as I just said, were beyond antique, but a few were quite possibly late 19th century, and one or two actually had some legible words. Beneath the stone angel, which was gray with age and mossy slime, I found the family name, the carving amazingly still intact on all four sides of the pedestal: CALHOUN My Mamma's family cemetery, then. I had not even known there was such. - - - I wandered throughout the graveyard for a while, more or less in a trance, not thinking any particular thoughts. Here and there I found a legible gravestone on which I read an inscription. I thought about Mamma, interred in Champaign, and wondered if she would prefer to be here. Just then I found three newer gravestones at the front left corner, where the front and left fences had fallen over-the front had fallen in on the graves, the left had fallen out and away from the cemetery perimeter. I set the papers carefully down on one of the older tombs farther back, and tried to lift the fence off. It proved too heavy to lift, but stepping over it and pulling at the bottom rung from the other side allowed me to at least slide that end away from the graves, leaving the stones uncovered. When I went back in, I discovered that these were indeed newer-probably the newest-graves: my Daddy, and my Mamma's folks. They read: Edison Donald Lewes February 26 1910-May 10 1941 Beloved Husband, Father Caretaker of The Big Forest Rory Thomas Calhoun Beloved Patriarch died May 29 1932 Ilse Maggethe Knutsen Calhoun Beloved Matriarch died May 29 1932 My father, my maternal grandparents whom I never remembered knowing; but surely I must have, for I was two years and three months old when they died. I determined right then and there that I would arrange to have Mamma's casket moved right here, next to Daddy; I saw then there was a space already carved out as it were, beside his grave: a plot marked out with tiny stakes and twine, and a blank headstone. Tomorrow I would see Attorney Benton Squires and instruct him to put the process into motion to have Mamma transferred here, to lie beside Daddy and her own folks. I realized at once, too, that this must be the first of the two additional plots of land I had not realized until this past week that I owned: the Calhoun Family Cemetery, located, oddly enough, in The Big Forest. I jogged back to the Merc and dug an old pocket spiral notebook and a pen out of the car pocket, then walked back to the Cemetery, making notes as I went, mentally apologizing to the inhabitants for calling it a “boneyard.” I noted for tomorrow that I first needed to stop in at the Junction to see Attorney Squires regarding moving Mamma; then I would head on to Madison Mills and locate the Testament Corporation offices. About 3 PM I needed to be in Rennald to pick up my bonus payment from Todd's Garage, and while there I would run a load or two at the Washerette. A full day indeed, and first of all I would need to set up the Toddley boys, if they showed up, at work on the plastic for the roof of the Plant Nursery. I supposed that after midnight I would be summoned to work on the Greenhouse, so I might as well enjoy the remainder of this beautiful Sunday and its temperate weather. I pocketed the notebook and pen and picked up the files and envelopes from the nearby gravestone. Loath now to sit on a tomb, I had instead located a fallen log and sat on that. I pulled out the County Tax Assessor's notice first: sure enough, it did appear, if I read it aright, I owned the plot of land on which I currently sat, the Calhoun Family Cemetery. I hadn't seen it before, could have sworn there was only the tax notice itself and a carbon copy stapled to it, one set for each of three plats; but now I saw all three had folded plat maps attached to each-how I could have missed something that thick I didn't know. I unfolded the first, and saw that my “homestead” land included the section on which I had built my cabin and graded my drive, the land behind-my back yard-which now contained the burgeoning Plant Nursery; but also extended a sizeable distance in all four directions: behind the Nursery; to the East, toward Knox; to the West, including the foundations on which I now was building the Greenhouse; and then for some 1000 acres on the south side of New Knox Road. To the West, it appeared, my land extended right up to the boundaries of the old Jenks Farm, an oddly wedge-shaped piece which on its other side touched Farmer Jennell's very extensive segment. Looked like Jennell and I both had much acreage, but he farmed his and I had been in ignorance of exactly how much land I had inherited. I folded that plat map back up and went on to the one that showed the Cemetery! I sat stunned and amazed-I owned the land where I sat, out to the road, and back behind the Cemetery (which here appeared to be North) for twelve hundred and fifty-eight acres, including some on either side to the East and West). Astonishing-it seemed perhaps this had all been Calhoun family land then. I noticed tiny print on this particular plat map, but try as I might, I couldnt' bring it into focus. Then I remembered I also had a small magnifying glass I kept in the Merc's car pocket; it had been my Mamma's, for use with her daily newspaper as her eyes got older and much less useful, and when I packed her possessions, I remembered now sticking the glass in the car pocket rather than into one of the cardboard packing boxes, where it might have been accidentally crushed or broken. So I jogged back to the Merc and then returned to the cemetery, by this time really wishing I had bought that RC back at the Knox General Store; and I sat down once again to examine the plat map, which I had anchored with a small stone. I bent closely over the plat map which I spread out across my lap, and applied the magnifying glass. Still couldn't see the print, till I bent even closer – and, oh, there it was-just above the location of the Cemetery, next to the clearly marked-out rectangle which must represent the foundation ruins-the single word: Euphonia I had discovered the Calhoun Family homestead, and I sat a mere few feet away. To my right at the moment lay the ruins of the home in which my mother had been born and grown up, where she lived when she met my future Daddy-and where both her mother and father died in agony on that night of May 29, 1932-Euphonia. - - - So the land on which I had become impelled to construct the Greenhouse, that charred foundation ruins, was not Euphonia. That was not my ancestral homestead; that was not the farmhouse in which my grandparents had encountered their agonizing deaths. Well, in one instance, I was relieved: now I knew I wasn't constructing my dream business over the wreckage of my grandparents' lives. In another instance, this only created that much more confusion. If “Euphonia's” ruins sat behind me-then whose home burnt on the plat just beyond my driveway, where the Greenhouse was going up at night? Well, I didn't know-but somehow I didn't think that whatever it was, and truly, except for the chimney, it might not have even been a house-a barn, a tool shed (Tool Shed??), or even a mechanic's garage. Yet one more question for the recalcitrant Attorney, Benton Squires. A sudden stirring, like a gentle breeze wafting between the firs, caused me to look up. On top of the foundation, where the flooring would have been, stood a woman-a girl, wispy pale gown, waist-length hair, pale ribbon holding it off her forehead, eyes like the slate grey of sky just before the storm commences. She stared at me, and I, open-mouthed, gazed in return. Was this the girl I had seen crossing the road earlier, when I'd first entered The Big Forest, and nearly went to my untimely end? I blinked, she disappeared; blinked again, and saw her now in among the graves. Suddenly the cemetery seemed much wider and deeper than I had remembered, so that even though she now appeared in the left side near the rear-the side on which were my Daddy's and Mamma's folks' graves, but much farther back-my distance discernment just didn't seem right. I had thought that the graveyard was possibly only four lines deep, but now, I saw that she remained below a wide-spreading, thick-trunked oak, that its branches bent over her protectively, and that there must be at least eight parallel rows on that side of the center, counting my Daddy's and grandparents' as the first row. Then she would be standing, as was the oak, behind the eighth row, and yet there were some stones I could see-mostly titled, only one or two near upright-behind her. Oh, wait-not just behind her-through her. Oh dear. And here I fainted once again, as had become my wont of late. When I awoke, the sun was only a pale reflection of itself beyond the trees which stretched into infinity behind the cemetery and the foundation ruins of “Euphonia.” The girl was not in sight, but a worse sight was: a doll-like child, or child-like doll, playing hopscotch where the girl had stood, inside the foundation stones, with a screwdriver clutched with a death grasp in her left hand, singing her persistent little nursery rhyme: “I see, I spy, I stick this screwdriver in your eye,” turning toward me with that glassy-eyed blue grin and I screamed! Woke up holding my head in a death grip-and I was all alone. But at one point I had not been: the same stone I had used earlier to anchor the plat maps while I returned to the car for first, my pocket spiral notebook and a pen, and second, Mamma's magnifying glass, sat on top of the neatly folded papers. Mamma's magnifier sat beside, cracked once, diagonally across. And as I stood to brush off my jeans and collect the glass and the folders and envelopes, I glanced into the ruins. Inside, on the dirt, lay the screwdriver from my tool box at home. No! I wasn't going to collect it! I turned and ran, not jogged, to the Merc, looked inside at both seats and both floorboards to make sure I was alone, tossed in the papers and the magnifier and the stone (which I'd forgotten I had brought along in my haste), opened the passenger door and rolled up the window, shut the door, unlocked and opened the trunk to make sure it was empty of anything but what I kept inside. Then I closed and relocked the trunk and rushed to climb in the driver's seat, nearly ripping my jeans pocket in my haste to pull out the keys. Rolled up the window, closed and locked the door, locked the passenger door, looked over the seat to check the back floorboard once more. Keys in ignition, transmission in reverse, floored it out of there and back on to the road. I no longer thought about trying to drive any further into The Big Forest; instead, I raced back the way I came, a good trick considering the switchbacks, and eventually gained the turn on to New Knox Road without mishap. I raced along the road through the Village, scarcely noticing this time the girl Alice, who crossing in front of the store, threw up a courteous wave. I barely responded and sped down the road, slowing only when I came in sight of my driveway. Up the drive and around to the back, at the last minute remembering there was a Plant Nursery going up in the back yard, cut the wheel sharply and parked. Started to get out leaving the keys and the papers, then changed my mind and grabbed both, scurrying to the house after locking the driver's door; unlocked the back door, ran in and bolted and locked it, and went through the house closing every curtain and checking every lock and bolt. |
Chapter 37- - - Driving out of Knox, I was in The Big Forest proper before I realized it. I did not know now what I had expected: vines crossing the road to trap unwary tires, oaks hanging so low over the road even my low-slung Merc could not make it through. It seemed now as if I had spent my entire young life listening to bedtime tales and fright stories about this region, though I knew full well that I had not: Mamma had never, ever, mentioned The Big Forest except very rarely, in passing, and then it was more of a throw-off afterthought than an actual mention. So where did all these strange ideas arise from? Before today, I did not even remember thinking like this. Maybe Farmer Jennell had put some ideas into my head, with his talk of Old Man Jenks and his hound, dying up here in The Big Forest. As I thought that, I slammed on the brakes: wait! He said Old Mr. Jenks was dead? And the hound? Dead? Of course I knew he was dead-now-he worked with me on the Greenhouse Friday night-he was dead on Tuesday when I passed him as I headed toward Knox, and he stopped to wait for the hound, which now I guessed must have been his own dog-he was, I guess, dead the other day when he came up the driveway to talk to the boys and me-they didn't seem to react oddly. Oh, were they dead too then? Was I? Or would be? I'm sure he was dead when his old Chevy pickup tore up my drive on Tuesday afternoon during that horrible storm. But this part of The Big Forest looked fairly normal: tall pines, but spaces between to where Icould still see the sunlight; forest floor covered smartly with moss, fern growth on some of the trunks. Here and there farther back on the South side I spotted a dead trunk a couple of times, struck by lightning. But for the most part, this seemed to be just plain old ordinary usual forest land. Nothing particularly startling at all. Then I realized that this could not have been the segment which had been so heavily deforested by logging during the State's former timber boom. There was simply too little new growth, and the old trees grew so high and so closely together that this had to be virtually untouched land, not prey to the logging boom or any other kind of approach. Well, this didn't seem to be too scary-no, not scary at all. I kept on driving, deeper into the heart of the Forest, wishing now I had thought to buy a bottle of RC Cola while I was in the General Store. My stomach felt so much better and even my heart seemed relieved, as if my anxieties had lifted. The girl Alice crossed my mind again, and I saw her as if she were crossing the road in front of me, her long dusty blond hair held back by a pale wide ribbon, hair wafting in the breeze-Holy What! That was her! I slammed on the brakes and the Merc skidded sideways in the road. Luckily I was just at the beginning of a rather widened spot, perhaps a turn-around, and I didn't skid off the road. Instead my rear tires caught just before the edge of the pavement met dirt. Shaken up, I looked around, through the windshield, and out the passenger windows, but I saw no sign of the girl Alice. However, all the papers had fallen to the floor, but somehow remained inside their respective envelopes and file folders. As I bent down to pick them up from the floorboard, I saw a glimpse of white dress and flowing hair through the side window. I quickly straightened-bumping the back of my head soundly against the rear-view mirror-but nothing and no one was in sight. So I reached down again, collected the papers, stacked them neatly on the seat, then looked in the back seat to see if I could find anything to set on top of them. Sure enough, I found a cardboard shoe box I didn't remember putting in there; I did not even remember ever seeing it, but when I hefted it, I felt some weight, so it would do as a paperweight, and I used it as such, placing it in the center of the paper pile to hold it still and keep it from falling off again. As I checked in both directions and carefully pulled back into the road, still heading into The Big Forest, I felt the winds of my own mortality wafting across my spirit. |
| This morning, which got off to a personal painful start following a seriously bad afternoon and evening yesterday, I was composing merrily away on Chapter Ten of The Haunted Greenhouse when I realized that my directions in both this book and the prequel (The Phantom Logging Operation) are transposed! That is, my East is West and my West is East! So when I complete my 2500 or more words today, I will have to reverse myself and edit both books (and TPLO is currently at about 45K) and mutate East to West and West to East. At least North is North and South is South-I hope. I am attempting to straighten my geographically-challenged brain now. I redid the map I had made in PaintShopPro in December, to correctly locate the town of Rennald and the County Seat of Collins Junction, since Rory's cabin, the Village of Knox, and The Big Forest itself were already accurately placed. Then I had to draw two maps freehand, one to show the States and Lake Algonquin, and one to show Rory's cabin in relation to the other locales. Now I keep thinking I have to move his cabin to the opposite side of the Road. The difficulty is, I have been working with this locale for nearly three months, since Dec. 12; I have already written 57,777 words here between the two novels, and the locations, including Knox, The Big Forest, The Haunted Greenhouse, Rory's cabin and new Plant Nursery, the Calhoun Family Cemetery, Euphonia, and the charred foundation ruins on which The Haunted GreenHouse is arising, are set so firmly in my mind I am not certain I CAN relocate them.  Here's the Prologue to The Haunted GreenHouse, the Revised Prologue as of this morning: The Phantom Northern Woods Tales are set in an alternate historical probability, in which The Northwest Territories were divided differently than in our own “consensus reality.” History in this alternate probability, although sometimes similar, does not always adhere to the same time line as the one that historians in our consensus reality record. In this reality, The Northwest Territories became Wisconsin and Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. In The Phantom Northern Woods, each existing state is called by its full name: “State of-” as in State of Westerley, State of Minnetonka, State of Illustrian. There are three states where today only Michigan and Wisconsin stand: one state between them, like an inverted triangle, heavily forested, bordering Canada to the North-the State of Algonquin. It is this state which harbors the infamous “Big Forest.” The topography of this “probablility” differs from our own also. In it, Lake Michigan does not divide Wisconsin and Michigan. From West to East are: State of Westerly (similar to our Wisconsin), State of Algonquin, State of Minnetonka (similar to our Michigan), Lake Algonquin (at the eastern border of State of Minnetonka}. All of State of Algonquin North and East of Knox (which is approximately 1/3 into the State South from the Canadian border) is The Big Forest, which also extends into the entire northern half of State of Minnetonka. South of State of Westerley and the left side of State of Algonquin is State of Illustrian, comprised of our Illinois and Indiana from its west border to central, if a line were drawn North to South. |
Chapter 8 As Rory had talked to Farmer Jennell, and then rushed up the drive to locate the source of the noise he thought to be an explosion, young Alice-niece of Aunt Jennie, Proprietor-was scrounging in the Tool Shed behind the General Store in the Village of Knox, only twelve miles West of Rory's new cabin, and about a quarter-mile East of the entrance road into The Big Forest. Alice had long been forbidden the territory of the Tool Shed, but something seemed to have changed, even to have broken loose, in her Aunt Jennie's strict reserve since Tuesday afternoon's fated discovery by Alice of some spotted, mildewed, fox-paged, ledger-journal-account book, upstairs in the storeroom, tucked away on a paint-scrappy, faded, lemon-yellow wooden two-shelf bookcase, back in the far right corner. Aunt Jennie insisted right away that there was not anything in that corner, that the bookcase was nowhere in sight and in fact not even in the storeroom, and that the old ledger should not have been anywhere Alice could ever have found it, even if she had been looking for it. Of course Alice had not hunted it; she had not even known of its existence, and when she found it in the corner on top of the otherwise empty bookcase, she was only mildly curious, due to the odd location. She had not even tried yet to open the covers when she thought she heard Aunt Jennie calling her back downstairs. Later that night, lying sleepless in her narrow twin bed beside the attic window, watching Moon beams play across the roof peak just overhead, Alice had occasion to ponder this event. She could not understand who-or what-had summoned her; Aunt Jennie had been turned toward the archway when Alice rushed in, as if she had been expecting her, yes; but Aunt told her at supper that she had not called to Alice, she had been waiting for the customer, who seemed to have forgotten to purchase some items, and was currently lurking between the shelves of seeds and the shelf of garden implements. Aunt Jennie thought Alice had called to her! So she turned to see whatever was the matter, knowing that Niece Alice could sometimes tend to be a flighty girl, lost in flights of imagination, just like her namesake in the fanciful Lewis Carroll nonsense. Aunt didn't believe her niece had ever actually fallen down a rabbit hole; but she did have a tendency to daydream and to be easily distracted, and she might even have fallen asleep upstairs in the storeroom, resting on the plank floor in the sunlight from the West window, and been awakened by a house spider crawling across her muslin stocking. It could have been something as simple as that: a flighty young girl, daydreaming or napping, startled by a spider, or one of the odd lizards that appeared this far North only during the months of May-August, before the long winter set in once again. It could have been that simple, yet it wasn't. from The Haunted Greenhouse |
| I announced in this blog a while back that one of my pet topics would be the process and progress of my writing-for don't all we writers love to talk about ourselves? So today I'm going to orate on the current intriguing process of the newest novel, The Haunted Greenhouse, which was intended to be the sequel to the novel I began on Dec. 12, 2009, and will finish this month: The Phantom Logging Operation. Both take place in the context of my Phantom Northern Woods Tales and these two novels comprise Books One and Two of The Testament Logging Corporation Chronicles. I began The Haunted Greenhouse on Monday, March 1, since my intention about mid-February had become to use MarNoWriMo (March Novel Writing Month) to write a sequel to The Phantom Logging Operation. I had expected my protagonist, Rory Lewes, to simply carry on, muddling his way through the continuing parade of horrors The Big Forest throws at him, while demonstrating a fine grasp of moral integrity. Sorry, Gentle Readers! The Haunted Greenhouse has plans of its own, and by Day 3-yesterday-this novel had already begun to demonstrate clearly that it is determined, like its namesake, to go its own way, do its own thing-and to do it IN ITS OWN VOICE. Yes, Gentle Readers, The Haunted Greenhouse is no longer “just” the sequel to The Phantom Logging Operation. It's not even just Rory's book any more. Sure, some of the characters carry over, including Rory, Grave Ghost Girl, and Alice down at the Village of Knox General Store; and of course the ubiquitous, anthropomorphized, conscious Haunted GreenHouse (to be distinguished from the regular, ordinary, “normal,” Greenhouse Rory is constructing as part of his new Plant Nursery). But the differences were clear from the first day: 1.as soon as I had written the Prologue on Day 1, I knew that this was not going to be the first person point of view I used so successfully in The Phantom Logging Operation, which is written in Rory's first person POV. No, THG is third person point of view, and what a style of third person POV it is! 2.THG is written in double, alternating, third person POV's. The recurring, constant, thread is the third person viewpoint of The GreenHouse, that haunted, haunting, and consciously evil entity Rory is impelled to construct on his land, across the driveway and beyond the line of pines, atop charred foundation ruins whose provenance he doesn't know and The GreenHouse doesn't yet recall. 3.The alternating third person point of view will be from the standpoint of one of the other characters. So far, in five chapters, we have seen it from Rory's side, and from Grave Ghost Girl's side. Young Alice, I am sure, will also take her place on stage in providing a turn at the alternating third person POV, as toward the end of ”TPLO” she returns to draw Rory's attention at a time when he very nearly loses his life while inside The Big Forest-which would be a serious drawback for him (not just dying, but doing so inside that monstrous locale). 4.My writing style has changed completely. ”The Phantom Logging Operation” has that trademark wry, ironic, style that I exerted throughout the “Mediumistic Mary” series-where the protagonist there, 14-year-old Mary living in South Alabama and later South Georgia in 1911 adds her own smart-mouth, cynical flavour. That cynicism is not present in ”TPLO”-Rory is an idealist after all-but the ironic tone carries throughout. Well, The Haunted Greenhouse”reads, and writes, to me as if it is being composed by an entirely different author. Flowery and “19th century” is the only way I can describe it: sometimes it feels as if I am writing Vanity Fair. Or perhaps I am reincarnating William Dean Howells, without the syrup. I have never written in this particular Voice before, and if this is what is meant by “finding one's Voice,” I find myself-astonished. 5.”The Phantom Logging Operation” is pure, straight-out, no pretensions, horror. My protagonist Rory returns to the region of his birth, where he has not lived since age 2, and the evil Big Forest and evil Testament Corporation makes his life a living scarefest. Meanwhile, Rory develops his already sterling character even further. But The Haunted Greenhouse,” on the other hand, which I expected to be a subsequent straight horror work, has somehow immediately transmuted itself into horror cum magic cum fantasy (fantastical plus phantasmagoria) plus metaphysics plus medieval worldview type of plot lines. Very unexpected-see, Gentle Readers, I'm apparently just the amanuensis here, and not the author . |
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