by Jeffrey Ford
“You know, Mr. Ford,” he said. “There’s a big difference as to how the supernatural operates in storybooks and real life. You say you’re a writer.”
I nodded.
“In real life, the supernatural declines to explain. In fiction, it must. I’m not talking about sleight of hand by some clever magus. I mean events that are truly supernatural. In those cases, the storyline runs deeper than most are willing to dive.”
I came out with my story about the stone circle and the sacrificed animal. When I told him, the first thing he asked me is what kind of animal it was that had been killed. I told him either a fox, a dog, or a coyote, and then asked him if it made a difference. He shook his head and muttered “Nah,” although it was clear that it did. He had me tell him where precisely the stone circle had been in the woods, and I did my best. He seemed interested in the giant orange mushrooms that dotted the site.
“Do you have any enemies?” he asked.
“Not that I’m aware of. But I do have a hunch that the guy who killed that creature is the same guy who had been following me in his pickup truck.”
“Following you?”
I explained.
“You’d never seen him before?”
“Never saw him till that first day in February when I pulled out of my driveway. I hadn’t done anything to him.”
“Wait a second,” said the old man. “What do you mean by you hadn’t? Have you since?”
“Well, I scattered his bone pile, but . . .”
I quit talking because Braun took a comb out of the pocket of his flannel shirt and slapped it three times against the back of his left wrist. “Listen, Mr. Ford,” he said. “You can’t think of those operating in spellwork and Pow-Wow as if they’re tied to the regular passage of time or its perceived effects. You understand?”
“Nonlinear?”
He put the comb back in his shirt pocket, clapped his hands, and pointed at me. “You got it.”
“So he might have been harassing me on the road because I wrecked his bone pile, even though my wrecking the bone pile came after his harassing me?”
Braun nodded. “But you know, it could all mean something else entirely. It could have to do with something that hasn’t even happened yet. Speak no more about it now. Take this,” he said and handed me an everyday object (he said if I told anyone about it, it’d lose its power to protect me). “Keep that on you all the time. Go home now and don’t be thinking about Pow-Wow for a while. Write about something else. I got a protection charm at work. Be wary of anyone who seems cockeyed to you. Don’t have any business with them. I’ll send somebody by to check up on you in a while. A day might come, after this is resolved, when you’ll realize what it was about. The pieces will fly together.”
Of course I was more intrigued than ever, but the old guy scared the crap out of me. I was about as fearless against the supernatural as I was driving over fifty. I kept the whole thing out of my mind and wrote a story set in Japan. Half the time I thought Braun was pulling my leg, but still, when I’d get up in the middle of the night to take a piss, I’d peer out the bedroom window to see if the black truck was parked in front of the house. I wanted to tell Lynn, but I was sworn to secrecy, and the whole thing was just getting way too complicated to describe.
Stranger in the Orchard
I had story deadlines, and I’d picked up a few classes a semester at a liberal arts university about forty-five minutes away. Life was starting to fill up with Ohio. I didn’t have much time for the park, but when Fin and I did go we’d stay away from the creek through the woods and stick to the lake or prairie. It was mid-July, still and hot, and I didn’t give a damn about hexes and spells; I was too busy praying that the air conditioner would keep running till October.
Off from teaching, I consumed a lot of wine by moonlight on the porch. I’d sit out there with Lynn and a couple of bottles, a candle going, watching the fireflies across the field next to the house. She usually fell asleep somewhere around 11:00, and I’d wake her to go up to bed, and then I’d sit there and rock and smoke and drink into the following morning. The sunrises, I heard, were beautiful, and Lynn would send me photos of the dawn she’d snapped before heading out to work, but I never witnessed one as I’d usually climbed into bed just as the birds began to sing. The clouds of the afternoon were towering palaces of cotton, ships heading out to sea.
On a Monday afternoon in late July, I was sitting out in the orchard. There was a warm breeze blowing across the fields and filtering into shadows beneath the trees. There were trace scents of apple and pear. I could see the clear blue sky through the leaves and hear the insects in the garden. I had my iPad on a stand and a keyboard and was writing a story about a local museum I’d recently visited.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up and the goosebumps gave me a shiver. I turned around in my chair and looked behind me. There stood a tall young woman with bangs, mid-length hair, and a jaw as wide as my forehead. She was dressed in some old-time pink dress as if fashioned from a cotton feed sack.
“Well?” I said. I looked at Fin, who was standing there quietly sniffing her shoes, and thought thanks for the warning, buddy.
She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with her free hand. In the other was a metal detector and a metal shovel. “Hello, sir. Sorry to bother you. My name is Sylvia Benet, and I’m a graduate history student at Ohio State University. I’m involved in a project where we are going to some of the older properties in the area and doing shallow metal searches for everyday objects of the past, old coins, etc.”
“You want to look around in my yard?”
“This place has been here a hundred years, am I correct?” she asked.
“Over a hundred,” I said. “Go ahead and look around.”
“I’ll let you know if I find anything.” Fin followed behind her as she headed for the side of the house.
A while had passed and I’d given myself back up to the writing when I felt her behind me again. I turned and she stepped forward. It was as if she’d have stood there all day waiting if I’d decided not to turn. She didn’t have her equipment with her but she held a strange object in her hand.
“Look what I found out in the middle of the field,” she said. She laid what looked like a tree root on the table next to the keyboard. It was splayed at the bottom into a Y, and at the other end there was a bulbous knot with crude facial features etched into it and rusted metal screws for eyes. “It was the screws that let me pick it up on the detector.”
“What the hell is it?” I asked.
“Some kind of homemade doll,” she said.
“Creepy.”
“You know, that tree in the corner of your property,” she said and pointed off beyond the garage.
“The white oak?” I asked.
“Yes. That’s a very famous landmark around here, or at least it was back in the day. It’s a stunning tree.”
“A landmark?” I said.
“A landmark and also involved in more than one local legend.”
“Sometimes I just find myself sitting on the porch staring at it,” I told her.
“Well, sorry to bother you. Just thought I’d bring that for you to see. I’m going to finish up in the front by the porch and then be on my way.”
“You’ll let me know if you find anything else?” I asked, but she’d already started away and I’d spoken too softly for her to hear.
I held the tree-root doll in my hands and stared out through the trees at the cornfields beyond our garden. I watched the breeze move through them while I wondered about the origins of the root. I’m not sure how long I sat like that, but eventually I put the thing aside and got back to work. I’d decided if the girl wanted to take the thing with her for school, I’d say yes.
An hour passed, and when next I looked up, I noticed that the sky had darkened considerably an
d that the breeze had become a wind. The storm was moving in from the west, which was the usual direction for bad weather. I knew the rain would begin to fall in seconds. I picked up my iPad and keyboard and stand, the root doll, and headed for the house. Fin was at my heels, and he barked. We made our way to the porch at the side of the house, where I set everything down on a small table and then sat and lit a cigarette.
It only struck me then that I’d not seen the student again. I got up and made my way around the porch to the front of the house. She was nowhere in sight and her car was gone. “Oh, well,” I said to Fin and returned to my seat and my cigarettes. I looked across the field at the white oak. Sometimes at night, after a few wines, I could literally feel that tree breathing. Now, with the doll, obviously fashioned from an oak root, I could feel it thinking.
That night, on the porch, when I showed the doll to Lynn, she said, “That’s weird.”
“I know.”
“Get rid of it.”
“Where?”
“Throw it in the back by the cornfield, where the compost heap is. You know, the Christmas tree graveyard back there.”
“You want me to just leave it there? Lurking?”
Lynn drank her wine and shut her eyes, leaning back onto her chair. There was an owl calling from the north, off in the windbreak amidst the sea of corn. “We’ll have to burn it,” she said.
“Rough justice.”
The very next day, after a solid morning of writing, I decided in the late afternoon to cook an early dinner. Lynn wouldn’t return till late and would already have eaten, so why wait? I fixed up a chicken and stuck it in the oven to bake. While it cooked, I sat at the counter in the kitchen reading Basho and there was a knock. Fin barked like mad. I shuffled over to the door in my bare feet and opened it. There was a man and woman standing on the porch. He was in his early seventies, I’d say—a shorter, rounded fellow with white hair, big lips, and a hat. She was a very tall woman with a coat and purse from my mother’s era.
They were from around the bend, from a church over there. I missed whatever denomination it was. I don’t think it was Baptist nor Mennonite, some Christian deal I’d never heard of. Anyway, they were very nice. We stood on the porch and chatted. I explained to them that I really appreciated them coming by but that I wasn’t very religious.
“That’s a shame,” said the guy. “We were hoping you’d come over and visit.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I don’t think so.” I tried to smile.
“The reason it’s too bad,” said the preacher’s wife, “is we’ve got an opening for someone right now. That doesn’t happen as often as you think.”
“What do you mean, an opening?”
“A spot,” said the preacher. “Last week this young guy who was part of the parish got himself killed in a car wreck over on the back way to town. He was run off into a ditch by a guy in a pickup.”
I was slightly stunned by how enamored they’d thought I’d be of the concept of their having a “spot” for me, not to mention the surprise news of the pickup. I was struck silent.
Finally, after waiting for me to respond, the preacher said, “The cops got the driver of the truck. Oh, yeah, he’s going to jail, but we’ve got a place for you among us.”
“Was it a black pickup?” I asked.
They both nodded.
It took me a while to unload them off the porch. I endured the whole thing out of respect for their reaching out, although I found their offer, to say the least, kind of spooky. I let these concerns slip away because I had to wrap my imagination simultaneously around the fact that the black pickup had recently been hunting, and the fact that the infernal driver was now behind bars, which was a relief.
As the old couple stepped off the bottom step of the porch, she turned back and said, “The young man, from our church who passed away, he grew up as a child in your house.”
“Grew up here?” I said and for some reason pointed at the boards of the porch.
They didn’t answer, and they didn’t look back. They got into a midsized, older-model sedan, pulled out of the driveway, and were gone. My chicken was burned, and the oak doll was missing from the table on the porch when Lynn and I stepped out for wine later that evening. There was no possible other explanation but that the pastor and his wife took off with the thing. I told Lynn and she said, “Let them have it. At least we’re rid of it.”
Remember Me
I got a gig doing a reading in New York City; a decent reason for escaping the cornfields and hitting the road. I decided not to take a flight but to drive to South Jersey, park the car at the Hamilton train station in the overnight lot, and get a room in the city for a few days. I figured not spending for a plane ticket would offset the expense of a hotel in the Rotten Apple.
Lynn was glad to see me get out of the house and encouraged the trip. The drive to Jersey wasn’t bad. Along the way I listened to a book on tape about the making of Orson Welles’s last, never-shown film, The Other Side of the Wind. I spent a night with my painter friend, Barney, down in Dividing Creek in South Jersey, and then stayed a night with some old neighbors who lived closer to the train station. The next morning, before sunrise, I took off for New York. I stowed my car in the parking garage and was on my way.
The place I’d booked in NYC was as cheap as I could get it—less than 200 bucks. The room was made for some smaller race of people. I had to sidle around the bed, which took up the majority of the room, stand sideways in the shower, and sort of hover over the bowl to take a shit. At some point in the middle of each of the three long nights I stayed in that room, I woke in a sweat, choking. Each time I managed to calm down and take hold of myself. The good part was that I was so busy I only inhabited the miserable hovel for a few hours per night. I had lunches with editors and my agent and saw old friends. I made visits to a few of my favorite restaurants and museums.
The evening of the reading, the last night I’d be in the city, I had an early dinner and some drinks at the B Bar on East 4th Street. The place I had to read was up 4th a few blocks, so it was convenient, plus the B Bar, at the time, had a spot outside, a patio where you could still smoke. I had a salad and a beer by myself out there on a beautiful summer evening. My manuscript was on the table, and I leisurely went through it. All was well, and I was actually looking forward to heading back to Ohio the next day.
Just as I checked my watch and saw that I only had a half hour before I’d have to head up the street to the KGB Bar, someone stepped up to my table and put their hand out as if to shake. I looked up, confused, and took in the person’s face. Still, out of politeness I shook hands.
“Can I help you?” I said.
The stranger, a guy of about my age with a beard and salt and pepper, hair pulled the empty seat out across from me and sat down. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m getting old.” But his face wasn’t familiar in the least.
“Binghamton University,” he said, and I nodded. I had attended undergraduate and graduate school there. I shifted my thinking.
“Writing workshop with Gardner.”
That was a class and professor I’d had.
“Oh fuck it, Jeff,” he said. “Toby Madduc.”
The name was familiar to me, and now that it had been said, I did recognize the face, although, I suppose much like mine, it had gone through the fun-house mirror of time.
“Toby,” I said. “What the hell. I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you. You actually are looking great.”
“Oh, fuck, no I’m not,” he said. The waitress passed by and he turned to order us beers.
“What have you been up to?” I asked.
“Just working. But hey, I’ve seen what you’ve been up to. I’ve read all your books and story collections, seen the reviews in the Times, the LA Times, the Washington Post. Awesome. You�
��re famous.” He smiled, and I couldn’t tell if he was being genuine or breaking my balls.
“Yeah,” I said, “that fame is a relative term. What are you doing?”
“I’m working on Wall Street. You know, I pull in a ton of dough and I’m depressed.” He laughed.
“Did you keep up with the writing at all?” I asked.
He shook his head.
The waitress brought the beers. I told him that I’d moved out to Ohio so my wife could get a job she wanted. When he asked what it was like, I said, “Slow as shit. Otherwise, we’re out in the country, which is different.”
“I’m living in Brooklyn Heights,” he said.
I told him that I had to get going because the reading would start in about twenty minutes. He said, “I can’t make it, I’m sorry. Would love to see you read a story. It’s great to know someone actually got published from that workshop. I’ll tell you what, give me the address of the hotel you’re staying at. I’ll come by late. I gotta go back up to midtown for a meeting with a friend around 11 p.m. I’ll stop by your hotel and get you.”
I half-heartedly tried to beg off. “I have to split back to Ohio tomorrow,” I told him.
“Listen, bud, this woman I’m meeting later is none other than the fiction editor at the New Yorker.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” I said.
“I’m her broker. You gotta come and meet her.”
“I’m pretty sure the fiction editor at the New Yorker has no interest in meeting me.”
“Trust me, she’ll be into it. I’m telling you. She likes all that speculative crap. Really, you should come. She’s a million cracks.”
As I wrote out the address of my hotel on the back of a matchbook, I asked him, so what’s this editor’s name?”