Squid Corners

by Ed Helenski

  Around The Corner Wednesday December 13

  Towns, like everything else in this world, go through cycles. The seasons, night and day, all remind us of the cyclical nature of…nature. It is only human beings, with their enormous crania, that attempt to break the natural cycles. We ignore the weather; our workday lasts the same amount of time, winter and summer. That was not always the case.

  If we look at the old way of telling time, we see a very different world. When the world was measured by the passage of the sun, and the canonical hours were rung out on bells by human hands, time was not rigid but flexible. It had a cycle. There were always the same number of hours in daylight, no matter what time of year. It was the length of the individual hours that varied. In summer, the hours themselves were long. It was long from dawn till noon, and long from noon till dusk. The night hours were short. Dusk to midnight, midnight to dawn, they passed quickly. In winter it was reversed, the daylight hours were short; the nighttime hours were long. Hence, the long dark hours of winter. It was more than an expression.

  But man invented machines and told the cycles that they did not exist. We measure our time rigidly. No more winter, no more summer. No excuse for rain or snow, work and school go on, ignoring the weather.

  Other cycles are somewhat less apparent, but still just as present. There is the cycle of life. We are born, we grow, we age, we die. Sometimes the cycle is interrupted; sometimes it goes its full route. And if we are lucky, we allow from ourselves to spring forth a new cycle, we give birth anew.

  People are not the only things with the birth-death cycle. Plants, animals, houses, towns, they all do. When a house is new it is born. Shiny, fitted but not well worn. As time passes, it grows, additions, changes, all to make it more functional, more livable, more organic. It ages, things are repaired, and the repairs themselves age. Eventually, it begins to decay. When no one will live in it anymore, it dies.

  And so it is with towns. They are born, they grow. Sometimes the growth is slow, sometimes fast. Sometimes it happens effortlessly, painlessly. Sometimes there are growing pains. Towns age. They have a history, a past, and a future. Generations are spanned. The town embraces life cycles, cycles of people, cycles of trees, cycles of houses. And so, like them, towns sometimes grow old and die. But a town is not dead until no one lives there. And even then, like a house, it can be reborn. Start the cycle anew.

  Some people might say our town is nearing the end of its cycle. Some people see a few changes and say it is the end. Others cling to the town, to its past and its future. It is those who do, who see the future, that will ensure there is one. For towns recreate themselves each day. With each dawn, with each soul awaking, the town is reborn. So let’s celebrate the cycle, and enjoy the spot on the wheel that we occupy each moment.

  Tom Tharon

  Chapter 16

  Despite the best of intentions, not all endeavors can succeed. And so it is with our little rag. Dwindling ad sales, virtually non-existent out of town distribution, the end of any hope of syndication money, all spell the end. I think perhaps I can sustain another week or two, but it’s essentially over. I am bothered a good deal less by that than I would have thought. I am not quite sure why that is. Maybe I thought the paper was the dream, the desire, but it turned out to be a desire for something else. I don’t know what I will do now, but that doesn’t worry me overmuch. Life here is cheap to live, and I can take my time making up my mind.

  Larry sent me an email that forced me to come to grips with the whole experience.

  Tom.

  It sounds like you have really become immersed in your town. I have to tell you, I haven’t had any luck with your column. The truth is I haven’t tried very hard. Though you try to embrace universality, your references are so specific, so local, and so sparsely described, that I can’t follow them. I don’t know all the backstory that is being presumed. If you wrote from the view of a stranger maybe that would work, but you assume so much. I just don’t get it. You are a better writer than that. Come home.

  Foxe

  I haven’t told Maggie yet, but I am sure she is perceptive enough to already know. She is busy working this week filling in for Jackie Smith. Jackie was the fifth grade teacher at Buchanan, although they called her “the fifth” for a slightly different reason, or so Mags tells me. I guess she was always a bit in the bag, but was one of those rare and delightfully pleasant drunks. Her husband Roger runs the Barber shop. Or ran, I should say, I saw a for sale sign in the window on Sunday. Another one bites the dust.

  In some ways wandering around the town now is like being at a carnival the day after it closes. Everyone is packing and bustling and getting ready to move on. There are big empty spots where it was clear something was, but you can’t quite be sure what. There are leftover smells on the air, at a carnival they are the smells of cotton candy, popcorn, hot dogs. Here, the smells are harder to pin down, maybe they are only shadows on the mind, but the feel is the same. Everywhere you look; the sense is of something changed, something missing. You can’t always be sure just what, but something. I have passed my autumn here, and it feels like the autumn of the town as well.

  I told Meg on Tuesday. She was disappointed of course, but she took it pretty well. She has already talked to Baldy about starting a school paper, and she will be editor in chief. That might be a better, safer, starting place for a young girl. She gave me the latest on her bogeyman rumor.

  “It just keeps getting weirder” she told me, munching on a bag of corn curls as she spoke. We were at my desk having a couple of grape pops, kind of a farewell toast. “Now two boys, Mason Grier from fifth grade, and Adam East from sixth grade. They were out on the dirt part of Cleveland, out past Ma Barker’s” I had to laugh at that reference, not sure if it was aimed at Bertram or Barbara. “They went out there to smoke a cigar Mason stole from his dad’s dresser” Meg rolled her eyes as if to say, boys, what silly creatures they are. “Anyway, they were out there right near sundown on Saturday, and they were sitting down in the tall grass, kind of out of sight. Now here’s the weird part.” She took a swig of her pop and went on. “They claim they saw the bogeyman. They say he came up out of the ground, like a vampire or something. He was all hairy and brown, and when he came up he sniffed the air, and then he looked in their direction. They think he must have smelled the cigar. So then he seemed to see them and started coming towards them. Well,“ she started to laugh at this point, “they took off like they were being chased by bees. I guess they thought a bogeyman was worse than bees. They claim he chased them all the way back to town. Know what I think?”

  I tried to picture the pell mell rush of the two boys, and I was laughing too. “What?” I asked her.

  She took on a look like an old Yankee about to deliver a sage bit of cracker wisdom. “I think they are lucky they didn’t burn those woods down.” She leaned back in her chair, once again looking much older than twelve. “I want to still write this one, even if it doesn’t get into the paper. Maybe I can send it to this journalism contest I read about. First prize is five hundred dollars and they print your article. If I write it will you still edit it for me?”

  “Sure, Meg. Sounds like a good idea, maybe you will turn something up yet, expose the myth. Or codify it on paper.”

  “It’s really been great, Mr. Tharon. Thanks for all the help you gave me. And for the chance to write, for a real paper I mean.” She stood, looking shy and suddenly young again. “I’ll never forget it.” With that she lurched towards me, and gave me a tight hug. I hugged her back, feeling more emotion at the parting than I was expecting. Still, I would see her again.

  “It’s been my pleasure, Meg. I am sure you are going to be a huge success.” She leaned in, pecked my cheek, and then bounced off and out the door. I missed her already.

  I set about the task of contacting my advertisers. I would have to collect the bins and see if I could get any cash back on them. The PC and related gear I would keep, I had a feeling publishing was not
gone from my life, just taking a shift in focus. The office I could vacate as soon as all my stuff and the last of the books were moved out. I would break my lease with Amy Vickers. She would no doubt be heartbroken.

  Wednesday night Mags and I took advantage of the clear, cold night air, and went for a long walk. Winter nights always seem to have more stars than any other kind, especially when you get away from the lights of the town. Which is just what we did. After a supper at my house, we rounded the corner onto Cleveland and headed out into the darkness, hand in hand, or rather mitten in glove.

  I have to think that there is nothing so wonderful as just walking in the night with a person you are falling in love with, or in love with. In fact, I suspect that the two are one and the same. If you are truly in love with someone, you keep falling for them, the fall never ends. Infatuations wane, lusts fail, friendships shift gears and change, but love, true love, grows in a continuous fashion. There may be prunings and periods that to an outsider might appear to be dormancies, but in the end true love is something that never stops happening, never stops developing, never stops.

  Listen to me, the expert after nearly two months in love. We walked and talked. Don’t ask me what we talked about. It was all very wonderful and important, but it’s the kind of thing you can only do, recalling it tends to be vague and general. One of those moments that is purely in the now, never in the past or the future.

  We passed the Barker place, and started on down the unpaved portion of the road. I said that maybe we had better think about turning back, but Mags got such a look of disappointment on her face that I was dissuaded. She admitted being silly, but she was having such a wonderful time, she didn’t want to go back just yet. So on we strolled. The air was cold, but we were warm as only lovers in deep interaction can be. We passed Terio’s old farmhouse, the birthplace of Eustice’s bride, and I realized that soon the dirt road would be turning into wheel ruts through the grass and we would have to stop anyway.

  We paused at the edge of the huge meadow that marked the start of the old road through the wilderness, or what passed for wilderness now. The world opened up at this spot, a hillside overlooking a great field, rimmed with bushes that thickened into trees. Overhead the sky seemed enormous, filled to bursting with stars you could never see in the proximity of light bulbs. We stood, staring at it in awe, and of course, after a few moments, fell to kissing. It was just a magical night. We kissed and touched and despite the December chill and the lateness of the hour, our bodies responded with heat. Finally, reluctantly, we were about to turn around and head back to town. Mags took one last long look at this private vista we had discovered. I had my arm around her shoulders, and took in the view as well. The moon gave enough silvery glow, and we had been away from the lights long enough, that it was lit as well as daytime as far as we were concerned.

  It was Maggie that saw it first. Afterwards I would wonder if Meg’s stories and my retelling of them to Maggie somehow guided us out there. In any event we found ourselves joining the saga. There was a shaking of some shrubs off at the perimeter of the woods. It’s not the sort of thing you would notice ordinarily, but we had been here for a while and so were in tune with the sounds of the place.

  “Tom” she whispered, a little more urgently than she had been saying my name previously, when only passion was inspiring her. “Look over there.” She pointed off to her right, and I followed her finger.

  At first I saw nothing, and was about to remark the same, when the bushes moved again. “What is that?” I asked out loud, though I didn’t really expect Maggie to have an answer. “Stop pointing, maybe we can pretend we haven’t noticed them and get a better look”

  Maggie slowly lowered her arm and looked at me. “Them?” she asked. “What makes you think it’s a person? I thought maybe it was some deer.”

  “Remember Meg’s stories about a bogeyman? I somehow think we are about to see it.” I whispered back, putting my mouth close to Maggie's ear. Even in this alert state, I couldn’t help but notice how nicely shaped an ear it was, and had to squelch an urge to take it in my lips and nibble on it.

  Just then there was another great rustling, and a figure burst out of the foliage. I gasped, and Maggie said “Holy Shit”. I don’t know which was more surprising, seeing the figure, or hearing Mags say that. It looked more or less like a person, but somehow bulkier. It was surely no bear, although it was hairy or furry, or at least seemed so at this distance. It appeared to be carrying something.

  “What the hell is that?” Maggie asked me in a harsh whisper.

  “I guess it’s the bogeyman.” I replied, not taking my eyes off of it. Maggie had been holding my hand while we watched and her grip had gotten impressively tight. If she squeezed much harder she was going to break my hand. I wiggled my fingers, and after a moment she got the hint and loosened her grip slightly.

  The figure continued its slow way into the field, and it was clear now that it had something heavy with it. It walked with an odd, kind of sideways, gait, and it seemed a bit smaller now that we had some time to look at it. Still very stocky and bulky, but not really all that tall. Kind of like one might think of a caveman, as opposed to say a yeti. My thoughts were salable to the National Enquirer.

  “Is it a person?” Maggie asked me, seeming to get a bit more relaxed as it became apparent that the creature had either not seen us or was ignoring us.

  “I think so. What else could it be? It’s sure not a bear, and there are no…uh…large primates around here except for us. People, I mean.” I thought about it. Could some sort of gorilla or baboon have gotten loose out here? Such things did occasionally happen. I recalled hearing about something that happened up in northwest PA. For most of one summer residents in the small towns around Erie had been reporting seeing a lion, an honest to God lion. The police had scoffed and the local media had made of joke of it, but the reports continued. It finally turned out, as the story goes, that what people had been seeing was…a lion. A guy had moved to oh, Franklin or one of those towns up there, and brought a de-clawed, de-toothed, pet lion with him. No doubt a Californian. Anyway, it was illegal to have it there, and the expense of feeding it, the chore of keeping it hidden, grew too great for the guy, so he let it go. Just let it go. A lion. So, it seemed to me that a gorilla wasn’t entirely impossible. But this thing didn’t move like a gorilla.

  I was about to say so when the thing suddenly stopped and looked up, sniffing. I realized the breeze had shifted and grown. We were now upwind of it. And apparently, it could smell us. It froze, staring right at us, and Maggie clutched at me, as if frightened by being caught. It undoubtedly saw the motion, because it dropped whatever it was carrying and ran for the tree line. It had gotten about halfway into the field before it spotted us, so it had a good fifteen seconds of running before it was hidden again. When it ran, it showed dark, almost black legs. It wasn’t furry everywhere.

  “What WAS that?” Mags asked again, her voice louder now.

  “It was a person. I’m sure of that. The real question is who? And why? Come on.” I began tugging her into the field.

  “What are you doing?” She offered a bit of resistance to being dragged towards where the thing had stopped.

  “I want to see what it dropped. Come on, I am sure it…listen to me, it. I am sure they are gone.” I tugged, and after a moment she came. The light was still good, though not so romantic feeling now, and it was easy going through the meadow. We were able to see the trampled grass that marked the person’s progress, and so it didn’t take long to find what they had dropped.

  The object lay on the bent and broken grass and we approached it slowly. It was a bit smaller than a basketball, and roughly egg shaped. For a brief second I had thought it was a head. You know, a human head. But as we got closer it became more and more clear what it was. And that just left me puzzled. Laying on the grass was a rock. A large, dirt encrusted rock. It looked moist and clumped with mud and some crawling things, bugs or worms I don’t kn
ow. Nasty.

  “Why would it carry a rock?” Maggie asked me. “Was it going to bash in our brains with it?”

  “I don’t think so.” I replied. “When it saw us it ran. I have no idea why it was carrying this.” I looked around and shivered. “We better head back before we freeze to death. I think it’s gone anyway.” It again.

  Maggie nodded and we went back the way we had come, hand in hand. And every so often, one or the other of us would look over our shoulders. We didn’t lose the sense of being watched until we could see the lights on Cleveland again.

  When we got to my house Mags said she would just stay here rather than go on home. As we mounted the steps we got another surprise. Something was hanging from my doorknob. I bent and looked at it closely. After the previous surprises this was getting to be routine. It was a small leather pouch on a string. I picked it up and shook it. There was something dry and rattley inside. It was sewn shut so I couldn’t find out what, but when I brought it near my nose it smelled god-awful.

  “What is that?” Mags asked me, peering at it in the dim light.

  “Got me.” I replied. “Smells terrible though.” I went over to the side of the house and opened my trashcan. “In you go” I said and tossed the bag in. Good riddance to smelly garbage.

  Seeing the, well, whatever it was, didn’t put a damper on our romance, though it did niggle at the back of my mind. We spent hours making love, doing all the kissing and touching and whispering that I somehow think is the glue of a relationship. Marriages sometimes fail for lack of that glue. When I thought about the relationships I have been in, I realized that although there had always been sex, there had never been this sort of intimacy. The kisses were more than just prelude, more than foreplay. They were an event unto themselves; a need to make contact, to breathe each other’s breath, to be close enough to feel each other’s hearts beat. And that need was decidedly two sided. And the rest, the lying close, the whispers, that was real intimacy, more intimate perhaps than being inside Mags. In the dark, touching someone you love, it’s hard to not open your soul, tell the whole truth. Mags and I have shared so much in those whispers, even when the words themselves didn’t say much. I think a lot of marriages start with that glue, but it fades with time, and the intimacy with it. But a marriage is like a piece of furniture, periodically the joints need new glue, and if you don’t have any, eventually it falls apart.