(An Odyssey Journal)

The misty rain collected on the hemlock boughs, and clung like frost or ashes to the moss that covered the stones and the trunks of the trees. In the lee of the ridge, Ann huddled in her brother Evan’s cloak, her back to a shaggy gray birch. The raindrops beaded on the hood and shoulders, then slowly seeped into the wool.

Evan stood on a stone at the crest of the ridge, squinting into the rain, frozen in the hurried act of salvaging the last dry clothes that remained to them. His pack lay open at his feet, collecting dampness.

The tolling of a bell hung in the air, the sound distorted by the thickness of the mist so that it seemed if he only leapt towards it and threw out his arms he could catch it before he fell.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“No.”

“The bell!” he shouted. “Didn’t you hear it?”

Ann shook her head, not looking at him.

“It’s the train!” He ripped at the drawstring of his pack, pulling it closed. He slung it onto his shoulders with a heave that almost sent him toppling from the ridge. Then he leapt the two steps down to his sister’s side, and fumbled for her hand. “Come on!” he urged. “We can catch it!”

His voice would carry through the fog, just as the sound of the bell had carried. The thing that hunted them would hear, even from miles away. It would follow. But Evan didn’t care anymore. He needed to feel hope.

Ann struggled to her feet, her head bowed. One long lock of dark hair spilled out below the folds of the cloak, damp and clinging to itself in the rain, the spiral bough of a mountain tree gnarled and aged beyond its time.

“There isn’t any train,” came the words from invisible lips. He could hear them trembling.

Her hand was cold–but so was Evan’s. He spun away from her, and pulled her stumbling after him along the trail.

#

The misty rain collected on the hemlock boughs, and clung like frost or ashes to the moss that covered the stones and the trunks of the trees. In the lee of the ridge, Ann huddled in her brother Evan’s cloak, her back to a shaggy gray birch. The raindrops beaded on the hood and shoulders, then slowly seeped into the wool.

Evan stood somewhere behind her, doing something she couldn’t and didn’t care to see–something awful, false and self-deluding. Something hopeful.

The tolling of a bell hung in the air, the sound distorted by the thickness of the mist so that if she wanted, she could pretend it didn’t exist.

“Did you hear that?” Evan asked, his voice high and unsteady.

“No,” she answered.

“The bell!” Evan shouted. “Didn’t you hear it?”

She fixed her gaze on the dark, blurry line of moisture spreading through the edges of the hood. It was only inches from her eyes. They hurt with the effort, but she still could feel the hurt inside. Ann shook her head. She clung to her knees and tried harder.

Evan didn’t see, or hear, or care. “It’s the train!” he screamed instead. “Come on! We can catch it!”

She felt the heat of his body behind her, even through the cold and rain. A fevered heat, she thought. His burning hand fumbled for hers. It closed too tight, and pulled her up. She was too tired to resist.

She glimpsed his face in spite of herself. The scars stood out white. His eyes were red–the only things in this world with any color. The thing that hunted him was there, like a rainstorm trapped in an hourglass.

“There isn’t any train,” she said, through lips that trembled with cold.

His eyes burned; he turned away without a word.

Evan dragged her over the crest of the ridge, and down the steep, slick trail. She could barely lift her legs. She stumbled, striking old bruises against new stones. She would have begged, but she hadn’t the breath.

#

What’s the difference, shifting from Evan to Ann? Well, we get the opposite end of their contrast: despair instead of hope. Ann knows what’s wrong with Evan. Evan only thinks he knows what’s wrong with Ann. So we lose that particular aspect of the mystery that is pretty much the only thing that keeps this story going. But actually her perspective on it is pretty interesting too. She gets to look in Evan’s eyes, which by virtue of what’s happening to them are far more expressive then hers. She’s retreating into herself as far as she can go; he’s going insane. And the mystery of what will happen to them, as well as that of what has happened to them, of course is still intact. So actually I think I might enjoy rewriting this whole story from her perspective.

(An Odyssey Journal)

The stems of the blueberry bushes snapped as the giant bull moose carelessly cropped berries, leaves and all, chewing with sweeping, circular strokes of his jaws. The berries were abundant, though tiny and tart, and still a bit pink on the undersides. The moose heaved massive, mooing sighs of relief. He hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. His bones still hurt where the thing had hit him. He’d lain a long time by the side of the road, mooing wails of pain, before he found the strength to drag himself up. He still didn’t know quite how he’d done it–but he thought it had something to do with the smell of those wonderful berries.

The bushes would probably die when the moose had his fill. It wasn’t very fair. The birds and the deer and the other moose wouldn’t get the chance to eat their share. The farm wife in whose yard they grew wouldn’t get the chance to make pie. Her children would cry. And that’s saying nothing for the bushes themselves. Not that the moose particularly cared.

The hunter crouched in the bush with his blunderbuss, his eye to the sights, his finger on the trigger. He’d never seen a moose this huge, with antlers wider than he was tall. It looked a little mangled, unsteady on its legs, like maybe somebody else had already shot it. Not that that made any difference to the hunter. It was his kill now. Just wait till his buddies saw him driving home with that monster tied to the front of his car! He hoped his car could handle it. He pulled the trigger, sending a slug straight into its shoulder. The moose made an angry noise, raised its head, then went back to eating. The hunter cracked open his gun to reload.

The moose would most certainly die, once the hunter got off another shot or two. It would keel over into the blueberry bushes barely twenty feet from the spectacular crash it had miraculously survived. It wasn’t very fair. The poor moose had a wife and kids who’d never see him again. He was also King of the Forest. Once he was gone, there would be no one to decide disputes between forgetful squirrels over whose nut cache was whose. Not that the hunter particularly cared.

The little blue Ford Pinto lay crumpled in the middle of the road, the shape of a really big moose indented in the roof and hood. Hank and Janie Briggs were smooshed inside, just finally beginning to die from all the internal bleeding they’d suffered a day and a half ago. Hank and Janie were on their honeymoon in Maine, Vacationland. They lived in Massachussets, but couldn’t afford a vacation somewhere nice like Fiji. That was okay with Hank and Janie. They loved each other so much it didn’t matter where they went, just so long as they were together.

God laughed out loud. He poked a passing angel in the arm and pointed down. “See that?” he asked. “Those idiots! They didn’t read the sign!” They’d probably be dead before the moose. It wasn’t very fair. Not that God particularly cared.

Brake for Moose, said the sign sticking out of the dying blueberry bushes next to the road. It Could Save Your Life.

(An Odyssey Journal)

I chose the blonde-haired lady who works at the cafe at St. Anselm’s. Initially, as she shuffled about the back kitchen among her co-workers, I would have had difficulty telling them apart from the neck down. They all wore the pale blue smocks and white shirts underneath, they all were of approximately the same mid-level shapeless lumpiness, and they all moved with a short stride, not really lifting their feet from the ground, not really moving any part of their body except from the knees down. All this conveyed a sense of boredom, of downtrodden monotony.

What struck me about her, what made me decide to choose her for this exercise, was the way she responded after she saw me waiting at the counter. It surprised me–suddenly she looked up, right into my eyes. Her eyes opened very wide. Her brows went up. She asked what I wanted in a string of very quick, close-together words. I told her. “A small cone of moose tracks.” She looked down a moment to enter it into the register, and for those two or three seconds she regained the lethargy I had seen in her earlier and expected. Then she looked up. Again she was quick, almost jumpy, with big round eyes. She repeated what I’d said, and told me the price. “Moose tracks ice cream, in a small cone. That’s a dollar ninety-five.” My perception of her had entirely changed. With her big eyes and surplus of energy, she struck me as a lot younger–almost to the point that her personality seemed out of place in her body.

I got my ice cream, thanked her, and sat down.

A few minutes later she came out from behind the counter briefly. She’d gotten herself a cup of iced tea, and needed a lid and a straw. Now I could really observe two distinct styles of movement and mannerism. She still shuffled when she walked. But as she leaned against the counter, I noticed that her body did in fact have a rather pleasant pearish shape. She kicked her feet up, one at a time, bending her knees–a habit I’m familiar with, of people who work on their feet–but she did it with a very abrupt quickness I’d be much more likely to attribute to a twelve year old girl pent up inside on a beautiful day. The same thing occurred when she shifted her iced tea from hand to hand, moving it up from her waist to take a sip. She had a way of turning her head that made her hair bounce.

I found that I liked this woman, instead of just feeling vaguely bad that her job was so dull. She had a spark to her. I decided she wasn’t as bored or downtrodden as her job or that shuffle first suggested. She probably has a family at home, and something interesting to do when she got off work. Going mini-golfing, perhaps. Playing wiffle ball with her kids. Of course I was guessing. The point is, I was interested enough to care.

(An Odyssey Journal)

Marco yawned, affixed his ID badge to his labcoat, raised a fist and knocked on the convincingly realistic plastic polymer that made up the bark of a towering giant sequoia.

“Shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits,” he mumbled in monotone. He had to say it–could never remember the damn secret knock otherwise. Not for researcher’s pay, anyhow.

A peephole concealed in a knot squeaked open, and a moment later a door in the tree swung inward, revealing a fat man in a labcoat and badge identical to Marco’s own, only with a much rounder person depicted in the snapshot.

“How are the little bastards this morning?”

“Full of chatter and verve,” deadpanned the fat man. “Can I go home now?”

“Pleasant dreams,” said Marco, as his counterpart trudged off over the soft astroturf needles in the direction of the parking lot. Marco went into the tree, shut the door, and had a seat at the surveillance console. On the Canopy Cam, five adorable little sequoia tree-rats lay curled up in their nest, spooning, fast asleep. He noted their number, position, and apparent health condition in the log. One of them yawned and rolled over. He made a face, erased something, and wrote something else.

“Stupid endangered species, last mating pair of its kind.”

On the Branch Cam, Mamma tree-rat fluffed her bushy tail and cleaned her whiskers.

“Stupid loggers, hacking down perfectly good natural habitats.”

He turned a crank, pushed several buttons, and opened up the bag of donuts he’d brought with him. He selected a Raspberry Jelly. Motors whirred softly. In another plastic sequoia somewhere a speaker clicked on, spewing tinny birdcalls into the crisp morning air. A red fox with the words “Synthetic Predator Inc” inscribed on its titanium ass appeared from its foam-rubber underground lair on the Lair Cam, and prowled among the massive root systems, peering upward.

“Stupid UC Berkeley, no funding for brilliant grad students, making us babysit rats on a Sunday morning in June to earn a buck!”

Marco stuffed the donut whole into his face, and with powdery fingers flicked a switch. Several hundred feet up a feeding tube ejected a synthetic pinecone stuffed full of fertility-enhancing nutrients and erection-prolonging pharmaceuticals into free-fall. Mamma leapt and spread her membranous wings and intercepted the pinecone in midflight. She lighted on another tree, scuttled up the trunk and sailed back over to land at the edge of her nest. The babies woke with a sudden chorus of cheeping. The branch cam’s instruments pumped it down to the surveillance console in gloriously rendered five-channel digital surround.

“Aaaaarg!” wailed Marco, spitting bits of donut everywhere.

#

Pappa Flying Squirrel stretched and shook his bushy tail and jumped from the tippy top of a towering sequoia. He wooshed through the air like a hang-glider, membranous wings billowing. Pine-scented air rushed past. The rays of sunrise flashed all around him, the colors of gold and cream and sparkling wine. Adrenaline thundered through his veins.

“I feel like a squirrel-ling again!” he chittered. “The wood is my playground!”

He swooped down through broad branches spread like God’s hands, and landed beside his lovely wife. Her fur gleamed in the morning, burnished and groomed to a shimmering russet. Her yellow teeth shone strong and sharp as she chewed a tasty pinecone, and spat it back up in organic smoothie form for their five cheering children in.

When the feast was done, Papa placed a paw on Mamma’s rump. “Now, run along, little ones! Mamma and I have some chattering to do!”

(An Odyssey Journal)

Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak…

“Morning, Delerius.”

“Morning, Malthus.”

“Feeling well, I hope.”

“Rather down, I’m afraid.”

“Anything I can help with? Something on your conscience?”

“Afraid not, Malthus. Thanks, though! Cheers!”

“Well, never fear. Things always look up.” Malthus grunted. “Do me a favor, Delerius?”

“Anything, Malthus.”

“Scratch the spot just under my nose? This new hood itches.”

Delerius shrugged. “Would if I could. Honestly.”

“Oh,” said Malthus. “Of course.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” screamed Delerius.

“Sorry!” said Malthus.

“No…trouble,” said Delerius.

“Will there be anything else?”

“Think…that’s up…to you…Malthus.”

“Er…quite right. No, I believe I’m satisfied.”

Delerius gasped.

Malthus scratched underneath his nose. “Ahh, that’s much better!”

“See you tomorrow, then!”

“Looking forward to it!”

Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak…

“Morning, Abjectus!”

“Ptui!”

“Damn it!” Malthus pulled off his hood and snarled. “You’ll regret that, Abjectus.”

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

(An Odyssey Journal)

Rain dripped from the barn’s eaves: plip, plip, plip, plip, and so on. After sixty plips, a fallen maple leaf at the puddle’s edge tipped, trickling the excess in over the floor. Dahlia the cow chewed her cud and digested: fourteen chomps, then a rest, then three, then a rest. She never once batted an eye. Hammy the farmhand dozed leaning back on two legs of a rickety chair. Every four breaths, a greasy lock of hair caught in his nostril and caused him to snore.

William-o the Pirate King, the barnyard cat, lay sprawled out on a wooden beam seven feet up, his legs dangling high in the air. On either side of him the age-dark wood was scored with marks where he’d sharpened his long, black claws. His one good eyelid drooped, then fluttered open, then drooped again. He twitched his scarred and battered tail. He yawned. He watched a spider crawl all the way along the beam from the empty stall at the barn’s southwest corner to the tool cubby on the other side, and begin a new web between the riding mower’s front left bumper and the handle of a hoe.

Outside in the rain, toads frolicked in the puddles. In their dry birdhouse in the crook of the maple tree, the bluebirds warbled unceasingly. Far away in the house, fat mice played shuffleboard with toothpicks and piecrust crumbs across the newly-polished kitchen floor.

And William-o the Pirate King could ruin none of it.

The spider’s new web was nearly finished when a new leak began to form in the roof. A fat water droplet fell on William-o’s battle-scarred left ear. He yowled and twisted, batted at the offensive droplet, lost his balance, and fell from the beam into a pile of musty green hay.

Enough is enough, thought the Pirate King, and bounded out onto the muddy floor.

He leapt straight through the spider’s new web, tearing it to shreds, and smooshed the spider. He stalked into Dahlia’s stall and dug his teeth into her udder. She lowed and stamped and kicked, but he was gone long before her hooves hit. He went over to Hammy’s rickety chair, and knocked its legs from underneath him with one swipe of his paw. Hammy roared and cursed, and grabbed for a switch.

But William-o had disappeared into the rain.

Northeast view from Great Blue Hill summit house, Milton, MA.

Natural – A glacial anomaly split down the middle by a tree. Mt. Toby Reservation, Sunderland, MA

Man-made, decorative. Chesterfield, MA

Man-made, decorative. A driveway marker. Worthington, MA

Man-made, possibly votive? Worthington, MA

Man-made, devotional – part of a buddhist shrine. Singing Brook Farm, Worthington, MA