Category Archives: Chronicles

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Door to Door

Wisps of smoke drifted through the streets, lingering in the air on the corners. Those walking by swore they could sometimes glimpse something from the corner of their eyes. A form emerging, solid as they, but when they looked at it straight on there was only the smoke dissipating to nothing. They hurried on anyway, the air oppressive… 

I was in the midst of preparing dinner when the doorbell rang. A smiling youth waited on the other side. Do you have five minutes? I thought about saying no, but he seemed harmless enough, his eagerness and sincerity vaguely pitiful. With a motion of my hand I beckoned him inside, closing the door to keep out the smoke, so heavy on the air these last days. 

It lingered still as he sat on the chair in my living room opposite me on the couch. He reached into a bag I had not noticed and pulled forth a book. I have been given a wonderful opportunity, he declared, to travel these parts and see all the great things here. I get to call on all the wonderful people, learn about them and tell them about myself and share some wonderful news.  

He tapped a hand upon the cover, which was worn at the edges and looked as though it had spent a long time in the bag, which itself was somewhat fraying at the seams. Idyllic greenery was depicted, so vaguely it was impossible to tell where it was taken. For all I could tell it was a picture of a tree down the street zoomed in on the tangle of branches and leaves.  

We talked inconsequentially for a few minutes. He had come from the southwest to see our fine country during his summer off from school. There was much he wanted to see and do, but first he had to share his news. He asked me about myself and I told him little, keeping my answers short and letting a hint of impatience creep in, which he did not seem to notice. For he was back to the news he had to share.  

I feared I was about to be invited to join some church, but he just opened the book. It was filled with pictures with no text whatsoever. At first glance they looked, as with the cover, like stock photos that someone had taken from the internet and printed at poor resolution, for the colour was faded and none of the details were sharp. You see, he said, as he touched each one and I wanted to tell him I didn’t, but worried that would just invite more discussion. I was already regretting inviting him in. 

It seemed he was going to show me every picture in the book – there must have been over a hundred pages. I tried to interrupt him, to thank him for his time and send him on his way, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes, continuing to turn the pages and rest his fingers lightly on the image. When he did I could swear the picture changed. If there was water it flowed, if there were trees the leaves fluttered. The details became sharper and stranger. There were pine trees in what appeared to be a desert, eucalyptus atop snowy mountains, rivers flowing uphill. These were not places that existed, that could not exist.  

I looked up at him, startled and disturbed. He met my gaze. You see, he said, and nodded as though everything was evident. The smell of smoke was becoming stronger somehow and I felt lightheaded. I noticed there were stray threads and loose pieces at the seams of his shirt and pants. The shoes he’d taken off at the door had lost their heel, which I hadn’t noticed earlier. He was coming apart at the seams. 

I stood without another word and went to open the door, gesturing for him to leave. He looked at me forlornly, but I refused to meet his eyes, pointing again at the open doorway. Returning to the book, he touched another page and I was unable to resist looking. A great storm was on the horizon, a swirl of clouds moving closer and closer. There was flashes of lightning and I could swear I could hear thunder. The smell of smoke was overpowering. 

I stepped back from the door, blinking and waving my hand as though to clear the air. When I had recovered he was outside, looking at me sadly as though I had somehow failed to meet the moment. You see, he said. It sounded like a promise. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Little Green Men

In those days strangers did not receive much comment. People were always coming and going from the Quarter and no one thought much of it unless they stayed. It was the way of things until it wasn’t. 

Later, no one could quite remember when the two newcomers arrived in town. Mostly this was because they didn’t stay for any length of time, in town one day and reappearing some weeks later. They were usually in the company of some of the loudest supporters for the independence movement which had lately been roiling the Quarter and other locales. A referendum on the matter was planned in the fall, which most agreed would not succeed. It would send a message out east though, let them know the Quarter could not be taken for granted. 

They were regular figures at rodeos and other events throughout the region where those in favour of independence sought to sway others to their side, handing out placards from card tables set up on the grounds. It was said they were part of the monthly gathering that took place at the Carter place where the usual suspects gathered to plan for the referendum and the future that came after. If drinking a couple of flats of beer and shooting off rifles could be considered planning, some said. 

The strangers didn’t say much at community gatherings, present but in the background. Those who did speak to them said they were obviously not from around here, their accents immediately marking them out. Everyone understood what that meant, though no one thought it of much note. They weren’t the first people to come north for one reason or another. When asked what they were doing in these parts, the strangers would say things like “helping out our friends,” and leave it at that.  

That disconcerted some people, but most dismissed it. They were hanging out with the same people who’d convoyed out east in the last days of the grippe reborn or blocked the roads to the borders south. This was just what they did: protesting and honking and not accomplishing much when all was said and done except hanging out with their fellow travellers. Not a surprise that people from down south were fellow travellers. Look who they elected, after all.  

If asked where they were from, they claimed to hail from the interior or to have family from Fort Mac. No one pressed them on these obvious lies. They were friendly and jovial with their fellow travellers, but were unable to hide their anger at being questioned by those opposed to the cause. Those people were dupes and fools, they would say loudly and with menace. 

As the referendum approached, the Carter place became a hive of activity, people coming and going at all hours, including the strangers. There was shooting nearly every day on the back of the property out of sight of the road, though the neighbours could hear it for miles around. A few called the police with their concerns, who promised to look into it. Nothing was done though. Some saw trucks with foreign plates heading in that direction, though the vehicles were never spotted again, which was somehow even more concerning. 

In the days before the referendum, the activity ceased and the strangers were gone. Hardly any vehicles were seen heading to the Carter place. Everyone felt a sense of relief. Once the referendum was past all this strangeness would be over. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Parting Ways

In those days the ways back to the Quarter had changed. Roads torn up, diverted or fallen into general disrepair. The usual approaches no longer worked. In places they followed old road allowances, overgrown and washed out, barely a trail. It took hours to come to a usable road, hours where someone might chance upon them with questions of why they were there. Few were the friendly faces. 

He returned after the war to this changed landscape. Everything felt unfamiliar. Fields abandoned to dust and weeds that he had never known could grow so tall. Even the houses and yards he passed were different than he remembered. Smaller somehow and he immediately noticed all the signs where entropy and decay were creeping in. Had they always been there? The sky was grey and hazy, smoke from some distant fires, which felt familiar in all the wrong ways. 

They greeted him with hugs and tears, an explosion of joy that soon ebbed. His mother kept up a steady stream of chatter, news of people he’d forgotten or didn’t know, anything to ward off the awkwardness they all were aware lurked just below the surface. His father seemed at ease, but that was just his way. His sister was oddly quiet, watching him intently as though she didn’t recognize him. Maybe she didn’t. What are we going to do with you, her expression said.  

She took him outside after dinner and showed him around the yard, pointing out all that had changed. Much had. He didn’t want to say he would have preferred to be alone. The barn they had played in as children had been pulled down, replaced with a new set of corrals. They’d put a shed up on the west end of the yard to provide shelter for calving season and there was a whole series of new pens and lanes stretching down to the alkali slough where they used to leave the deadstock for the coyotes. 

She explained all they’d done, making clear the ideas had been hers, and the improvements that had resulted. He said little in response, which she took as a challenge. The world didn’t stand still while you were gone. No, it hadn’t, he agreed. He couldn’t put into words what he was feeling, how the image of the place he had carried with him through all those terrible days was vanished. Maybe it had never been. 

They always wanted you to take it over, she said. Especially now. But I was the one who wanted to be here. You always wanted to go. 

Had he? It was hard to remember the person who had ventured out. At some point there had been a parting of ways with whoever that was and what had come back was someone else. There were no words to explain that either, so he didn’t and they returned to the house.   

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Driving

They spent their days driving, countless hours. If you added them up, you would total another lifetime. It was the nature of living in those parts where it was two hours to anywhere and distance was always calculated in time.  

Summers they would head to the nearest movie theatre, an hour and a half away in a town a province over, where they showed the big movies at the same time they opened in the cities. They’d head out after dinner and be home when it was just starting to get dark.  

Winters they’d drive unless the weather got really ugly, though it was hard to tell what you’d find once you got started. How many times did they run in and out of blizzards as they headed north or west? The snow dancing in the headlights, almost blotting out the darkness behind. A blanket of undisturbed snow covering the road and the surrounding fields so completely it was hard to tell where the road ended and the ditch began. They felt like explorers, breaking new ground and setting the trail for those that would follow. 

Autumn and spring meant the deer and antelope were moving and dawn and dusk were dangerous. They had to be on alert, scanning the fields and ditches. Gophers, porcupines, skunk and badger all found their way under the wheels.   

They had different vehicles, fit for the purpose. There was the car, and later the jeep, for trips to town or the city. The old half ton fitted with a slip tank was the farm truck they used to take them to the fields or to check the cows. Then there was the one tonne they used for pulling trailers and longer trips where they’d be spending time on backroads.  

They never thought about all the time they spent in vehicles. It wasn’t as though there was any choice. They did what they had to do. Long drives they’d pack a lunch and stop somewhere scenic. A campground in a river valley. Somewhere with an outhouse. At every opportunity they’d take the unfamiliar road, just to see if it was a nicer drive. Something new to see, if nothing else. They saw more of the country than most. 

There was nothing like coming home as darkness settled. The twists and turns of the road so familiar the truck could probably drive itself. Kilometres and kilometres of darkness relieved only by the sparks of light from farmyards, providing their assurance that there were people out there in this vast place. The intersection would come into view, familiar enough they didn’t need a sign to tell them, and they would turn north and wait until they came to a rise where the lights of town filled up the horizon. They’d know then they were close to home and would continue into the darkness that lay beyond. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Seven Lifetimes

To stand here on the rutted gravel road of what once was railroad avenue is to see the whole of the town at a glance. What remains anyway. In time only name and memory.  

The foundations of the old elevators are still visible through the grass, but the tracks were pulled up years ago. The highway is there to the north, and it will take you anywhere that matters. Seven people remain in town. If they linked hands they would barely make it across the width of the old hotel, rotting away and waiting to be condemned. But each of those seven would have known someone who walked that street a lifetime ago – let us be conservative and count that 70 years – even if they could not recall it themselves.  

A small station stands across from the hotel, a platform really, but trains come every day. Though the town is diminished from its height before the fire in ‘28, there is still a school busy with children, a post office, a general store, a church and more. Electricity and running water arrived not too many years ago. Everyone walking those streets will remember what life was like without it. There is nothing to suggest to them the steady diminishment that will follow, the dwindling of the town with the arrival of the highway and the rail line going. 

None of those who walk those streets were in that place a lifetime ago. They are all newcomers to those parts and the town was born, flourished and died its slow death over less than two lifetimes. But some would have been in these larger territories their whole lives and would have encountered the combatants of the great rebellion that roiled the land north and east. They would have passed through these parts trying to rally more of their proud nations to them. Their failure meant the end of the Iron Confederacy and that the treaties signed ten years before would now rule their lives. 

They would have remembered, or known those who could, a lifetime further back when the Iron Confederacy was the great power in these parts, at the centre of the trade between the European fur men and the other Nations of the Plains. Those traders were fully present throughout the territories by then, but they likely couldn’t have imagined how quickly the balance of power would shift between them. The bison herds still roamed and the pox and grippe had yet to wreak their full havoc. 

None of those then would have been able to conceive life without the Europeans presence, but they would have known some who, a lifetime before, had never encountered one. They would have understood the provenance of the guns and pots and axes and knives that gave their confederacy its name, but in those days the traders did not venture far from Bay and the northern rivers that fed into it and the Confederacy was in its ascendance.  

Those then would know someone who could recall a lifetime before when the Company had not yet settled on the Bay and they had to rely on the generosity of others, at poor prices, to acquire those iron goods. And those people would have parents or cousins alive a lifetime previous when the existence of those traders would have been a tale told fifth hand. A strange and unbelievable tale.  

Horses would have come north by then, through the trading networks of the Plains, transforming their lives, the world suddenly much smaller. They could follow the bison herds with ease, move to better territories and build the alliances that would become the Iron Confederacy. A lifetime before and all that came after would have been unimaginable. They would have walked the plains much as they had for seven lifetimes prior to that. The next seven would see worlds made and unmade. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Interludes

It was the fifth false spring that broke her. The fifth storm that blew in from the west leaving her trudging through snow. Again. It was the end of April for fuck sakes. All she wanted was a morning warm enough to sit on the balcony and have a coffee and contemplate life and where she might go from here. Life and weather were not cooperating. She knew enough of these parts not to expect that, but still.  

The thing was, it had been a long winter. The longest. A kind of grim stumbling march through the long nights wondering if she was even heading in the right direction. Feeling like she probably wasn’t, but still keeping on because that was what she did. And what was the alternative anyway? Well, she spent a lot of time thinking about the alternatives only to end up convincing herself they weren’t any better than what she already had. He didn’t make her happy, if she was forced to admit, but he was decent and good and who was she to complain. No one was promised happiness, exactly. You made the best of the situation and it wasn’t a bad one. She’d been in worse for sure. 

When he’d said he was leaving, she told herself she shouldn’t be surprised. What had she been thinking about these last months after all? It had somehow taken her completely unawares. A suckerpunch to the jaw and she looked at everything through glassy eyes still. The snow returning every week didn’t help. Hard to move on when the world seemed to be spinning its wheels.  

Oh everyone told her it was for the best. It was an opportunity. She would be okay, better even when all the dust had settled. Sometimes she believed them. This was an interlude, a pause where she could gather herself, reassess and determine what mattered to her. Be lost for a little while before finding her way. But most days when she woke up to clouds and cold and a blanket of white on the streets below, it felt like she was just lost and there would be no finding her way out. That maybe the interlude had been her time with him and now things were turning back to normal where the snow never stopped and the grass never turned green.

Notes on the Grippe

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Being an accounting of the recent and continuing plague and its various circumstances, from the perspective of an inhabitant of the regions lately called the Lost Quarter. Dates unknown. 

Day Two Thousand Two Hundred Six

Over two thousand days since the Dread Lord made his appearance in these parts. I started writing these notes in those early days in an attempt to impose some order in a world where it felt like there was none. We clung to anything that looked like solid ground, any routine that might restore meaning. What strikes me now, looking back at those early missives, is how frantic they feel. I was reaching for anything to put into words, a duck paddling madly, while above the surface it leaves a gentle wake. 

The days before the Dread Lord’s arrival were filled with portents of doom. It was like watching a wave cresting toward you from far out at sea. Knowing it will soon reach land, but having no sense of when or how badly it will engulf you. We went about our days, knowing it would happen, that it was inevitable, but with no idea of what that might mean. I recall going to a travel clinic in preparation for a trip we had planned. This would have been January. The travel nurse told me then we would not be going and I thought she was being ridiculous. The Dread Lord would come, yes, but it would be manageable. Our lives would not be upended. It seemed impossible. 

My memory of those first few months after is still so vivid. These parts were spared the worst of the Dread Lord’s power and the days were quiet and peaceful. I recall we spent our time talking about leaving for other dominions, starting life anew. Later we realized that restlessness was a response to what we were enduring. Lives apart from friends and family, unable to do so many of the things we loved. Lives interrupted with no timeline for when we might restart. 

The months that followed have vanished into a kind of blur. Things were opening up and then they were closed. Hospitals in crisis. You can only gather outdoors. You are allowed fifty percent capacity, but everyone should wear masks as they move about. Rinse and repeat. After we received our inoculations I felt a strange sort of relief. It was not over, but the end was in sight, and matters were now under our control. And yet, within weeks the hospitals were under threat again because others declined to do their part.  

It was false spring after false spring. You think the winter is over. The days are warmer, the ground is bare. It is only a matter of time before the grass begins to turn green. And then the snow returns and you are waiting again, while protesters march by crying out against the tyranny of inoculation.  

Waiting is what I remember the most. It was all waiting. An interlude. People don’t think or speak of that time now, everybody happy to get back to their lives and not dwell on what was lost. Except for those who protested so vociferously. They now govern us and have set about getting their revenge on those who they feel wronged them. We shall all do what they tell us so that they never have anyone tell them what to do again. Sacrifice for a cause, doing good for each other, these are foreign concepts to them. They are in it only for themselves and will do whatever it takes to get it and they assume the rest of us are the same.  

Strange to live in a time where the events that most define us, and will continue to echo through the remainder of our days, are the ones we refuse to dwell on. Their absence in our memories grows larger each day, shadowing everything. 

Miscellanea

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Miscellanea from the Lost Quarter and beyond.

Empty Suit

In that land sovereigns were formed of dreams. Lords and magnates would partake of the dreaming substances and they would give blood. A thorn through the tongue or the palm. Awake they would dream, delirious and sweating, chanting songs in languages they did not speak. For a time it would be utter babble, everyone singing their own tune, but gradually the songs would shift until they were unified, a process that could take hours or days. Images would pass between them, hallucinatory and vague, ecstatic nightmares they could not turn away from. Horrors that excited them beyond measure.  

From this the sovereign would take shape, disgorged from bile-filled mouths like so much illness. The sovereign would go among the people, a spirit, form with no substance, without thought or reason. Protector, protector, the people would cry out as the sovereign passed. Protector, protector, the lords and magnates would echo weakly as they emerged from their trances shaking and unable to quench their thirst.  

The sovereign yearned to go, to dissipate back into the ether like any spirit unhoused by flesh, but the words of the people could not be denied. They crafted a binding spell, tying the sovereign to that land, those cities and villages. The sovereign took from them what was needed for sustenance. Their dreams for the land, their hope for the future, their fear at what they might lose and their anger at all that was wrong with their lives. The sovereign was filled with these thoughts and feelings, made flesh by them and soon walked among them, as real as any of them.  

Different though, always apart. For no one could forget, least of all the sovereign, that that flesh housed nothing but the strange and thoughtless desires of the people. From these the sovereign determined how to rule. Cruel and capricious, kind and forgiving, vengeful and despairing. All of these at once and more. There was suffering. There was joy. 

Always the spirit of the sovereign tested those earthly bonds. To be free of those awful thoughts. The terror of so much need and emotion was forever overwhelming. No binding spell lasts and eventually the sovereign would escape, returning to those other realms. The flesh that had bound it decayed quickly, for it was not mortal. Nothing of life was actually in it. Any part that somehow remained they burned at altars constructed for that purpose. Only the armour and regalia the sovereign wore was left and the people would set it upon a shrine, empty and forbidding, waiting for the lords and magnates to take the dreaming substance and give blood. 

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

Scenes from a Saturday Night at the Grocers

Outside it’s cold, the snow in the parking lot packed down so hard it’s now ice. People step lightly on it, like curlers following a rock poised for the call to sweep, shuffling inside and stamping their feet in the entrance to discard any snow from their boots. The mats are swamped, heavy with melted snow and bits of gravel and refuse that were brought in with it. There are small pools of muddy water trailing beyond it into the store, the automatic doors opening and closing over it.  

The store gleams, the white floors and ceiling shining. The cacophony hits like a wave cresting as they step within. Music and chatter and announcements blending together, impossible to ignore and hard to distinguish anything. Immediately in front of the entrance are the fruit and vegetable stands and to the left of that the grocery aisles, beyond which they can glimpse the meat counter. A few people are browsing, pushing carts and checking items off their lists. To the right are the prepared food counters, crowded with people ordering barbecue skewers, grilled squid, kaldereta, adobo, sinigang, fried fish and pork belly.  

A bandstand is set up behind the diners eating at the rows of tables. A man and a woman are on it alternating karaoke songs – the ones everyone knows. The speakers are turned up loud so that the singers can be heard over the chatter at the tables. The diners are seemingly oblivious of the singing, keeping on with their conversations. At the food counters customers and servers call out to be heard over the din. A crackly microphone interjects when orders are ready. 

It creates an odd symphony. I will love you forever. An endless love. My heart is broken. Value meal number 1 is ready. Value meal 1 is ready. A woman dances by the pomelos, swinging her newborn around while her husband looks on bemused leaning against the cart. 

They stand in line. The woman taking orders is called up to the bandstand to sing. Ms. Josephine. She yells back that she is still on shift, but no one can hear. The family before them keep adding to their order as they move down the line and see more dishes. Ms. Josephine catches their eye and asks for their order. Two value meals, a pork skewer, rice, bitter gourd atchara and choice of side. Fried scad as a treat. Ms. Josephine overflows a plastic container with mung beans and hands it to them.  

They pass by the bandstand on the way out where they are between songs. We’re here every Saturday. Thank you for your support. Try the value meal. Outside the sun has set and the snow glistens under the streetlights.

Field Notes

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Being a record of certain phenomena found in the environs of the Lost Quarter.

The Arch

Warm winter winds blowing and blowing and blowing without end. A real snow eater. You can almost imagine spring was coming with the warm days and the melt, though no one in these parts is fooled. This is but a respite from the cold, which will return soon enough. Worth it, so long as more snow comes with it. 

The wind is like a breath of relief after the cold and darkness of December, when everything seemed to huddle in on itself. The days are getting longer now, the weeks when there seemed to be only five hours of daylight in the past. The wind feels a part of that change, though it isn’t. Just more weather, always a fixation in these parts. 

Further west, closer to the mountains, they have these winds every other week to hear them talk. How can you stand the cold out there, they say, with a smug grin. People here respond with a smugness of their own: these weak westerners who don’t have the strength to manage a proper winter. That is the logic of winter in these dominions. Pride that one can endure such privations (and worse if it comes!) and insistence that others elsewhere face much worse, that really this is all not so bad. And it is true, that such winds only intermittently find their way to the Quarter, while the cold northern ones can always find their way in. There are days when you can drive west and watch the snow in the fields go from glistening in the sun, to sagging, to puddles and bare patches.  

The snow melts into tiny rivers, carving pathways down laneways, turning solid overnight as the temperature drops. The next day repeats itself, except the water flows over yesterday’s ice and adds another layer to it. Soon enough the low spots everywhere are treacherous, as are the places where the snow has been packed down by many footsteps, the warmth transforming it from snow to ice, unbreakably hard. Walking becomes a high-risk activity. You learn to go with the ice, to let yourself slip and glide rather than catching yourself. 

Evenings coming home, you pause to look at the sky. A habit. Always good to see what’s coming. To the west there is a curving line of clouds, dark and ominous. A great wall, beyond which the sky is clear and blue. Above the sky is full of scattered clouds, as dark as the western arch. There is no rain or snow in them, just the promise of warm winds. Colder days are further out on the horizon.