THERE'S THIS ONE PARTICULAR HARBOR…

It was a short drive down the hill from the Park and Shop across the bridge and up the winding road that led to town center. The roads looked in a bit better shape than RJ remembered, the hills unchanged. They were mostly covered in maples, sycamores and a few oak trees, but where a road cut thru the hills or construction took away the topsoil, there were small rock slides exposing dull yellow clay and grey sandstone shot thru with thin black coal seams.

RJ didn’t remember there being so many pick up trucks in town, but then reminded himself that he wasn’t even driving yet when he last visited Wayne West Virginia. Not being one of the cool kids with encyclopedic knowledge of car models, he was unlikely to have noticed what sort of cars anyone was driving. Still, it struck him as stereotypical of the region. There didn’t seem to be many SUVs, which was funny because as this was exactly the kind of ‘urban’ landscape SUVs were meant for.

As he continued on into town the few things he recognized seemed to have either suffered drastically over the years or remained impervious to the wearing effects of time. There were a few more trailers in the trailer park though most looked exactly like the ones that were there 10 years ago. He remembered playing with the kids that lived there without ever knowing their names. They would just meet up at random times among the piles of gravel and sand the DRW kept on the opposite side. The road crews chased them off regularly, but they always came back and played there.  Once RJ had slipped on a small pile of road salt and scraped up his arm badly, the salt crystals adding their burn to the sting of the injury, but even that wasn’t enough to deter him from visiting there the very next day. For a brief moment he considered turning down that road to see if the gravel piles were still there, but drove on past consoling himself with the thought that there would be time enough to visit around town after the funeral. Besides, there was a place just ahead he was going to stop regardless of the time spent.

RJ cursed under his breath as he passed a shiny new gas station complete with electronic sinage and a well lit interior. The price of unleaded gas was a few cents cheaper too. He hadn’t needed to fill his tank at that strange little station a few miles back after all. He shook his head and made a mental note to stop here on the way back out if need be. Growling to himself, he sped up a bit anticipating the bridge ahead and near it, the place where he spent most of his time while living in Wayne. It was a small house with two bedrooms situated on the hillside overlooking the ‘Brinkley Bridge.’  So called because of the ticker-tape noise it made as cars traveled across its rickety frame. Some time later the bridge fell and was replaced with a concrete and steel structure, but the memory and the sound was still fresh in RJ’s mind. He crossed the bridge slowly as traffic would let him, glancing down over the side to see if the flood wall was still there. Unable to resist the draw of his memories, as soon as he crossed the bridge he pulled over next to the railroad tracks and got out to look down at the bend of Twelve-pole Creek that flowed under the bridge and back the way he came.

He half expected to see the iron framework of the old bridge still in the waters below the new one, but there was no sign of it or the pylons it once stood on. He couldn’t tell if there’s been any change to the 20 foot high flood wall holding back the waters from the lower course of Twelve-pole. Gone also were the large blocks of sandstone he had laboriously chiseled to free fossils for high school projects. There wasn’t supposed to be any substantial fossil finds in the area, but he had found six or seven bones in the rock that were the size of a man’s hand. RJ made a face at the memory, he’d probably destroyed any value the fossils had by using ten penny nails as chisels and clumsily hitting them with a common claw-hammer. Still he wondered as he stood there what had become of those fossils, and the really superb one of a dinosaur footprint he had carried around for years?

RJ shrugged to himself and turned to get back in the car. He’d probably given those fossils away as he did so many things he once valued, in order to curry favor with some friend or group he wanted to hang out with. His eyes traveled up the hillside opposite looking for his childhood home, but in its place was a billboard proclaiming “A ghost town is dead!” He stared at it for a while trying to work out what it was trying to sell, and the nearest he could come to was something about advertising on the billboard itself. The clock display on the dash caught his eye as he started the car, he would be late for the funeral home if he didn’t get moving, and he needed to find a place to stop for the night afterwards. He was still puzzling over the words on the sign as he gave his honda some gas to climb up the last hill before Wayne’s main street.
“A ghost town is dead!”..WTF?

He felt a bit of confusion as he topped the hill, not remembering which way to go around the courthouse. The pizza place, a small chain called Gino’s, seemed to have moved across the street from where he remembered it. He paused at the stop sign a bit longer than normal trying to get his bearings, and it was the old battleship grey artillery cannon that cleared things up for him. He mock-saluted it and drove slowly down hill past the Methodist church and along the bus garage where the middle school now stood. It had been a ‘Junior’ high school when he went there, but now the parking lot was all that was left of the old building on the hill and its hundreds of steps. He spared it a lingering look suddenly remembering a near brush with kissing the Dalson twins on a dare. Their dare, not his. Someone had built a nice multi-level home on the grounds, and the sign above the bus garage proudly proclaimed “Wayne Community Center.”  RJ wondered when Wayne had developed a sense of community, he sure didn’t remember one. There had been nothing more elaborate than hobby days at the one room public library to distract children from the dismally uninteresting landscape they found themselves in.

The town center was soon behind him, and he turned at the bridge on this end of town, not as new as the Brinkley Bridge, but still not resembling the one he thought he would find here. He remembered a second place he had lived, near the bridge here, but couldn’t spot it from the car. The coincidence had never before struck him that he had lived next to the bridge leading into town, and then moved next to the bridge leading out of town. Too late to ask mom if there was any significance to the choice. Again he was jolted into facing his task here, and he started looking for the funeral home. He was pretty sure where it was, since it was the same place that held his father’s funeral and his brother’s before that.  Soon as he made a turn and saw the parking lot and the low unassuming building marked Morris Funeral home and he knew he was in the right place.

This is text I found in an old notebook, I don’t believe the previous chapters still exists. Its labeled “chapter 5, Spirit of the Wood.” Looks like a rough text, and there’s even a note to myself to re-write it, so please excuse errors herein:

It must be the Teline, Loric mused to himself. How else could it be that I have died yet I still see?
When the tendrils of the Devathma released me I saw many of the villagers, Their dead brown faces  wearing masks of mourning. The wailing of the women was loud in my ears, but I could not move to cover them.
I saw Dernhelm dispatch the Devathma with a single blow. He broke the horn from the devathma and it was hollow and dry on the inside. He blew thru it and his call was answered in the Vilage.  Death! Death!  I do not to be dead. I shake myself hard to show him I am alive but my body doesn’t move. Look at me Uncle! I live! I saved the dagger of my father from the pit.  Its there on the ground by your feet!
Two others come and lift me up. I am moved but I cannot move. I don’t feel their grip on my arms and legs. The sound of Bullroarers travels around in the village. I am lain on dry reeds among my friends. I get a glimpse of Jakul and Hiram both with matted hair and covered with a light blue clay. Were they in the pit too I ask, or some other trial? I want to cry but my eyes are dead,
== Rewrite  so that all Downlanders get to switch each boy (ouch!) and then toss it on the pyre…) ==
they will not cry for me now. I try to look away but my eyes will not close. Now all I can see is the sky and the treetops. Did I do well? What are they doing to me?
The Village is quiet now. Have they left us all here for the birds to find? Did we somehow bring shame on our families and they are rejecting our bodies, refuting the manhood of our dead bodies?
No. I can hear Dernhelm talking, but his words are not clear. He’s mumbling something and the downlanders are responding, chanting.
Mumble mumble chant, mumble mumble chant.
Ah! Now I see him! He’s leaning over Jakul. There’s his father–what are they doing with those switches? They’re striking his body!
“He is dead, my son is dead. The Village has lost a hand.” He moves on. Hiram’s mother is coming by with his sister’s help. He hasn’t walked without help since the net fell on her and took her husband…and my father. My Father! Who will cry for me? THere is no one to show the Village that I am dead.  My father died on the nets, my sister has left, and Oldsir had his second vision and is with the Spirit now.  I wonder if they will hang me in a tree or plant me in the hollow of the Asking tree where Eidie can come and ask my spirit who should marry who?
Now Dernhelm is giving her the switch. She’s hitting Hiram on the head, the chest, and the legs. I see litle puffs of blue dust rise each time she hits. Are you dead Hiram? Was your song strong enough to join the Spirit of the Wood or are you there, trapped liked I am?
“He is dead my chief, my son is dead. The village has lost a hand.” Dernhelm is looking at me now. He going to hit me. I should have guessed. My uncle is the only Tolorion left in the village. I try to feel pain but it isn’t there. The world has gotten fuzzy. One…two…three.  I am dead! Is that blood on the switch? How can the dead bleed?
“He is dead. My Brother’s son is dead. The village has lost a hand.”
For a moment Dernhelm thought he saw his nephew’s mouth twitch like he was coming back from the dead.  His open, unfocused eyes are disturbing to look at. If the boy was to come alive now it would look bad. The ceremony must be finished.
With a frown he leaned down close and closed Loric’s eyes and then motioned the Speaker for Animals to come forward. He growled, howled, and hissed a song of mourning for the fallen boys and the (can’t make out what I wrote here, sorry., looks like ‘ he blew flames from the nostrils of an ape’s ehad he wore and set the dry rushes aflame. All the switches from the ceremony where added to the pyre. Dernhelm watched them smoulder darkly and pop into flame. This was the hardest part — the waiting until the right moment to signal the final passge from the deadh of a boy to the life of a man.
Finally, flames all but obscured the bodies and he could smell the hair beginning to singe. he blew three short bursts on the horn of the Devathma and the pyres immediately collapsed in on themselves. He knew that underneath the supports the boys were being wrapped in hides and coated with healing salves. Usually the blue clay was proof enough against the flames, but sometimes scarring happened when the Chief did not do his job well. Dernhelm grunted to himself. THAT had never happened since he had become chief.
He led a procession of women to the river where they would keen and smite the water and call upon the Spirit to recieve the boys with favor.
THere were rush boats to build, octli to be consumed and tales to be told. Later after the Elders had joined htem he would leave quietly to care for Loric’s body. After the body had been sealed in a caul and left for the Spirit , Dernhelm could look forward to a quiet evening in the village.
The boy was too much like his grandfather to come back after a day or two with only a tale of his death and of singing with the Spirit. He would actually try to bring something to the village to hep us understan the Spirit better.
Smiling to himself, Dernhelm passed into the trees remembering when he too believe the Spirit guarded them.  That was before he had become Chief and certain mysteries were revealed to him. Rituals guided every action the Downlanders took from birth to death, not the Spirit of the Wood. He would make no hearthfire for Loric– could not, the Spirit did not move him anymore…

RJ pulled his Honda into the roadside Park and Shop. When he was last here this was just a repair shop and some guy named Shorty did all the car repair, drove the wrecker and sometimes even the school bus. You need similar skills for all three he thought wryly.
Getting out of the car, he paused with one foot on the ground and looked down. This was the first time he had ’set foot’ in West Virginia in 10 years. Should it feel so strange? It wasn’t really ground or soil he was touching just oil stained concrete. Shrugging he popped the gas tank open and turned to swipe his card thru the reader but the pumps weren’t new enough for that feature. They were dingy and rusted and had a lever to lift on the side when you wanted to start pumping fuel. They were probably old when he left had left this town, and it surprised him that they still worked. He decided to take a chance on whether they would only accept cash and started the pump. The only money he’d spent on the drive down was for a quick tollway burger late last night. As he filled the tank, RJ noticed the cost per gallon was higher than in Indiana. Some things he guessed, had kept up with modern times.  He could have done with seeing some 1985 prices on other things he might pick up and take back to Indiana with him.

He went inside, blinking in the sudden dark of the shop. The floor of the place still carried a hint of oil-soaked sawdust from its days as a garage. The floorboards were old and grey, and they creaked as he walked down a few narrow aisles. He had a look at the meat counter, it bore a handwritten sign proudly proclaiming “Get your deer butchered here!” Moving toward the register he picked up two small bags of peanuts and a Diet Coke. Apparently diet Dr. Pepper was still a rumor in these parts.

The lady at the register was chunky and wore a stained butcher’s apron over a voluminous t-shirt and blue slacks. Maybe she did double duty, there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the shop. RJ tried to remember when deer season was and couldn’t quite place it, sometime in the fall or winter he thought. October might be too early. Didn’t really matter, he was as likely to go hunting while he was here as he was to do car repair or coal mining for that matter.

The lady snapped him out of his reverie with a loud “Is this gonna be cash or charge honey?” RJ noticed he was being closely scrutinized, but wasn’t sure what the lady thought of his rumpled clothes and road weary face.
“Charge please, and I topped off my tank out there too.” The lady nodded, “Hee! “topped off”, that little car doesn’t hold much Go juice, does it? I saw ya out there trying to figure out the pump, didn’t know if you were gonna drive off without paying since I didn’t recognize you or the car.”

Grief, thought RJ, this town is so small they know people by their cars. I’m probably the only one here with a Honda Civic and this is probably the only place to get gas without driving back into Huntington. He smiled back without comment as he handed her his credit card. She looked at it –actually looked at it — front and back, then looked back at RJ, one eye squinting and the other owlishly wide. “Just who’s boy are you?” She asked critically, tilting her head to the side as if that helped her hear his response.

RJ was taken aback at the unexpected challenge and he blushed before answering. He wanted to say something flip like “I’m nobody’s boy, Lincoln free’d the slaves years ago.” But he wasn’t sure just how that would go over. No need to antagonize random people here, he admonished himself, despite their nosiness.
“I’m a Selkirk, I’ve come home for my mother’s funeral.”
The lady leaned across the check out lane and looked closer at RJ’s face. He tried his best to return the gaze. “One of Gerri’s boys? You’re the one that’s been living in Indiana all this time aren’t you?”
Again it bothered Rj that this lady somehow knew about his family business without his knowledge. He reminded himself that she might have been a close friend of his mother’s and would have heard all about her family. Mom had always been proud of her family, no matter how fragmented it had become. He swallowed his outburst and said “Yes. I’m from Indiana now.”
The lady laughed harshly and shook her head “No you’re not! Once A Local,  Always A Local. Can’t run away that easy, especially you Selkirks. You have roots in the earth here, if you know what I mean.” She paused as if waiting on some confirmation that RJ did indeed know what she meant, but he was clueless how to respond. It was if he was being singled out in Sunday School and asked what some parable meant while the whole class watched. He picked up his things and signed — signed — the credit slip before heading back out the door. “Well…they don’t know I’m here yet, I better go.  Nice to meet you…bye!”

He stepped back out into the sun, noticing that she watched him from the store doorway as he walked around his car. Another pair of eyes belonging to an equally rotund mechanic sitting back in the shade was following his movements too. The man called out “How far did you drive from Indiana?” RJ wanted to confront him and ask how he knew he was from Indiana then realized as he walked up to his car that the mechanic could see his Indiana license plate from where he sat.

“453 miles in 9 hours.” RJ answered, wondering why he bothered be so accurate. Diving back into the car and latching the door, he saw the man stand up and move toward the car. He quickly put his Honda in gear and called out “Say hello to Shorty!” as he drove off.