There are some things I want to talk about, need to talk about, but I also need to continue this year for the things I need and want to talk about were only just starting to be realized. The understandings were yet to come and the elements were building during this time. Things such as structures developing or the consistent flow of time and the interaction of people, things and themes through such. Artifacts had come into play, things dropped in certain stories and left to be found in others. A couple of characters were taking shape beyond the initial story where they appeared or were mentioned. These things are what I need and want to talk about, but I feel I need to get through just a couple of more to when I reach a critical point in the determination of the town.
I was making, and still do due to the goals which I have now become insistent on applying to myself, an effort to begin the next story as soon as I finished one. As soon as "Mercy Holds No Measure" was written, a story culminating in 1872, I turned my eyes to a time that yet hadn't been touched. While I had established the ages past and the town that stood, and I had journeyed to the late 20th Century and 14 years into the next, all the time between was an empty, blank slate.
Have I mentioned that I live in a ghost town and that my grandmother was raised in one. Her history, the photographs that fill albums, and a lifetime of living in those very places has given me some perspective on a lost chapter in American history. While the Roaring 20's and the years before are generally recalled through the lenses of artists experimenting, these depictions and the histories that come through leave an empty hole where lived those still at the crossroads of centuries.
There are little towns all over Arizona, as well as the Western States, tiny places without memories remaining that rose and perished long after men took at last to the skies. Towns like Copperopolis, McCabe, Gilbert (there are two in Arizona, one a bland suburb of Phoenix and the other a memory lost), and ever so many others dot the Bradshaws, sharing those mountains with the remains of the romanticized days before. There is very little romance to be found in these ruins, nothing to hint of dramatic days in a wilderness untamed. Instead, sad little places where desperate people set out with high hopes in what is now known as the Great Automobile Gold Rush... something so great that nobody seems keen on remembering it.
Being my great-grandfather was emblematic of that time, family lore and photographs keep it ever important to me. With this in mind, I started looking hard at that valley I was coming to know better and better with each moment I drifted off waiting for customers. It was during this investigation of the creek that I pondered an old cabin that rests upon the family property. It is an old stone house which once had a wooden structure, the barracks, attached to the back and larger than the primary structure. I do not recall the barracks, but I do have a memory of the building itself beyond the photos and sketches in our possession. The fact that I have this memory is odd because, like the new road which I remember seeing being built, that stone house was taken down by my father that year as now there were little children about. I was 2 years old.
Now, about this house, I've come to learn a bit or two about it. I know who lived here 110 years ago, his name and his odd collection of pets. These details are in a history published by a then summer resident whose family, at this point, boasts presence in this valley longer than any other than my own. Her history, "The Many Lives of the Lynx", names the owner of that house and supplies confirmation to what my grandmother would tell us... that the gentleman there kept the local skunks as pets, feeding them and caring for them. The book does not speak of him getting drunk and trying to shoot the doorknob off with his revolver. There are a lot of stories that are missing from that history, including most mention of my great-grandfather. He haunts the background of that community which had taken in a few seeking summer cabins, but apparently was not one invited to the house parties. His herd of boys though were mentioned, particularly as the primary reason for the existence of a school up there.
I've always liked having that old stone house, that collapsed pile of stones in rough order, around. I never really played in it as a kid, keeping from the piled stones but playing on the outskirts. There were admonitions always against exploring in a ruin because, well, at the very least, best damn place you can find for a hundred year old rusty nail. Besides, the following list is ever around: spiders (nasty ones), desert centipedes (really nasty), bark scorpions (okay, we're just gonna slowly back away) and a nice collection of rattlesnakes of diverse species (yup, just not gonna do it). I did not go into old ruins as a child.
Eugene Parker was so admonished, his uncle ever so insistent any old structures found must never be approached. Problem was, Eugene lived in Jasper, a small mining community that had sprung up on the lower Bajazid where chaparral dominated before the pines took hold. It was a small place, only a couple dozen structures spread out without any common center or community focus, the type of place inhabited by those staking their lives and their meager fortunes on the possibility that the prospectors of days gone by missed something significant. Jasper was just such a place, too small to matter and not big enough to be cared about.
Still, life goes on and children must learn. Still, the truths that repeat always do and the sins of the fathers influence pass on. Frankie Stenoyer had learned his father's lessons well and considered Eugene, frail behind his spectacles, practice. Eugene just needed a safe place to hide.
There are still skunks up here where I live and I often wonder if some of my well-dressed neighbors descend from those semi-tame animals of a century before. None of them have ever confirmed it and usually when we meet while I'm out walking, they skirt me warily while doing some interesting balancing acts. A detente would best describe the relationship I have with these guys.
Eugene's uncle, one Eric Parker, impressed me in this Tale. He really stood up and made himself known. I've since learned that his grandfather was the oldest member of the Mortenson Party and it was some while before I learned more about old Simon and why his children never inherited. It's selfish and tragic and someday I'll tell that tale, but Eric, well, there is more to his story. He is one of the six hobos who I am now listening to for the rather novel piece I'm working on.
As for what came of those studies that May of 2017, it has been accepted by Weirdbook and will see publication before long. No dates yet on when this one will be available, that publication smartly preparing ahead, but I can assure you that a subscription to that anthology will ensure that you learn what happens in "A Safe Place to Hide" (6,983 words). The ramifications of this particular Tale not only touch upon my current work, but has opened up for me one of my favorite characters, the Butterfly Man... someone who now dominates the stories of this century.
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