BEYOND REDEMPTION – Gary V. Powell

I lost another chunk of innocence today. Before I read Gary Powell's story “On Horicon Marsh,” the sound and sight of wild Canada geese honking in their flying vee always thrilled me, always, as they had William Styron until that one autumn day when they caused me to stop, riveted with fear, and I stood stranded there, helpless, shivering...having, in a quote from Baudelaire...“felt the wind of the wing of madness.”

Styron's account of that experience, which I read some twenty-five years ago in Darkness Visible, the memoir of his descent into crippling depression, added a curious dimension to my appreciation thereafter of honking geese, an echo of mysterious danger in my wonderment at how such an innocently fascinating spectacle could trigger such personal devastation.

“On Horicon Marsh,” in Powell's short story collection Beyond Redemption, has added yet another dimension. This one is of sadness mixed with the admiration I've always felt for these amazing birds that mate for life and migrate thousands of miles by instinct twice each year. 

 Two couples and their children gather with scores of other tourists on an overlook at the famous Horicon Marsh in northern Wisconsin to watch a thousand geese fly in and congregate at the five-hundred-acre stopover on their winter trek south. It's nightfall and well below freezing. Sleet batters the tourists as they stand on the overlook watching the gathering birds. Now comes the part that will color my reaction to the honking vees forevermore:

Mitchell has anticipated the arrival of the geese all day, but instead of the rush of boyish wonder that once accompanied this moment he's troubled by an awareness he's never before noticed.

The geese fly in, land, and groom, with apparent indifference to the human audience, except Mitchell senses the participation of an agency more fundamental than mere indifference. The geese are so engaged in the business of survival that they can spare no interest in anything else. Attached to their every movement is a grim economy. They are required, second by second, to pursue, in the face of cold and snow and exhaustion and starvation, their precarious existence.

Beyond Redemption's singular stories, all of them, carry the potential to bring new light to the reader's understanding of some universal facet of life. Many of these jewels are woven so artfully into the narrative's complexly layered fabric they can be overlooked on a first reading. The “Horicon Marsh” illumination is more prominent, and reappears at the end in a twist that put a smile on this reader's face and left a warm glow in his heart.

Another of Beyond Redemption's tales, “Homecoming,” lingers with me so poignantly I still hear the melancholy Dan Fogelberg chords that played in my head while I read it. Two high school chums, Dee Dee and Billy, now nearing middle age, reunite after the death of Mikey, who had been the football team's star running back. He died a drunk. Billy was the star quarterback. He's now a handyman, Dee Dee a lawyer.

After they scatter Mikey's ashes on the beach where all three on the same day had lost their virginity to each other, Dee Dee and Billy...

[for more Friday's Forgotten Books see the listing on Patti Abbott's unforgettable blog]

Tree voices

It was known locally as The Hanging Tree. No history to corroborate the name, that Sutton knew of, but he allowed there was enough circumstantial evidence. At least one if not others of its massive reach of sturdy horizontal branches might well have held a rope or more back in the day. And it was old enough. Sutton knew that. At least two centuries under its ragged bark. And huge. Hips big as an Asian elephant's. In fact, damned thing looked like the child of a wild night 'tween a mastodon and a giant squid. Frozen, though, were that the case, save for the trillions of leaflets waving like royal fingers in a parade.

The circumstantial evidence was good enough for the history buffs to picket the tree with scolding signs. The age of the tree was enough to bring out the huggers, who climbed into its multitude of crotches and vowed to stay put come hell or chainsaw horror. The poets enlisted choir members to lend timbre to their march singing new words to the Joni Mitchell chestnut about not knowing what you got 'til it's gone, with the new chorus being, "You rape paradise to put up a business school."

Sutton knew any one of these groups was capable of carrying its protest into lethal territory. And if not the groups themselves then some lone assassin. And assassin was most assuredly the right word because anyone who drove ten-penny nails into a tree that was marked to be taken down was virtually guaranteeing the poor bastard with the chainsaw would get enough of himself sliced apart or off when a nail bounced the snarling teeth back in a finale the local media could only euphemize for their family audiences. Which is why Sutton was up there now with a magnet and a claw hammer as a nasty-looking storm rumbled in from the west.

He didn't especially like the risk of climbing around in a tree with a storm approaching, but it seemed the only opportunity to do so without protesters interfering.

So he was alone, straddling one of the limbs and scanning an area he'd marked for cutting, when the discussion started. At first he thought it was just more of the distant thunder. The voice was low and resonant, Paul Robeson leading into Old Man River. He looked around carefully. Saw no one. As it turned out there was only the one voice, but it spoke a multitude of viewpoints. As if each speaker went to the same microphone which electronically converted all of the voices into Robeson's. It was a gentle discussion, an enlightened one, one without any apparent stake beyond a collective concern for an uncertain future.

Soon locked in the spell of unseen eavesdropping, Sutton slid down to the nearest crotch and leaned his back against the rough old trunk, and listened.

"Kinda small potatoes. No passion."

"We've tried passion. Too dangerous. Inevitably led to religions."

"True, but without the risk what does it matter if a bunch of introverted stoics believe? Organized action is still our best bet."

"Pure love is all that matters. It's all we have. This guy wants to believe but he needs rational assurance. Blind Faith is a band.”

"But the danger. We prove to him, we prove to a million like him that we exist and can and will interfere, can they handle it? Can we be certain none of them will go messianic on us, again?"

"Now wait a minute. The messianics have done good by us. We wouldn't be here without them. It's the ones who take advantage of them, twist their messages. The metaphysical predators."

"There will ever be mortals who can't wait. It's in their genes. Even when our chosen ones sacrifice their bodies, their lives to demonstrate the power of their love, there will always be seculars who subvert the example, the opportunists."

“So you're saying no more beacons?”

“We've given them enough beacons. It's time to go subtle. Time to work with the meek. Prove our existence to them in an intimate way, that we recognize them with love, let them know their calling and their commitment to it are vital.

"Yes. And they recruit by example, their devotion to vocation, the quiet confidence and strength we give them."

"By example alone? No proselytizing?"

“Absolutely.”

“Will that enough?”

“It has to be.”

"But we're nearly out of time. They're destroying the planet. We can't afford to lose the species. What can ten, a million, nay, ten million devoutly loving introverts inherit when all is risked by the others for comfort and pride?"

"The truly devoted can survive."

"They must.”

“If they don't?”

“Have we faith enough to last without the love of mortals feeding us? Have we enough love to face the unknown, the eternal cosmos? Have we? Sing it, children--"

"Shhhhhhh. I should like to think we do, but it's a risk I'm not wanting to take."

"Nor I.”

“Nor I.”

“Ummmm...”

“Nor I.”

“Nor I."

[This rumbles awhile.]

"The nays have it. Well then, as our sole effect is on attitude, we'd best get cracking."

The ringing in Sutton's ears resembled the whine of jet turbines too near, and he choked on the ozone. He saw by the steam rising from the fresh gash in the bark of the neighboring cedar this is where the lightning had struck. Raindrops pelting his head and neck had restored his consciousness. It was just starting, what promised to be a deluge.

"Hoo boy, best to get down now." He clambered out of the crotch and dropped to the ground. He patted the trunk that had provided his backrest. "Later, old girl." He jogged to his truck.