The OrphanAGE, Vol. 1.39

First Lines

First of all, it was October, a rare month… ~Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

It is said that many of us have one in the hopper...a novel, that is. For this issue, we prevailed upon on our own w.e. leathem to cough up some fiction. A poet, essayist and penner of short stories, Leathem's long grind on longer-form fiction looks to be making headway. Tentatively titled Bears, we must keep in mind poet and fellow Missourian T.S. Eliot's admonition: between the motion and the act, the shadow falls. Well, here's hoping. Until that day, here's the opening gambit (we'll run part 2 next week).

Joining him in this issue are a few drawings by visual and performance artist Peter Max Lawrence. From Topeka to Lawrence to KC to San Fran and, most recently, to a rustic spread somewhere in the Rockies, Peter has been one busy artistic beaver, reaching not only national but a global audiences. His web page boasts a CV citing more than 200 exhibits, screenings and collaborative shows. From marquee galleries like KC’s Leedy-Voulkos to Berlin, Moscow, Reykjavík venues, Peter's is a record of impact.

Rounding out this week’s issue, we again dive into the vaults of Prospero’s Bell Tower Concert Series, shot and produced by filmmaker Danny Mac Stayton, for some beats 'n words from The Royal Chief.

If you are enjoying these issues, we ask you to reshare our link on your socials AND to invite a friend (or three) to subscribe.

We are free, and possibly the most engaging 10 mins you’ll find this week.

Peace,
Dante

In This Issue:

• Fiction by w.e. leathem (excerpt, part 1)
• Beats 'n Words, Obvious: by The Royal Chief
• Illustrations by Peter Max Lawrence

Coming down the mountain, boys, what do I see,
bear tracks, bear tracks, coming after me...
~ James McMurtry

September 29

Cass Boroten dropped to a knee, keeping balance with her rifle. Her fingers traced the impressions. Pad. Toe and claw. They were deep. Maybe two days old. The stride enormous. She’d never heard tell of anything this size. Leastwise not in this region. If pressed, she’d guess at least 1,500 pounds. A silvertip that’d have to be more than nine feet standing. Making for the fold of hill north of the rise, it had been moving fast as it went. She could easily follow its passage through the wreckage of mallow leaf. Her eyes carried across the ridgeline to where the land sloped to a clot of lodgepole, which in turn escorted the rising earth to higher ground.

She couldn’t help a prickle of apprehension. She was a good shot and the .30-30 would be effective for damn near 150 yards. She stood and scanned the horizon. A brown this size could probably make thirty miles an hour, and she was downhill from the only cover around. She might have time to get off a couple-three shots. Even using 170-grain shells, she doubted that it would stop something this big.

Up and down the Rockies, it’d been one incident after another all summer. The jogger, a woman near Nederland. Plucked right off the trail that ran out of town. She’d never seen it coming. Outside of Kalispell, also a woman. Two hundred sixty-five miles of through-hiking to meet her end. Thirty-four seemed young somehow for such a death. And of course, the family south of Banff. That one was particularly ugly: a mom, a dad, three little kids. The bear had wandered into the camp and killed the two youngest before either adult knew what was happening. The third child was saved only by the hysterically shouting mother, flailing as she charged the bruin. Then, just last week, a man fishing the Kootenai. Most of an arm gone. He’d survive. The pics, though. Extensive reconstructive surgery to his face and scalp, his back and buttock, his upper thigh.

There was the Springfield holstered on her hip and the bone knife sheathed at her boot, gifted her by her father that first Christmas back. Eleven inches. If it ever came to that, it’d likely be game over anyway. For the first time in her life, Cass wished she owned a .303 or a Weatherby.

There was just so damned much room. Nineteen months home, and it still took her breath away. Hillock after hill, meadow giving way to paddock, streams sluicing clamorously across paths. All just as she remembered. Just as she’d left them years ago. Anything could set off the feeling: a bank of clouds careening across grass, casting a sere, dusty shade visible for miles. A stand of trees tilting upward to swallow an entire mountain face. A breeze entering a fold of earth, like a breaker rushing, clacking the thin, tall lodgepoles till they hissed and creaked and popped, shearing off the tender lower branches as it swept her up in its wild, telluric riff. What was that composition? Appalachian Spring…? She couldn’t remember.

Today was fragrant and dry, still lingering with summer. She had lit out early morning, heading northeast. That was nine hours ago. There'd been no trail, and the going, after the long hours, was starting to wear. There was just enough sun remaining to swing out along Keener Loop before turning back. Still, it’d be a good forty minutes till she’d hit the old logging road. Follow that on down to the back pasture, then cut across. From there, if she kept up her pace, she’d be back at Bruinsford in another thirty. Day would slide into twilight before she was home.

She was looking forward to a bite, a shower. To sliding into bed beside the open window. If her eyes weren’t too heavy, maybe a few pages in her book: The Baron in the Trees. Why, exactly, she’d picked that one up, she couldn’t recall. Probably the first thing handy when she’d packed. Didn’t really matter; its whimsy a salve after a long day. Oh, and the trees...

All that was going to have to wait.

She made it another three-quarters of a mile before she had to again stop. Something, probably a pebble picked up while checking the print, would not stop worrying the flesh at her instep. She paused beneath a canopy of aspen. Taking a swig from her water bottle, she leaned against one of the five-ton boulders scattered willy-nilly all across this part of the country by the Bretz floods, when the Clark Fork dam ruptured some 15,000 years ago. Removing her boot, she spotted them. Five on one tree trunk. Four on its neighbor. Half an inch wide, gouging deep, laying open the blood-gold sapwood. Perhaps eleven feet up and running a good fifteen inches in length. The wounds were fresh. Torn and mauled bark stringing from their edges. She couldn’t imagine that even a buck readying for rut, keen on peeling velvet, could leave scars such as these.

There was no service this far out, yet the camera on her phone still worked. She took a quarter hour snapping pics. Up close. From varying angles. Trying, somehow, to capture the gouging, the violence. She examined the surrounding trees. An adjacent sapling, maybe five summers old, had been shorn clean off. Ten yards farther on, another. Farther still, three seedlings lay trampled but not broken. They’d recover, though they’d remain bent for years, if not for life.

There was other sign. Along the edge of the stand. To her untrained eye, it looked to be of a different sort. Searching the needles and bracken, she found scat. Moose? Elk? Hell, could even be cattle... Again the prints, outsized, like those she’d been following all day. She couldn’t be certain. Some looked to be trampled and over-trod by at least one other set of tracks. In the dusk, it was difficult to make out.

The camera's flash in the deepening gloom began to bleach more and more detail from each successive image. She decided to call it quits. Was her unease getting the best of her? Replacing her boot, she set out again. Twice she caught herself glancing back over her shoulder at the shadows slinking in to muddle the view along the tree line.

Twenty minutes later, she spotted a figure. On the horizon, outlined against the sky. The first human she’d seen all day. A hunter heading in for the evening? Perhaps. As she watched, the silhouette removed its hat. Turning her way, the figure seemed to tilt its head back as if to sniff the air. She wasn’t sure if she’d been seen or not. Most likely, she was all but invisible down here along the curve of the copse. After a pause, the figure slung a rifle across its shoulder and turned away. Carrying to her ears the tinnish, atonal tonk tonk of what might have been a sheep bell clanking. Then, even that faded.

...to be continued

The Royal Cheif

Peter Max Lawrence

Peter Max Lawrence images have been taken from the following exhibits & publications: the Vertical Gallery, Quiet Lightning, Monologging