There are long sabbaticals hidden between these posts, reader. I’m not sure you would notice if they weren’t made explicit. I work, or rest, or find myself stuck in one way or another.
I never go home.
Money has certainly been an issue more recently. Money for getting the bike out of impound (left at the ‘Edge of Disaster’ just a little too long). Money for a new pack. Money to fix an old truck radio. Money to eat.
Luckily, the unending autumn brings a long harvest and I am suited for mindless farm work, for pumpkins and apples and shuffling through the dirt. I work and make money and bide my time, devoting much of my thinking to the problem of the stranger and waiting for the weekend of ‘Mazzy’s Harvest Carnival.’
I am thinner and darker when it arrives.
‘There is something at the heart of ‘Mazzy’s Harvest Carnival’ that radiates a sickly-sweet feeling of unease, a feeling that hits well after one pays for entry. At ‘Mazzy’s,’ every beloved autumn tradition is taken to an extreme, exaggerated past seasonal cheer and into a clownish, careful-what-you-wish-for mockery. Pumpkins are heavier, hayrides are slower, and the cider is so thick with sugar that one can pour out a glass and count to three before it touches the ground.
‘Mazzy’s’ is syrupy as a place and people stick there like flies, determined to get their money’s worth and determined to re-experience festive autumnal memories that, upon careful recollection, are no more than a series of half-remembered commercials and cartoon specials. In a wasted sci-fi future, this will be where they find humans sealed up in amber- fat, and frozen in postures of mild disappointment.’
The ‘Carnival’ arranges itself late in the season, the result of hodgepodge chores assigned to myself and the others on the farm. There are others, yes, people like myself who prefer cash under the table and don’t mind bunking with strangers. We pick apples one day, assemble a tall, rickety slide the next. Signs are painted, hay is stacked. There is talk of the corn maze, of the tedious task of carving a path through the stiff husks and paper-sharp leaves.
And then, one day, the maze is there. The entrance appears with the sunrise and from the same rickety slide we see that the path has seemingly chewed its way out from the center.
“They must grow it that way,” I offer over a dinner of thick, pumpkin stew.
“No,” someone says, a woman who has been working the farm longer than me, “No way the corn grows that way.”
She doesn’t offer another explanation.
Sometimes I roll over in the mornings and feel the absence of the comb case in the breast pocket of my shirt- an absence so distinct that it seems, in the twilight of dreaming, to be as thick as the thing itself. One morning, to stop my teeth from chattering, I pull one of the ‘Arbor-Eat’ems’ picks from the vial and find, despite my weary skepticism, that I feel better. The pick (one for now, as there are only ten) becomes a part of my farming personality. On the night of the stew and of the self-made maze, I find the soggy splinter migrating to the corners of my mouth and tugging at my lips.
It pulls me to the cornfield.
The maze is not forbidden, but nobody admits to entering before I do. The leaves rustle and the pick twists in my teeth: ‘This way,’ ‘Turn,’ ‘Oops, dead end.’
“Alice?” I ask, “You’re not very good at this, are you?”
If it’s Alice in the pick, she says nothing. We wander until the moon is overhead and stumble upon the center where a scarecrow slumps on its post. A bucket of candy rests at its feet, along with a sign that says, ‘Please Take One ONLY.”
“Do you know the difference between a maze and a labyrinth?” I ask, taking the pick from my mouth, “A labyrinth is just one, winding path from the outside to the center. A maze splits and dead-ends- has as many ways in and out as you like.”
This is a conversation for tomorrow’s dinner. I practice, with Alice and the scarecrow, as I used to practice in the mirrors of middle school bathrooms.
“You can’t really be lost in a labyrinth…”
(Noises in the corn interrupt me, but quiet as I take notice. I find out later that the maze is rearranging itself. That’s the nature of these places. It will be another long night.)
“You can’t be lost in a labyrinth, but, I suppose, if it’s very long, you can be stuck. You might forget which direction you’re heading-”
I drop the Alice-pick and spend a long time finding it again.
(The maze grows more complex in the meantime.)
“What does it say…” I continue, “What does it say about life that a labyrinth is supposed to be meditative? The beginning is the end, the way is set.”
(An angry ghost eyes me from the scarecrow. It has been the heart of the maze for a hundred years. For a hundred, hundred years. It curses me, but I have always been unlucky and don’t notice much of a difference.)
“There’s some comfort in having no choice.”
I shake the scarecrow’s hand (the ghost rages inside) and turn to leave.
“But if this were a labyrinth, there would be no distinguishing between directions. To catch its prey, a minotaur would only have to stand by and wait.”
-traveler
