Is there a moral buried somewhere in the story of Dan Clay? It rattles in my head like a song, a sleeping ghost, returned from the back of some book I had as a child. Untitled and anonymously authored, I wonder if I am destined to write every story I have ever read.

My senses return, in time, though Clay and O’Keefe continue to trade bullets in the back of my head. I pull myself out of the mud and I search the valley wall for a likely ascension. It’s all mud, everything around and, behind me, the captive storm turns and approaches once more.

My backpack has burst at every seam, spilled itself across the wet ground. I gather what I can on the torn canvas and hold it to my chest like a child. I walk into the storm, toward the trees that form a paranoid huddle in the center of the valley.

There was a picture that accompanied the poem- I hated the picture and I looked at it often. It illustrated the climax, the turn of the second draw when Clay reappears from his year of torment to face O’Keefe, who would have only waited a terrestrial instant. The sheriff is lit up with fire and surrounded by smoke- deep, black, and toxic. Read as written, Clay’s reply to O’Keefe is solid and confident. It reiterates the notion that a good man can remain unbroken in hell.

The illustrator thought otherwise.

The drawn Clay is bent and burned, his face is twisted by a gaping frown, an expression normally reserved for cartoon ghosts. He is sorrowful and screaming or moaning in pain. The drawn Clay appears terrified.

I wonder about a character that would bear such suffering. I wonder why the author chose to repeat the beginning at the end.

I walk into the storm and am buffeted by rain. The soft ground becomes slick. I have nothing so clear as a destination, only the path away from a dead-end. There is still some comfort in that. I try to ration it. I spend much of my time rationalizing.

Clay is a reactionary man, a man molded by his misfortunes. He learns nothing but to be distrustful. He becomes untrustworthy himself. The author’s repeated lines suggest more sinister changes. Is there a monster shaped of Clay that we do not see?

I ask because I am a reactionary man and I am sure that I was pushed into the valley by the stranger. He has been in my shadow all along.

I am nearly blown over by the wind and I press myself against the rotting trunk of an old tree. My old copy of Autumn by the Wayside, the book given to me by a man who recognized my name, slips from my arms and explodes on the ground, its entries scattering into the storm. I catch a single page under the heel of my boot, an entry for a place called: ‘The Oasis.’

-traveler

Not much is put forth about a man from the north, the sheriff of old Saskatoon

‘Cept for the warning, that his smiles in the morning hid th’monster he’d be after noon.

Sheriff Dan Clay wasn’t always that way, was wary of tossin’ round lead.

And that hesitation lead to daily damnation and a bullet-shaped hole in his head.

 

See, back in the day, the younger man, Clay, believed in a world that was right,

So he didn’t think twice, bout’ a man playin’ nice, when it came time for pickin’ a fight.

Faced with Charles o’Keefe, a liar and thief, Clay steadied himself for the draw,

But, impatient and surly, o’Keefe pulled his gun early, and lived on as a scourge to the law.

 

The dead man, Dan Clay, might have seen his last day, but woke to a devilish grin,

“There’s a small price to pay,” said the devil to Clay, “But it might get you kickin’ again.”

“If you come around often, I’ll spare you the coffin, let’s call it a second each day,

At noon you drop in then it’s right back again- no need for a good man to stay.”

 

“For you to be reckoned, all I need is that second, for most it’s a lifetime and then some.”

And just as he planned, Clay took Satan’s hand, without having heard the addendum.

“I thought I should mention, a minor extension- though it works out for you quite as well.

See one Earthly instant gets wrung out and twisted and ends up a whole year in Hell.”

 

Made the fool twice, Clay struggled to rise, and he covered his wound with his hat,

And as for the sin that’s followed him since, he hoped that the badge covered that.

And he’s done plenty fair, by the town and the mayor, but everyday just about twelve,

Sheriff Dan Clay spends a year of his day serving time on his sentence in hell.

 

As though fate had planned it, O’Keefe and his bandits, crossed motives with Saskatoon law,

And knowing the grief, that follows O’Keefe, Clay faced him once more at the draw.

“We’ll fire at noon,” laughed the murderous buffoon, but, ignoring his normal seclusion,

Clay cut through his laughter, “How’s one second after, to avoid any repeat confusion?”

 

In the thick high-noon simmer, O’Keefe seemed to remember, the facts of his previous crime,

Said, “I woulda’ sworn, a dead man would learn, how to judge the wrong place and wrong time.”

Clay made no reply as the seconds ticked by for he knew what high noon had in store.

And faithful O’Keefe, the second-rate thief, pulled his trigger the instant before.

 

Now some blame the liquor, but Clay seemed to flicker, to even the soberest folk,

He was gone for a flash then, with sulphur and ash, reappeared in a black plume of smoke.

Dan Clay looked a fright, with his mustache alight, and the hellfire lickin’ his heels,

He said “I won’t debate, that the place wasn’t great, but the timing, at least, was ideal.”

 

Clay made it brief, and he buried O’Keefe, and he gave up the badge and the post.

And he gave up the gun and the favor he won and eventually gave up the ghost.

Not much is put forth about a man from the north, the sheriff of old Saskatoon

‘Cept for the warning, that his smiles in the morning hid th’monster he’d be after noon.

 

-traveler

‘If Jupiter’s ‘Great Red Spot’ were to have a terrestrial cousin it would undoubtedly be the storm that persists on the ‘Edge of Disaster,’ an ominous ridge in Western Colorado. Fed by a series of mountainous lakes and a quirk of airstreams, the unnamed storm churns in its valley like a thick soup, trapped in a constant approach of the ridge.

Standing at the ‘Edge of Disaster’ is a humbling experience. One feels awe, initially, and then perpetually until the awe begins to feel more like tension and eventually, stress. The ‘Edge of Disaster’ perfectly triggers a series of instinctual fears that are not meant to be sustained. Some find catharsis at the ridge, a resetting of perspective, but most find the prolonged anxiety follows them off the hillside, like a ringing in the ears.’

I looked up weather patterns before I arrived- I do that a lot, actually, but it makes for boring reading so I don’t include it in the posts. This storm never quite escapes the valley but it does, occasionally, slosh up the sides, smearing moisture up along the walls and ridges. That’s been the case recently so I donned my rain gear and wrapped my pack in plastic. I crinkled my way to the ‘Edge of Disaster’ and felt the heavy storm-fear in my ass (like the sudden drop of a roller-coaster, but cosmic and grim).

I was on my own at the ‘Edge of Disaster’ so I, unwisely, played chicken with instinct and I timed myself watching it. It is hard, in a way that’s difficult to describe. I have lived through storms; that’s a different feeling altogether. I have lived through storms.

The ‘Edge’ is reinforced with unmarked cement which seems like a good idea but may provide a false sense of safety. I stand too close and topple over the edge, blinded by fluttering plastic and pushed by my shadow. It watches as I tumble into the valley and slip beneath the storm.

I come to in the mud, far below.

-traveler

“Goshdarnit, I thought we had this worked out!”

The gathered crowd shifts uncomfortably as the park ranger, a man withered by his thirties, wrings his hat in frustration.

“Come’on darlin’!” he coaxes the ground, “Come’on up!”

The ranger’s neck is blushing red and he keeps his back to us, his face turned away. From the side, it’s possible to see he’s wearing a stiff smile. He checks his watch very carefully. He pulls out his phone and checks the time there, too.

“Funny thing,” he says, “Certain things you can predict and certain things you just can’t but it’ll be any second now…”

Nothing happens.

“Here’s a trick that used to work,” the ranger says, “On the count of three, we yell ‘BOOM’! That’ll get a reaction! Ready? One… two… three!”

“BOOM!” we say.

But, still, nothing happens.

“Ha ha…” the man tries to laugh, “One more time: A-one and a-two and a-three!”

The crowd responds in a mutter, embarrassed for the man.

“Any moment…” he says.

We wait in an uncomfortable, almost mocking, silence. There is no wind and branches hang still. Birds do not sing. Even the monstrous children cling quietly to their parents.

“Whatcha’ doing over there, Brian?” another ranger calls from the forest, suddenly, “Old Miss giving you trouble?”

“It’s fine, Alana!” our ranger calls, gesturing her away, “All under control here.”

“She’s a feisty one! Let me have a look…”

“I’ve been doing this for years, Alana, I don’t need…”

“BOOM!” Alana shouts, jogging over, and her exclamation is nearly drowned out by the thick jet of water that explodes out of the ground in front of us.

Most of the tour group is too distracted to see that our guide is twisting his hat between his fingers again, even as Alana pats him jovially on the back. I wonder, for a moment, if he’ll hit her- he seems like a man with few straws left to break. Brian hangs his head, instead.

‘‘Ol’ Unfaithful’ is nature at the height of cruelty, a magnificent geyser that promises nothing. It celebrated its status as a National Park in 1981 with a decade of dormancy, followed by the scalding-fatality of a ranger in the spring of 1992. There is no predicting its pattern of eruptions, no seismic tell to be perceived by machines. It adheres to timetables one week and scorns them the next. It rumbles enticingly for hours before releasing dry, sulphurous, flatulence. It’s said to have sprayed mud, acid, and satanic prayers at different points in history. It’s said to have swallowed a schoolchild.

‘Ol’ Unfaithful’s’ only constant is perversity, and even that seems to move along a spectrum between playfully antagonistic, and outright murderous. Arrive with little expectation, reader, and keep some distance.’

-traveler

The stranger’s truck is old and its cab is small, made smaller by garbage and stained fabric and wet places. The stranger drinks coffee from a plastic thermos that he carefully balances on a broken, fold-out cup holder. It explains a lot about the condition of the upholstery and illustrates a thing I had suspected about him- that he is no more enlightened than I am. A man that understands the meaning of the path would surely just fix…

To be honest, I don’t know if it means anything.

I watched the stranger argue with a cashier over that mug, insisting that he should be able to fill it for a 25-cent discount, that ‘Gas & Drive’ is one of many branches to recognize said discount. When I offered the stranger a quarter to end the dispute, he took it. The argument was not about the principle of the thing, as I had suspected. It was about the quarter.

The stranger may have no principles. He may have left the witch hunter to die if I had not insisted on dragging her to the lawn of the burning cottage. He may have pulled pennies from the bowl on the counter of the ‘Gas & Drive’ to make up the cost of his bitter, yellowish coffee. He may not be enlightened at all or these features may simply persist with enlightenment. It would be dangerous to conflate moving ahead with betterment, to assume knowledge is preferable to ignorance.

For example:

When I was young, my brothers and I realized there was a great, concrete manhole in our backyard. It had always been there, at the edge of our property where the forest bunched up against the delineating fence, but we lived for years before taking any sort of notice. We had not yet entered the middling age, when dreams become relegated to the nighttime, so we dreamt for a full 48 hours of what might lie beneath the mundane grass of our yard before our parents had left on some short errand. We knew, instinctively, that they would not approve of our journey into the earth.

Our combined strength was not enough to lift the great cement plug so we improvised a lever from a fallen branch and see-sawed the skinny weight of three boys with the secret door. It lifted and fell back into place several times before a lucky shift left it ajar- a 6-inch view of the darkness beyond. We summoned our courage and turned a flashlight on the mystery.

Shit.

A 3-foot drop into a lake of our own shit. We had discovered the septic tank.

Could it be that I ignored the lesson of that afternoon? Will it be a lake of shit, on a grander scale, that greets me at the end of this path? Perhaps, facing something like that, one comes to understand the value of a quarter and the relative cheapness of human life.

‘A Guide to America’s Shitholes:’ the book I would write if I had it in me to write a book. A series of disappointing investigations stemming from the first, the literal, hole of shit.

‘Young Americans go abroad to discover themselves and pull over the car to discover each other, adding lover’s lanes to the folk infrastructure of our nation. They are skittish locales, disappearing even as the sticky label of ‘lover’s lane’ is applied. These dark strips of road are at their peak when they are just a place, a place where people go to… you know… do… things. How often a well-meaning initiate-’

“How many times are you going to read that?” the stranger grumbles, “You don’t think I know how to find a place? Didn’t I find you?”

“You didn’t use the book to find me,” I tell him, “What do you care that I read it a few times?”

He breathes slowly, exhaling from his nose. He leans over to the windshield and breathes on that- wet huffs that blossom on the glass and fade.

He leans back and takes his coffee again: “I don’t know how much longer I want to wait.”

“The author says these places are fleeting.”

“All the more reason to call it a night.”

But:

‘The intimate darkness of ‘44th between Alder and Oak’ is unusually long-lived, a stain that refuses to come out in the wash. It is said, in a truth disguised as a joke, that couples parked here will be visited by a thing, by a judge, that reveals the lovers’ potential with a handprint on the windshield, raised fingers counting toward a positive outlook. What’s to keep a crafty partner from planting a handprint while their beau is indisposed? The legend is very clear about this point: the true judge on ‘44th between Adler and Oak’ will only ever mark the outside of the glass.’

“This is the most childish thing…” he says, shaking his head, “When I was in middle school we would twist the stems of apples and chant the alphabet until it broke off. I always made sure to take it easy on mine until ‘L’ came around.”

“And?”

“Luke never came around like ‘L’ did.” The stranger coughs- a persistent, rumbling cough neither of us have spoken about, “What did they do at your richy-rich school?”

“We-” something clicks on the back window and I squint into the darkness there, finding nothing, “We would just talk to each other, man. We would just talk to each other and fuck.”

“In middle school?”

“High school, then. We talked to each other. No need for magic apples.”

The stranger shifts and stretches: “Maybe it’s just nobody was twisting their apples with an eye for you.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s go,” he says, “Cops think it’s all good and fine when it’s teens hanging out in these places but two adult men…”

“You don’t think there’s anything here?”

“I think if there’s anything here, it’s chill enough to leave be,” the stranger pulls a cheap pair of binoculars to his face and laughs, “Ah, look at this.”

He points out his window at a car parked down the block and, leaning over the stranger’s legs, I see that the windows there have fogged over. A hoodied figure has peeled away from the darkness of a tree and carefully approaches the car.

“Mystery solved,” the stranger says, taking the binoculars back as the kid presses his hand to the glass, “Looks like every town’s got their magic-”

Something slaps our windshield suddenly and the glass shatters into webs. The stranger is out of the truck immediately, yelling at a thing that is already gone, waving a pistol I did not know he had. In my stupor, I see the fading imprint of a palm and a single, raised finger: the pointer.

A rating of one, a gesture for silence, or for warning.

The stranger is, undoubtedly, more trouble than he is worth. I pocket a quarter from the dash and determine to part ways with him at the next obvious juncture.

-traveler