Murmured enchantments in the secret invisible meeting place in the ancient swamp V8+ 52*

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Secrets are kept by some people for very long times. There are those who, in their last breath, finally reveal that which they have guarded so closely for so many years, yet, a rare few take the most intimate side of themselves to the next life without ever sharing the secret of their hidden truth with anyone on this side of the grave. Then again, once every hundred years or so, there is someone who has a secret which cannot be told.

Unlike some people, Stowe Bridger could look himself in the mirror because he had no criminal record and he had graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and established himself in a satisfactorily paying career as an investigative journalist. The shack he currently found himself in, however, didn't speak to his socioeconomic successes. The vast expanse of the flat prairies of the sweeping plains of South Dakota stretched out farther than the eye could see in all directions.

A ghostly sensation of cold isolation crawled over Stowe's flesh as he looked around at the weathered planks of his dilapidated lodging. If the walls of this old clapboard hovel could talk, what secrets would they tell? A dried decaying exoskeleton of Cicada dealbatus, a species of seven year locust found in the Dakota Territories, adhered to one of the blank walls at about head height. The empty bug husk was stuck there as if the creepy thing that once filled it had molted, abandoning its empty shell to the elements. Stowe shuddered and turned away from the gruesome insect remains.

Even though the structure of this dreary dwelling was composed of rotting wood, the rusted fasteners of which barely held it together, it was far better than dirt. He couldn't imagine how pioneers and early settlers could endure living in sod houses; but who among them could afford to have wood shipped all the way out here to this treeless wilderness?

Stowe's wandering mind returned to the task at hand - a special assignment that offered lucrative pay and journalistic prestige, that is, if he could find anything of what he was looking for. Hiking the mysterious grasslands in search of evidence of a lost religious colony would be a great cardiovascular workout. Who knows what he might discover? A Pulitzer might be coming his way.

Stowe hadn't used his old backpack since trudging the college campus over a decade ago, but he brought it along on this trip because the zippered bag with its numerous pockets would be perfect for carrying hiking supplies such as maps, a compass, trail mix, bottled water, wet wipes, and a utility knife.

There wasn't much signal out here for cell phones, but the handheld GPS should link up with enough satellites to keep him from losing his way. If not, he would rely on old fashioned methods of navigating in unknown territory. Another moment by the warmth of the pellet stove, then he'd set out across the sod, walking head-on into the cool overcast air of early October on the limitless windswept Plains.

Checking his backpack to make sure it was empty before loading his hiking stores, Stowe noticed a paper in the very bottom of the bag. Drawing it out, he unfolded it slowly. The least hint of a smile traced itself in the corners of his healthy Scandinavian mouth. The paper was a hard-copy of the very first magazine article for which he had been paid money to write. The feature involved a visit to what in days gone by was called an old folks home - but are now known as assisted living centers - to interview one of the residents, a seventy-four-year-old retired music instructor named Fred Boswell.

Stowe remembered the interview as if it happened yesterday. A nurse's aid had led him through the Pine Sol and medicine vapors of a long hallway, the walls of which were utterly covered with drawings and paintings of angels, out back to a small courtyard. He followed her to the center of the courtyard beside a burbling fountain. The old man sat in a bariatric wheel chair with a plaid blanket across his lap in the golden sunshine of a mild afternoon in early April.

Stowe took a seat next to his interviewee on an ornate graying stone bench and politely introduced himself to the old gentleman who told his story with a distant abstracted gaze glossed over his milky-blue cataract eyes as if he were talking more to himself than to his interviewer. A stroke which had paralyzed his right side, combined with the reality that he had no immediate family to care for him, had brought the senescent Boswell to Tranquil Arbors Nursing Home.

A decade prior to his internment behind the whitewashed walls of Tranquil Arbors, Fred Boswell had been an aging alcoholic and band teacher at a junior high school, which, according to him, was the primary factor contributing to his penchant for nipping at the bottle. The snot-nosed little brats would practice neither their scales nor their arpeggios and they applied very little effort toward learning to read music. So, in effect, all Boswell did was wave his ragged splintering baton before a cacophony of miserable nerve-grating racket that made his stomach roil and his ears bleed. It actually wasn't the deplorable state of student interest in mastering musical instruments that depressed Boswell so deeply. Life had doled out other disappointments of far greater distress than student apathy.

During the hardships of a shadowed era that arrived in his fifties, Boswell's spouse, who had been a devoted housewife for over twenty-four years of reasonably happy marriage, got it into her head that she wanted to learn to skydive. Boswell figured she must have been suffering some sort of midlife crisis, so he didn't interfere with her wild tangent. He reckoned it was merely a passing phase - some desperate attempt to regain lost youth that would fizz out before she did anything really dumb.

Yet, on Mrs. Boswell's first trip up with thirteen other crazy adrenaline junkies, she bailed out of the plane before the green 'jump' light went on. To this day no one knows what came over her. Somebody said she had been inhaling helium from a balloon and talking in that high squeaky voice just before takeoff.

Her 'chute got tangled and she plummeted four thousand feet into a jam-packed stadium during the second quarter of a college football game. Witnesses say Mrs. Boswell hit the thirty yard line from whence she bounced fifty feet into the air. The quarterback on the home team suffered such traumatic injuries to his right leg that doctors had to amputate at the knee. It was on that fateful day, after receiving the tragic news of his beloved wife's horrific death, that Boswell took his first drink.

After the loss of his dearly departed mother, Boswell's son, Pete, who was preparing for a career as a cellist with the philharmonic orchestra, quit the music conservatory and ran off with the circus. For awhile Pete was apprenticed to a magician, but he didn't have a knack for card tricks, so he switched to being a clown.

Pete was great with children. He had a way of making them not be afraid - must have been his silly antics. He used to send postcards from the road, and occasionally photographs. Once, out in Hollywood, Pete - in his clown suit, bright rainbow hair, and funny makeup - had his photo taken with two movie stars. Yes, Pete was a rising star himself until one afternoon during mid circus season under the Big Top. He was performing an act he had carried out dozens of times with an elephant named Hortense when something went amiss that caused the enormous beast to step in the wrong place. Poor Pete's skull was crushed, resulting in instant death. The makeup, the blood, the dislodged human teeth - it was a chilling nauseating disaster. All that was recognizable of Pete's mangled head was his rainbow-colored wig, and even that had chunks of skull fragment mixed in with blood, brain matter, and sawdust.

One evening several years later in that season we all know and dearly love, the Season of Giving, old Fred was to conduct his junior high band in an orchestral Christmas concert to be held in the Brookville civic center beside the town hall.

Half his ornery students forgot their sheet music and the other half couldn't read a note if their lives depended on it so it made absolutely no difference whatsoever that they remembered to bring theirs. To complicate matters further, when the curtains were drawn open by the stage master, little Timmy Tucker got so nervous being up there in front of all those people in the audience that he wet his pants.

The other students were laughing and making so much fun of little Timmy that his anger and embarrassment exceeded what his delicate constitution could bear, so his mother had to take him home. This was a catastrophe of biblical proportions because little Timmy was the only oboe player and it just so happened that one of the pieces to be performed that evening included a long oboe solo. How much worse could things get? By the time the evening was over, old Boswell was wishing he hadn't asked that question.

Two of the dads in the audience got into an emotionally charged disagreement about whose son was the better saxophone player. The disagreement quickly grew heated and abruptly led to fisticuffs. Security was summoned to remove the combatants from the hallowed halls of the civic center. This is where Nancy Sue LePage enters the Boswell cataclysm.

Nancy Sue LePage was from north of the border. Being Canadian by birth meant she put 'eh' at the end of every sentence she spoke. At first, the good people of the small town of Brookville thought she was saying 'A', but Nancy Sue explained to them that it's not 'A', it's 'eh'.

In the neighboring town of Lautrec, they once had a fellow who moved there from Britain and he used to say 'what' at the end of every sentence, but when he saw how nervous he was making everybody by doing that, he took it upon himself to curb his innate colloquial instinct. He struggled for well over a year to condition himself not to say 'what' at the end of his spoken sentences, and when he finally broke himself of the habit, the psychoemotional trauma which resulted affected him so profoundly that his only daughter had to travel overseas to escort her ailing father back home to Britain where he died in a psychiatric hospital shortly thereafter.

One afternoon, Nancy Sue, fearless leader of the Glee Club, paid a visit to her neighbor, Buck Tarkington who, in addition to being a decorated veteran of foreign wars, was also the Potentate of the local Shaddai Shrine Temple.

Buck's place was an acre's walk from Nancy's Second Empire Victorian. His hundred-year-old mansard roof house sat on a small prominence, or rise, which overlooks the better part of Brookville. The town square and park green can be seen from Buck's back porch and this is where he and Nancy Sue were having their late Saturday afternoon chat. It was in the fall of the year. The sun was low on the western horizon. Buck and his neighborly visitor, wrapped in quilted flannel shirts, were enjoying an aperitif and the cool autumn air when Nancy Sue suggested that they should do something original and memorable to "spice-up" this year's Christmas concert.

Nancy Sue's keen eye, passing over the scenic panoramic vista, happened to notice the replica Revolutionary War cannon sitting in the center of the park green, to which she drew Buck's attention by commenting on the questionable nature of such a large instrument of destruction being so prominently displayed in the town square. It was, Nancy Sue admonished, a symbol of violence which should not be celebrated by the leaders of their good community. What sort of influence was it on the impressionable minds of the young?

The replica Revolutionary War cannon was the jewel of the historical society and the pride of the town. A special hardtop canopy had been constructed to protect the prized armament from the effects of weathering. Docents buffed and polished the beloved showpiece everyday. The US flag flew bold and high immediately adjacent to the treasured attraction.

Beatrice Clairmont, the Grand Royal Matron of the Brookville Historical Society, was a retired elementary school teacher and loyal consumer of the Dixon Ticonderoga Company genuine wood yellow No. 2 pencils. In addition to this, she always loved the story of how Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British during the Revolution. Benedict Arnold had assisted with the legendary military coup d'état, yet he later proved to be a turncoat, so Beatrice Clairmont didn't count him among the other heroes. Beatrice's prompting insistence is the didactic expedient by which the Brookville replica Revolutionary War cannon came to be known as "Old Ticonderoga".

Buck was thinking about what neighborly Nancy Sue had just said about Old Ticonderoga while his bloodshot eyes pondered intensely upon the armament trophy. Under the feisty influence of a Jack'n'Coke, Buck's favorite aperitif, the honorable war hero had spawned the ingenious idea of borrowing the cannon from the historical society to put up on stage for the firing of powder charges to accentuate the orchestral climax of the grand finale. That, Buck suggested, would surely 'spice up' this year's Christmas concert! To this dazzling brainchild, Nancy Sue enthusiastically agreed. Perhaps the horrid emblem of violence could be put to some humanitarian or artistic use, after all.

On the appointed evening, the field gun with its heavy iron bore and large wooden wagon wheels was positioned on stage. Buck was to be in charge of firing the artillery. As it happened, he had taken the liberty of stopping off at the local VFW Post on his way to the civic center. By the time he arrived that evening, he was in most excellent spirits having imbibed a number of his favorite aperitif.

A mildly staggering and thick-tongued Buck Tarkington showed up with his signature Shaddai Shriner red fez on his balding head, a snow-white Santa Claus beard dangling loosely from his dimpled chin, and a wide grin upon his lean ruddy bourbon-seasoned face. Buck was in an enthusiastic mood. He felt warm and welcome. He reveled in the glory of his brilliant idea of including the big cannon in the evening's performance. This would be the best Christmas concert ever!

The program for that ill-omened celebration consisted of Silent Night, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, Jingle Bells, Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker Suite, Handel's Hallelujah chorus, the Hoedown from Aaron Copland's Rodeo, and, for the grand orchestral finale, the 1812 Overture composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a concert piece in which the great composer incorporated real cannon fire. In this year's Christmas extravaganza, Old Ticonderoga would join in the music to match the climactic crescendo to Tchaikovsky's visionary genius.

Under the influence of the 90-proof aperitif, the smiling chuckling staggering convivial Buck Tarkington tightly packed four times too much powder into the big barrel of the field gun - he packed it real good. By the time the 1812 Overture started, Buck was well into his cups, but his bleary-eyed double vision was zeroed in on old Boswell passionately whipping his ragged baton before the junior high school orchestra. Watching closely for his cue, Buck's syncopation with the musical timing of the famous prelude was bang on the money.

What a climax it was! At exactly the right measure, Buck touched off the full size black powder field artillery piece. The cannon fired - BOOM!

"What in the name of all that is holy!"

As it turned out, little Timmy Tucker wasn't the only one to soil his linens that memorable night. Old Boswell and a number of others momentarily lost control of their bowels. Six hearing aids were utterly destroyed. The plate glass doors at the entrance to the civic center were blown forty feet from their frames. The mayor, who had recently had a pacemaker installed, died right there on the spot of a myocardial infarction.

The heat from the deafening earth-shaking blast shattered the glass bulbs on the overhead fire sprinkler system so that water began flooding down upon the shocked spectators, drenching their evening gowns, tuxedos, and entirely washing out all the elegant ladies' stiff hairspray heaped up beehive bouffant hairdos.

The barrel of the cannon suffered irreparable damage. It was badly cracked down its entire length. The muzzle was blown completely off. Fortunately, the rocketing shrapnel flew straight over the heads of the audience and harmlessly buried itself in a wall of the civic center. The ruined cannon was, in and of itself, a painful trauma to the citizens of Brookville, most notably to Beatrice Clairmont, because not only could the historical society not afford a replacement, they still owed over two thousand dollars on the one that Buck Tarkington had effectively demolished.

Fred Boswell ended his story by remarking that the holocaust of that ill-fated concert evening precipitated his retirement. A year later, he'd suffered the stroke that landed him in Tranquil Arbors. The old fellow had, during the relation of his sad tale, gained a sentimental endearment for the young Stowe who sat quietly on the stone bench making notes with a digital voice recorder on his knee.

At the conclusion of the interview, the tired old band teacher who had endured so much misfortune in his grievous life, reached up with his left arm as if for a hug. Stowe Bridger managed only a light quick handshake, after which he hastened to the nearest restroom to wash his hands thoroughly with antibacterial soap. That old man seemed a nice enough fellow, but his skin was covered with unsightly age spots and scabby sores. Who knows what contamination might be oozing from such sickly geriatric flesh?

"Come back," Fred Boswell had pleaded, "come back and talk to me again any time you like."

How often old Boswell must have sat alone out by the burbling fountain gazing at the empty stone bench hoping for another visit from the journalist.

Stowe Bridger never returned to Tranquil Arbors.

This vexing memory hinted at the Secret of Hope, a prophetic passage from an ancient book, which Stowe could not force from his mind. According to what he last heard, old Boswell now lay peacefully in eternal rest amid the other graves of the Brookville Memorial Cemetery. A slight pang of guilt crept into Stowe's subconscious where it would brood for some time before rising to command his full attention. At the moment, the ambitious journalist felt only a distant nagging sensation, the cause of which was obscured in the dense foggy region between conditioned reflex and the independent action of free will. As above, so below....mote it be. Stowe Bridger didn't know it yet, but the secrets from his past were coming back to haunt him, and the most haunting secret of all is the secret which can't be told. It's a secret that changes everything. It is the Secret of Hope.

© 2021 Sean Terrence Best
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