St. Anthony’s Cabin

The Loaf from Buckston Glen

Traffic through Massachusetts and New Hampshire was light. Traffic on that stretch was never light. Brandon didn’t even want to think about how light the traffic was for fear he would jinx traffic density at some point in the future. Branching off the highway, the road narrowed and dove into dense pine forests with limbs that arched low over his 2002 Corolla. The temperature dropped by 10 degrees over the course of 20 miles, and he switched off the air conditioning to inhale deeply of the scented breeze through open windows. As the residue of putrid city air exited his lungs, he felt himself relaxing. He arrived in Buckston Glen about two hours later. A green sign suggested a population of 1,200.

Cruising the main drag of the charming riverside community infected him with a subtle jubilance that blossomed as he crept toward his destination. Then, on the right, a tall blue building with two gas pumps. The white trim around the windows was peeling, and a cardboard sign written in black permanent marker proclaimed the store to be “OPEN.” Brandon swerved into the parking lot without signaling. The suspension system of his car gaw-thunked as he nipped the curb. Though never planned nor remembered ahead of time, stopping at this service station on his first night at camp had become tradition. The spring-loaded screen door clattered and slammed shut behind him while he was greeted by the scent of woodsmoke and hotdogs under heat lamps.

An eclectic array of provisions was scattered along white metal shelves. On the far side of the store were drinks and a small section of grocery items in refrigerator cases whose transparent fronts dripped with condensation. From these, Brandon grabbed a plastic-wrapped pack of sliced ham and some neon orange cheese singles. En route to the register, he also snatched up a small container of mustard. Cheap yellow. As he looked around for a loaf of bread, he became distracted by a section of VHS tapes. The Hunt for Red October. The Lion King. He wondered, as he had before, why any business would still bother selling VHS tapes. Brandon never picked one out, but he enjoyed looking. Maybe that was the reason for their existence. Near the register was another small section containing baked goods.

“Great, I’ll pick up something for breakfast,” he thought, then remembered, “oh, and bread.”

He grabbed a large loaf of bread wrapped in wax paper and decided, “toast will be enough for tomorrow morning.”

“Did you find everything you need” a graying woman in an apron asked from behind the counter?

“Uh, I think so,” Brandon said, “thanks.”

Her deep blue apron had a small outline of a loon stitched in white thread.

“That bread is baked fresh each day,” she informed him.

Brandon said nothing, but he smiled. Then something unexpected caught his eye. Behind the counter, propped up near the window, was an old Casio keyboard. A sign next to it read “$10.” He couldn’t believe it. He’d taken piano lessons when he was younger, and just seeing the keyboard brought up a wash of old memories. Brandon had been wanting to start making music again in some form or fashion, but his job hadn’t left him with enough time to seriously pursue hobbies. He'd been hoping the ten days of paid time off he’d used to travel to his family’s isolated cottage in the forest would be an opportunity to reconnect with his creative side.

“Uh, does that work,” he asked the woman in disbelief?

She paused for a moment and looked at the keyboard.

“Well, it makes sounds,” she said, “if that’s what you’re asking.”

Brandon looked puzzled.

“It’s missing three keys,” she continued, “and the plug broke off in the charger socket, so it only works on battery power.”

“Hmm,” Brandon mused.

She picked up the keyboard easily and set it on the counter. A gallon Ziploc bag labeled “batteries” was duct-taped to its side.

“Okay,” Brandon said. He then handed over a twenty and was on his way.

Shingles on just one side of the family cottage’s roof were covered in moss. White paint from the walls was coming off in strips. Brandon was the first person up to camp that season, and he quickly went through the set-up ritual: flipping the breakers, priming the pump, and plugging in the refrigerator. He hung a windchime assembled from rusty cutlery, fishing line, and twigs from a low-hanging corner of the roof. There were always windchimes at camp, as far back as he could remember. He’d been told a story about how the windchimes had become a tradition, something to do with his great aunt, but he couldn’t remember the details. He carried a small kayak that was left inside over the winter to a spot near the water. Brandon swept the dusty floors, but they appeared just as dusty once he had finished. When actual chores were finished, he pulled a book off a shelf of soggy paperbacks in the kitchen. This year the book he would pretend to plan on reading was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. To complete his ritual, he set the guestbook on the kitchen table. It was customary for camp visitors to write a witty or absurd note when they arrived, but the evening was already growing dark. Brandon decided it would have to wait until morning.

That meant it was time for the evening meal. The bread he had purchased was dense and dark, which presented a challenge when he set about slicing it with a dull serrated knife. Eventually he produced two badly mangled pieces. Onto them he slapped a thick layer of mustard, pieces of ham, and three chemical-orange cheese squares. Getting his teeth through the sandwich was a job unto itself, but it was one he pursued with the reckless abandon of hunger. Five minutes later, he was finished with his meal, and he threw himself into a massive armchair by a tube television and inspected the cover of the paperback he had chosen. A pleasant warmth welled up from within his chest. Happy tingling sensations danced on his fingertips. Brandon was so pleased to finally be up at camp. He hadn’t taken a vacation in years, and this was just what he needed.

A Loon

The morning was glorious. Brandon awoke to a massive whooshing of wind through the tree tops. He felt as though he had just experienced the best sleep of his life. A sleep-tracking watch he wore constantly confirmed this assumption with a perfect rest score. He was also ravenous. The narrow wooden stairs of the cottage thundered as he clunked down them in his pre-coffee stupor. After setting a pot to brew, he banged out through the cottage’s screen door and faced the lake. It was the epitome of pleasant. He inhaled deeply, held his breath for a count of five, and then exhaled. A therapist he had been seeing back in the city had told him that breathwork was healthy, and so he sometimes remembered to breathe. An internal timer went off in his mind informing him that the coffee was ready.

He poured himself a cup and cut two more disfigured slices from the loaf. These he buttered and moved to a little outdoor table setup on the porch. On his way outside he tucked the guestbook under his arm. After the first few sips of his coffee, to which Brandon devoted his full attention, he flipped open the guestbook.

An entry from 1998 read, “rain for nine days in a row, nine!”

“Festival fun! Can’t wait until next season,” was another from 2003.

A few words in a handwriting Brandon recognized but couldn’t quite place said, “the loons know what we forget!”

Just then an eerie cry cut through the gushing of the wind in the trees.

“The loon,” Brandon cried joyfully. His mother had always loved the call of loons and never failed to comment on them when they were around. Brandon supposed he had picked up the habit.

Another sip of coffee. Slightly too burnt-tasting, but strong. The bread was flavorful, if a bit sour, with its buttery spread.

Once more the haunting call echoed across the lake. Brandon imagined it took on the shape of words. They seemed to call, “You . . . Again . . .”

“Me again,” Brandon laughed to himself, pretending to answer.

Another sip of coffee. He tried to think of a poignant or witty phrase to insert in the guestbook. It didn’t take him long.

“The loon is getting philosophical,” he wrote, “I think it recognizes me from a past life.”

Finishing his coffee, he turned his attention to the remaining half slice of bread. It looked kind of weird, he thought. As he squinted at it, he thought he saw faint purple streaks along its surface. When he relaxed his eyes, they disappeared.

“Oh well,” he thought and swallowed the last bite.

He threw the dishes into the sink, returned to the table, and wondered what he’d do with his day. He had no agenda. There was another cry, different this time, more piercing. Overhead, a bald eagle cruised in a wide arc just offshore. Brandon stood to get a better look. The eagle glided further down the shoreline. Brandon, for lack of any other thought, decided to follow. He picked his way slowly along the rocks that lined the rim of the lake. All the while he scanned the treetops for any sign of the eagle, which disappeared intermittently. Periodic shrill cries kept him motivated. Eventually, he came to an inlet in the shoreline. Rounding this, he spied a massive nest constructed of dried branches in the very top of a dying tree. The eagle perched on its nest momentarily before swooping back over the water.

He heard the loon again, further away. The cry made him feel alone, and the temperature seemed to drop suddenly. Words again formed in the loon’s cry, “it’s not . . . too late.”

Brandon again laughed off his imaginings about talking loons and headed back to the cottage. Once there, he retrieved a small notebook he had brought with him. He labeled a page “day one,” and began to write.

“I came up here because I wanted to get closer to nature,” went the first line.

“I wanted the communion with nature Thoreau described,” he continued.

Then, “it’s just happening a bit sooner than I had expected.”

Bug Zapper

The mosquitoes grew decisively worse as the day wore on. It was as though the little mosquito scouts had detected a feast entering their area of operations. They reported back to their little mosquito generals who then marshaled the echelon for an assault against Brandon. Bug spray did little to stem the tide, and Brandon decided to escalate the confrontation. Earlier on, he had been rummaging through a decaying tool shed near the cottage and uncovered a new-looking bug lamp that he assumed one of his cousins had brought up the previous season. It was an ugly black metal affair, but it looked effective, particularly given the hundreds of little spots dotting the lamp’s surface. Brandon knew these were the residue of fried insect husks. He carefully perched the bug zapper on the railing of the porch and ran an extension cord under the cottage door to a nearby outlet. The surface of the bug zapper glowed a wicked blue. Several seconds later there was an electric pop followed by a sizzle. Brandon dusted off his hands.

There were a few hotdogs in the fridge, which he grilled over charcoal. All the while the bug zapper popped and zinged in the background, but he paid no attention. Brandon drank several cans of a light beer as he prepared and consumed his meal. The mosquito army was suffering considerable losses in what Brandon only assumed would come to be known as a pivotal and historic defeat for the mosquito nation. This allowed him to sit outside undeterred as he ate and drank. There was something captivating about the bug zapper. Brandon could almost detect a rhythm to the whizzes and bangs of mosquitoes meeting their end. An obtuse idea formed in his mind. It felt like his brain carefully unwrapped a stick of butter. Then sudden realization, as his brain chucked that stick of butter against a wall to test its softness. Brandon would write a song.

He banged back inside through the spring-loaded screen door. Then he elbowed his way back outside with the Casio keyboard in tow. He thudded it down on the porch table and slotted the batteries. A red light glowed near a wild array of buttons.

“That’s a good sign,” Brandon said aloud.

He mashed the keys. Nothing.

“Hmph,” he groaned.

Still nothing after five minutes of toggling switches and thumping at the keys. Then Brandon noticed a knob clearly labeled “volume” that clearly indicated it was set to “0.”

He giggled stupidly and cranked the volume. The keys now sang out in their clear crystalline voices.

The next hour was spent fiddling with sound settings and drinking light beers.

Brandon then stopped fiddling. He stared into the glowing blue of the bug zapper. The rhythmic cadence of bugs exploding in radiant violence was enthralling. It undulated. Moments of silence. Rapid fire bursts of death. Brandon began to press the keys to mimic with the zapping. The result was dissonant and arhythmic, but buried deep within, Brandon detected a thematic alignment with nature. The music felt alive. Brandon felt a creative mania. This trip was turning out even better than he had expected.

Building a Piano Barge

His sleep that evening was fitful. He tossed and turned. He rose with the sun, sore, but with an incredible sense of purpose. When he’d come up to camp with his parents as a child they’d always devoted several days to projects. Some of these were actual improvements, like installing a new sink in the cottage, but others were purely time-killers, like building forts out of fallen timber. Brandon skipped breakfast and began stomping through the cabin and the surrounding woods looking for a project. After a time, he came to a collapsed shed near the water that his family lovingly called “the boathouse” but which hadn’t housed boats in a generation. Several empty 55-gallon plastic drums sat nearby, and a bunch of Styrofoam poked out from beneath the fallen roof.

Immediate certainty. He was destined to make his own nautical vessel. The pieces were all in the right places. Back at cottage he found several coils of heavy orange rope, a roll of duct-tape, and a box of heavy black trash bags. All the materials he needed seemed to have made themselves available. He spent the next three days working feverishly. The door of the derelict boathouse was still in relatively good shape, and he used this as a hull. Four 55-gallon drums were lashed to the hull, one near each corner, and several Styrofoam blocks provided additional flotation. A crude bench was created by placing several boards atop yet another Styrofoam block. After the first day of work Brandon realized the craft was far heavier than he had expected, and he wasn’t able to get it down to the water. Only after removing the plastic drums did he manage to drag the hull down into the water, which was a dramatic affair featuring much straining and gasping for air. The boathouse door floated on its own, but he doubted its seaworthiness and so reattached the drums – wading into the water to do so. The cracks in the hull were sealed with trash bags and tape, while the sides of the hull were formed from scattered boards that he nailed into place.

The weather cooperated over the three days that Brandon toiled. As he worked, he hummed the scattered melody of the song he had composed while transfixed by the bug zapper. He lost track of time, but he managed to stumble his way back to the cottage each evening after a quick swim to wash off the sweat and grime he accumulated in the midday sun. Each evening, he would subsist on his barebones ham sandwiches, which began to bore him, so he took to eating handfuls of sour, not-quite-ripe blueberries that grew freely near the cabin. His green shirt, unchanged for the duration, developed white marks from his sweat and tore in several places. At some point during his project, he began to feel as though he were preparing for an extravagant performance.

“The audience will be thrilled,” Brandon heard himself repeating as he gazed at the surface of the lake one evening. This statement felt a bit odd as it passed his lips, but the desire to see the craft afloat on the lake kept him from examining his own actions too closely. After his evening meal he would sit on the porch with his keyboard, collaborating with the bug zapper, in what he was sure was an innovative and genre-defining composition. It wasn’t so much a song that he produced, but a constantly evolving improvisation set in A minor with repeating rhythmic themes. To Brandon, it felt as though the patterns of the universe were making themselves heard through the steady thrum of insects meeting their doom.

His journal had grown disorganized. There were no longer numbered days at the top of each entry. Brandon re-read something he had written only moments before, and it startled him.

“The sound is sacred geometry in motion,” and “I will make this offering to the lake.”

But Brandon quickly forgot the strangeness of what he had written and went to bed.

Much to his apprehension, the day of the performance arrived. Early, while the lake was still calm, he paddled the kayak to the site of the old boathouse where he had moored his floating creation. After cutting free an anchor he had constructed from a length of orange rope and a cinderblock, Brandon attached the craft’s towrope to the rear of the kayak. Towing the platform along the shore behind the kayak was grueling work, but he performed the task with the fervor of a musician possessed by his muse. Upon arriving at the shore in front of the cottage Brandon realized he had forgotten the anchor back at the boathouse. This led to quite a lot of unexpected wading that dampened the legs of his blue jeans, but at last he hefted an edge of the raft onto a large rock where it seemed to stay secure.

On his walk up to the cottage, he was distracted by a particularly noisy squirrel that chittered at him from a nearby spruce. He chittered back. Then he hurled insults at the squirrel, whose chirping became insufferable in no time flat. Having engaged with the squirrel for at least 20 minutes, Brandon returned to his task. Using ugly clumps of duct tape, he affixed an old wicker chair from the cottage to the surface of the raft, directly in front of the bench. Last, he gingerly carried his keyboard to the wicker chair and fastened it with copious additional strands of tape. He jostled its corner for good measure and found that it didn’t budge.

After a midday ham and cheese sandwich break, Brandon returned to the water and pushed the raft off the rock so that it floated freely. The surface of the water was still glass-like given the surprising lack of wind. Pulling the raft toward the lake’s center felt much easier than it had earlier because pre-performance anxiety filled Brandon’s stomach like a cup of hot tea consumed too quickly. He noticed that he was feeling a bit hot, but that could easily be an effect of the sunburns that seemed to have inexplicably materialized along his arms and legs. The moment of truth came almost before Brandon realized it. The kayak, with the raft in tow, drifted lazily near the lake’s center. Doubling back and coming alongside the raft, Brandon gripped the wooden hull. Standing felt shaky, almost impossible, but the calm of the lake allowed him to mount the raft. In doing so, he tripped forward onto the bench with momentum that sent the kayak whooshing away. It only drifted about ten feet before the tow line interrupted its escape.

“No matter,” said Brandon unperturbed, “no matter.”

Brown hair glued to his forehead by sweat, he now stood before the keyboard. An eagle soared overhead.

“Witness me,” Brandon cried to the eagle, and he could have sworn he saw its white feathered head dart toward him.

“Surely a sign,” he thought.

Brandon began to punch at the keys, doing his best to recreate the sounds that had been inspired by the bug zapper. He felt the power and intensity of the music. It was as though his actions formed a perfect fifth to a chord whose root was the gentle lapping of water and gusts of wind. A perfect alignment with the natural world he had been so craving felt immediately attainable. In a rush to achieve that ambition, he redoubled his focus on his fingers – willing them to dance across the white keys in a way that would please the lake. The lake itself was not made of the sort of stuff that could be pleased or really have any opinion whatsoever, of course.

Over the next five minutes the wind picked up significantly. Brandon subconsciously registered an increase in the volume of the gusts but continued playing. It wasn’t until his craft started to pitch violently on the incipient waves that he bothered to notice. Then things happened very quickly. A rope holding one 55-gallon drum in place came loose, and the drum floated away. This caused the craft to lean dangerously to one side, and the added pressure tore away a couple of Styrofoam blocks along the same side.

“Oh,” said Brandon. He thought he’d better just ignore that.

He managed to get a few more keystrokes in before a large wave broke over the side of the raft and drenched him.

“Hmm,” he said again.

Then the craft flipped.

Brandon was sent into the water. The chair he’d been using as a stand, and the keyboard itself, ripped free and vanished into the murky depths.

By the time Brandon bobbed up to the surface the upturned raft and kayak had drifted a considerable distance away. He felt dismayed. The lake hadn’t accepted his performance. Luckily his bare feet connected with a large rock hidden just below the surface allowing him to stand shin-deep in the water. It wasn’t a deep lake after all. There he stood, saddened and soggy, with his arms crossed over his chest. Swimming to fetch the kayak wouldn’t have been an impossible task, but the project was ruined, so it felt useless. He just stood there, on his hidden rock in the middle of the lake, for a half an hour while waves crashed over his thighs.

Eventually a very confused looking fisherman in a Jon boat pulled up beside him.

“Afternoon,” Brandon said, “careful there’s a rock here.”

“Ya’ don’t say,” was the fisherman’s reply.

“How’s the fishing,” Brandon asked.

“Well, I hooked some smallmouth this morning,” the fisherman replied, still clearly befuddled, “but the wind’s picked up too much for good fishing.”

“Are you doing alright, son” the fisherman asked.

“Sure,” said Brandon, “I think I understand water better now.”

The fisherman said nothing.

“I don’t suppose I could trouble you for a lift to shore,” Brandon asked.

The fisherman nodded and let Brandon board. It was a quick jaunt back to the cottage. Before disembarking, the fisherman asked, “do you want me to call someone for you?”

“For me,” Brandon asked, perplexed, “I don’t suppose so.”

“Well alright,” the fisherman said, “do you know where you’re going?”

“Oh yes,” Brandon chuckled and thanked the fisherman.

Stepping onto shore, he turned back to the fisherman, who was clearly annoyed but who still offered a thin smile.

“Look after yourself now,” he called as he activated a trolling motor.

“I’ll do what I can,” Brandon said, “we all do our best, trapped as we are in this echo chamber of souls.”

The fisherman shook his head and motored away.

Brandon spent the rest of the day wrapped in a towel lying in the sun. He closed his eyes as he lay warming. The last thought that crossed his mind before drifting into sleep was, “I suppose all great composers have a drowning story.”

The Futility of Spiral Gardening

“And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so.” These words rattled in Brandon’s cranium as he awoke, sore, lying outside on the bare boards of the porch. He didn’t remember falling asleep outside, but the failure of the day before still gnawed at him.

“And let dry land appear,” he muttered.

His eyes drifted upward, resting upon the swaying spruce limbs and drifting clouds. They fell along the white paint and bright red trim of the cottage. Then to the deck. A heavily used paddle board was leaned against the side of the cottage, near the door. On its surface was a white geometric pattern resembling a mandala.

“Hey that’s pretty cool, man,” he said.

Everything felt crisp and fresh, as though rains had fallen in the night and renewed all the vegetation.

He fumbled around a bit and found his phone. The internet loaded slowly because cell reception was poor, but eventually he found what he was looking for. His search for “mandalas” returned numerous images of complex and colorful geometries. Brandon glanced back and forth between the phone screen and the vegetation surrounding the cottage. It almost seemed that the vegetation was arranging itself into the curves and loops of the mandalas. At once he realized his folly.

“One cannot impose order on the waters,” he cried, “for it is this soil where God’s creation is most apparent!”

With renewed certainty, he realized his task was to bring alignment to the veritable garden of Eden that stretched out before him.

“My communion with nature shall be that of a garden,” he said, standing - determined.

Gripping a shovel kept just inside the cottage door, he set to work.

“My magnum opus awaits,” he said confidently to the squirrel that had started chirping at him again.

He collected white pine and red maple saplings growing in the nearby forest. Next clumps of highbush blueberries and lupins. Lastly, he ripped ostrich ferns from the ground, careful so that their root systems weren’t separated. These he delivered to the porch creating a makeshift garden display vaguely reminiscent of those at hardware stores. When it seemed a critical mass of vegetation had been assembled, he attempted to clear an area near the porch using a rake. The rake promptly broke.

“No matter,” he said.

In moments he was able to unscrew a broom from its handle. Using the duct tape, he affixed the head of the rake to the broom handle.

“This shall be my order unveiler,” Brandon proclaimed, holding the implement aloft.

Once he’d cleared an area of fallen leaves and twigs, he set about arranging pinecones and small rocks into a sacred geometry based on a spiral mandala on his phone that seemed particularly appealing. One-by-one, he replaced these objects with individual plants, delicately reconnecting their roots to the Earth. He felt a deep connection with the natural world. Each plant he set in place represented a piece of himself, a symbol of his victory over the stress of city life and his return to his native state of being. Numerous inarticulable insights coursed through Brandon’s mind leaving him with a severe migraine. He assumed this was just the intelligence of the plants making itself known.

“It must be painful to become so aligned with nature,” he said to himself, “we do so much to distance ourselves from the natural world – we put up our walls so that we can hide away.”

“I do this, myself,” he continued somberly glancing up at the squirrel, “I keep nature out, when I should be letting it in.”

He glanced at the cottage, which seemed to sway in agreement with his insights. He spent the next several hours meticulously taping leaves from his transplant garden to all the windows and doorways of the cottage.

After his gardening and interior decorating, Brandon came inside tired and thirsty. He drank a small amount of water from a bottle he’d brought with him and went to bed. His dreams were vivid. In one dream, a deer approached him and said, in perfect English, “all things return in fives.” It was a majestic creature but understanding eluded Brandon.

The force of habit carried him out of bed the next morning in search of coffee. With a full cup, he returned to the living area from the kitchen and noticed a rack of antlers mounted above the mantle. This seemed a gross abomination. Why should a trophy from such a beautiful animal be on display, as though someone were proud of dispatching this emissary of the natural world?

“Gruesome,” he thought.

Sinking into a worn armchair, head in his hands, he realized he wasn’t acting as he should be. He was an oppressor, a transgressor, a member of a species that ravaged nature. In the light of morning, he saw his actions from the day before as a woeful attempt at imposing order on a world that was already perfect. He spent the next two days tearing up his garden and doing his best to replant the vegetation he had stolen in its original location. Brandon didn’t suppose he would ever clean the dirt from beneath his fingernails nor the stains of his transgression from his soul. These thoughts pushed him into a depression.

Baptism

Sadness clung to him in the way that a damp dishrag clings to the center divider of a sink where it had been left to dry. Drip by drip becoming lighter and freer. Morning walks seemed to help his mood, and it was on a particularly foggy morning walk that Brandon first heard the singing. It drifted over the lake, as though from far away, as formless sounds that were at once indecipherable yet distinctly human. Brandon followed these songs along the rocky shore. It was slow going, but the voices grew steadily louder and clearer. The lake appeared golden in the dawn light. To his great surprise, upon rounding a bend in the shoreline, he saw several plainly dressed folks standing in waist-deep water.

Their leader, a heavyset man in a white robe, appeared to be submerging the folk in turn. From further up the nearby boat launch, the gentle strumming of a woman with a guitar carried over the water. It was clear to Brandon he had been summoned. These were his people. Here be the true believers in the supremacy of nature. The air was thick with reverence, and the loons were silent. A sign, surely. Brandon entered the water barefoot with arms outstretched. The bottom was rockier than he’d expected, and so he waded awkwardly through the lake toward the group, who stopped what they were doing as he approached. When he was near enough to make conversation, Brandon nodded gravely to the pastor before smiling at the rest of the flock.

“Morning friend,” called the pastor, “can we help you?”

“I am here for the ceremony,” Brandon replied. He moved slowly toward the pastor, who nodded and didn’t seem to mind.

The pastor reached out to him, his movements unsure.

“Do you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior,” the pastor began.

“I am The Loafened One,” Brandon interrupted loudly, “the geometry has arrived! I offer the breath to water and root to sky!”

Brandon plunged himself backwards into the water without the pastor’s assistance.

“Bliss,” he cried resurfacing, “oh divine alignment!”

The pastor’s eyes grew large, and he took several steps away from Brandon.

“Are you staying out in them woods, boy,” the pastor asked softly.

Brandon nodded and smiled. He waved to the other members of the congregation who looked nervously at one another. He turned and stumbled back the way he had come.

The pastor called after him, “take it easy next time!”

The Buckston Glen Festival

An indeterminate time later Brandon was strolling through town. He’d been seeing posters everywhere for the Buckston Glen Festival, and he’d somehow found his way there. The sky was overcast gray, and it could have been any time of day. Vendors lined the main drag in colorful booths, and several food trucks had formed neat rows along the street. As he entered the throng a large group in a parking lot began to disperse. Amongst the people were a good number of leashed dogs, each with a delightful costume. Cheers and laughter echoed through the street as a mass of children ran past Brandon. A young girl with golden hair stopped in front of him.

“Did you see, did you see,” she asked him gleefully.

“I see many things,” replied Brandon cryptically.

“Bonnie won,” she cried.

“Bonnie . . . won,” Brandon asked back.

“Yep,” she said, thrusting a red ribbon at Brandon’s face.

“I didn’t see . . . Bonnie,” he replied. His words felt sluggish.

“Oh well,” said the little girl, “you can have this – I don’t want it.”

She placed the ribbon in his hands and ran away. Brandon inspected the ribbon. There was gold lettering on its surface that he didn’t bother to read. A small safety pin was situated near the top of the ribbon. Brandon pinned this to his breast. It felt as though he had been chosen, as though his arrival was propitious. This festival must have been held to celebrate his final attunement with the spiralized order of the natural world. He walked on for a time. Occasionally someone would greet him.

“Hey there,” waved a vendor selling sandwiches.

A woman with gray hair asked him, “how’re things going up there at the lake?”

Brandon didn’t reply to these comments. He felt as though he were a king being addressed by the common rabble. Though grateful for their acknowledgement, he didn’t deign to respond. After all, he was the guest of honor, his presence was gift enough. On his stroll, he passed a park with a gazebo where a band was setting up to perform. A man in his early twenties sat tuning a mandolin. Brandon ascended the steps with surprising grace. A microphone had already been set up and let out a squeal as he pecked at it. The man with the mandolin eyed him wearily but didn’t move.

“A moment of silence,” Brandon said, “if you please.”

Several passersby stopped walking and watched.

“I need a moment of silence, please,” Brandon said, clearing his throat.

A few more people gathered.

“I am here to speak to you about the bug light code of divinity,” he cried.

No one spoke.

“The crackling of the doomed insectoid,” he continued, “it reveals to us the patterns of our world.”

“We must all remember the warning of the loons, we must all be witnessed by the emissaries of nature, by the eagle and the deer.” Brandon felt he was off to a very good start.

“Hold in your hearts, the fungal network that enshrines the forest,” he called, “for it is our God!”

He prattled on in this manner for a few more moments before concluding with a deep bow. The audience, quite large at this point, was quiet. Then a child laughed. Several adults nodded awkwardly and whispered, “this one’s touched.”

One elderly woman began to clap very slowly.

Brandon left the gazebo steps and joined the people.

Immediately the woman who had clapped approached him.

“Are you alright, hun,” she asked.

Brandon sniffed at the air before musing, “it’s been a strange couple of days, but I feel great!”

She looked concerned, then asked, “how about some pie? That’ll fix you right up.”

He looked at the woman ponderously then gave a sharp nod.

She led him to a nearby booth where her daughter was selling slices of pie. There, she gave him a thick piece of blueberry pie. No charge. Brandon had devoured half the slice before she managed to hand him a plastic fork. The pie was incredible. The crust was buttery and perfectly flaky. The blueberry filling was rich and thick. Brandon ate in rapture. When he finished, he bowed deeply to the woman, and again to her daughter. Then he set off back down the street, stopping to bow to man with a loon embroidered on his shirt.

Starlight

Feeling exhausted yet serene, Brandon arrived back at the cabin near twilight. Before going inside, he walked down to the water and scooped some up in his cupped palms. It was delightfully cool. He tried to gulp it, but most of it spilled. The droplets that did end up in his mouth tasted foul, not that it bothered him. Such was the cost of living in true alignment with nature. At around this time Brandon noticed that his right foot was throbbing. It ached as though he had twisted his ankle, but it was also hot - burning in fact. He sat on the porch and removed his shoes and socks. To his amazement, the tips of his toes had become dark, almost black. This worried him. He brushed his fingers against the toes, but he couldn’t feel them.

“Probably just dirt,” he ventured. The words did not dispel his worries about the lack of sensation.

The squirrel chittered overhead as if to mock him.

“It’s just dirt,” he yelled at the squirrel as he picked up a small rock, which he threw into the branches of the tree from which the sound originated.

Moving inside, and in so doing realizing he walked with a pronounced limp, he found his journal sitting on the kitchen table. He’d filled many pages with illegible writing and scribbled drawings of mandalas. A nearby ballpoint pen seemed to call to him. Brandon tried to pick it up, but his fingers felt sluggish, as though they were obeying the commands from his brain with a two second delay. The pen fell from his grasp and rolled across the table. He tried again with no success. Then, using his left hand, he was able to place the pen in his right hand. When he tried to move its tip across the page it slipped away.

“No writing today,” he said, “probably just dirt.”

The eerie call of a loon gently wafted across the water, up the rocky shore, and through the tiny gaps between the boards of the cottage walls. Brandon looked out the window into the dusk. A full moon was visible through the window. The call came again. Against his better judgment, Brandon limped back out of the cottage – screen door banging shut behind him. With all the care he could muster, he descended the rocky path to the lake shore and gazed in awe at the reflection of the moon on the water’s still surface. A single dark outline stood in stark contrast to the vibrant white reflection of the moon. The loon. It drifted effortlessly across the glassy surface. Brandon sat backward, hard. Though sitting brought a fresh wave of pain he found himself in a perfect seated position and continued watching.

The loon called again into the darkness. Light was fading fast. Worries seemed to fade with the light, and Brandon watching the loon drift this way and that, never leaving the path cut by the moon on the water. When the night became totally black, the loon itself appeared to glow, its outline illuminated and backlit by the moon.

“Whoa,” Brandon said. No words could capture the ethereal quality of the waterfowl. It called again. He desperately wanted to answer its call. No sound escaped his lips, though he tried.

The loon erupted from the surface of the water. The silhouette cast against the moon rushed toward him at great speed. Brandon swallowed hard. It was on a direct collision course. There wasn’t time for him to move. At the last possible moment, the loon veered upward and ascended at an impossible velocity. When it reached a great height, once again growing small against the backdrop of the moon, it burst like a firework into hundreds of shimmering starlets. These embers assembled themselves in a great constellation of stars against the night sky.

“Well shit,” Brandon said, “ain’t that something.”

The Clinic

The next morning was agony. He awoke sore and feverish. It took him a great deal longer than it should have to realize where he was. Unbearable weakness. Clammy palms. The toes of his right foot looked black in the morning light. He fell down the last few stairs as he rushed to prepare coffee and landed hard on the wooden floor.

“Hermph,” he groaned.

Nothing was broken, but every movement came slowly and brought fresh spasms of pain. Brandon crawled, on hands and knees, into the kitchen. There, with great effort, he lifted himself using the countertop, which groaned back at him in response to his full weight.

Coffee didn’t help. His thoughts were static-flavored, and his vision swam. Faint red halos appeared around various objects.

After his coffee he still felt awful – so sick that he couldn’t ignore the sensation.

“God damn,” he muttered. There was only one thing left to do.

Shoes lost sometime earlier, and car keys nowhere to be found, Brandon set off down the dirt road leading from the cabin. It had grown muddy with some overnight rain. His foot ached, he walked with a limp, and the going was slow. He’d imagined that it would be easier when he reached the paved road, but it wasn’t. Tiny pebbles on the hard surface buried themselves in his feet, which already burned with strange intensity.

A massive, lifted pickup truck slowed down as it passed him. From the window, a man with a lengthy beard yelled, “you alright?”

Brandon ignored the man, who he couldn’t be certain was real.

“Son,” the man yelled again gruffly, “I said you alright?”

“Yeah,” gasped Brandon, “just molting.”

The man stomped the accelerator and the truck roared away down the road.

After about five miles Brandon was ready to collapse, but he was also entering town.

“Useless, useless,” he repeated as he passed signs for the local antiques shop and then the pizzeria.

Then a sign with a serpent coiled around a staff appeared.

“Ah, the rod of Asclepius,” he said with a sort of admiration, “how the hell do I know that?”

Next to the sigil were the words, “Buckston Glen Health Cooperative.”

A smaller handmade sign affixed to the main sign read, “walk-ins welcome.”

Brandon felt an immense sense of relief. He pushed his way through the glass door and entered a temperature-controlled lobby looking positively bedraggled. Moving in a pained shuffle, he found a small window behind which a woman in professional clothing sat. A small poster next to the window displayed a cartoon of a tick and read, “Lyme disease, know the warning signs.”

“Uh, greetings,” he said to the woman.

“Do you have an appointment,” she asked, not looking up from a cellphone she held.

“No,” he said, “negative.”

“Take a form, fill it out, we’ll call you,” she said with disinterest.

Brandon said nothing and didn’t move. After a second, the woman began to respond. She handed him a form and started pecking at her computer. Deciding this was sufficient, Brandon took the form and hobbled to a seat. He was the only one in the room. There was a pen attached to the clipboard where the intake form rested, but Brandon couldn’t really use it. He tried for several minutes. At last, he was able to produce a spiral sketch that he thought was quite nice on the spot where a description of his symptoms should have gone. Brandon was just thinking of making another pattern in the section devoted to family medical history when a door at the side of the room swung open.

“Mr. Jameson,” called a cheerful female voice, then spotting Brandon turned serious, “oh my goodness – your foot.”

The nurse rushed over to Brandon and looked at his exposed right foot, the toes beginning to curl and the soles bleeding.

“I suppose I’ve got my foot in my mouth,” Brandon said with a smile.

“Let’s go,” she said, helping him to his feet and through the door. They passed into a corridor and then a small side room with a paper-covered chair and an assortment of small medical supplies.

“Your foot looks gangrenous,” the nurse said, “oh, I’m Helen, by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you Helen,” Brandon said with the happy tone that only those on the brink of insanity can muster.

“Is it just your foot,” she quizzed.

“Like I said,” Brandon replied, “my foot’s in my mouth and the thinker is out to lunch.”

Helen started to laugh but then stopped, suppressing the sound midway through so that only a hard “H” came out.

Helen took his blood pressure and checked his reflexes, making a few notes on a computer screen.

“How have you been feeling lately, Mr. Jameson,” Helen tried again, louder and slower.

“Do you think God will forgive us,” he asked in response.

Helen looked unsettled, and changed topic, “the doctor will be in very soon.”

“Well don’t that just cut the bacon,” Brandon answered with a laugh. The whole affair had taken on a comical quality that he was enjoying.

Helen hurried out of the room and returned moments later with a young man in a white coat. He spoke with a slight Boston accent.

“Have you eaten anything strange lately,” he asked as he inspected Brandon’s foot.

“Bacon sounds good,” said Brandon.

“I’m serious, sir, any molding grains, rye bread, or wild mushrooms,” the doctor asked.

Brandon laughed for a full minute.

“The loaf,” he said, “rye . . . smelled like the library book sale.”

“Ah,” said the doctor.

He took Brandon’s pulse at his wrist and felt his cold hands. Turning to the nurse, the doctor said, “vasoconstriction, gangrene in extremities.”

“Apparent hallucinations,” he continued, “haven’t seen this in years, but I’m betting this is ergot poisoning.”

Helen made some notes.

“I’m ordering a blood test for ergot alkaloids,” he continued, “in the meantime, get him started on a course of antibiotics, give him a tetanus shot, fluids, and something for the pain.”

After a brief period filled with pricks and prods, Brandon found himself sitting comfortably in yet another room. Helen was with him.

“Honey, you can’t be going around eating mystery bread,” she said.

Brandon laughed, thinking about his ham and cheese sandwiches. The thought made his stomach turn. She’d wrapped his foot in gauze and given him a Gatorade.

“Not bad, all considered,” he thought. He was still in quite a bit of pain, but it felt as though something that had been bothering him over the last week had been resolved. Helen had also given him a pamphlet with “ergotism” written in yellow balloon lettering. Beneath it there was a mad-looking cartoon of a raving monk, and further down still, “St. Anthony’s Fire.” Brandon paged through the pamphlet clumsily. He was too tired to read.

“We called you a cab,” Helen said, “there wasn’t any emergency contact information on your intake form.”

“Why not an Uber,” Brandon asked sleepily. The pain meds were having an effect.

“We don’t have Uber here,” Helen replied.

“The loon was trying to warn me,” Brandon said to Helen as though it were a grave secret, “I wasn’t ready to listen.”

“You need to rest,” she replied.

Epilogue

Months later, Brandon attempted to read the notes he had taken during his summer madness. The first few days read like any travel diary: locations, events, and such. After the third day the notes took an abrupt turn toward incomprehensibility. There were ornate sketches of geometric patterns. Apparently, he had tried to dust off his high school trigonometry at one point, where a variety of strange equations covered the pages. He doubted they meant anything, but they looked real enough to make him wonder. On a day labeled just “loon” there was a pencil sketch of a misshapen bird on a lake. More than once, “witness” was written in heavy handwriting and underlined.

A high-res printout of a loon had been taped to the top of the desk where Brandon read his notes.

“Do we have any rye,” Brandon called to Teresa, his girlfriend of 5 months.

“No,” she replied.

“Pity,” he said, “I was feeling like a ham and cheese.”