Volume 2, Episode 4: A Preserve

Hello. Hey, how you doing? I'm doing all right. I'm sorry this is late for a call. Is this all right? Oh, yeah, yeah, don't worry about it. Okay. I just, I found something that I thought that you might appreciate. I was looking through some books and there was one that I...

I took off my shelf because I wasn't quite clear where I had gotten it. I thought it might jog my memory. And I must have gotten it at our... bookstore because as I was flipping through it, I found this piece of masking tape that was stuck in like about a third of the way in.

And it was, I think that I remember that the section names and subsections were... sometimes very mysterious and just unusual and they made you think and so this one i don't know how it got here i i don't know if i took it or if it was kind of an accidental stowaway, but this piece of tape in this book says, look behind you. And that's how I knew that it, it must, it must've come from there. Oh, it would, it just, you know, uh, black block lettering rights.

Just the usual section lettering. Oh my gosh. You have an actual artifact from the, from the shell. I guess that I do. I mean, I, again, I don't know how I got it. And also I don't know what section it was from. What do you think that. was look behind you look behind you if it's definitely from us so you think you got that book from

because it just came rushing back, right? Because you remember, I mean, you remember some of these, and they were just kind of, you know, they were just like pieces of tape. on the shelves yeah usually i mean and they would be written in black i can't believe that you actually just i mean but did i i hope i mean in a way i hope i didn't but it's like maybe my instinct was

correct to do so because it just... I know what you mean. I know what you mean. There were some weird sections there. I mean, I'm remembering some really just... You know, you'd wander upon a section, like sometimes it would be, you know, they had all these kind of nooks and crannies that like you wouldn't really, you know, you know, discover until.

you know you turn the corner and then it would have like something i remember specifically like there there was a self-help section that i think it i think it was called lies to tell yourself uh which seemed appropriate and hilarious um i think too I mean, not that at this time, especially I dwelt in these sections, like, like sort of anything to do with like the house and home, you know, like.

like cooking or repair or just like gardens or anything that seemed kind of foamy. Like I feel like there was a bird theme.

Like, you know, Bird in the Hand, Bird on a Wire. I do also remember now making the connection because that rare section, which is like that book that... we were looking at all the time there were there was a rare book section but it was in no way like sheltered or like behind glass or like even prominently displayed up front it was just with it was just with all the other books

But I think hen's teeth, I remember they called it, one of the labels said hen's teeth. It's because of this phrase, scarce as hen's teeth. because hens don't have any teeth. So it just seemed sort of, it was like this sort of magically appropriate name for a fair book section. I don't remember that one, but yeah. it seemed like there were like two opposing forces drawing up the names of these sections because, you know, there were completely normally named.

I remember that, like, you know, sports. Because I like sports. I saw going to the sports poetry, I think was just poetry. But then I remember, like, the section with all the military history books. was actually called man versus man uh which is like oh okay that that makes sense and i and i you know there was one section um that I was really intrigued by. It was just called Siloists. Siloists. I'm like, what is this section? And I had to look through the books for a while to figure out.

that they were all books by or about people who were existing completely alone in the world. Like they were traveling all alone, you know, first person accounts of. completely solitary travel, or they were just living in isolation. It was almost all nonfiction, but some of them, you know, Robinson Crusoe, I think was in there. I was like, the soloist, someone had written. the word silhouettes on that masking tape and the handwriting on all the sections I think was all the same.

But it was like someone had a sense of humor and some other person did not. They were sort of, there was some sort of weird conflict going on in the sections of the damn bookstore.

i mean if you walk in and that's kind of a thing that you notice right away oh i get it you know there's these mysterious clever names to all of this like like that would i don't know it wouldn't have been as odd and and strange yeah like but yeah you didn't know it was just kind of mixed in right it was if they had all been weird then it's like a hipster gimmick yeah the fact that only about half of them or maybe even not in that but it's so weird that the one that you

having that book that you what do you think that was well that's the thing it's like because i know that there was a section in there and you know the book that you and i I've been trying to remember was not in this. The book that you and I were trying to remember, it was just in the horror section. And this section was called horror. But there was also a section around the corner called The Inexplicable.

It was a subsection of horror, but it was all books very specifically about things and phenomena that there was no explanation for. So this is where all the really crackpot, strange, you know, chariots of the gods stuff. Yeah. Disappearances, Bermuda Triangle. So the section was called The Inexplicable. It was, I think, one long shelf. Maybe at one time, that label, the label that you have.

That was the name of the horror section. And whoever didn't think that was funny or clever working in the store tore that off and just put up horror. And maybe, you know, and now you have the original name of the horror section. Because, like, what else could it have been? Look behind you. Look behind you. One more that I remember.

i remember was um they had a section on the beats the beat writers and of you know of course especially ben as a young person i you know i had a very vested interest in the beats because i you know it I was needing to kind of learn how to kind of loosen up and just get, you know, and I, I think that was called angels and demons. Oh, that sounds.

I don't know that, that kind of rings a bell. I'm sure you were probably, I mean, I don't know, you know, because of course I, I, yeah, I was, I'm sure I would have been in that section too at that age. Angels, yeah, Angels and Demons. Yeah, I mean, we both have books from the store, but for some reason, like, I don't know, like a bookmark or a piece of tape from one of the sections is more of a...

I don't know, it makes it seem less of a dream somehow, something that specific. Right. I'm glad you told me. Right. What this is all reminding me of... I don't have... so many memories of people from, from the college really, but you know, there was this one guy, man, I wish you had known him. I know you and I were just a couple of years apart and I'm sure you wouldn't have remembered him. There was a guy.

named tim strumman tim strumman um lived in uh poplar hall you know the the one with the gargoyle yes yeah yes he tim strumman We called him the reader. Now I didn't know him terribly well. It was more of an acquaintance, but everyone just kind of called him the reader in fun, but just one of the most interesting personalities.

I met there in my brief time because amazing thing about Tim was Tim was so devoted to reading. He was so obsessed with reading, spending every spare moment. He was like a psychology major. And I would have loved to have told him about this store, but I just, I never felt right about telling anyone about the bookstore. But Tim, the amazing thing about Tim is that he had made reading into the kind of this devotional.

He wanted to spend every second that he wasn't studying or just hanging out reading. And he read everything. And it was so cool because he didn't really deal with favorite. He said he didn't really have any. What he dug about reading so much was that each book that he opened... He told me once it was just like a different universe. He liked to be in that reality. He liked to enter a different reality. It doesn't matter whose it was or who had created it. Because Tim would say that...

He wasn't entirely comfortable with the reality that he had been assigned. Like we were all assigned the reality. We're all there at college and in his mortal life. He. saw books as these other realities that he just wanted to step into he he thought the more time he spent in them somehow the less obligated he was

The kind of mundane reality that we actually lived. So he would just tear through books and he would read, you know, he would read the classics. He would be sitting there with, you know, a copy of the tin drum, but then the next day he'd be. He'd be reading some novelization of some horror movie. That was the kind of guy. He just wanted to enter different realities. He would be in the library all the time.

Oh, he and I were in some game group together. That was how I knew him. But they called him the reader, Tim. And I, of course, I never was really in touch with him that much. outside of our little tiny group of friends. But I've never known anyone who looked at reading that way. And I never told them about the bookstore. It's kind of a shame.

There's something about that place that just seemed to kind of nurture some of these lost souls. I don't know. Was he lost? I don't know. It reminds me of another person just kind of, you know, in this idea that, I don't know, they were in some other reality kind of running parallel to ours, but. But I mean, is ours even ours? Oh, well, you know, it's too late for me to spiral about that. But there was a guy that I'll tell you what I remember first, and then I'll tell you kind of some bits.

of the things that i you know heard about him over the years so he was a guy oh i don't know he seemed maybe like maybe not quite middle-aged but like you know an older older than i I'd say I would put him between like, I don't know, somewhere between like at this time, 35 and like 50. I don't know. But he, I started to notice him because I would hang out in these, like I would hang out in coffee shops and stuff.

two in particular um one was an all night um chain diner and um The other was a very kind of like a locally owned, really cool place that I think, you know, I would see him both of those places and I would see him just kind of like he would just wander in at some point. And he would kind of be chatting with people who were there, who frequented the businesses, and also...

people who work there and like the owners, he seemed to kind of know everybody and he would just be chatting very pleasantly with them. There was kind of, he would always, he always had like a belt with like a. I don't know, like, I mean, this was certainly before cell phones. He seemed to have like, I don't know, some sort of a device, like a walkie-talkie or something.

uh he would just be in my peripheral vision like all the time he was just around it just seemed like he would stride into a place and it would be like he belonged there you know i mean he wasn't like you know he was kind of like this shorter guy he was a little bit kind of round he just i mean it you know it wasn't as if he strode in and just like took command but he just seemed like he belonged there he knew how to blend in and

he would always i remember he was the one person who would do this he would go behind the counter and he would pour his own coffee i mean it didn't seem like this invasive like nothing about it alerted like sometimes you'd find yourself going like why does i mean like what's who like no one else does that like is this why does this guy who is this guy

But I just he his presence was so kind of normal. And it turns out, I mean, he was kind of this well-known local character who had been. Oh, apparently, you know, he'd been quite brilliant when he was he'd gone to school there. He was at one time a very brilliant kind of like stage and costume designer and he was even writing like these. huge tomes about, you know, about the exteriors that we choose versus our interiors and how

You know, I mean, we don't think we're sending all these messages, but we do. But like how much an exterior can do to relay information, you know. And apparently he was quite brilliant. And then he kind of, oh, I don't know. Over the years, he became just really fixated on, he became one of these guys who would show up whenever there was police activity.

You know, he would show up on the scene, you know, he had a scanner and he thought of himself as part of the action kind of like, you know, he would just show up and like these coffee houses, he would just show up.

And he would just come in and there was something so efficient about the way he moved. And he seemed like he had an active life and he had things to do. He was getting a little bit... more and more out there as the years went by and I don't know I think his behavior at crime scenes and at fires and things like that started to

where it was something that the officers had like put up with before because he wasn't really getting in the way and he wasn't, you know, even though it was obviously kind of this fantasy that he was nurturing, that he was part of. part of the response and part of the action. I think he just started to change and get a bit more aggressive. And so people started to like cut him off.

I would still see him around a little bit, but he seemed much sadder and much, I don't know. I mean, I knew nothing about the man, but he just was, I didn't see him for a while. And then apparently he disappeared. He had, he had rented an apartment above. you know another coffee house but this wasn't where i never saw him in there it wasn't one that was set up like that like he liked you know with kind of this open this kind of this open area um

But he'd gotten really fixated on, it was law enforcement. And then it became very, he became very, I guess, obsessive about firemen and fires. you know he started wearing uniforms he started getting really into uniforms um and he would just like order he would order these he would go into like like the army navy or something and he would order these specialized kind of and it wasn't like

you're going into a fire uniforms. It was just like, it was like more of like the plain clothes, but very clearly, you know, demarcated agency vestments. And. He stopped working and I don't know. He disappeared. And when apparently when they went into his apartment. you know again i'm so hazy on all of this but it was like there was all this weird detail like he was gone um but there was there were all these weird like charred spots like

burn marks or squirched places around the walls, around the ceiling. And there was one really pronounced one on the floor. It almost indicated that he had like... It like burst into flames and sunk through the floor. I just, you know, like when you hear about those very bizarre scenes when people have apparently spontaneously combusted, you know, it was like that, but it wasn't.

quite like that it was a lot I don't know no one ever to my knowledge I mean someone must have seen him again somewhere but maybe not I don't know he yeah he disappeared and just left like all of these traces of his um obsession behind and you know when i think about where he started and where he ended up it makes it kind of a kind of sick sad sense but

You know, people must have started out caring about him and then at a certain point just cut ties. I don't know, but he was quite a presence and being a non-presence at the same time. You know, he just seemed to fit in everywhere until he didn't, you know.

the characters of our alma mater yeah yeah i guess um Now look behind you. I mean, what was that about? There were mountain night noises like you never get used to. Not even if you're born and raised there and live and die there. Noise is too soft and sneaky to be real, murmuring voices. Noise is like big, flapping wings far off and then near. And...

Above and below the trail, noises like heavy, soft paws keeping pace with you. Sometimes two paws, sometimes four, sometimes many. They stay with you, noises like that. All the hours you grope along the night trail, all the way down to the valley so low, till you bless God for the little crumb of light that means a human home, and you ache. and pray to get to that home, be it ever so humble, so you'll be safe in the light. From the Deseret on Yandro by Manly Wade Wellman

A preserve. We took the road north of town. It crossed rows of new housing on the hill. Gray split levels with... curving white numbers and big soft doorbells and driveway lamps. It passed the water tower, so close you could see little rungs and ladder bars running up like nerves and veins along its spine. i turned the way i remembered which i wasn't sure was the way but after a minute when the land opened up and the sinking sun lit it on fire gold and pink and even unnameable greens and blues

I recognized it. I felt it like a shock. The dusk fields. I used to just drive and drive. I was afraid to go too far when I was young because it felt wrong. Because I wouldn't know what to do if the car broke down and wouldn't take me any further. And wouldn't save me where it stopped. But there were a few places I would go. Strange routes along the river or crawling up through farms.

They felt so different from the town I knew. They used the edges of things. I thought that maybe, if I followed them, I'd find a secret world. Just another one I didn't understand. I remember getting out by fences, looking back at the twinkling airfield, at the glow from starry motels. So years later... How many, I'm not sure. After lots of things had happened. And some of those things I survived and some I didn't. And then it was another time. I had a friend who came out to see my home.

We went to look for antelope, which I remember peppering the fields at dusk like spots on a great fish, everywhere at once, multiplying in the tricking light. They were there, then. Coming from nowhere, it seemed there was nowhere to come from. They were there and then they weren't. As we craned along the two lane, scouring, squinting at the power line rays. We came to nothing. I didn't know where they had gone. Or what had taken their place. We drove in silence mostly. And that was just fine.

I felt a certain way with him. Whatever scratch there was, whatever grit, he also brought my blood down to quiet. I could feel it happening, and I let it.

Wheat zoomed by in trails. Someone told me antelope blood is very concentrated, I said. Very salty. But I didn't know. I took the westbound road toward the fenced-off lake and stopped the car. We crunched over graveled where the sounds of our feet slowly disappeared like ash. We went to the dock, leaning out over the reservoir and duck preserve.

and the green weeds grazed up through the boards and out to shining mud. We could see the water tower still from there in wood for miles, a weird bulb hanging on clouds. We moved past the dry water snails and long blue flies buzzing drunkenly from tuft to starchy tuft. The observatory, or the structure of it, was still there. I pushed the door open, which just hung broken and lame. Inside we could smell the damp wood, years of wet leaves and rot. Here, I told him.

I unfurled the tarp and laid out one of the quilts I brought over the top of it, smoothing it down. I had a couple bottles of fruit juice and I pulled the sneaking plastic tab off one of them and it unwound in a satisfying strip. I didn't know what to do with it, so I pushed it back into a canvas bag. I poured and mixed it with gin. We settled in and looked out the low window under the higher one.

A log had fallen across it on the outside, and I went out and moved it, and I had to unstick it a little because it had mired in the underneath, in the dock, planks in a silty gray dirt. Will you stay with me here a little while? Yeah, he nodded. Okay. He could easily say it. It didn't mean that much to him. See, he trusted me and he didn't, you know? It wasn't anything but that. We arranged ourselves and looked out over the pond.

I held the red plastic cup too tight and it bent to an oval in my hand. The sun sank down and came through boards and skipped over the water and tinged all the tall plates on the grass. Then... Right then. It got really dark in there. It was like that. The light gone in a single breath. We knelt up. knees smashing equally to floor. There was no wind. I could see the first few stars heat through. Why do I need to see it? he asked.

It's like a kind of fish and also a dog, I said. It used to stand, I think. I remember it standing but kind of crouching too, hunching under the moon. Why do I need to see this? I turned to him and his eyes were like a black soda in a glass. They looked like my future and my death and all the stupid stories I told myself about myself. I wouldn't make it. I wouldn't make it out. Because I love you, I said. Actually, I didn't say that. What I said was, oh, there's no reason, really, I guess.

I felt lifted, scared all over again. I didn't know what to do. The water held a thing, and the ducks had gone home. And the frogs creaked their throats. And all the shiny beetles in the world scraped their legs across one another, making a sound rain. And a little head spiked. Small and packed with teeth on shoulders. Reared soft up. This is like one of your stories, he said. You could make something beautiful.

Maybe, I said. I guess I could. Something moved and sloshed in the dark. But I'm not sure I want to.