"Half the Town it Used to Be"
In which I finally give up and confess that something is "unpublishable"
I’m doing OK, really. With writing at least.
The last year or so, I’ve dedicated myself to writing fiction, along with all the non-fiction I do here and elsewhere. I’ve had three stories accepted and published so far and that’s very satisfying.
The latest one just came out a couple of weeks ago and I’m particularly proud of that one. It’s a bit of me working through some religious baggage and it’s called “Comfortable, With a Sense of Purpose.” You can find it at Across the Margin, here: https://acrossthemargin.com/comfortable-with-a-sense-of-purpose/
For all the successes though, there comes a time when you just have to give up on some things. I have a story called “Half the Town it Used to Be,” that I quite like, but literally no one else does, apparently. I’m basically ready to move on from it, rather than continuing to waste everyone’s time with it. So I thought I would go ahead and publish it here. A few people might read it that way and it won’t have been a total waste of effort.
If you are one of those people, please let me know what you think, either by private email or by leaving a comment here:
I am perfectly happy to accept criticism about it, so don’t be shy. I’m particularly curious about why “Comfortable” seems to work so much better than this one. Ah, the mysteries of art.
I’ll be back next week with more normal UnTaking fare.
HALF THE TOWN IT USED TO BE
by Danny Anderson
“You know when the Russians attack, this is gonna be the first place they hit, don’t you?” Kirby’s accusing finger fixed on the fence that marked the end of town. “Boom. One mushroom cloud hotter than Hell and we’re toast. Lot of good old Spanx’s bomb shelter’ll do then.”
Anything behind a fence makes people paranoid.
“Come on, they’ll go after New York or DC, not us. Why would the Russians care what’s in The Arsenal?” Eric Icke was only 15, but he had wild, bushy eyebrows and they now half-covered his squinting eyes.
“You think they wrap that place up with barb wire ‘cause there’s nothing big inside?” Kirby Trumbo shook his head, sneering. Like a spiteful piston, he hissed a burst of cynical air through his teeth. He knew the scoop and Eric being naïve about it made him angry.
“But you don’t know. Nobody knows . . .” Eric said.
“And they don’t want us to!” Kirby shot back, the acne on his face flashed purple. “Just like they don’t want the Russians to!”
“So why would the Russians bomb it then?”
“BECAUSE they don’t know, moron.”
On this overcast day in July, Eric and Kirby sat in the grass at the edge of Buzzard Creek, eyes fixed on the line of tightly crisscrossed aluminum that stretched for miles between them and the thick, hidden forest of 50 year-old maple trees south of town.
These events, like everything else in Windhaven’s past or future, unfolded in the shadow of the great, impassable fence. Though it had become rusty in places, it was still strong. For these village boys, it was hard to imagine a time before the militarized border at the southern edge of town.
The village of Windhaven, Ohio had for generations grown corn across acres of tall rows that, during mid-summer at least, boxed the town inside a billowing wall of green and yellow. Inside were its families, almost all descended from the original twelve who’d founded the town. Outside, the rest of the world lurked, always benign, though Windhaveners were ever vigilant and suspicious. Even when the corn was finally harvested, and the great green barrier removed for the cold months, a fence remained around the village. Windhaven was isolated and huddled down, with many miles of woods and the fields of other villages to keep the world at a comforting distance.
Like Eric and Kirby on this day, the village of Windhaven always had a genuine relationships with its fence.
Established early in the Nineteenth Century, just after the chips of the American Revolution fell into place, Windhaven began life as the object of a land-dispute. The American colony of Connecticut claimed ownership of the fertile soil of Northeast Ohio because England’s King Charles II had put in in its colonial charter. A decade after the Revolution, that must have seemed silly, so the (now) State of Connecticut sold off what was called the “Western Reserve” to a group called the Pioneer’s Land Company, which created one of the nation’s first sub-divisions, the original suburban sprawl. For God, country, and profit.
Windhaven was soon established by some New Englanders who pooled their money together for a bite of Western expansion. They and their descendants farmed peacefully, forgotten by the world, for more than a century.
Then WWII happened and the era of industrialized warfare required a sacrifice from Windhaven. Approximately half its pastoral territory was eyeballed and procured (at fair market value) by Uncle Sam to build a munitions plant so America could bomb the hell out of Dresden.
Windhaven had always been as patriotic as any small, Midwestern town that came to define the modern aesthetic of “Americana” in the national imagination and Hallmark stores. Flag Day, Independence Day, and the birthdays of American presidents were always occasions marked by parades. So it would have been awkward if the town’s government, comprised largely of descendants of the original 12, had fought against the wishes of God and Country. So the landholders, also comprised largely of descendants of the original 12, took their money like patriotic Americans and moved off, beyond the cornfields, into the wider world of Ohio. The ties to Connecticut were practically mythological by the time the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor anyway, so the Sellers settled mainly in richer, more genteel towns closer to Cleveland. They simply dissolved into the ethereal realms of Hudson, Pepper Pike, and Bath.
Windhaven, cut in half, was left with a fence.
Not a corn fence like before, but a metal, ten-foot, chain-link fence. And sitting at the top, like a bow on a Christmas package, was an endless loop of razor wire. A gift-wrapped symbol of federal gratitude.
Behind this new fence, permanent, not seasonal, the United States government erected the Portage County Munitions Plant, though anyone who ever talked about it just called it The Arsenal.
It would have been ridiculous to think that the town could remain an image of nostalgic Americana after such events. It would also be foolish to think of Windhaven as simply “changed.” No, Windhaven was not some variation of an original. It represented a radical break with the past, something nameless and new, born straight from the nightmares of the Twentieth Century.
And a new town needed new eyes to gaze, forever suspiciously, at its new fence. The occasional corn fence was gone along with the Main street cottages, yards, and shops that had always looked south. They were swept away along with the Southern half of town, replaced, with terrifying speed by brutally efficient barracks for the soldiers and civilians who made The Arsenal churn with the industry of mechanical death. They lined the entirety of Central Street for a mile and were laid six blocks deep behind. The US Government had, inside of six months, transformed Windhaven into a utilitarian nightmare, straight out of Stalin’s dreams.
After the war, the government kept The Arsenal, but didn’t need its barracks anymore. They were placed on auction and purchased by a real-estate interest in Philadelphia who filled them with tenants who sought to escape the claustrophobia and crime of the inner-cities of Youngstown and Cleveland. The new Windhaveners’ dreams of pastoral peace and prosperity were dashed by the same crippling poverty they’d left behind, however. The biggest employer, The Arsenal, only hired enlisted men for the work it did. The barracks would eventually, and forever, be known as The Projects.
For decades after the Good War, Windhaven’s children would emerge from the projects each morning, look up at their fence, then back down to their feet as they shuffled toward whatever passed as a destination.
This July day, Eric and Kirby found themselves at the creek that ran along the fence.
“There ain’t even soldiers in there anymore,” Eric said as he waved the Arsenal away, his feet dangling over the northern bank of Buzzard Creek. The water flowing below them was just a trickle by July. The spring rains had already fed the corn, which was well over knee-high now. What remained had soaked deep into the thirsty aquifer below them months ago.
“And how do you know that?”
“’Cause we live in their old houses, stupid!”
Kirby’s long, frizzy hair whipped from left to right with the violent shaking of his head. “Icke, The Dick!” Kirby risked much by invoking the cruel nickname the town had saddled Eric with. “They don’t live here no more. The entrance is way over on the other side and they come in from Youngstown for work.”
Eric considered, then relented the point.
Kirby closed his case with, “You don’t got razor blades on top a fence without guns on the other side. And who knows what the guns are protecting?”
A moment of contemplation silenced the boys.
“Ok, Dumbo Trumbo,” Eric wheezed, taking petty revenge. Kirby’s long hair was not just symbolic rebellion. It also covered the long, floppy lobes of his ears, which had always made school picture day a painful humiliation. The fashions of the hard rock bands he and all his friends idolized gave Kirby a handy cover. Nevertheless, the name hung on him since grade school had persisted.
Like the rest of Windhaven, the children made up for their lack of imagination with a gleeful acceptance of cruelty.
Eric and Kirby silently walked across the field, back to the pulverized slate sidewalks of Central Street, the gaps filled with clover. In unison, they buried their hands deep into the pockets of their hand-me-down jeans. Officer Wills was blank-faced as he slowly drove past, staring them down. The boys kept moving and each lifted his head, maintaining defiant eye contact until Wills passed. They peered into his rear-view mirror, gazes locked, until he looked back to the road. Windhaven had an unspoken code and the boys had kept it. They had stood their ground.
*
Days later, maybe weeks — though it was still July, Kirby Trumbo slammed open his wooden, screenless, screen door. The buzzing of the long spring announced his entrance into the world, and he liked to hear the tinny clap of the thin, grayed pine as the door wiggled, snapping against the shingled siding of his family’s corner of the Projects. Like his Saturday morning cartoons, it was a harmless, even therapeutic, violence.
He snorted and spat into the thin, mostly dirt lawn beyond the steps of his porch. Kirby looked across at the silhouetted birds against the cloudy sky circling the Arsenal in the distance, then back at his home.
Each of the projects was identical from the outside and only mildly distinct within. There were six units per building. Guided solely by the principle of maximum efficiency, the Government had settled on a design that was basically three duplexes smashed together. His place was at one end of building four, a luxury to only share one wall with strangers.
Kirby had nothing to do and looked around for someone to waste away in the heat with. The only people he saw were the grim-faced men in work shirts shuffling in and out and between units. He saw Frank Brown, his dad’s quiet friend, slide under his ‘75 Chrysler Newport, which had been parked on the street for weeks, awaiting its resurrection.
With no viable social options, he decided to go over to Lawson’s to buy a pop and maybe run into someone. He jogged up the porch steps, the pounding of his boots squeezing audible moans from the boards, and grabbed a six-pack of old bottles to return to Sparkle on his way.
As he eventually meandered into Lawson’s, he added the coins he’d earned to a few that jangled in his jeans. No one was there, except Ed at the counter, who nodded, and Rita at the deli, who just kept slicing meat. On his way to the cooler, Kirby stopped to watch Rita work the chip chop ham. He was always fascinated by the smooth, gliding motion of the blade and the way it would shave the meat into impossibly thin slices that folded under their own weight into neat piles. He paused to stare at the marbled pink, limp product before grabbing his drink.
He paid and the bell above the door dinged as Rick Stone from school walked in. They made eye contact.
“Hey Rick. You seen Eric Icke around?” Kirby asked.
“Icke the Dick? Nah.” Rick always used Eric’s nickname when he could. He knew it might just as easily be used on him so he never missed an opportunity to reinforce its association with Eric Icke. Rick saw it as an accident of the universe that benefited him for once.
“Alright then,” Kirby said. Neither he nor Rick had stopped moving through the conversation and Kirby was out the door immediately.
With nothing else to do, Kirby decided to walk over to the fence by Buzzard Creed, drink his pop, and smash the bottle against the rocks when he finished.
Crossing the field, Kirby stepped to the creek and looked up at the fence, dull, no sun to glisten off the barbed wire today. He looked back and, seeing the Projects glare in his direction, he walked along the creek, eyes on his boots to avoid twisting an ankle in a burrow, until he was well past the edge of the woods. After a day of seeking company, he now sought privacy.
There was a boulder at the edge of the creek that Kirby like to sit on and he leaned comfortably into it, exhaling like it was an old couch. He looked up, into the Arsenal, and the fence changed forever, for him at least.
At first it looked to Kirby’s eyes like someone had tossed some old clothes over the razor-wired top of the fence. Then the grim picture came into focus and the bottle he held, still unopened, slipped from his hands and smashed against the rocks beside Buzzard creek.
Kirby saw a body hanging limp over the fence, legs town-side, torso Arsenal-side. On the ground below, on the town-side of the fence, was an old carpet remnant, green and ragged, one end drenched with a dark ooze that Kirby knew was blood. It looked like when you field-dress a deer. Blood dripped all the way up the fence.
At the top, sickeningly sunk deep into the razor-sharp wire spiral, was a body. Two legs jutted out towards him, hanging stiffly. Hanging between them, through the fence, Arsenal-side, Kirby saw Eric’s white face, frozen solid, upside-down, his grimaced mouth tightly shut.
Eric Icke’s open eyes, glassy and unflinching, stared north, fixed on the village of Windhaven from the other side of its fence.
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"Half the Town it Used to Be"
"Anything behind a fence makes people paranoid." Lots of meaning and application there for sure. So much of this was reminiscent of the Ohio I knew. There was a Nike missile base surrounded by a fence and feeding cows that so much lore surrounded. It put our forgettable town directly in the crosshairs of the Russians of course. Lol
This captured all that so well and gave me many memories. I liked it.
Thanks for sharing, Danny! "Comfortable, with a Sense of Purpose" resonated with me quite a bit, but I think this one was more engaging. I'm surprised you weren't able to find another home for it, but I'm so glad you shared it here!