NightFall by Collin Rich

Echoes of Genesis

In the City-scape of Man

Music: M83 "Echoes of Mine"

Fortune

Fortune’s favor spins its dizzying course

Spying to lift frail shoulders and break sturdy backs

Like a serpent in the grove selling its counsel

This saint spreads his providence

 Blessings smoothly blended with a curse;

Misfortune with a passing pleasure

Giving always to those who seek not

Opening for those who needn’t knock

Yet desperate men delve in desperate thought

 And crave contract under chance’s fixed rule

Here am I, lend thy servant his lot

And find me fortune or a fool.

Sansgrandparentitus

It was November of freshman year when I was struck with the second attack of esophagitis. Like striking teachers, my stomach acids grew discontent with their position and sought a higher calling. Unfortunately for me, that higher calling was my esophagus. The muscles there, sensing the presence of lower class body functions, first tightened and then inflamed. The system was broken and it left me unable to eat, drink or even swallow without excruciating pain. Of course, providence is unkind to those already down on their luck; three days into my esophagitis my body spiked a fever. And the single remaining memory, the recollection of me sitting naked in the dorm showers, vomiting tears and bile onto the drain, has become holy to me, my own personal Gethsemane. But at the time it was not nearly so redemptive. After seven harrowing days, an ungodly amount of time for a six-foot-four-one-hundred-and-forty-five-pound boy to go without food, my body healed. On the first day of my resurrection, I marched into Wendys and ordered two baked potatoes. To this day I’ve yet to taste anything nearly as delicious.

            I tell you about that experience not to gain sympathy, but to give you a point of reference. It is to help you understand the once most painful illness of my life has been replaced, not by cancer or Lupus or African sleeping sickness or any of the rare diseases I learn from House, but by something far more common. I call it Sansgrandparentitus. In layman’s term: I have no more grandparents.

            For a myriad of reasons, outliving your grandparents is a thing most terrible to experience. You see, my grandparents were the buffer between my parents and death. And now that they are gone, my parents are taking their place in the eternal line. On the subway I watch the stops pass and realize that the greater part of their life has gone by. And as happy as I am when they come to visit, I am sadder when they leave. It’s not just the usual sorrow of a goodbye, but the recognition that the once limitless time with my parents has been reduced to a finite account from which I’ve just withdrawn. Though I try to resist, their transformation occurs right in front of me every time my sisters and I refer to them as grandma and grandpa. As much as I disapprove of my parents’ new title, it won’t go away.

I could live with Sansgrandparentitus if this were the only symptom. But it’s not. You see, my grandparents were the buffer between me and growing up. I find myself pained with jealousy as I watch my parents spoil my nephews with dollar store toys and McDonald’s happy meals. It makes me want Sunday morning walks to Smitty’s for breakfast with Grandpa or the words of approval from Grandma. Where have the phone calls gone? And the suspenders? The turquoise necklace? The homemade bread? The knuggies? Those small, immeasurably important interactions have been reduced to memories.  My grandparents made me perfect, innocent, precious, and important. Now that they are gone, I am no longer immortal. The eyes in which I could do no wrong have closed and made me aware of my fallibility.

Mortality is a painful condition. But for those stubborn souls who refuse to grant weight to this issue, I invite you to think about the suffering of all humanity. Without grandparents, we are collectively robbed of wisdom. An entire generation of experiences has slipped by unharvested from society’s pool of knowledge. Without those roots, we are like trees waiting for that final strong wind.

I realize that for a great many this condition is regarded as incurable. Lives come and go as they have for millennia, leaving only the worn footprints in the carbon sands of time. I can’t empirically argue against their overwhelming evidence, I can only offer a simple belief: that a reunion lays in some far distant time for me, my parents, and my grandparents, that will outshine any Wendy’s baked potato. 

Chapter 1: A History of the Ozark Mountains and the Principle Parties Involved

There is a magic in old places, a feeling that betrays their age. We feel it in the air’s scent and the water’s touch, whispers of influence that can penetrate wood, rock, air and mind. It is the magic that makes us uneasy, as if our simple instincts grasp at the inherent danger found in ancient places. And yet what fools we are, ignoring reason and seeking to conquer what is best left alone.

            There were fools in the Ozarks long ago. They rode their canoes into the heart of darkness from open plains. In its mountains they found a home full of water, trees, fruits, and beasts. And as they hunted the forests and built their homes, they ignored the shamans who railed against the land. They spoke of the mountains’ unnatural creation. These were not familiar rock giants that grew from the ground in frightening, violent bursts, but strange tombs of the ocean’s displaced inhabitants. They were nothing but sand and time and memories, full of the hate and anger of the forgotten. But in their garden, the early fools disregarded the shamans and gorged themselves off the land. In time they disappeared, a mystery to those unfamiliar with the curse of the ancient. Later Indians grew weary of the place, sticking to its dense edges, peering into the heart of the Ozarks over thick walls of vegetation.  

            Centuries passed away until the arrival of the white man. They came from the distant sister of the Ozarks, the Appalachians, and so were accustomed to the danger of ancientness. They were brave and arrogant settlers, thinking themselves impervious to the land’s curse as they hobbled over the tortuous landscape on crafted wagons. They would explore on the rivers, marveling at the face-like rock cliffs strewn across the water’s edge like wary sentinels. On the flatter regions of the river banks, they chopped and cleared dark-soiled land to build their farms. It was a man’s work, cutting into the thick trees and pawing at the stubborn undergrowth with worn hands. Even the earth itself was reluctant to let them settle, blocking the hoes and shovels with rocks entrenched in the dirt. After clearing, the settlers’ heavy labor generated little rewards. It was not because the plants wouldn’t grow, but because they grew too well, grew wild even. Instead of producing fruit, the leaves and branches and shoots swelled. Corn stalks grew to unusual heights, tomato trees spread like ivy, and squash vines overran their boundaries. It was after several years of these farming failures that the settlers finally surmised that it was for beasts, not men, that the Ozarks had been created.

 Yet the settlers’ pride, mixed with a lust for supremacy, demanded they remain. Instead of cultivating the land, they warred against it. First to suffer were the tall, sturdy trees of oak, pine and cedar that towered over the hills in thick clumps like conspiring giants. They were hacked down by violent strokes of the axe and their mangled and butchered corpses sold to the plains. Next, with shovels, picks and dynamite, the early colonists clawed at the hills’ crust, prying out great heaps of metal. In the earliest days, it was these two industries that ruled the region, but there were few lured in by its lucre. The reason was simple: no man was ever made rich from his labors in the old hills. Outside, the trees sold for a good price, but the Ozarks’ precarious, forested hills prevented the type of easy exporting that fashioned wealth. And as for mining, there was no gold, no silver, no bronze; none of the metals to feed a speculative mind and make a man rich. The Ozarks was more deliberate with its treasures, choosing to store the cruder, wilder and most dangerous metals within its vaults. Some have argued that the lack of gold in the old hills is somewhat of an anomaly considering the nature of the curse of the ancient. They argue that gold, after all, is the center of all conflict. Gold causes men to aspire for wealth, which feeds their greed and turns them desperate and savage until they are drawn into violence. But such circuitous schemes were never in the nature of the Ozarks. Instead, the hills offered more direct metals; iron to make the barrel and lead to fashion the bullet.  And these two metals, though valuable for bloodshed, were common enough to the outside world to keep the settlers poor.

            Among the first of these stubborn men was one named Jacob Mooney. In 1809, he left the mountains of Kentucky and travelled to what was becoming known as Northern Arkansas. He was spurred on by tales of adventure spread by explorers who had both the perception to recognize the land’s magic and the wisdom to resist settling.  In Kentucky, Mooney was a carpenter. His work was excellent, his work ethic less so. Like any true bachelor, he refused to work more than necessary. He was a notorious free sleeper, some nights snuggling up to empty bottles in the dirt and others to unfamiliar breasts in houses of ill-repute. Those days would have lasted forever for Mooney had God in his providence not given him one night with May Phelps. She was 17 at the time, a homely girl of good Christian values who had spent that night with Jacob for reasons unfathomable. Two month later, she stood outside the saloon, waiting nervously to confront her baby’s father. When Mooney stumbled out of the doors, May burst into tears. Staring at this inconsolable girl, Jacob Mooney sobered and made the first of many noble decisions in his life. He married May, quit drinking and determined that he would make a good life for his progeny. His son Aaron was born in Kentucky and before he could walk his father loaded them into a wagon and left for Arkansas.

            Jacob made good on his promise to provide for his family. He carved out a piece of land along the White River and in a month’s time had built a one-room log cabin. Those first years on the river banks were years of plenty and of sorrow. Like the other settler’s, Mooney quickly learned that the rocky land was no good for farming. But Jacob was a resourceful man and refused to let the Ozarks force him out. Hearing the tales of the land’s wild nature, he decided to try his hand at wild stock. In Northern Texas he bought a dozen head of cattle and drove them to his land in the mountains. On his farm, the cows wandered contently and grew fat off the thriving grasses. Seeing Mooney’s success emboldened the more rationale settlers to turn from the axe to the ranch. And so a new industry was born, and for the first time in the mountains of the Ozarks there grew success.  

As Mooney’s ranch propagated, he sought to increase his progeny.  But what the land had given Mooney in wealth it made him pay for in blood. The Mooney’s second child, William, passed away a month after birth. The third child lasted only a few days. During her fourth and final birth, May hemorrhaged. Jesse Mooney’s birth through pools of blood was the prophecy of his life. He would grow strong and wise and respected, he would be his father’s pride, a man dedicated to blood relations. All of Northern Arkansas would know his name, and in the end, Jesse would leave this world the same way he entered it.

Years after May’s death, travelers began to pour through the region. To accommodate the traffic, Jacob built a ferry. It was a profitable business and Mooney and his two boys ran it respectably. They were God-fearing people, and no pilgrims were turned away for want. Jacob Mooney gained a reputation as a Christian man, a wise man, and most importantly, a family man. He was dedicated to his boys, as if their success would compensate for the sins of his youth. While running the ferry, he taught them everything a man should know: how to be honest, how to judge a man, how to hold your ground. But despite the bond, Aaron Mooney ran away at the tender age of 15. Where he went and what kind of man he became, no one knows. Neither Jacob nor Jesse ever spoke of him again. 

By 1828, the word had spread of the beauty of the Ozarks and the success of the land’s ranchers. Settlers began to pour into the mountains and the town of Yellville was established, fifteen miles west of the ferry. Other towns began spring into existence and in 1836 Arkansas became a state. That same year the Tutts and Everetts moved to the newly formed Marion County in northern Arkansas. These two families, whose names would become famous across the Ozarks, shared only three commonalities: they were from Virginia, desired power, and had immense potential for violence. The commonalities aside, the two were completely different breeds.

The Tutt clan originated from the mountains of Virginia. Their forefathers, ignoring warnings of Indian dangers, had charged into the wilderness and thrived. But the mountains worked upon them and they became men of the land, self-sufficient, strong, and wild. Yet the Tutt’s were also strangely charismatic. As strangers moved into the now settled region, they were drawn to the Tutt family both by their everyman appearance and their unexplainable sagacity. The Tutt’s were just as approachable as the Lord himself, but seemed to offer more practical advice. With their beards and jokes and homespun knowledge, they seemed sure disciples of “King-Mob,” yet ironically they never accepted Jackson’s party. The Tutt’s saw in Jackson a little of themselves, that old hickory toughness, and the self-portrait must not have been to their liking.

            Out of the numerous Tutt families dotting the Virginia Hills, it was only Hansford or “Hamp” Tutt and his four sons, Richard, John, Henry and George that migrated to Arkansas. Rumors were that it was family scandal and contention that prompted the move, but knowing Hamp’s character those rumors must be false. It is not that Hamp was above a fight or ill-reputed behavior. While generally pleasant, he was apt to drink, and the strange effects of alcohol have been documented throughout history. But the rumors must be discounted because Hamp Tutt was a finisher and never left business unsettled. Contention would be fought or else resolved and scandals would be disproved or else atoned. In a way it was one of his most admirable qualities. The real answer as to what drove him and his family from the ancestral hills was something far simpler: wanderlust. In Virginia, Hamp had begun to feel that nostalgic yearning for the days of his forefathers, who had marched undaunted into strange mountains and come off conqueror. Hamp desired his own wilderness, a ground of rebirth to test his mettle and prove worthy of the Tutt heritage. When the Tutts arrived in the Ozarks, they settled a plot of land on the edge of Yellville, just beyond Crooked Creek. The plot was named Tutt Hill and Hamp set out to make himself king of the mountains.

The Everetts came from the city of Fredericksburg, located in Virginia’s Northern regions. They were a gentleman family, at least by American standards. The first Everetts had settled the region by selling tobacco and other crops. But despite their remarkable farming skill, they never made much money in agriculture. They were adamantly opposed to slavery and so never had the man-power to compete with plantations. But God graces his favorites with many gifts, and the Everett’s were religious church-goers. As a reward, they excelled in business, law, politics and just about any field they tried their hand at. It was said in Fredericksburg that if an Everett decided to try his hand at selling horse shit he would still manage to make more money than the Governor. With their religious piety, their abundant wealth, and political power, the Everetts were the center of the town.

The family had plans to bring their money making touch to Fredericksburg by establishing the town as a center for trade. They commissioned the construction of canals, roads, and turnpikes to spur economic growth. Then, in 1832, their ambition heightened as they used political influence to connect Fredericksburg to Richmond by railway. But the railroad push became their downfall. In 1834, the bank war between Jackson and Biddle caused a brief recession that was just long enough to bankrupt the city. The railway expenses became the rallying cry for the Everetts’ opposition and after the 1835 election there was none of the family left in office. Despite the shift in power, many of the Everett clan stayed put, patiently waiting for the wheel to turn. However Bart and his brothers Jesse and Sim were less patient. In 1836 they left to find a home in newly formed Arkansas, certain they could gain influence in the fledgling state.

It was these two families who would center in the coming violence. The feud, which in later years would become known as the Tutt-Everett war, would consume the Ozarks. The cause of the feud has often been debated. There are many who claim it was politics, a battle between Whigs or Democrats for control of the region. Others claim the cause was more akin to classical Greek tales of man’s desire for forbidden women. Both of these factors did exist, but they were only symptoms, not causes. In truth, the violence was a result of the ground, the water, the air and the age of the Ozarks, enacting the same ancient curse it dealt to all foolish trespassers.

Hot Chip: I Feel Better

Death

            I believe myself an aspiring writer; and yet, my time facing this screen is sadly limited. I am drawn by the greater vices: politics, law cases and e-sports. They pull me from my good intentions and trap me in the realm of the trivial. But on rare instances, I am sadly drawn back to this processor of words and I begin an essay such as this. Today’s thesis is the highest of all such sad theses; it is a musing on that great leap, the infamous exit, the slow bow. I speak on death.

            I received word today of another death and it stuck to me. I tried all the tricks to keep it at bay: compartmentalizing, blocking, filtering, ignoring, flooding. And yet the word latched onto my retina, impairing my vision of the stories and articles and opinions I was attempting to drown it out with. It was so powerful that I marched into the kitchen and picked up the little box trap of peanut-butter-smelling-sticky-yellow-glue substance meant to rid the house of that little devilishly-sly mouse and threw it straight away. I knew that if somehow the trap had worked I would have to cover the rodent in oil and pry him loose with my hands because with the word now firmly entrenched in my retina I lacked the ability to follow through with my original plan of throwing him and the box from my 6^th story apartment (which seems to me to be the only plausible solution to getting rid of a mouse stuck in such a trap). Death has a power to change our plans.

Death Incarnate

            You might think me strange to be so effected by such a common, cliché word. Death is for melodramatic romances and movies with option-less directors. In the city I live the thing that the word death represents must be common as the homeless people ravaging the subway trains with their stories of unfair unemployment and unpaid medical bills. God bless them. But I still feel it; I feel it more acutely. Watching the Sunday afternoon fitness enthusiasts riding their bikes down Lexington I can’t help but think of how he found death. Strangely there were no cars involved. “We always thought it would involve a car,” the organizer told the local newspaper. He sounded confused, hurt almost. It was like the Jews with Jesus; he had been waiting for so long only to have it show up in some unforeseen circumstance. “We always thought it would involve a car.”

            It didn’t involve a car. But it did involve a wife and three kids. They had to fly up on a charter flight to Jackson Hole Wyoming and drive by that arch of deer antlers that must have seemed so absurdly gruesome to tend to the body of the man who would be turning 43 this week. As if that weren’t tragic enough, the oldest son and only daughter both have birthdays this week as well. In the seriousness of the circumstances, it seems almost trivial to fixate on birthdays. But I do. It’s that last little push that tips the Jengo tower. It warps an already tragic situation into something unrecognizable. It keeps me up at nights. We shouldn’t pray to death, but if I did I’d ask it to take me any month but February.

            And then there is the wife and the kids. They’ll be with me forever now, just like Suzi Everton. Suzi’s husband died when I was only 12. He was the kind of man who could forget he had an M.D. and was 40 years my senior. He was the kind of man who would look you eye to eye and offer what you knew to be heartfelt counsel. He was the kind of man that when he got angry, we all knew something was wrong. Something was wrong, it was a brain tumor. He died about a year and a half later. Amidst the grief I still feel for his passing there lingers a wisp of inspiration. I marvel at how a man could live his life in such a way that the tell-tale sign of his end was that he simply raised his voice. If we in this city of petroleum-pushed taxis and ambition-driven suits were held to the same standard, the waiting line for the MRI would eclipse Splash Mountain. That is my silver-lining, no doubt another technique to stave off the gloom of a beloved man’s death.

The Mystical Horse

But as a 12 year old, I didn’t face death the way I run from it now.  It consumed me. We would drive by his corner office on Stapley and Brown with the dirty-white, other-worldly horse statue and I would feel his death consume me. I knew there would be no more picture scavenger hunts with churchmates draped around the mystic horse, no more delivering French baguettes with bacon-cream dip, no more sweaty backyard basketball games overlooking his little stable. I knew he was gone and I knew Suzi was left behind. I was surprisingly pragmatic as a 12 year old; I was concerned over her bills. How would she keep the house? Would Suzi have to leave the neighborhood? I drew up the plan not to let that happen. I would create a card game, the cards would sell for four dollars a pack and all the proceeds would go straight to Suzi. My business failed and Suzy moved out of the neighborhood. I never forgot her. Out of sight out of mind is simply not true.  

              In recent years there have been new additions to my halls of worry. Angelina, Pam, Wang Mama and yesterday, when the bike went over the guard rail and into the Snake River, Bridget joined that list. I hope the words halls and list don’t seem demeaning. You should understand that just like Suzi, I find myself desperately concerned for these women. I think on their loneliness, on their loss, and wish I could find some way to make it go away. I want to give Pam someone to talk to, let Wang Mama know that she is loved and watch over Bridget’s kids like they were my own. But I don’t. I’m plagued by the human condition of good intentions. But they will always stay on my list. I think lists are a powerful thing. They are concise and accurate, they let you know which assignments are due when and make sure you don’t forget that Greek yogurt that your wife loves so much. But the list these women are on is more powerful still. It’s a type of prayer-list. Though I don’t daily mention their names aloud in my hurried prayers, I know God see’s the list and takes due notice. 

Of course, I didn’t mention Angelina in my good-intentions. You see, Angelina is my hope.  Her husband had fathered me in a far-away land. He taught me how to work, and how to pray. Most importantly, he taught me how to eat. The man never spent less than 10 dollars on any meal and it caught up to him in a swimming pool in Hawaii. He left behind the happiest woman I have ever known. For months after his death I couldn’t bring myself to call her. I was afraid that maybe she wouldn’t laugh anymore. I couldn’t bear to think of a conversation without her laugh. But in one of the remarkable, rare instances of courage in my life, I called her. I haven’t stopped calling her since. We talk weekly and she thanks me for every phone call. Yet each time I insist it should be me thanking her. She doesn’t know that she is my relief from death. Each conversation makes me feel like I am somehow serving Suzi and Pam and Wang MaMa and Bridget.

Now is that long overdue moment when I consider what this essay has become (I know you were thinking the same thing). Is this the heavy-handed treatise on mortal frailness that the introduction promised? Yes and no. You see, I always try to be honest, and because of that honesty I just can’t bring myself to hand over a gut-wrenching, tear-jerking essay on this subject. I have a propensity to try and skirt death which prevents the shock and sobbing and depression. But death still has its influence. It comes like a cloaked dagger rather than the ostentatious swing of the sword. It creates an awareness of my limitations and a guilt for my inability to be Christ. It forms the fissures of conscience into which I thrust good intentions. Of course, the tradeoff is that of renewed priorities, wider perspective, increased concern and greater gratitude for God. Death isn’t simple, why should its consequences be so? And sitting here, writing this essay I now realize that this swirl of death’s foaming impacts is actually a primordial soup.  It is the building blocks of compassion, which if acted upon evolves into love.  

Out of a Forest (Set to The National)