‘Gods man! There are maggots in the tea.’
The outpost was squalid, a tent, constructed with vapid disinterest, had been fully saturated by the morning’s rain and did more to bathe the sleeping occupant than it did to passably shelter them. From the depths of the sodden canvas a rasping snore was heard and could be mistaken for an asthmatic wood saw, hacking its way through sheet metal.
Timon gazed ruminatively across the storied Outpost Stormfront and considered if his cousin’s letters had come from a place of trickery. This was supposed to be a place of achievement. An enclave of hearty people shaping the land through studious mind careful hand; the citizens of this outpost were described by Jeremy as paragon; they were to work with providence, to push against the forefront of human achievement. Timon had been told by his cousin that in five short years the outpost had grown to the size of a small town and that it was expected to be equivalent to a city in four more summers of similar progress.
‘You don’t know where Jeremy Lonaday is do you? I was to meet him to discuss becoming a doctor for the outpost.’ Rolling the word outpost about his tongue as if unsure if it was an appropriate definition, the well-mannered doctor placed down the tea canister and wiped both hands on his trousers.
‘Oh? They don’t usually show any interest in the tea,’ muttered the stockman who was at rest by the outpost’s main gate, ‘I guess the other food must have gone off too much for them. Shame, tea was the last thing that I didn’t have to boil before drinking.’
The haggard stockman slumped backward and Timon imagined him to have been carved from the very log he leant against, a statue locked in atrophied state and showing no signs of a desire to move. The man had become so entrenched into his rut that a small line of moss was seen to grow along the shaded side of his boot leading the doctor to wonder if he himself had been caught in a sudden delirium.
‘I asked of Jeremy,’ Timon replied tersely, his patience tested by the unexpected broken nature of what had been described to him as paradise.
‘Never heard of him,’ the stockman rebuffed, staring into the fire, and drawing the tea canister back towards his rucksack, ‘If you don’t want a tea, there’s not much I can help you with. The outpost is a bit run down, but that’s to be expected. They say an investor is bringing gold and jobs in the new year. We’ll build fences that will stand against the winds and roads that won’t wash away in the rains. Good things to come in the new year, good things to come.’ He repeated with eyes focused upon his low burning fire. A pall of unrealised sadness draped over the man’s shoulders and appeared to weigh the stockman down enough that it appeared impossible for him to stand.
Bidding good day and leaving the rambling man to his wistful daydream, Timon ventured into the settlement proper and took notice of the pervading damp that wept from each paling or piece timber unlucky enough to be cut or left out in the open. The grass was lush, the forest was perfectly verdant in every respect, but it appeared that each manmade object within the outpost had been beset by nature left to rot to the point of abandon. A general store’s awning had fallen and was now tacked down as a form of rudimentary wall. A tarp, covered with mould and lichen, swayed heavily in the breeze and pulled against the rusted nails that held it in place. The land felt hostile to Timon, it was as if something in the air recoiled against manufacture, a curse that had doomed creation toward eventual decay.
The people of the fort were shuffling aimlessly and seemed stupefied by a loss of purpose. Wandering about the ruin of their lean-to shacks, a handful of people looked to be searching for a routine that they once had engaged in for their entire life, a direction that now was so utterly lost.
Greeting a small feverish man who was staring forlornly at the ruins of a wall to no reply, Timon tried in vain to seek a reason for the Stormfront’s fall into beleaguerment but could only parse incoherent talks of good things to come and the rambling of a storm due to land in the afternoon.
‘What things? What storm?’ Timon barked at the man, desperate to find some form of sense still burning at the wick, ‘Is this even Stormfront?’
‘Trees and dirt is all we have,’ the man said in a distracted way, ‘plenty of trees and all the same of dirt. But pay no mind, the investor’s cart gets closer by the day and with a golden twirl of his many purse strings, there’ll be roads and stores and fences and parks.’
A dull light was embering in the man’s eyes that Timon noted to be of hopefully insane. He had seen people brought to this state before, people who had no other option but to exist in vacancy. Lost for a better option, he began to walk the outpost in hopes of his cousin’s appearance.
What malady had happened here? The air was crisp and held a good scent for respiration, the sun shone with a relaxed wash across the dew-covered earth and there was felt to be a sated sense of newness to the terrain that seemed uniquely perfect for human settlement. But the wood of the town line was wilting, lacquer refused to take to palings and dripped away as if on its own accord, sloughing to the base of everything much like melted wax.
Placing his bag upon a foot-bench, Timon took a step back in shock as the surface immediately crumpled into little more than waterlogged splinters, water trickling from the destroyed timber and soaking back into the footings as if retreating into the earth. Looking down, Timon saw that his step drew water up from the ground and could see several of his footprints behind, now drying in the morning light. Testing a hypothesis, the doctor with drew a pencil from his bag and held it a hairsbreadth from the ground. Sure enough, a single droplet of water emerged from the clay and dripped upward towards the pencil as if drawn by a magnet.
‘What an utterly profound thing,’ Timon said aloud while shaking the pencil dry. A curiosity to defy reason such as this had yet to be recorded in science. It was something that cried out to be studied but Timon imagined that whatever secret obscured this phenomenon, would similarly refuse to be recorded. Retrieving his bag and noting it’s base to have become saturated, the doctor stalked towards a sapling that he presumed to be an olive tree, his curiosity now overtaken by the frustration of finding the outpost in such a state. The tree was diminutive, obviously planted by a settler but still close to the heart of a wilderness that baulks at the hand of man. Reaching out, he noted the leaves were resplendent, healthy in every respect and beginning to bud much sooner that it should be possible for such a young plant.
‘It was planted when we first arrived,’ a familiar voice sounded behind Timon.
Turning on the spot, the doctor saw his cousin but could scarcely believe it was the same man he remembered from only five years before. He was thin, dishevelled from lack of sleep, and the young man seemed so empty that Timon’s heart began to ache.
‘Something about the olive tree always seemed hopeful,’ Jeremy continued as if in a conversation he had wished to speak for some time, ‘every year it refuses to grow and as such refuses us progress alike. I once thought to cut it down but could find no axe, I thought the ground hallow but could find no shovel. The tree won’t grow, it knows that Stormfront is doomed.’
‘Jeremy,’ Timon embraced his cousin with sadness and noted the frailty of his form. The small man’s once solid frame had been reduced to bone. ‘But what of the letters? You were succeeding here, there was a mill and belltower to be built this summer, you had said this yourself.’
‘I had lied. The Olive tree wouldn’t let any paper remain useable here for letter writing, and to unstop an ink bottle would only call the rains. I wrote those letters before I had left. Five years of time I thought I would need. Five small lies to my investors that would buy me the time I needed to establish Stormfront. But we are dead now, drowned by a land that refuses development.’
Dropping to his knees, Jeremy Lonaday hung his head and looked toward the olive tree with defeat, there was nothing left he could say, Timon had never seen a man so broken. Snapping a small branch from the tree, the doctor placed it into his cousin’s hand and patted him gently upon the shoulder. Rain fell to the ground and quickly began to pool upon the already drenched earth, noise became a patter, and that patter then became a drone as the storm settled into deluge. The entire world was reflected in the rippling water, two grounds, two skies, two cousins alone in the ruins of progress.
‘Good things to come in the new year,’ Timon muttered, ‘good things to come.’
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 