This is the first draft of the first several pages, tear it apart with criticism please


A Year in Pinefall

October

Jove moved out from small town of Pinefall Maine into the park during the chilly morning of an exceptionally warm day in the sort of area where the usual unusual events of life would have felt perfectly comfortable taking place. Jove was wearing a wooly plaid, time worn overcoat, slowing his pace as the iron gates bearing the name of the century old gate faded beyond sight somewhere behind both him and the leisurely winding brick path. Smoking a strong blueberry tobacco he glanced at a bird, a stone, a couple much farther away and in a different part of the pine sprinkled cove. He took in these things in all at once, letting them seep into his aged awareness, absorbing the sight, sound, feel all at once as opposed to making distinct recognitions of the various brisk sensations. The surrounding trees, who were already sleepy enough to mistake this man as part of the environment, hardly took notice as this man made a surprisingly harsh twist of the wrist to flick a leather strapped wristwatch into view, quickly defining himself against the welcoming sleep of nature’s autumn. Judging from the softening of his wrinkled face he apparently approved of the time, and eventually became a part of the environment once more.
Several couples and one jogger passed, some noting a disturbing eminence coming from the aura this man seemed to project. However a quickened pace and a few topics of conversation later and the minor chance event in passing lessened as late morning turned to early afternoon. Pine trees held the majority of the population of trees in the appropriately named park but after a while Jove walked up to an oak, the type that seemed to have put all its effort into growing wide instead of tall, as the more fashionable, but less wise tree will often do. This oak was old to people, dating back some 30 years but still young for a tree and quite alive. It was surrounded, or perhaps saying the tree was encompassed by a circle of brick would be more fitting as the path had been built around it. But now, having grown some, the oak appeared by no means to be confined by the path which accentuated the ambiance rather than imprisoned this tree. It was not the first tree to have grown in this interesting location, but it was certainly the widest to have done so.
Jove walked right up to the tree, which unlike the others was not very sleepy even though the brightly colored red and orange leaves would have you think so. Jove breathed uncomfortably near the tree which was could not make heads or tails of the man. The tree at first mistook the sweet smoke for the visible breathe of a chilled autumn day but soon found otherwise as the unappreciated smell of burning tobacco lingered on the thick woody knots which flowed generously over the trunk.
Jove was the first to speak “I suppose you are hungry, a tree so wide awake at this time of year. Now that is something to mistrust. What keeps you up so late, friend?”
The oak groaned in a hoarse whisper that was even deeper, darker than usual as it had not whispered for a very long time “I am awake and you are awake. The burning sun god is killed by the frost as it has always been. I am awake, and remain so by that which draws you here today, this month, this year.”
Jove thought and waited a minute before responding, as was helpful to trees that do not process information as quick as walking things.
“What draws me near? I feel something but know little. What do you know tree? It is not here yet is it?”
The oak groaned and creaked more than it had to before responding but was interested in spite of itself, “I feel much but know little as yourself. This town has busy, noisy undercurrents but they have died and are being killed, murdered” it stopped for a while before resuming; “Even the sun is being murdered by what is here. Softly but with dominance it comes. There is no reason to give a name. It is what it is, confining it with a definition will not confine it, you know symbols are beyond what has come and what is still to be.”
Jove felt he knew what was being said but gained nothing but a confirmation of his own feelings. A biker rode past. The tobacco in the pipe was spent.
Before he was able to turn and leave the oak quickly whispered, “A force indefinable is seeping in this town. This show is changing. Infectious.”
Jove was taken aback by the unprompted comment but his face did not show it and he left with no reply. He hardly noticed the cold ash spill in his pocket as he silently looked up at the cold sun. It shone but seemed to dim even as he glared at it, with a cold enough stare normally required to view the sun, he found it unnecessary. The sun was there but it was dead here, it was not shining in defiance, it was lit in compliance, following the cold will of an invisible master, it was lost in a seemingly much brighter sky. What is here?
Jove walked back into town, taking a different route than the one he had come. He came out of the park into the town, one which was surrounded by a large lake one side and an unsettling forest on all the others. Unlike the oak with its path, the surroundings here gave the feeling of human defiance as opposed to human domination. The nature in some parts of the world is much stronger than the residence which occupies it, but as with the case here, it was too unaware to do much about it. An archaic, indefinable force, it may not have been aware but its presence was felt and its will still imposed upon the impressionable populace.
The town was made from two separate eras of growth. Once when it had been founded as a fishing location in the early 1900s, and another foundational period of time appeared to be set in the classy, but dated, 1960s when an attempt by an overenthusiastic mayor was made to transform an aging fishing town into a small time resort area. Still, while not in its glory days Pinefall’s resort income lingered.
A breeze brought in the smell of a storm over the visible water and Jove walked in a coffee shop looking some thirty years younger. The aroma of fresh coffee held the air. Jove walked up to a bright younger girl with Jen written on her name tag.
“Hi, can I get a tall latte to go?”
She smiled “single or double shot?”
“Single, thanks”
A guy walked in from the back, looked around, grabbed something and walked back. Jove noticed someone walking outside on the sidewalk past his view of the light wood stained stools setting in front of a single large glass window with medium sized letters spelling “coffee” backwards. A stand of newspapers was stacked up near the register. There was a glass counter behind which were piled groups of cookies and pastries.
“Here you go, bye”
Jove stepped outside where it had already begun to sprinkle a cold rain. He started for some buildings but realized he didn’t know where actually he wanted to go. He swung around remembering the newspapers. He opened the door and grabbed a paper, and looked around but didn’t see anyone. There was no bell to ring. He laid the change down in the tip jar and left.
Not bothering to focus on the headlines he opened to the classifieds trying to find a place to stay for a while but a strong gust took the newspaper and that opportunity away with it. He noticed a hotel in the near distance but noticing an uncomfortable feeling about it he stopped. What could he do? A man, or woman, was dimly visible in the top floor of a building. A cat ran across a patch of grass and near a bridge. He started towards the hotel, it being nearly two blocks away from where the strange man was now. Jove walking increasingly against the wind as the cat faded from view. The person in the window did not fade from view. The hotel became harder to define as he neared, but Jove attributed that to the storm which he was much more focused on than anything else at the time.

Stepping through the second set of doors he stopped at the entrance, soaking in the surroundings faster than the rain dipping down his coat. The hotel felt like it had gone sideways in time for a while, and then picked up with the rest of the world. Jove stood unable to place the deep burgundy and gold styled wallpaper, which felt very much alive. Apparently he had made his way to the front desk but when he was startled from his trance by a brown middle aged woman he judged from the puddle underneath him it had been a while.
“Can I help you?” She said with a tone that would have been better suited to ask her customer for help. Her straight frizzy hair didn’t look good in a ponytail. But Jove noted that it probably wouldn’t have looked good down, either.
“Yeah I would like a room for tonight.” Jove said, stepping slightly back.
“Mmmmm.” She leaned in towards an old boxy computer, and inadvertently towards Jove.
Looking around Jove could no longer hear any music. Had he imagined it before? Outside it was pitch black. Jove looked about twenty some years old. The girl at the desk looked like she had had too much children, but wasn’t aware of it yet. Maybe she would go on until the strains of her quickly ageing body told her that secret, one that was clear to everyone but her. Or maybe she would go through her life ignoring everything her mind, her soul was trying to say, in sort of the way a person ignores an annoying mosquito that bites in an inappropriate place while one is in public.
Jove and the desk manager finished the aged but oddly untouched hotel took in as much of Jove as he had taken in of the hotel. Hotels have seen a lot of people and normally can place a person very soon into a certain category. However this hotel was, like everything else in Pinefall, very sleepy and only noted his appearance before going back into an eternal nothingness. Buildings don’t sleep the same way people do.
Jove was soon walking towards the elevator, a dull one with nothing special about it. But that made it stand out. A number three button pressed, and a few halls later and Jove was checking into room 336, one that had a view of the front of this main street.
He looked out and saw a few empty buildings both in front of him across the street on the right and left. They were all two story buildings build in a Romanesque way, with plenty of brick in them also. The town was not big; maybe a few main streets in any direction but that were about all. Jove looked around and the only things he could make out in the night beside a few buildings and lampposts were the lake and beginning of the forest.
Jove lay down and went to sleep.
Downstairs Molly, the desk manager, walked around in the back. She made a phone call she made a coffee. She sat down and imagined for the hundredth time picking up that pair of big, red, dull scissors that lay next to the some pens and tape and shoving it into the skin on her wrists until she would bleed out into the same sleep the building was in. Later that night Molly answered two more phone calls from people with ugly voices, made another disgusting coffee and looked at the big red scissors for a while. The next morning she was still on shift to check Jove out.
Back in the room Jove was still awake in bed. The windows were closed, he did not feel alone. He did not feel anyone was there either. If there is a third choice of feeling someone can feel, one where one feels not alone, but not with someone that is the option Jove would have chosen to describe what he felt. Goodnight.
A big cat, the kind that would be a mutt if it had been a dog, pawed out near the Iron gates of Pinefall Park. The cat was a dirty steelish gray but it wished it were black as it moved with purpose around some acorn trees. It saw some birds, some squirrels on the way to the way it was going. It stopped, paused as it looked around soaking in the environment as well as rain. While dodging in-between umbrella like evergreens the animal stiffened as it smelt the mixture of red and a chipmunk. It smelt the red in the air as the scent of the chipmunk moved from the ground to the sharp mouth of the skinny cat in the expansive park. The small animal, caught and quickly dead in the jaws of the strong cat did not make a sound as the life left the small body. The cat wished it had. In the distance a wide oak tree watched the scene, because it was very wide awake. The freezing rain being a soothing draught to its roots, it did not need rest as animals but maintained a powerful awareness. It also noticed the cat rip the animal apart and walk around some more before disappearing. The oak saw the cat twice more before finally fading into the night for good.
* * * *
In an old, cold building at the same time the cat leapt onto its prey Brick J. Welle signed his name unrecognizably onto an important mayor type of document, since Mr. Brick J. Welle was the mayor of Pinefall. He signed another document. He signed another document. He signed another document. He signed another fucking document and loved it. Mr. Welle was a man who was very interested in himself, so he did very well being in politics.
He often told anyone of his two daughters and one son when he caught them, “You’re not in politics until you’re at least a mayor. Really right.”
Mr. Wells prided himself on speaking right. He believed in changing himself into a well know person, a star, a politician. So, of course, he spent the night signing documents that wanted his name. Mr. Wells loved documents because they were the only things that loved his name more than he did. He thought, more and more often as time went by and the cold habits of youth changed into the inescapable patters of age, that he had put more effort of art into his signature than many artists.
Brick, as he hated being addressed, was old but it was very hard to tell how old he was. People who meant him often gave him the impression of being infatuated with him when really they were trying to make out the feature of his strange face. Were those dimples or wrinkles? If he ever stopped talking or smiling maybe someone would find out. Brick had been married, twice. Once ended in an early divorce, that most people did not know about, and the other ended with the death of a much unseen wife who, when she was seen, was very, very pale. But she was also very, very normal and hardly made an impression on anything. She had been much more like a living passive agreement than a person. Maybe she wasn’t normal. But there were no maybes about her being dead and buried at the well up kept Pinefall Cemetery, which was so well maintain more by her husband’s love of his own signature than by any sentiments.
Brick, pushed back his black greased hair and dropped his pen. Brick wanted to go on a walk, a tour of his own town, which he felt very much was his own. But Mr. Welle did not go on a walk around town; he got in a bright car drove. Drove, drove, drove, Mr. Welle drove that car somewhere but not to bed he drove around and back, to be at work at nine the next morning. When he walked in he brought a new pen, which he wisely kept in his pocket so as not to detract from the attention to his face. When he walked in the courthouse the next day his coworkers would see his characteristic smile and strong greasy hair.
But morning hadn’t come yet and Brick droved a while until he ended up at Pinefall Cemetery. The storm seemed to fight against everything else in the area, knocking down limbs from aging tree, destroying the safety of small animals and disturbing the peace of many corpses who had been turning all evening trying to find a dry spot in their small tomb. But either because Mr. Welle’s grease naturally repelled the onslaught of rain of because the rain and wind had an odd way of missing him, Mr. Welle was not affected the same way the rest of the park was.
The cemetery was an old one but well maintained, as was the rest of the town, mostly through high taxes and an adamant belief that a solid façade would equate to increased revenue. Etched stone graves marked the uneventful lives of the late townspeople of Pinefall, the kind that were as scary at night as they were serene during the day. The careless jeans brushed several unmissed graves as Mr. Welle made his was in a roundabout way to the center of the cemetery. The middle of this cemetery was a dark area, with a raised area of earth, granite benches on top. This area, with ominous pine trees even during the day, was a great place to come and do things, the mayor thought. He didn’t know if he passed his late wife’s grave on the way.