Smokehouse

Winter’s desolate cabin fever gripped me this grey season. I wondered why I had not yet hopped a train as my departed brother had.

The promised abundance and serene beauty of spring’s arrival remind me why I never leave the wood. Once my livelihood became singular and alloyed with bushcraft, the whole world began to feel abundant.

Here I found a truth that separated me forever from any common narrative. Gifts waiting in every unseen place. Food, medicine, pleasure, all at hand and ready to be taken home. The unaccountable remainder of my life are the crass items of the modern world I trade for. Only this binds me still to visits from the outside.

Once the frost lifts, I harvest trout and salmon from the pond and rivers. I stock venison and wild turkey from the hills. The game and staple crops feed the still and the smokehouse, whose chemistry provides my livelihood.

This spring I acquired a cache of strangely gnarled applewood, soaking it overnight before feeding it to the coals. The shack had never held smoke so rich. Even before the molasses and brown sugar were added, this stock’s effluence was delicious, sweet and adhesive, clinging to everything.

The wood came from the orchard behind the motel where the bodies were found. Old trees, poorly kept in their last years, but dense and honest in the cut. I helped take them down myself. Applewood burns slow and even. It carries memory in its smoke.

I sat in the sun and read while the applewood crackled, its dark sweetness drifting upward. Vinegar seeped into my skin. I was careful not to touch my eyes while raking and manicuring the coals. I enjoyed the wholesome chores performed in between being lost in a book.

It was while drawing from the applewood pile that I saw it.

Round and metal—I thought at first I had spotted a locket or pocket watch set within the split of a log, as if it had been placed there during growth, not after. Small and golden, though not bright. Like something handled many times. Its body held a faceted quality, precisely hammered.

I watched it pull itself free of the debris on spider like legs. Eyeless, it wore something like a pig’s snout where a face should have been. I had the sense it was incomplete, as though it were only a part of a larger anatomy.

I seized it with leather-gloved hands but could not get ahold of it. It stung like a pin cushion in all directions. When I let it go, it scurried away.

The injury was not painful. Only points of contact.

However, I grew exhausted and was in bed, sick, without dreaming for days.

I have not slept again since those events.

This did not concern me at first. There is much to be done this time of year, and long days suit the work. I drank coffee. I read. I kept my schedule. I am still waiting for my vendors to arrive.

I have adjusted to life as a single, never-ending episode.

It was on the second day that I noticed another of them.

At the edge of sight. A small movement along the woodpile. When I turned, nothing was there. I thought little of it. The mind invents motion where none exists when the eyes are never closed.

But later, while reading, I saw another.

Gold. Not bright. The same workmanship as the spider. It held itself at the corner of a page, not touching it, as if marking a place. When I shifted my focus, it was gone.

They pass through a seam, a membrane I never noticed before I spent time with them. I have become able to find the stitches that hold our world together.

I spent one morning waiting for a crease to present itself. There on my table a seam wiggled open to admit a golden bug, and I at once dug my carving blade into it. I spread with both thumbs and pressed my face to the opening.

Inside was the truth.

Reality ceases when there are no more words.

I found that I thought more clearly without rest. The animal mind speaks truth in images that are lost when forced into words, which are too new an invention to be trusted. They are approximations. They fix a thing into place so that it may be handled.

There is a point before preservation where a thing is most receptive. Not alive. Not dead. Unresolved. In this state, the boundary between what a thing is and where it is becomes uncertain. My mind is plastic and now tuned finely.

Now I see the creatures were always present. Small ones live as fleas in my cabin. Some, impossibly large, move slowly along the distant horizon.

I had expected the vendors by then. I need my supplies.

They are punctual men. They do not miss their appointments without cause. I considered that I might have miscounted the days. Time does not divide cleanly without sleep.

Still, the smokehouse required attention.

The applewood had taken well to the coals. The air inside was thick and sweet, settling low and clinging to the walls and hooks. I noted the color first. A deeper tone than usual. Something nearer to lacquer.

There was a large slab cut hanging apart from the others.

I had no memory of preparing it.

The proportions were wrong. Too long in the limb. The joints set at angles that suggested careful but unfamiliar work. I stepped closer to inspect it and rotated it as it hung from a meat hook.

The surface had taken the smoke well. The skin had tightened and glossed. There was a familiarity to it that I could not at first account for.

It had leather-gloved human hands.

I considered the vendors then and understood.

They had arrived as expected. It was I who had failed to meet them properly.

I stood for some time without remark. The work had been done cleanly, with care. There was no sign of struggle. The inventory, though unexpected, was in good condition and will be added to the other varieties.

The smoke was rich that day.

It carried memory well.