Love In The Time Of The First World War

My first attempt at writing of love. The year is 1917, and silent movies were accompanied by live musicians, in this case a pianist.

Soon houses thinned into farmland and wilderness. Doug turned around, desiring the company and the light the town provided. How long he walked he did not know, not conscious of where he was going but merely trying to stay on whatever road seemed most well-travelled. Here and there were people headed towards their destinations, but Doug did not know what they were. Perhaps they were on their way to visit family and friends, on their way to houses that provided comfort and camaraderie to those who knew the owners.

For the first time in recent memory, Doug felt alone. Whatever the downsides of a lumber camp, there existed within it a certain comradeship. Interdependence required as much. And before that, even though alone, there were other words more apt to describe what he had been feeling. Fear, frustration, despair, but not a longing for human companionship. Perhaps his time in the woods had achieved the desired aim—he was thinking and feeling normal human thoughts and emotions again. Even the events of the last few months had not been able to prevent the healing that had taken place. Whatever might be wrong with the outside world, it did not have to leave its mark on his soul. He was beginning to feel whole again, and feeling whole, he realized that man was not meant to spend all his time alone.

Music drifted into his mind that seemed to accompany his thoughts. Elegant, beautiful music that stirred in him subtle and wonderful emotions. Anonymous longings sprang up in him like long-dormant flora, feelings universal and timeless. Another soul was touching his, telling him of deep mysteries beyond the understanding of man.

Music. It was a language that spoke of things over which words had no power.

Chopin! Tears came to his eyes and he did not know why. It was beauty, beautiful music beautifully played.

He did not realize it but he began to walk towards the source of the music. It was only a piano, but each note reverberated in him. It was another thing entirely than the music he had been used to of late, a fiddle played by oversized hands accompanied by a concertina and doggerel verses.

And just as suddenly the music changed. It was as if at once a chase began, and if to accompany it came a hunting song or a madcap dance. Looking up to the source of the sound he saw a rather large building and upon it read the sign for a moving picture show. He had come upon a theater, albeit a very humble one. A woman sat at a window, distractedly. The show had apparently already started, but Doug was able to get her attention and purchase a ticket. He entered into a small dark room with perhaps no more than fifty chairs arranged in front of a silver screen no more than ten feet across. And upon it played some drama concocted by one of the major studios. But while in other circumstances he might have been interested in the movie, it was the piano that called to him. It was too dark to see the people inside the theater as more than shadows, but he could see the movement of the pianist. It appeared to him a ballet dance, so fluid and lovely was the body as it swayed to the notes. She was positioned to the right of the screen, facing it so that she could respond musically to what was being shown. Every act and emotion upon the screen was played out more convincingly in the movements she made, more so in the music itself.

Doug could not even recall the movie he was watching, only that it was the most moving he had ever seen. Not the story itself nor the actors but the accompaniment. It lifted everything, from the simplest movement to the look of longing on the starlet’s face. Music infused the story, making it sublime.

Sometimes as the light on the screen was brightest, he could make out her fingers touching down gracefully upon the keys and it appeared to him in his enchantment they moved like tiny faeries in an intricate dance.

He did not see her face and yet he was convinced he loved her. Her grace and gentle soul, the playfulness that let drop hints of her depths like ripples on a pond. He was content to sit in the dark, alone with the music she played.

It was over far too soon. The film ended and the lights came on and-lo and behold! She was beautiful. Beautiful as the music she played, lovelier far than the starlet that had been on the screen. Long brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, with here and there a strand escaping like non-conformists. Her entire person seemed to radiate grace, as though you could not feel uncomfortable in her presence.

And yet Doug felt extremely uncomfortable at the moment. He wished to approach her, make her aware of his existence, and yet knew no way of doing so. He was a stranger in a small community and knew such forwardness would be quite unacceptable. He knew of nothing he could do to catch her eye. Already she was surrounded by others from the audience. And yet Doug could not help noticing there was no one who seemed to be either suitor or husband.

She was young, younger than Doug by several years, but seemed in possession of a maturity beyond her age. His eyes slid from her face as she happened to glance in his direction and in that moment he noticed no ring on those fingers that had danced so eloquently on the ivory keys.

She left amid a group of people, family he couldn’t help thinking, judging by a similar look among a few of them. Doug too exited into the darkness, alone but with thoughts of another, one whose name he did not even know. And all the events of the last few months receded in his memory, and all the concerns of the last few years slipped away. He had sought to flee what had been haunting him, the inescapable truths of a world too large for him, and at last he knew what he had been seeking.

Love was the answer. Love was the cure for all the sickness and ugliness in the world. The revelation came not as a thought but as an emotional welling up within him, like the passionate passages of a nocturne.

First Words Of A New Novel

The year is 1917 and the first World War is raging. Meanwhile, our protagonist has seen too much and prefers escaping to Northern Ontario than serving in the military. Here then is the beginning of the sequel to Seven Stones, tentatively titled Shell Shock:

      Steam rose from the backs of four horses as they struggled to pull a heavily loaded sled up a snow-covered hill. On either side of them, as far as the eye could see, trees too small for harvest were left standing amid large gaps where giant pines once stood. Behind the horses was a sled filled with the timber of once mighty trees, piled so high that even sitting at the lower end of the hill it stood taller than the magnificent draft animals.

     One would have thought their task impossible, but the horses worked in unison with what the loggers standing nearby recognized as pride. Both man and beast tested their limits in this wilderness, and those that were not broken by their labor were changed by it nevertheless.

     Within the muscles of the straining horses surged the very essence of life, the urge to test itself against whatever the outside world demanded of it. They were horses at the nexus of youth and experience at their work. And they pushed towards the summit without any conception of failure, nostrils flaring to release steamy breath into the cold morning air. An occasional whinny came forth like a grunt of affirmation as they pulled.

     A man stood atop the pile of logs, holding the reigns. He shouted encouragement, but the horses needed no external motivator: their task was clear. And so they lurched, gaining inch by inch, until the first two horses stood upon the crest, and then the others. A final effort pulled the sled over the hump.

     But there was no rest to be had upon the top, no slow transition to a gentler labor. No sooner did the sled reach the apex than the very gravity that had held the sled back now moved it towards them. Slowly at first, so slowly that it gave the horses an instant of relief, a brief sense of triumph. But quickly the horses found the situation had changed. Suddenly their burden had become a pursuer, like some predator out of their primordial past. Now they needed not to pull but to flee. And because they were harnessed together, they could not afford to give in to the urge to panic.

     Behind them a thick rope was connected to the back of the sled, attached to a strange device that contained a series of pulleys on the other side of which was a group of men who sought to slow the sled’s descent. The driver pulled back on the reigns in order to remind them that he was in charge. It was his task to keep the horses from giving in to their instinct to panic, the powerful compulsions that had helped their bloodlines survive for untold generations. His was the hand that would keep them functioning as a unit.

Their pride and discipline held, although nervousness could be seen in their wide-open eyes and the involuntary tics that made their ears twitch and their tails tuck. Such discipline was more of an effort to them than the upward pull, more against their nature.

     Large hooves found solid footing on the path that had been well prepared for them by those whose job it was to tend the ice road. Hot sand had been shoveled upon the freshly fallen snow. Behind them it was the men’s turn to pull, and they applied themselves with all the pride and animal intensity the horses had shown, intent on keeping the sled under control.

     The horses were perhaps a third of the way down the hill that was a not so gentle twenty foot decline when the first snap of the rope was heard. Strong men stared helplessly at the quickly unraveling cords as the horses seemed to sense the danger. The men released the rope faster, hoping the horses could make it to the bottom while it still held. But the fiber continued to uncoil until with a last quick snap it let go.

     No time seemed to pass between the snap and the look of terror that alit in the eyes of the horses. Panic arose in them but it was checked by their experience and awareness of the situation. Perhaps such knowledge resided not in thought but merely in muscle memory, still they were reacting to their predicament in a controlled manner. They needed to run, but they needed to run as a unit. They would have to keep pace with the load bearing down on them without straining unduly at their harnesses. They would have to use all the energy panic provided without surrendering to it.

     The driver tried to help them in this, sought to provide direction and control. But the initial snap of the rope had launched the sled forward, so that he was facing his own battle to remain his perch atop the logs.

     It was a single misplaced hoof that did them in, a slight break of the rhythm that kept them operating as a single entity. Even then they might have recovered had it not been for one of the horses in that back that was a little younger and newer to the job. Panic arose in him with an intensity that silenced any other concerns. Abandoning the thought of teamwork, he strained against the harness with all the life that was in him. The other horses still struggled to work in concert, but it was futile. There was no unity, no time to react as a team. Panic soon spread among them all.

     In the mindless jostle of animals attempting to flee, it was a short time before one of them went down. It almost managed to regain its footing but by that time he had brought the horse next to him to the ground as well. The two front horses continued pulling madly, each in a different direction. Before the rear horses could get their legs back under them, the sled was upon them, the thick steel runners slicing effortlessly through muscles that short moments ago had spent their efforts providing the sled’s momentum.

     The driver had already been thrown, or else had judged the situation hopeless and jumped from the impending disaster. Nobody would have blamed him—a jump from such a height would not have been made lightly. The sled did not get past the fallen horses before the reins tightened, tipping over the already top-heavy sled. Amid the noise of the crashing sled, of men hurling curses and logs breaking free from their restraints, the cries of the horses cut through the chaos. It reigned above the madness as the chief horror. All of their pride and vitality in the end had brought them nothing but this. Cursing and shaking his head as he walked down the path towards the horses, the foreman reached into his Mackinaw jacket and pulled out a pistol.