And isn’t this the place—the town—you’d heard about? Aren’t these the trees, the hills of pounded, dirty grass? Those people a few hundred yards away, aren’t they townspeople? This must be a town, because those are certainly townspeople, exhausted, thin, living off the scraps the rest of us, the bystanders, outsiders, have tossed to them.
And is it a town if you can’t leave? If you can enter, yes, it’s a town. But what if you didn’t know you had entered it? What if, one day, you are walking or riding your bike or driving west from some of other town, or southeast of Penn’s Branch, which isn’t a town, but a favorite camping place for city folk who need to spend a weekend under the stars awash in the overwhelming hiss of cicadas, and unbeknownst to you, you cross into this place and notice these people, these castaways from other towns, crouching in the shadows of their makeshift huts? What then? Do you stop, do you talk to them? Do you ask them, what is this place? This is in the middle of farm country, there’s not a slum within a hundred miles. What would so many people be doing here, strewn about in such an unkempt condition? No camping gear, no electricity or running water?
Or is that not true,? If there is a stream nearby, could it be said then that, yes, they do in fact have access to running water? And from the remains of the belongings that they brought there, if they happened to fashion blankets, walls, roofs, buckets, knives and spears, could it be said they were without gear to aid their survival?
When you leave your car, will you be afraid? Will you carry a map with you, but also a serrated hunting knife sheaved in your belt? Will they stare at you? Will they gather into groups of five or seven or three and discuss the fact of your presence among themselves? Or will they even care, will they even register your approach with anything more than weary disinterest?
Now that you’re standing among them, women, men and children, what will you ask them? Will you ask, What is this place? Will you turn to an older woman, squinting as if she’d just lost her glasses, and ask, Where do you hail from? Or to all of them, the gaunt, the barelegged and sunburned, will you ask, How long has this place been around, how long have you been here?
It’s a town, they’ll say, it’s been here longer than anyone, and if you hadn’t arrived here, driving west on a road you had spied on the map, a shortcut between interstates, you would have said to them, That’s no answer at all. But who’s to say what constitutes a town? Somewhere between the intimacy of villages and the expansiveness of cities, a town has always occupied a tenuous lift in the advance of civilizations upon the wilderness. Who’s to say when a village becomes a town, or a town a city? Who’s to say if towns exist at all?
It’s a town, they will tell you, and we came our own way, one or two or four at a time. When they explain who they are and where you are, will you look around you? Will you watch their faces and then follow their line of sight? And if you do, what will you see? Will you see others just like them, veritable townspeople, standing alone or striding along some undefined perimeter? Will you ask the old woman and the burned man with the mustache and bony arms, What are they doing, those people over there? Oh, they’re watching for any newcomers, they’ll say, then with hard irony, Like you. To which the mustache man will add: some may be trying to work up the nerve to take a step out and scorch themselves.
And what will that mean? To scorch themselves? What will that man, stroking his mustache, a whip of Johnson grass dangling between his teeth, have just told you? That they plan to light themselves on fire? That these burns, abrasions, scorch marks on the arms, cheeks, backs, kneecaps, torsos of the townspeople around you were self-inflicted? And won’t it seem that, before the man had mentioned this, you hadn’t noticed them? The wounds in various stages of healing covering their bodies? The puckers of old scars? The glistening char of fresh ones? And when you ask them why, won’t they laugh? One or two or at least a dozen who squat or sit within earshot? Won’t they laugh in the silent manner of the initiated as they bear down on the amazing obtuseness of the innocent?
See the ground? they’ll ask. Notice how tramped down it is? Now look yonder, notice the difference? When you follow the point of their finger, across the trampled ground, what will you see? Will you see grass growing in spare sprigs here and there the farther the ground goes, until, at a distance, it begins to push up again and even farther along, flourish? Will you notice the ditches running along the road doing the same? Beaten earth gradually turning green and busy with grass the further the road stretches back, into the distance where you came from? And will you understand then? Will their point be clear?
Will you hear them tell you what it means to be in a town, or in this place at least? Where stepping beyond certain limits means death? A flash, quicker than touch, and from where you stand, what it will look like: a whole person has just been skeletonized by a small glint of something, though they were walking away with their back to you just seconds ago?
Will they tell you in as much detail as they can offer, drawing on their limited abilities of description, that anyone who steps beyond a certain point will fall painlessly into a puddle of viscera and wet ash? Will you believe them? Or better put: what would it be worth to doubt them? Will you hear the old woman tell you then how some people, out of claustrophobia or boredom, who have been here for years, rush past the town limits screaming to their own quick end? Watching those people on the edge, then, those silhouettes against the late sun, will it make you nervous? Will you want to call out to them?
Down the road, is that a sound, a car wavering out of a heat cloud? Notice the townspeople who come running? Some standing along the road’s edge waving the car on, others jumping and shrieking “No”, others squatting in groups of three or four with money thrown into quick piles on the ground? What’s that, you’ll ask. Won't the mustache man’s mustache disappear beneath cupped fingers, then, as he blows on a slim length of grass? Since you've been here long enough to know how a town holds its councils, won’t he tell you what you can already guess? Won’t he say, This is how some choose to pass their time. Betting who will enter and who will stop cold and turn around?
At that, won't you remember your own approach, hours ago, heading west from where you came? Won't you, watching them now, blame yourself? Your thoughtless fiddling with the car stereo? Your missing the cues entirely, those people waving you on, those others yelling no? Into the town you drove, and no sooner had you parked, the celebration died down?
The car stops. It turns around. It leaves as if it knew what it was driving towards. What will you feel then? Relief, disappointment, maybe even resentment? Will it be a heavy mixture of all three, existing naturally together for the first time?
And won't the people coming down from the road be less divided, won't they come off it all together in a crowd, spitting, patting their pant legs, talking without turning to each other? Some will have money in their pockets, others won’t, but will they walk back with confidence, just as the old woman without glasses will tell you, since tomorrow they’ll have a chance to earn it back? And when they run out of money to bet, what then? Will they bet their lives, a short walk beyond the town limits?
Won't a third person turn to you this time, a man with a limp and a chessboard under his arm, neither essential enough for you to remember him, and tell you? Won't he say something like, It'll be dark in an hour. And then, sure enough, won't the trees grow large
and spread like inkblots and in the time it takes to light and tinder the town fires, won't it cover the whole sky and the horizon and the earth? Indeed, it will be dark, and there will be coughs in the dark. And people will come walking out of the dark and others will leave to take their place, won't they? And occasionally won't there be the sputter and spark of someone catching a hand or kneecap on fire, having crossed too close to the town limits?
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