The Mockingbird Legends

A Postmodern Gothic Tale. Coming of Age Rural in a Dissolute Time.

Monet

BOOK THREE

Forty-one

At the streetside corner of their houseyard at Langdon Station under the great five-mile-arbor of the Queen’s Line he penetrated the docile slot of the green letterbox with an envelope containing his college application. Ranger school. Nothing had gone wrong with the exercise. He had not spent two years conditioning the box to his advances and no one had stoned him. His nose had not gushed blood. He did not find himself suddenly spent with the envelope halfway to its target, nor had the box wheeled and stormed away. Let’s see what comes of this seed, he said to no one.

He walked back over the lawn under the locusts and around the back where his small mother was happily deadheading roses. He paused to kiss her on the cheek and continued on to enter at the back door. He opened the cupboard and got a mug out and poured himself a strong black coffee from the pot there. His father was at the formica table reading the local paper. Nothing ever happens here until everything happens at once, the elder said.

-Like what, Lachlan said, sitting down across from him.

-Like I see there’s an application to widen the Queen’s line. ‘Will bring business to Langdon.’

-Says who?

-Says His Worship The Mayor Jones.

-What business?

-Indeed son. What business indeed.

-What about the arbor?

-What about it indeed, his father said, sipping his coffee and putting it back down and flipping the page. Your uncles will be singularly unimpressed. Homicidal, even.

-Yup.

-And then there’s this one, he said tapping the page. Seems ol’ Anthea Ambrose flew the cuckoo’s nest. Had you heard anything about that?

-Is that right, Lachlan said flatly. Shifting in his chair and taking a gulp of brew.

-Oh yes! Seems a maiden had left a second story window open, some unnamed daughter of a local planter. Ol’ Anth jumped. Landed on a compost heap.

-Landed on a compost heap?

-The same. Lit out, nothing more than a turned ankle they reckon.

-I had no idea they did composting.

-It’s in here so it must be true, his father said, looking over his black browline glasses and winking. Says here the brackener Gunderson set his sleuthhounds onto her but - and here’s the part that’ll interest you son – one got ‘taken by a cat’ and the other one missing, likely still on its trail.

-I hadn’t hea… ‘taken by a cat’?

-Says so. Says they trailed her all morning and into the afternoon to the edge of the hollow. Come upon one of the hounds disemboweled by ‘what is believed to have been a mountain lion.’ The other hound nowhere to be found.

-Can I see that dad, Lachlan said leaning forward.

-Be my guest. I gotta go down to my orifice and get at some work. Rising now, handing him the paper. Lachlan laid it open on the table in front of himself and studied it. See you at supper son? I’ve made Yorkshire pudding… son?

-Oh, yeah. Sure dad, sounds great. He read the account for himself but it contained little beyond what his father had already told him. Just the usual filler that was not the news but rather just an account of divers peoples’ feelings regarding the news. The standard list of emotions apt to foment of chaos. He sat back and looked at the opposite wall, sipped some coffee and stared awhile unfocused at the print of Monet’s Fruit Trees In Bloom there behind where his father had been sitting. A scene not at all unlike the one that greeted the eye looking out the kitchen window on Blossom Sunday. He looked back down at the paper and turned the page. Another piece caught his eye.

Mayor Recognizes Achievement of Young Entrepreneur

His Worship The Mayor Jones brought to the attention of The Langdon County Gazette the recent entrepreneurial achievements of Langdon’s own Richard Ambrose, son of Scranton and Anthea, co-owners of the Langdon Hardware store. The latter currently missing from Philbert’s Home for the Infirm. The just nineteen-year-old Richard’s invention - The Ambrose Battery Boss - has been a boon to mechanics everywhere and a hot seller on the North American automotive aftermarket.

Richard has used the funds from his invention to launch a land development corporation. While still in its nascent stages, the plan of the new corporation is to build tasteful retirement communities surrounding the town of Langdon.

In an interview with The Gazette the junior Ambrose said the developments will not only offer an avenue of financial relief to struggling farmers, they will bring capital into the community. That this will not only be of benefit on its own obvious merits, but when placed in the context of the plans to widen the Queen’s Line will almost certainly usher in a new era of growth and prosperity for the town and the region beyond.

Mayor Jones commented: “Young mister Ambrose, like his father and mother before him, is a great asset to our community and we are proud to call him our own.”

Richard Ambrose asks that anyone who may have any information pertaining to the whereabouts of his missing mother contact either Mayor Jones or Police Constable Gunderson.

Lachlan got up from the table and turned to the counter and topped up his coffee. He stared out the kitchen window over the sink with its garburator that he visualized as a giant antlion waiting there, keen on his fingers. He looked off with a glazed lassitude to the east in the direction of Lili Markovic’s. Past the flowering dogwood and into the peaches beyond. Into his peripheral vision just inside the leading row of of the trees came a small grey and red Ford tractor towing a large cylinder-on-wheels, like a flat-ended propane tank with what seemed like a outsized fan on the trailing end, blasting a diffuse white cloud of toxins up into the growth and mostly into the general atmosphere. The driver was clad like Neil Armstrong on a moon-run, replete with helmet and breather attached by a hose to an oxygen tank.

Christ… He slammed the kitchen window shut and ran through the house, bedrooms to the north, the dining room and living room and verandah to the south, closing all the east-facing windows. He looked frantically a moment for the mother who had grown up here and lived most of her life here and would be prematurely dead of cancer four years hence to warn her to come in out of danger and was relieved to see she was now working on the west side of the house. He made his way back to the kitchen, letting out a deep exhalation and shaking his head. The upstairs houseline began to ring. He picked up the receiver. Hello?

-Hello, is that Lachlan?

-Present.

-How is your day going so far?

-Good.

-Excellent to hear.

-This wouldn’t be Mister Growth and Prosperity would it?

-Uh no, it’s uh… it’s Richard Ambrose.

-You don’t sound sure.

-Ha-ha. I, uh… it’s uh… why I’m calling today Lachlan is, uh…

-Go ahead.

-Sorry, I’m just a bit addled right now, but wha…

-I mean go ahead, ask her out.

-Oh, uh… ha! It’s not about that this time. Silence on the line, encroaching on the grotesque.

-I was sorry to hear about Anthea, Richard. Have they found her yet?

-No… no. Not yet, no. It seems the hounds were on her but they… well they got sidetracked. Ran into some bad luck.

-Yeah, I was just now reading about that. Can you find another houndsman?

-Well, we tried. But seems other than Constable Gunderson there’s no one but Ol’ Bulldyke runs hounds anymore. His being coonhounds strictly, won’t scent a man. Or even a woman.

-And Gunderson’s not running hounds for the moment.

-Not under the circumstances.

-You get a chopper on it?

-Canopy’s too thick. I mean yes, but we felt we couldn’t see enough. It was like looking down on green popcorn, all those bloody trees.

-Bloody trees.

-Listen, that’s why I’m calling. I wonder, uh, listen I know I uh… uh… His voice caught. Lachlan sat in silence listening to the sniffling of his nemesis. Hgghhh, ahuhh… excuse me. Please excuse me, Lachlan. What I was going to say is I wonder if… hppfffff…

-I’m here, Richard.

-Yeah… yeah, thanks. I was wondering, can you help me?

-Help you?

-I wonder if you or anyone you know could maybe, I mean I’m no good at these things and your family of course has a reputation…

-A reputation.

-You know, a reputation for tracking and whatnot and I wondered if you would be willing to go up to where the dogs, uh… where the dogs left-off and see if you can track my mother down.

-Track your mother down. Where the dogs failed.

-I’m willing to pay…