Lascoe lumbered through the woods. It was afternoon, and Lascoe wanted to be out before dark. Dark in the forest full of threat or fear or belief in malevolent intelligence unseen. And there were stories, which true or false, did not build a sense of security. Predators of course with glowing eyes. Who would want to risk being ripped apart in the darkness. Disembodied by inhuman creature. The thought of it dehumanizing. Still one could only lumber apace and for Lascoe there was no pace but pace of lumber.

He had not always been thus.

Lascoe did not want to think of the past.

Not in the forest.

Not in the afternoon.

Not in as much hurry as Lascoe could be in.

What had happened had happened and would not somehow unhappen.

This was not a fatal embrace of some notion of fate so much as a fatal embrace of some notion of fact.

Lascoe must lumber as lumber must.

That was much of it.

Lascoe was not ready to concede that that was all of it, the all of it being too large for the moment’s consideration.

Well he knew the language of sin as well he knew the language of remorse. Sometimes he thought he knew no other language.

Then Lascoe would be visited with fear.

Fear in the head.

The how and why of illness, real and imagined.

Sorrow to come, and, eventually, after, perhaps, considerable decline, death to follow.

What hope fantastic might confront that in a darkening wood, a dim wilderness.

God, perhaps.

Was Lascoe not—had he not been taught—he was under the constant surveillance of God?

Probably that was nonsense.

Perhaps some nonsense of use.

Lascoe was a hypocrite, Lascoe knew, as all men are.

Why not some painted cloth of hypocrisy as a cosmic defense or at least the illusion of cosmic defense if possible even in the certain fear it was not?

It would not make the woods lighter or darkness less certain to fall.

No place to replace place.

No history to replace history.

When things had become inevitable, Lascoe did not know. Perhaps it was always this way. Perhaps he had not noticed. Now he could not not notice.

As a failure among fortunes.

His Father’s failure visited upon him.

His own upon himself.

A kind of double failure or deeper failure, as though effort was doubly applied to increase the effect—the texture of failure.

If that was true.

If anything were.

Else, nothing to uphold but a mythology.

And if nothing but, mythology the all of it.

And description or definition or distinction did not matter.

Much of life lived in cold and dark.

Inevitable in a cold and dark land.

Consequent necessity.

And the acceptance of the necessary.

As the necessary could not be refused.

Of necessity Lascoe was here and of necessity Lascoe stayed here but Lascoe could not articulate or explain what that necessity consisted of.

Perhaps a mental trap.

Perhaps a web of obligation.

Perhaps a desire to be empty without the knowledge of how to be so.

Or the skill.

He knew he had a certain time to consume, fixed or random, outside his control.

Beyond his determination.

Or effective use.

As things grew darker, Lascoe watched the sky.

Spent a lot of time looking at the sky.

Once he had wanted a house in the sun, but that desire had died in him or somehow faded away.

As once he had owned a weapon of great quality.

Sold long since.

It had seemed necessary to own it and later equally necessary to sell it.

That perhaps the way of things.

Or certain types of possessions.

Possession purchased, perhaps, in alarm and sold in tranquility.

Neither alarm nor tranquility a lasting or permanent state.

Alarm came and went.

Sometimes necessary, as or more likely, manufactured to provide a motive or move a populace.

Lascoe did not like to think of himself as a member of the populace, but he knew he was.

Though he never heard mention of the populace in times of tranquility.

A tranquil populace needed no disturbance, apparently, while in times of alarm, disturbance followed disturbance.

Loss upon loss.

Or threat upon threat.

Sometimes hard to tell which threat was worth considering.

Bitterness to it.

Bitterness in it.

A root of disappointment though was a false threat truly disappointing.

Maybe any failure of expectation was.

With attendant bitterness.

Bitterness attended much and likely commanded more.

Lascoe was not alarmed.

Angry, perhaps, about the bitterness he had experienced as anyone did, but not alarmed.

Alarm implied panic.

A surprised panic, alarm.

Lascoe had trained himself not to panic.

Trained himself in the absence of formal training or trainer.

Made do in absence.

And what was that but life?

Or a prominent feature of life.

Clearly preferable to alarm.

To panic.

To unnecessary upset.

Anger might be necessary as bitterness might be inevitable as it was, it seemed, a consequence.

Consequential.

Panic consequential, in some cases, but not necessary.

Never necessary.

Consequent in the absence of necessity.

A kind of block on what was needed.

What the situation demanded.

A correct, or at least plausible, course of action.

When action was required, inaction nothing but failure.

Failure would yield nothing.

Or fear.

Or rage.

Rage fueled by many things, including rage itself.

Kind of self creation.

A kind of self-sustaining state.

Why?

Lascoe did not know why. Usually why did not occur to him. Why would or should it?

Blinded by rage.

Or fired by it to see clearly.

Evening falling.

Gray evening.

Gray evening every gray day.

In this place.

Maybe in other.

Or every.

Gray enough to evoke or produce rage.

Why not towards dismal dark?

Why not how to be miserable?

As though it might be learned.

Rather than experienced.

As rage.

As dark.

As misery.

A kind of failure.

Though there were other kinds. Vast varieties.

Failure of illusion.

Failure of regret.

Lascoe was not without regret, and illusion, he was sure, but who was not?

Who could not be?

The problem was to ignore failure and regret.

Because there was no other cure.

Or none occurred to him.

Tiresome, really, to even contemplate failure and regret.

As though their contemplation brought them on, or, at least, brought them forward.

To the fore.

As Lascoe moved forward to move out of the wood.

As though motion were a solution.

As though there were any solution.

More than temporary.

More than immediate.

Yet one could not live in immediacy.

Not always.

Only occasionally.

And then more by accident than plan.

Little point in planning.

Lascoe’s life a kind of lumbering repetition.

Without plan.

Wrong, he knew.

Wrong and wrong enough.

It was not as though there were some boat out of here.

Wanted a sky with something other than darkness falling.

Rain even.

Even rain in the night.

A rainy season.

Though this was not a place like that.

This was not a place for that.

Connected surely to the place but feeling connected maybe to the wrong place.

Each day a reminder of something.

Each day a reminder of the day it was.

In the place it was.

Freight yards of the past.

Soot black brick.

Property abandoned as other property moved.

As property was and had since time ancient.

Something almost in the air here.

Always lurked or hovered.

Always, it was said.

Though what always affirmed spoken claim of always in what venue?

Ask somebody, maybe.

A friend?

Did not know if he any longer had friends, or, if he did, where those friends might be.

Associates, perhaps.

Though he was long dormant in the long-dormant association.

Association had its function.

Question of protection.

Some safety.

In organized, collective activity.

That no longer necessary?

Or that simply abandoned.

Abandoned to the anxiety in the air.

That anxiety seemed all the air.

Was he making his progress.

Was he going backwards.

Maybe going in circles—lumbering that way—one tramp after the next.

Though the circle a practice in some places.

Practice presumably practiced for a reason.

For a method if not a result.

Or a respite.

Perhaps a respite, not a result.

Respite in place of result.

As if he were to meditate on such things or embrace the totems of these kinds of systems.

Image or the garment for example.

Magic image.

Or image miraculous miraculously placed.

To be meditated upon.

As a mystery.

But why meditate upon a mystery when a mystery could not be solved.

By meditation.

Or anything else.

Yet it was demanded.

In that system.

Lascoe outside system.

Lascoe thought.

Though Lascoe familiar with demand.

Demand constant.

And varied.

Or repeated.

More repeated than varied.

Circular almost.

Though that likely true for everyone.

That in the nature of demand.

System or no.

Though perhaps to be or could be described systematically.

As a method.

An example hardly, barely, exemplary.

Examples for what?

Illustrations of concepts useless.

What concept could be of use?

What illustration?

Unless the picture clarified something or was beautiful in its own right, why have a picture at all.

Grimly utilitarian, perhaps.

Perhaps a grimly utilitarian world.

Where things were of use or not.

He was not of use.

Not much.

Enough to survive.

Not enough to thrive.

As commonly understood.

To store up treasure against the world.

Treasure a protection.

The protection.

Against many kinds of misfortune.

Discomfort.

Fear.

Yet nothing was sure.

Even treasure was not sure.

A hedge.

An up the odds.

Not a guarantee.

Everyone wanted a guarantee.

He had not even the hedge.

As though hedge were against desperate love enough.

Desperate love, the feeling, more or less, Lascoe remembered, even as the details largely evaded him.

No detail really to be retained.

No value really in the retention.

Only a kind of grating memory.

Was he not—had he not been—grated enough.

By life. By desperate love. By time.

And no or barely effectual hedge against any of them.

Against all of them.

This was where he found himself—against all that.

As though against did anything.

Then again, was for any different?

Than against. Finally?

Finally finally the problem.

Or the solution.

Or both.

And no desperate love there or desperate love overboard by then.

And why the nautical metaphor in this place so heavy with woods and so far from any sea?

Lakes, of course.

And rivers aplenty.

In the morning, he had seen a rope. The rope hung from a tree near his house. Once of some use.

Abandoned apparently now.

Or not worth recovering.

Frayed and gray.

No doubt weakened.

Reflection of former application.

Former appliance.

As everything was abandoned eventually.

Replaced.

If not by newer version of itself, by something else.

Replacement the process, not the object or thing.

Though the object or thing replaced by similar object or thing or by different object or thing.

Still, that rope had held something.

He did not know what.

Strange and familiar.

Rope in a tree.

Of course.

As though some preexisting combination.

Or concept.

Combination a concept.

Visual, too.

Strong visual.

Though the rope seemed a danger, how dangerous was a rope really?

A danger easily replicated.

Created.

Yet did its presence demand something.

Some action.

Or behavior.

Some obligation.

Duty.

Ethical demand.

For action.

And how to him.

He had not placed the rope.

It was not his rope.

Not his tree.

Not his woods.

So what duty belonged to him if none of the rest of it did.

He had not placed the rope.

Had not staged it.

If it was staged.

And staged to what end?

Staged it was a message.

Abandoned it was of no use, but of former use.

Of whatever use before use abandoned sanctioned abandon.

Who could say?

Not he.

No one else about.

Should he wait for some former ethicist come round?

Lot of formers in the area.

No one seemed anything current now.

Perhaps it was the age.

Perhaps it was his age.

His failure of currency.

His impending departure.

From the area.

The area former.

Which had been.

Which once was.

He could not really say.

There had been no transformation.

Not that he had joined.

Or witnessed.

And while many commonly expressed individual transformation, he had experienced none.

Not that he recalled.

Maybe something coming.

Sense, always, that maybe something was coming.

Always the future.

Lurking.

Imagined.

Present in its absence.

As things could be.

Or things were.

Future too close or too far off.

Maybe both.

Either way the same.

Fortunes made in this wood.

Fortunes all around.

Resource harvested.

Properly or improperly.

Wood itself, furs, minerals below.

Stripped til played out or apparently played out often as not.

Now airspace above.

The wind.

Air itself potentially monetized.

Strip off woods for agriculture or industry.

Shop the gravel.

By the shovel.

By the yard,

By the truck.

Somebody’d take it all.

Lascoe would get no piece of it.

That had bothered him.

It bothered him no longer.

Fortune now of little use.

A failed imagination, perhaps, but his own.

More likely a kind of weariness.

Weary, wasted contempt.

Or loss of interest.

No concern for a concern. Not really.

Not any longer.

Annals of commerce.

He could neither escape or ignore them.

They were forced upon him.

To no end.

Like the lights distant.

He could see the lights, and, having seen the lights, he could not unsee the lights.

Or see in the light.

In the darkness, not so well.

Not now.

Darkness darker than it had been long ago.

True for him he thought true for everyone.

With age.

Along with everything else with age.

It was rule.

Not of his making.

Of life.

Of age.

Or time.

Got the rule whether he knew the rule or not.

Got the time whether he wanted the time or not.

Although it seemed he did.

Seemed he had no reason not to.

Which was determinative.

Or enough.

Or enough was determinative.

He tried to remember which.

Or who had said which.

Or when.

When he had talked to anyone.

It had been days.

It had not—had it—been weeks.

Department of Tomorrow and Department of Yesterday, someone had said.

A kind of analogy.

As there were no such things.

Linked to some larger point.

An argument about something.

How to live or what to do.

Some authority speaking authoritatively.

To gain.

Position. Power. Wealth.

Something.

As he circled back to fortune and the fortune he had not got.

Authority as posture.

Pretence to leadership.

Something said about a leadership position.

Or role.

Role probably more accurate.

Something someone played.

As a part.

A part well known.

And easily recognizable.

For all to see.

And acknowledge.

Mouth the line.

Knowingly.

Knowingly mouth the line correct as that might take one out of the woods.

And into?

Where was it he wanted to go?

He had no cure to look for.

He needed no cure.

Now.

Yet.

The cure he needed, if he needed a cure, did not exist, so there was no cure.

Truce, maybe.

Maybe, interruption.

A change.

He told himself.

People told themselves.

Or others.

In any case, he had heard it somewhere.

Heard and remembered.

Repeated to himself.

Would not let it go.

Or it him.

Dogged by it.

As he doggedly repeated it.

To himself.

Who else.

He knew.

No one else.

No one at all.

Dogged always by something.

As he took his dogged steps.

Through the woods.

Darkening.

As dark fell.

And never rose.

Why was that?

More of a fading, was it not?

Never called so.

Dark a stumble.

Stumble may be fall.

Fall to the ground.

Could not fall up.

Only down. To the ground.

As the dead.

To and enter.

Beneath.

Dead by night.

In the woods.

Dead beneath the moon.

Under the sun seemed less likely.

Or high afternoon. Unlikely.

But why?

Why not likely as all or any.

Certain for all and any.

Certain for him.

Dark or light.

Wood or town.

Slower now than years ago.

Motion slowed.

Failure to progress.

Quickly.

How had he been fitted to this?

His role, maybe.

Or function.

Place.

Yet none of it fit.

He fitted it, he supposed, of necessity.

This his final place?

Last place?

Where he would be placed—

And no one to even rob the grave.

Rob the dead.

A kind of tribute.

Or at least recognition.

Some weight certain to it.

Though it would not matter.

And so, what sop against what?

Some other sop?

Fear.

Anxiety.

Frustration.

Despair.

Without rational use.

Of no use.

Of what use was something without use?

To him?

To anyone.

Else.

Without progress or conclusion.

Or before conclusion as everything not conclusion was before conclusion.

Everything? Seemed overly broad.

He did not want to puzzle it out.

His not a quest for solution.

He was not looking for a cure.

If he wanted to know something, he could look in a book.

A book with answers.

As a book should be about answers.

Or a book should be about a book.

Not some drone of lost confidence.

Or the embrace of machine.

Embrace of machine a rejection.

Rejection of human life.

Merge with myth of some other thing, some better thing or process.

To reject the present.

Or a future like the present.

To avoid something.

To assert something.

Some fantasy of control.

Of agency dominant.

Power.

Power after all or power above all or power under all.

All power.

Or desire for it.

Or fantasy of it.

Ridiculous in its vulgarity.

Ridiculous in its ridiculous nature.

Maybe the desire to make something of nothing or to make a big thing of a little thing.

Some artifice to importance.

Artifice desired.

As one desired a thing.

Or a product.

While he walked in the dark.

Pursuing a destination.

Ever, it seemed, on foot.

What alternative?

Hardly on the wing.

Or transport magic.

Though that always promised.

For the future bright.

Which lingered always future-ward.

Always.

Beyond the now.

What was not?

Everything?

Nothing?

Hard to determine which.

If which meant anything.

He could not answer either or both.

That too facile.

Not by the like of him.

All of it slipping from him like a half-remembered theater piece or book.

Like an ancient rumor or whisper.

Even the story of Old Dutch now like a dream half-remembered.

Demand of thought.

Of clarity.

Always a demand.

Demand always.

Nothing in this.

No revelation.

No bolt.

Lightning only to be feared as a child feared it.

Weather coming up.

In the dark.

Lurk.

Lurk or linger.

Seemed contradictory to do both.

As though something might bloom in the darkness.

Why would he think that?

Nag of change.

Or something transformed.

Something meaning nothing.

False embrace of fabled shift.

Uncontrolled.

And instead?

Old hatreds.

Or despair.

Early despair or past despair.

What was the difference.

Why must the thought occur.

Must of thought.

Born, maybe, of some dead malice.

Again.

What did that word—again—mean.

Some information repeated.

Information—term itself broadened.

Not what he wanted.

Opposite.

So was it narrowing? The name for that?

Tiresome.

Weary to sleep.

Failure of thing or system.

System of belief.

Like some thing dragged with a broken song in it.

Would not stop singing.

Would not sing properly.

Quality of broke.

Or lost.

Like a half-remembered failed game of love.

Game?

Love?

Then maybe shame-regret come round.

Kind of progression.

With, he supposed, the end.

And?

Bone bleached portico dead as ancient ruin.

All changing or changed until done.

Finished.

He got back to his empty house.

Greg Mulcahy is the author of Out of Work, Constellation, Carbine, and O’Hearn.