MSTed: Return of the Native, Chapter 2
Jess Nevins
(warning: the pain got to me...I did the best I could, but
was overwhelmed, I think)
2 - Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble
Mike: Sounds like my ex-girlfriend....
Along the road walked an old man.
Tom: (Python voice) It's......
He was white-headed as a mountain,
Crow: Did Hardy use some sort of random metaphor-maker that
just spat out words? White-headed as a *mountain*?
bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect.
Mike: Richard Harris?
He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass
buttons
bearing an anchor upon their face.
Tom: I've seen that guy - he panhandles down by the Dunkin'
Donuts.
In his hand was a silver-headed
walking stick, which he used as a veritable third leg,
Crow: Long-stick Silver?
perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches'
interval.
Mike: I thought he was gonna say something _else_ was dotting the
ground.
Tom: This _is_ Hardy, Mike.
One would have said that he had been,
Tom: A character, and therefore someone who should have been
introduced several pages back?
in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other.
Crow (sarcastic): Oh, would one?
Before him stretched
Mike: The endless pain of being trapped in a Hardy story?
the long, laborious
Tom: Tedium of Hardy's writing style?
road, dry, empty,
Crow: What is "Hardy's prose," Alex?
and white. It was quite open to the heath on each side,
and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line
on a head of black hair,
Mike: Is he saying that Egdon Heath is like a comb-over?
diminishing and bending away on the furthest horizon.
Tom: I never thought I'd long for the brevity and wit of a Ratliffe
story.
The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to
gaze over the tract that he had yet to traverse.
Crow: So he's a Basil Wolverton drawing?
At length he discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot,
Mike: It's the plot! Salvation is at hand!
which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going
the same way as that in which he himself was journeying.
It was the single atom of life that the scene contained,
and it only served to render the general loneliness
more evident. Its rate of advance was slow, and the old
man gained upon it sensibly.
Tom: This makes _Waiting For Godot_ look like a John Woo
movie.
When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van,
Crow: Remember, if the van's rocking, don't come knocking!
ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this being a
lurid red. The driver walked beside it; and, like his van,
he was completely red. One dye of that tincture covered
his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face,
and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with
the colour; it permeated him.
Mike: So what you're saying here is that he's red?
The old man knew the meaning of this.
Tom (old man voice): Damn Commies ruin everything!
The traveller with the cart was a reddleman--
Crow: So, nu, he's one of the Reddlemans - is that the Scarsdale
Reddlemans, or the Reddlemans of Palm Beach?
a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with
redding for their sheep.
Mike: Because, after all, if you don't paint your sheep red, lord
only knows what will happen to them!
Crow: One word, Mike: Australians.
He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex,
Tom: The English bourgeois doing what it's always done - feeding
on the poor.
filling at present in the rural world the place which,
during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world
of animals.
Crow: So he's saying the Reddleman is a Tenniel drawing?
He is a curious, interesting, and nearly
perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which
generally prevail.
Mike: Ah. A new usage of the word "interesting."
Tom: By which Hardy means, of course, "boring."
Crow (Leonard Nimoy voice): Yes. Which is to say, no.
The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his
fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. The reddleman
turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones.
Tom (reddleman voice) Bugger off.
He was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome,
Crow: Would in fact have struck John Merrick as being butt-ugly.
approached so near to handsome that nobody would have
Mike: Been surprised if he modeled.
contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its
natural colour. His eye, which glared so strangely
through his stain,
Tom: EW!
was in itself attractive--keen
as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist.
He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft
curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent.
His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed
by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners
now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting
suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn,
and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its
original colour by his trade. It showed to advantage the
good shape of his figure.
Crow: Hmmm......
Tom: I don't think we have to wonder much about which side of
the fence old Tom Hardy was playing on, do we?
Mike: Thank god this is text-only, so we don't have to worry about
any buffalo shots.
A certain well-to-do air about
the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree.
Mike: He must not have gone to college in the 90s, then.
The natural query of an observer would have been,
Why should such a promising being as this have hidden
his prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular occupation?
Tom: Oh, yeah, I was just gonna ask that very question.
Crow: Actually, I think the natural query of one of the Observers
would have been, "Why is his brain in his head and not in a pan?"
After replying to the old man's greeting he showed
Crow: His middle finger to him.
no inclination to continue in talk, although they still
walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed
to desire company.
Mike: IfyaknowwhatImean....
There were no sounds but that of the
booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them,
Tom sits bolt upright. "Tawny Kitaen? WHERE?"
Crow: Tawny *herbage*, Tom.
Tom slumps back into his chair. "Damn it."
the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the
footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van.
Crow: Hey, that sign that said "Last gas for 200 miles" wasn't
kidding.
They were small, hardy animals, of a breed between Galloway
and Exmoor, and were known as "heath-croppers" here.
Mike: Elsewhere, among the Welsh, they were known as "dinner."
Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally
Tom: Let fly a loogie.
left his companion's side, and, stepping behind the van,
looked into its interior through a small window. The look
was always anxious.
Crow (shaky voice): Gotta check my stash, man, gotta make sure
it's still there!
He would then return to the old man, who made another remark about the
state of the country
and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly
replied, and then again they would lapse into silence.
Mike: Nobody will be admitted to the book during the gripping
"non-conversation" chapter.
The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness;
Tom: Because they were both MIT graduates, and thus used to
being hated and ignored.
in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting,
Crow: Frequently fall on each other with bared teeth.
frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts
to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities,
Mike: People make do with their car horns.
such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination,
and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself.
Tom: It seems like the English have a different definition of sex
than we do.
Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting,
had it not been for
Crow: The old man's rank flatulence.
the reddleman's visits to his van.
Mike (shaky junkie voice): The bats, man, they're all over the road,
I gotta check my stash!
When he returned from his fifth time of looking in the old
man said,
Tom (old man voice): You got a serious monkey on your back,
sonny!
"You have something inside there besides your load?"
Crow audibly clears his throat.
Mike: Let's not go there, okay?
"Yes."
Mike: He asked me! He asked me!
"Somebody who wants looking after?"
Tom: What is "About friggin' time a subplot was introduced!",
Alex?
"Yes."
Crow: No! Uh...splunge!
Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior.
Mike: Somebody taped over the Simpsons!
The reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came
away again.
Tom (junkie voice): Oh, wow, Sunflower's making some hash
brownies, dude.
"You have a child there, my man?"
Crow (Peter Lorre voice): Can I give her some candy?
"No, sir, I have a woman."
Mike: So we won't need to sing that Todd Rundgren song to you,
is what you're saying?
"The deuce you have! Why did she cry out?"
Tom (junkie voice): Bad trip, man, she thought the bugs were all
over her....
"Oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling,
she's uneasy, and keeps dreaming."
Crow (singing): `cause all she has to do, is dream, dream dream
dream dream....
"A young woman?"
Mike (Peter Lorre voice): Heh, heh, heh - how young?
"Yes, a young woman."
Tom: What is "Someone whose touch Hardy never knew," Alex?
"That would have interested me forty years ago.
Crow: I don't like where this is going.
Perhaps she's your wife?"
Mike (lame comedian voice): Was it the smell of my burned supper
that gave it away - am I right, guys?
"My wife!" said the other bitterly. "She's above mating
with such as I.
Tom: Well, thank god for that, at least.
But there's no reason why I should tell you about that."
Crow: True. After all, why let the readers in on the plot?
"That's true. And there's no reason why you should not.
What harm can I do to you or to her?"
Mike (reddleman voice): Have you smelled your breath recently?
The reddleman looked in the old man's face.
Tom (reddleman voice): You really ought to have that thing lanced.
It looks infected.
"Well, sir," he said at last, "I knew her before today, though perhaps
it would have been better if I had not. But she's nothing to me, and I
am
nothing to her; and she wouldn't have been in my van if any better
carriage
had been there to take her."
Crow: I think I know Anne Rice got her writing style from.
"Where, may I ask?"
"At Anglebury."
Mike: Isn't that near Triangleville?
"I know the town well. What was she doing there?"
"Oh, not much--to gossip about.
Tom (reddleman voice): Bitch.
However, she's tired to death now,
and not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless.
She dropped off into a nap about an hour ago, and 'twill do her good."
Crow (reddleman voice): You've heard of beauty sleep? She needs
a beauty coma.
"A nice-looking girl, no doubt?"
Mike (Peter Lorre voice): But not too old, I hope? Heh, heh, heh...
"You would say so."
Tom (old man voice): Bitch!
The other traveller turned his eyes with interest
towards the van window, and, without withdrawing them,
said, "I presume I might look in upon her?"
Crow (old man voice): Wearing my *pant* sheepherder outfit?
"No," said the reddleman abruptly.
Mike (reddleman voice): Back off, man, she's private stock!
"It is getting too dark for you to see much of her;
Tom: Would it be too much to ask for just *one* sympathetic
character?
and, more than that, I have no right to allow you. Thank God she sleeps
so
well,
Crow (reddleman): Otherwise she'd wake up when I get the
peepshow going.
I hope she won't wake till she's home."
"Who is she? One of the neighbourhood?"
Mike: Nah - he follows Joe Jackson's advice.
Tom: You mean--?
Mike: Yeah - he doesn't bother with the local girls, you know the
rest.
"'Tis no matter who, excuse me."
Tom (reddleman): Bitch.
"It is not that girl of Blooms-End, who has been talked
about more or less lately? If so, I know her; and I can
guess what has happened."
Crow: Can't this guy take a hint?
"'Tis no matter....Now, sir, I am sorry to say that we
shall soon have to part company.
Mike, Tom & Crow: Liar! Liar!
My ponies are tired,
Tom: Is that what they say in England instead of "my dogs are
barking"?
and I have further to go,
Crow: Frost did that line better, I think.
and I am going to rest them under this bank for an hour."
Mike (old man): Well then, I'll rest with you! Now, that girl, is she
still, you know, untouched?
The elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman
turned
his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, "Good night." The old man
replied, and proceeded on his way as before.
Tom: I don't know how long Hardy can keep up this pace!
The reddleman watched his form
Crow (reddleman): He may have been nosy, but what a butt!
as it diminished to a speck on the road and became absorbed in the
thickening films of night.
Mike: Ingmar Bergman's corpus is there?
He then took some hay from a truss which was slung up under the van,
and, throwing a portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the
rest,
which he laid on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down,
leaning his back against the wheel.
Tom: Oh, *please*, Mr. Hardy, don't spare us *one* deathless
moment of your prose!
From the interior a low soft breathing came to his ear.
Mike, Tom & Crow do the Three Stooges snoring routine.
It appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the scene, as if
considering the next step that he should take.
Crow: Over the bridge!
Tom: Into a live volcano!
Mike: On to Route 90 during rush hour!
To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed,
to be a duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional hour,
Mike: I knew Egdon was a union town.
for there was that in the condition of the heath itself
which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness.
Tom (Jay Leno): That's because it's like Congress - Congress,
ladies and gentleman!
Crow: I'd say you stole my bit, only I don't want to even claim it
was mine to begin with.
It was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene. This was
not the
repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible
slowness.
Crow: Life imitating Hardy's art?
A condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is
Mike: A good description of Kate Moss?
a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness
of the desert, and at the same time to be exercising powers
akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest,
awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness
usually engendered by understatement and reserve.
Tom: That, my friends, is one of the finest examples of British
frontier gibberish that I've ever heard!
The scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series
of ascents from the level of the road backward into the
heart of the heath.
Crow: White reddleman, black heart.
It embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities,
Mike: Oh, yuch, it sounds like Robert Davi's face!
one behind the other, till all was finished
by a high hill cutting against the still light sky.
The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time,
Tom: Then his eye returned to his body, and reattached itself to his
head.
and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there.
Crow: Don Corleone?
It was a barrow.
Mike: I--huh?
Tom: Barrow, barrow....from the Middle English bergh...a
mountain or mound, used only in the names of hills in England. Also a
male hog castrated before sexual maturity.
Crow: So it's a pig in a poke?
This bossy projection of earth
Tom: That hill thinks it's just *so* cool.
above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the
loneliest height that the heath contained. Although from
the vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlantean brow,
its actual bulk was great. It formed the pole and axis
of this heathery world.
Crow: Y'know, in some states convicts are given a choice: the
electric chair, or having Hardy read to them.
As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware
that its summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole
prospect round, was surmounted by something higher.
Mike: bow-chicka-bow-bowwwww.....
It rose from the semiglobular mound like a spike from a helmet.
The first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have
been to
Tom: Leave and go where the natives don't paint themselves blue
and eat rocks.
suppose it the person of one of the Celts
Crow: Nah, Red Auerbach's always had much better taste in real
estate.
who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn
from the scene.
Mike: So he's in the Bronx?
It seemed a sort of last man among them,
musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night
with the rest of his race.
Tom (wearily): Oh, death, where is thy sting?
There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath.
Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose
the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure.
Crow: And all in the house that Jack built!
Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere
than on a celestial globe.
Mike: Celestial globe?
Tom: I think he means Patrick Stewart's head.
Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish
Tom: Is only possible with 8 layers of shellac.
did the figure give to the dark pile of hills that it seemed
to be the only obvious justification of their outline.
Without it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it
the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied.
The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale,
the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted
only to unity. Looking at this or that member of the group
was not observing a complete thing, but a fraction of
a thing.
Crow: Do you guys think that Thomas Hardy was a lonely, loney
man?
The form was so much like an organic part of the
entire motionless structure that to see it move would
have impressed the mind as a strange phenomenon.
Mike: Seeing _anything_ move in this story would be a strange
phenomenon.
Tom: Like a Hardy book selling?
Immobility being the chief characteristic of
Crow: This story?
that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance
of immobility in any quarter suggested confusion.
Mike: Like Hardy's prose?
Tom: Confusion, Mike, not a contusion.
Yet that is what happened.
Tom (Jack Palance voice): Believe it....or not.
The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity, shifted a step or two, and
turned
round.
Crow (singing): You spin me right round baby right round....
As if alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow,
with the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished.
The movement had been sufficient to show more clearly
the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.
Mike: Voyeurism and biographical hermeneutics: the Thomas
Hardy story.
The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared.
Tom: She heard Hardy coming?
With her dropping out of sight on the right side, a newcomer,
bearing a burden, protruded into the sky on the left side,
ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on the top.
Crow: This is the problem with open-air toilets - everybody sees
what you're doing.
A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth,
and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with
burdened figures.
Mike (stoner/hippy voice): Like, where's the Dead show at?
The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime
Tom: Was not to be found coming from Thomas Hardy.
of silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms
who had taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these,
and had come thither for another object than theirs.
Crow: Woodstock 2: The Quest For The Holy Grail.
The imagination of the observer clung by preference
to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something
more interesting, more important, more likely to have a
history worth knowing than
Mike: Anything Thomas Hardy could come up with.
these newcomers, and unconsciously
regarded them as intruders. But they remained,
and established themselves;
Tom: This would never have happened if they'd done away with
rent control.
and the lonely person who hitherto
had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely
to return.
Crow: At least _someone_ escaped from this story.
Tom: Let's go, guys.
Mike picks up Tom, sighing deeply.
---------------------
Mike and Crow walk back into the SOL, to find Tom dressed up
like a game show host, complete with ugly polyester blazer and a
poorly-fitting toupee.
Tom: Guys, I know you're depressed, so I thought I'd run a little
game to cheer you up. I'm calling it "Write Like Thomas Hardy!"
Crow slumps his shoulders.
Mike: Well, it's not like I've got anything else to do....okay, Tom,
how do we play?
Tom: Crow, you go first. Pick a subject - some part of the
environment.
Crow: Oh, alright...uh, I pick the sea.
Tom: Okay, good. Now write 30,000 words on it - but remember,
you can't introduce any interesting characters or plotlines.
Crow: Um...
Tom: Now, Mike, you come up with a character.
Mike: Okay...how about Salty John, the ex-pirate?
Tom: Good, good. Now throw him away. He doesn't get to appear
in the novel until chapter 23. Crow, how are you coming along?
Crow: Well, I'm up to about 15,000 words...but how many friggin'
ways can you say that the sea is beautiful?
Tom: The whole point of the exercise, Crow, is to write like Hardy.
Here, I'll give you some help. *clears throat* The sea was particularly
stormy that day; its waves, cerulean with the discontent of the ocean's
masters, frothed and--
Mike reflexively punches Tom, causing Tom's toupee to fly off.
Mike: I don't like this game any more. C'mon, Crow, let's see if
there are any heavy drugs I forgot to unpack.
Tom: Uh...guys...we've got Chapter Sign!
jess
GemMemory
<SNIP Jess' MSTing of novel I read in 10th grade and alternately really
liked and really hated by turns but can't remember ANY of now...>
Jess --
The one thing I CAN remember about ROTN is that is was the best book ever
for playing "Between the Sheets" with -- that is -- adding the words
"between the sheets" to every chapter title and seeing what happens...
Ah, 10th grade fun...
"Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble Between the
Sheets."
I'll be waiting for the rest (and looking for the first if AOL actually
ever lets me see it...),
Ian W. "Eustacia Vye" Hill
singer/songwriter of the rock and roll tapes:
"Return of the Native" (1987)
"Unions and Confederacies" (1989)
"Perpetual Emotion" (1992)
and the upcoming
"Jobie and Katherine (original play soundtrack)" (1997)
"Exile on Maine Streets" (1997)
available through Dig My Art Music:
http://members.aol.com/dibcochran/dma/
Still not in the Damned FAQ
Bite, ME
"I wanna try the exciting new toothpaste from Mars!"
"No! I wanna try the exciting new toothpaste from Mars!"
"Kids, kids! We can ALL try the exciting new toothpaste from Mars!"
-- Mike Keneally, 'hat'
Whatever happened to the antipathy matrix?
LaurelynCS
Somewhere in another thread not all that far away, someone who wants us to
think he is Ian W. Hill writes:
><SNIP Jess' MSTing of novel I read in 10th grade and alternately really
>liked and really hated by turns but can't remember ANY of now...>
>
--entertaining comments snipped---
>I'll be waiting for the rest (and looking for the first if AOL actually
>ever lets me see it...),
YES! I have been vindicated! Thank you Ian Hill!
Laurelyn
GemMemory
previously on RATMM, laure...@aol.com espostulated:
<SNIP discussion of Jess's Hardy MSTing>
>>I'll be waiting for the rest (and looking for the first if AOL actually
>>ever lets me see it...),
>
>YES! I have been vindicated! Thank you Ian Hill!
>
>Laurelyn
No prob, Laurelyn... and by the way, a tip or two for AOL RATMMers that
I've begun to pick up...
Use "List All" after going through your "Unread Messages" every now and
then. Sometimes AOL decides you've read a message you actually haven't,
and puts it into the "Read" box.
(There are some understandable, but annoying reasons for this...for
example, I read about 12 newsgroups. Very rarely do I read ALL the
messages in any of them -- except RATMM, where I always read every
message. After a Usenet session, to clear the board, I always click "Mark
all Newsgroups read." I have discovered that any RATMM posts that have
come in during my session, though not listed, will be marked read at this
point. There are other ways this happens. If you always want to see all
RATMM messages, after a session, leave Usenet and return a couple of times
until you're sure you've got everything from RATMM you're going to get at
that time. Less understandably, sometimes AOL lists all the messages you
have, lets say 83, but will only let you read say 57. If you then mark
the newsgroup read, those "missing" posts will magically appear in the
"Read" section, where you can finally access them...of course, if they
were continuations of previous threads, good luck finding them!)
I thought of this tonight because as of this evening, suddenly, Part 1 of
Jess's Hardy MSTing magically appeared in my "Read" box without ever
having been here before (go check it out, Laurelyn..!)
So why do I bother to stay with AOL? I'm shopping around long and hard
for a new ISP (and no, I don't need suggestions, I've got plenty...) but I
won't bother switching until I'm at least 80% sure it'll be one I can stay
with for a WHILE.
Ian W. "Still missing eWorld -- AOL with brains and heart" Hill
Still not in the damned FAQ
Falmouth, er, Bite, ME