Thread by @JuliusGoat

c h a n g e d

Struck by a sudden fancy, Landrude decides to pause at the apex of the Knoxville greenway; he’ll enjoy his cigar and then sketch this gorgeous forest island he’s only today noticing, though he must have passed it a hundred times.

The cigar’s a weekly treat and an old habit. So’s the ticket. The cigar’s a matter of taste; the ticket’s a reminder of the times when the prize would have been all the money in the world, and the five-dollar price an extravagance

This week’s selection is a green-foil shiny thing with a blackjack theme, purchased at a gas station along the way, but Landrude’s only rubbed away one disc when he feels the creative urge and knows he’d rather be sketching the island.

Every drawing begins with observance.

With deliberate and ceremonial anticipation he unwraps, clips, and lights, procuring the necessary accoutrements. He folds the cellophane wrapper precisely and stows it in an inner pocket, along with the still-unfinished ticket.

A man on the taller side, in middle life with a full head of upswept salted hair, rangy features tamed somewhat by a well-scrubbed look and a recently developing belly; portrait of the once-starving artist in the comfortable repose of satisfactory success.

Puffing, he surveys the island, really taking his time with it, drinking it in; just a bit of wooded elevation, thin on one end and widening at the other, sort of a wedge rising up from the middle of the slow-running Tennessee river.

The island’s been there every other day, he presumes, just he’s never marked it before. Now, though, it holds some quality that calls to him.

Maybe it’s the way the Knoxville autumn has burnt the leaves yellow and red in almost a checkerboard; maybe it’s the way the island’s shape hugs the shore, or the way the sudden rise and fall of trees upon it suggest a slumbering cat…but of course it’s not that.

It’s the name on the plaque—that particular name. How could you have missed seeing it before? It must have entered subliminally at some point, informed your work without your knowledge.

In any case, he knows he’ll have to sketch it or else spend the week regretting the missed opportunity.

The greenway—a long stretch of well-maintained elevated boardwalk that rises and falls as it tracks the river’s winding course through the city—is a perfect post-work walk, beginning a half-mile from Landrude’s house and stretching up from Sequoyah Park to downtown Knoxville.

It gives a fine prospect of the island from one of its peaks, right here where Landrude’s standing, and the light’s going to be perfect in a few minutes when the sun dips below that low hang of clouds in the west.

Back to this plaque, now. It’s a brass job gone nearly entirely to oxidation. Landrude fishes out his reading glasses to examine it.

Out comes the small sketchpad and the pencil. His hands work with ease of practice, his eyes darting up and down and between.

The important thing is to get the shape, the shading…you’ll be able to do a finish later; your memory can capture color, enhance detail…and there might be a story here, a narrative utilizing some old local tale…

... the old fort would be something interesting to see, you should hire a boat—or better, the romantic notion—make the swim yourself some morning, picnic there as your forebears once did…

Landrude’s eyes dart up, startled.

The island seems to be…swimming, or even underwater.

No, it’s not the island, it’s…it’s everything.

What

the
hell is

happening

here?

Vision warping, as if he’s looking through thermals across the vastness of a baking noontime desert, rather than a manicured suburban Knoxville autumn.

And then it seems as if he himself is slewing into some form, some new shape.

It’s like a soul nausea, as if he’s becoming something other than he was, all while remaining himself, a snake shedding its skin to become a porcupine, an eagle becoming briefly aware it will someday die.

Mercifully, the sensation ends.

Landrude glances up, and wishes he could tell himself that what he’s seeing had been there from the beginning, but no, no, he’d been paying the island far too much attention for self-delusion.

Look there: Visible above the island treeline rise the poniards of an ancient wooden fort. Hoping to steady himself, Landrude leans forward on the railing, sees the plaque, bright and shiny, polished, well-maintained:

Below this exhortation, the craftsman has etched a triptych of images: a blacksmith at his forge, a fountain, a pigeon by a stream.

Landrude reels backward, catches himself on the opposite railing, fights against a scream.

He closes his eyes, tight as he can.

When he opens them, it will have all gone back to normal.

It will have.

It will.

He opens them. No good. It’s all still wrong, all still changed. Even “Looney” is now spelled “Loony.”

Landrude sinks to his haunches and tries to control his breathing. He concentrates on things that seem the same: the boards of the greenway, the powder blue of his suit, the smell of tobacco rising from his hand.

But even these things seem wrong, different, changed in ways that he can’t define, because there’s no context for “normal” to which to compare—it all has the same wrongness.

He’s nearly convinced himself nothing has really changed after all, when it all starts to slew back again; the same sensation, only reversing…guided by some unknowable instinct, Landrude flips his pad to a fresh page, tears it out, holds it against the plaque.

With the side of his pencil, he makes a desultory rubbing, the ridges of the signage quickly transferring to paper the approximation: forge, fountain, pigeon, stream, warning.

When he removes the paper, the world’s gone back the way it was before. Only the etching tells of the way it’s been: the forge, the fountain, the bird.

Appetite for a walk or a sketch utterly vanished, Landrude turns and walks back down the greenway toward home.

Before long, the walk becomes a run, etching still clutched in one hand, pencil in the other, running from the greenway as if pursued by some numinous beast. He knows already he’ll never walk that way again.

There’s a flood of relief as the door closes behind. Hand trembling, he allows the paper with the rubbing to fall to the foyer floor and stumbles in, trying not to think of brain tumors or even worse fates—God damn, but what the hell was that, anyway?

At least he has the rubbing as proof; it still shows forge fountain bird, proof that his experience was a real one—though whether that proof is a comfort or not, he can’t say.

Landrude makes for the kitchen to pour himself something to take the edge off—it’s only Tuesday, but after this, he decides it’s allowable. Returning with his drink in hand, he stops and stares.

The paper lying in the foyer has changed into something different.

A.R. Moxon, THE REVISIONARIES bookshop.org/books/the-revi…

Out in paperback 12/1.

Preorder now.

bookshop.org/books/the-revi…