Oh, how we reel up and spool out our threads of personal truths, our intertwined ropes of deceit and envy, our veiled goals cut loose of ethical bounds. This is the battle of good and evil we all wage in Warhaven, unwinding. We limp along ignoring resolutions. A dour revivalist preacher might call out our mountain range of sin which we must cross, following the rocky creek beds and the jagged passes, the human condition. Perhaps. Yet the characters to follow are encumbered not by an array of peaks, but by a single razor-edged precipice, a peak which he or she somehow surmounts again and again on a daily basis. If there is any valuable truth in Warhaven it is that our community is comprised of stalwart folk who take their sojourn on this earth seriously.
Oh, look at the crowd today down at Brown’s Lunch Counter, the bench diners, talkative, a boisterously loud self-confident group, and the quieter booth people. Consider the bushels of secrets these individuals harbor, their outer shells, their armor, the baggage beneath that makes them, such brethren and sistren.
Imagine, reader, ascending in a helicopter or a drone or even land-bound in one of those cranes directors use to shot movies, wide-angled, gazing down at the crowd, you having some sense you can see right into their souls, as if you wielded some big, fancy magnifying glass. There you have it. As with a can of sardines, peel the lid back, remove the roof and ceiling of Brown’s and look at these marvelous specimens of the human race, their hearts thrumming.
Those of us who know Lucy Lyon know a woman of mettle, of keen determination, a scientist with a list of publications longer than your arm, and yet she is a fragile being who struggles with the demon sloth, that places obstacles in her way with every breath.
Lucy’s struggle is invisible, for she deals with this in private. Even her twin brother Lucien, who lives next door up near the Old Stone Barn, does not have the full view of her war with laziness. That is because on a daily penitence she goes into the ring with this opponent and cleans house. Literally. The dinner dishes in the sink, clothes strewn about, papers to file, she utterly ignores tidiness in the evening. In the morning the guilt of this drives her to scrub and vacuum and dust and she works up a good sweat that is her penance for sloth. As a child this was not an issue. In adulthood, in what snide neighbors would label spinsterhood she grapples with an inner inertia that makes her blush with an embarrassment she refuses to take out into the world.
Beatrice Dombledock, waitress at Brown’s, is quick on her toes and swift with her scathing wit. She gets a lot of exercise delivering burgers and burritos and chicken fried steaks to patrons of the café, so we in Warhaven are blind to her eating habits at home, where she devours cookies and potato chips in a near spiritual frenzy of gluttony. She keeps the weight off and feels she is pulling one over on us in Warhaven, we in our self-absorbed unawares.
At the counter sitting side by side are barber Card Dawson and city clerk Gwen Stokes, both dining on the BLT special. He looks at her, knowing her many competencies of the office, of the council chamber, of her deft political and personal tact with the disgruntled and the neglected and the vain. He cringes, knowing his many shortcomings as a man and he desires half the skills she has mastered. His millstone is the blinding burden of envy. Behind the barber chair he frequently is pained by the stories of his customers, wanting their joys, their accomplishments, their grandchildren.
Sven Delig, administrator up at the Warhaven Care Center, sits in a booth, half listening to town curmudgeon Stanley Humphley who is complaining about the burrowing moles up the Last Mile, our cemetery. Sven is patient, even with himself who has suffered from lack of composure with every halter top and miniskirt he has ever witnessed in use. His lust is perhaps balanced, in some way, by his many donations to women’s causes around the world. His is a passive weakness, which he keeps to himself, a closeted, complicated sexism. Stanley is known for his verbal tirades. His public anger is not physically destructive, and his opinions are more times than not the source of public entertainment. But at home, in his private wrath, he throws things, breaking windows and coffee pots and once an old picture tube television when a Superbowl matchup did not go the way he had wagered.
“Here are your fries, Stanley. Don’t put any up your nose!”
“What do you know, Beatrice? You don’t know beans!” Both are masters of the Mona Lisa smile.
Card leans over to Gwen. “How’s the city council agenda looking tonight?
Gwen sits up straight, dabbing her lips with her paper napkin. “Well, there are reports from the Robinson Helicopter Company on personal aviation forecasts and Wilbur will be speaking on growth in Africa and Asia for River Currents Power. All the usual: city departments giving their monthly nuts and bolts, public comment where Stanley will sign in with his red pen to complain about something. I’d be happy to email you a copy if you’d like, but it is posted outside city hall when you walk out of here.” Card nodded, marveling at her attention to detail.
Gwen fights this vanity of skills back at home within the fences of the Lindley Compound where she berates herself for her ugly, offensive pride. She leans toward Calvinism in her personal theology and believes with an irrefutability that she is not of the chosen ones. She is a cutter, a soul who inflicts self-harm, who never wears short sleeves or skirts, who somehow feels vindicated, that these actions are justified for a person facing eternal damnation.
And lastly there sits Gene O. Casino who pumps gas at Wally’s Filling Station. While a generous fellow with his time and folksy wisdom, he believes all the money and material possessions he has ever acquired should remain his. This greed gnaws at him and he hasn’t a clue how to free himself from its clutches.
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The City Council is a work of fiction by Jim Tindall, appearing every other week in Columbia Gorge News.
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