Hole of darkness.
(Back to the Anodyne well. —Almost ten years ago I was holed up in a sleeping bag on the floor of an elementary school gymnasium somewhere outside Edmonton, speed-reading my way through a copy of—well, you’ll see in a minute. I hadn’t read it in years (had I read it, really, at all?), but I’d decided it was the perfect thing to pastiche for a piece on the Woodstock Mystery Hole. I ended up liking it well enough—this piece, I mean; I liked it even better when I heard it had been read aloud, in most of its entirety, at a poetry night at that breakfast joint on Hawthorne, but it has a new name now. —The breakfast joint, I mean. Has a new name now. I don’t think they do any more poetry nights.
(Barron doesn’t so much do in-person tours of the Hole these days, so I’ve cut the bit with the phone number, and cleaned up some old typos and undoubtedly inserted some new ones. Photo’s by Juliana Tobón. All due apologies to Konrad Korzeniowski, without whom, etc.)
The Henry, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of sails, and was at rest. The Slough stretched before us like, well, like the end of a terminable waterway. Sky and sea would never weld together without a joint here; too many trees, and used car lots and office parks, and besides, the Pacific was a hundred and twenty miles away. The air was dark over Swan Island, and further back seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest and the greatest town hereabouts.
Val, the Editor of the magazine and our host, stood in the bow, looking off toward the interstate. Still, nothing else on the Slough looked half so nautical, and we looked upon her with great affection. Anne had, because her her many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. Carter sat squarely in the aft, round sunglasses perched on his nose despite the gathering gloom. He had sunken cheeks, a stylishly pale complexion, stylishly black clothing, and, with his legs crossed, his hands resting on his knees, palms up, he resembled not so much an idol as someone who wished to be mistaken for one. Val, satisfied the anchor had good hold, or at least that we were not going anywhere for the immediate moment, made her way aft. The day was ending beatifically. The slick oily sheen of the water shone brilliantly, struck by the declining rays of the sun. The pacific stillness of it all was broken only by three young men thirty yards or so off, taking great pains to catch a fish they would not be able to eat. Only the gloom to the south, downtown, brooding (as I said), became more somber, more slatey, every minute. It was difficult to countenance that our normal work was not out here in the bright Slough, but behind us, within, yes, that brooding gloom.
At last the sun set, dusk began to fall about us, and the three young men left, without a fish. Lights began to appear in the used car lots. The US Bancorp Tower, an incongruously pink thing erect in the midst of downtown, shone strongly in the last rays of the sun. Lights of cars and trucks roared past on the interstate, a great stir as ever going north and south.
“And this also,” said Carter suddenly, “has been one of the dark places of the earth.”
His remark did not seem all that surprising. It was just like Carter. Still, Anne and I exchanged glances, wondering perhaps if one of us ought to say something, before—
“I suppose you folks remember I did agree to write a story on the Woodstock Mystery Hole once,” said Carter, and then it was too late. We were fated to hear about one of his interminable experiences.
“I don’t want to bother you too much with what happened to me personally,” he began, betraying with this remark that was what he would best like his audience to hear. “But to understand what happened to me you ought to know how I got out there, what I saw, how I came to travel down the long dark thoroughfare of Woodstock Street where I first met the poor chap.
“I got the assignment from Tiffany, your Cyberculture Editor. I don’t know how she first got involved. Murky connections there, I don’t doubt. I met her one hot afternoon in the Brasserie Montmartre, which was gratifyingly cool and deep in shadow. She appeared suddenly, the back of her head freshly shaved, dressed in a pink thrift-store Chanel knock-off. She stayed long enough to eat two of my fried artichoke hearts and hand me a most singular envelope.
“It had been white once, turned grubby now and worn to a state of extremely dirty softness, as if it had passed through many hands before travelling from hers to mine. Inside was an extraordinary assortment of papers, articles culled from a variety of periodicals, from the Oregonian, a state-wide newspaper run by a reclusive family back East, to the Grantonian, an exercise in high school journalism. Also newsletters, a pitch-black postcard, obscure flyers, a singularly odd liability waiver…
“The gist of it all was a story about a man named Barron, of indeterminate age and height, who grew up in Madras, discovered the joys of substitute teaching, lived in New Mexico and California for a brief time, then came to Portland, where he bought a house in Southeast, and dug a deep hole in his backyard.
“Apparently, as more than one of the journalists reported with a straight face, the hole had always been there. Or so Barron said—all he’d had to do was take a shovel and remove the dirt, and lo and behold, there it was.
“It presented an extravagant mystery. I looked up from the papers, dazed, and seemd then to catch sight of this Barron, in my mind’s eye. It was a distinct glimpse, of a lone man, pale against the ever-present overcast, standing above a great dark gaping hole in the earth, his hand moving a bit, gesturing, beckoning me down.” And here Carter moved for the first time, startling us all, his form silhouetted against the sickly salmon glow of the sodium-vapor lights, his hand gesturing in conscious mimicry of his vision of this Barron. “I shuddered,” he said, and he did. “Every account of the man commented on his air of inscrutability, that he is ‘shrouded in dark mystery’, ‘too fast to be caught off-guard’, ‘prone to wearing grey suits and thin ties’. That sort of thing. Not one of them came close to answering the great question now looming before me: Why.”
Here Carter drew a deep breath, and ran a hand through his lank black hair. “Of course, that question begged another. How. The only directions I could find turned out to be the (of course) mysterious phrase, ‘Just two miles west of I-205’. Not terribly helpful in getting me to the man.
“I was still pondering this problem when the answer dropped almost literally into my lap. A bit of email, from Barron himself, allowing as how he’d ‘heard’ of me, and wanted to invite me to a ‘Meteor Shower’. Just a brief, cryptic note appended at the top of a standard form letter, giving date and time and details about the potluck and, most importantly, driving directions. I was set.
“His house turned out to be a small grey affair, set close on a dusty cul-de-sac. The front of it is screened by shrubbery and a grey wall, and just off to one side of the front patio has been set up a Gift Shoppe, where I could buy more of the pitch-black post cards (close-ups of the Hole, it seemed), flasks of genuine ‘Vapors’ exhaled by the Hole, various tracts dealing with the Hole, and with an organization known as the Universal Church of Fun, ‘magick’ mojo crystals.
“Next to the Gift Shoppe was a pipe which rose out of the ground and terminated at about chest height, with a sign on it, inviting me to toss in a coin and make a wish. ‘All wishes 100% guaranteed.’ I shook my head at the impossibility of this claim and walked through the open doors of the house and out, into the backyard.
“‘There is pot-luck beer,’ turned out to be the first words I heard Barron speak. ‘But it’s so bad it’s been here year after year… feel free…’ He was taller than I expected, though not so tall as you might think. Still, I had almost no inclination to take him in at the moment, his thin, wiry frame, his unruly mop of grey hair. I was too busy staring at the yard.
“Along the back of it, utterly incongruous in this Southeast neighborhood, was a twenty-foot tall laurel hedge, a perfectly straight, tailored wall of greenery. Below that, spread in a smooth oval, was a lovely, close-cropped green lawn that stretched from the hedge to the back porch. Scattered about its rim were clusters of lawn chairs; already a number of people had arrived, and were disporting themselves genteelly.
“Barron noticed how the hedge drew my attention. ‘Nice, isn’t it,’ he said. ‘I wanted a tree house, but I didn’t have a tree. So I grew a hedge.’ He took me across the lawn and showed me the inside, which was hollowed out; built within was a platform which ran the length of the hedge. ‘People like to climb up here and peer out at the party.’
“I took the opportunity to ask the first question which came to mind: how on earth could he guarantee those wishes? ‘Ah,’ he said, sagely. ‘They are 100% guaranteed to be wishes. What happens after that—well.’ And then he was off, greeting a new group of partygoers.
“I followed slowly, stepping out from behind the hedge, looking back towards the house. And stopped dead in my tracks, feeling for a moment the ineffable mystery I had come here to answer tickling tremulously at the edges of my perception.
“I saw, for the first time, the complex of the Mystery Hole.
“It was a simple affair, but bizarre. A kiosk stood over the Hole, with a sign on it, announcing that this was the ‘Deluxe Mystery Hole.’ Behind that stood a blue fiberglass tower, atop which, incongruously enough, was a rowboat. And rising from the very lip of the Hole was what appeared to be a flight of stairs, climbing dizzily up to meet the roof of the house; as I approached, it resolved itself into a clever trompe l’œil—incredibly narrow, it proved nothing more than a plank of wood, cut cunningly to seem a full staircase.
“I went closer. A concrete apron surrounds the hole, shoring up its edges; an orange safety strap guards one side of the kiosk, and, on the other, a simple wooden ladder rises provocatively out of the depths.
“How long I stood there, on that apron, I could not say.
“Though I could see the bottom—Barron has installed small lights in the Hole—I could not tell how deep it was. Some of the news accounts I had read offered figured which ranged from 15 to 16 feet deep, but standing there, breathing in the cool air wafting from the depths, I was struck by uncertainty. The ladder seemed to descend much further than that, dwindling off to some strange horizon far below my feet, while the cobbled floor of the Hole, gleaming in the dim lights, seemed close enough to touch.
“‘How deep it it?’ asked a serendipitious voice behind me. ‘Well,’ answered Barron’s mellifluous tones, ‘it goes all the way to the bottom.’ I looked up. He was showing a couple of young men to the Hole, and smiled at me, pointing to an enormous sheet of black glass attached to the side of his house, like a sheet of darkness from the Hole lifted up and hung, frozen, in the air. ‘The Black Obsidian Mirror of Higher Truth,’ he said to me. ‘In which we can all see our dark sides.’ One of the young men asked, ‘Should we wear a hard hat?’ Barron pointed to a rack of them, beside the Hole. ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘Hmm,’ said the young man, selecting one, which had the name ‘Larry’ printed on it. ‘What happened to Larry?’ ‘Well,’ said Barron, ‘we have his hat…’
“And as I stood there, unmoving, the men climbed down the ladder, quick as you please, and Barron greeted an older man with a long and tangled white beard, who had driven up from San Francisco for the Meteor Shower, and his companions, two women who had been college roommates many years before, and now were sisters.
“Larry, and his hat. A boat sitting high on a blue tower. Our dark sides revealed. A hedge-house. A Hole. For a moment I was seduced; it all seemed so simple. Of course. The Hole went all the way to the bottom; what other answer was there?
“No. I shook my head. That way was too easy. I would get to the bottom of it; climb down the ladder and see for myself. Only not yet, not yet.”
Anne grunted again at that, a sharp, sardonic sound of amusement. “What?” said Carter. “You laugh? Give me a cigarette.” She did so, wordlessly, and held out her lighter for him. In the sudden light of its flame the hard planes of his face leapt out in sharp contrast to the gloom. “I don’t have a head for heights, as you well know. Nor for depths, as it turns out. People came and went as I steeled my resolve, many of them signing one of the liability waivers attached to the kiosk, planting a hard hat on their heads, and climbing down. A couple got up into the boat high above our heads, settled the oars into the oarlocks, and insisted to any who asked they were headed for Zanzibar. Voices cried out suddenly, peals of laughter rang out, coming from nowhere I could see—until I remembered what Barron said about the hedge, and saw the eyes peering out from the laurel leaves, high above the gathering throng, which in turn jeered the unseen lurkers.
“For some reason, that I couldn’t say, those voices clinched it. I made my choice. Before I could think about it, I signed the waiver, clapped a hard hat on my head, and climbed down, into the Hole.
“It was cool, and dark, though the lights helped. It was not a very long descent. At the bottom, the Hole stretched out into a short tunnel, turned a corner, and ended at a dead end. It seemed unremarkable enough, but that only deepened the mystery. Why? Why were all these people here? What drew them? What about this assemblage of strange, cast-off objects held such a deep fascination? This is only a hole in the ground, after all!
“It was when I turned to leave that I saw the first sign. On a small sheld on the wall stood three tiny figurines: Fred Flintstone, Mister Spock, and Harry S Truman. Left by pilgrims to the Hole? Or Barron himself? I couldn’t say, but something obscure, almost sinister in their juxtaposition urged me to hurry out of the Hole and back into the light. But before I set foot on the ladder, I saw one last thing, that gave me pause.
“How I wish I had not stopped.
“Light spilled out from something low, close to the ground by my feet. I knelt, and saw there a tiny door, a hand’s span in height, with a light shining through, from somewhere behind.
“Where had it come from? How had it gotten there? What lay on the other side? I reached out to touch it, try its handle—it would not turn. The door would not open. Was it a genuine mystery? Or another clever fake? The question maddened me, as I knelt there, an indeterminate distance beneath the surface. Until, with thundering suddenness, the answer came upon me.”
And here Carter stubbed out the cigarette Anne had given him, and something about that last little spark of light going out caused all of us to shiver, I think. “I could not learn what was on the other side,” said Carter, “because there is nothing there. I could never learn the reason why because there is no reason. All these people, the Hole itself, its accoutrements, Barron and his enigmatic sayings, all were here for one thing and one thing only:
“Fun.”
We were all silent for a moment, a long moment, that seemed to stretch almost to a breaking point. Val finally was the first to speak. “What about the meteors?”
“Meteors?” hissed Carter with startling vehemence. “After that, you want to know about meteors? That’s the only question you have?”
“Well,” she said, with more patience than I could have mustered, “it was a Meteor Shower you went to, and—”
“A joke! A simple joke, like everything else there! The Hole, that tower, all that effort expended over a dozen years, his entire substitute teaching career for all I know, all of it for nothing more than silliness, whimsy, fun!” He seemed overwhelmed, and took a number of deep, panting breaths to calm down. “I fled. Climbed out of the Hole, dropped the hard hat, and fled out of the gate. I didn’t care to stay and find out what silly joke would lurk at the bottom of the meteors.
“Needless to say, the story will never be written.”
Silence reigned again. Anne seemed about to say something, then thought better of it, and busied herself with lighting a fresh cigarette. Carter lurched to his feet and moved forward, heading belowdecks at a slow, shambling pace. “The fun! The fun!” I heard him mutter as he passed.
We three waited until he was out of earshot.
“You know,” said Anne, “I asked Barron about his Hole once.” It did not surprise me to learn that she knew him; Anne knows everyone. “It seemed dangerous to me, having folks crawl in and out of a hole in your backyard, and I called him on it. ‘You’re always in danger underground,’ he said. ‘Some folks drive for hours to experience that sort of danger, spelunking in caves and such. I just wanted to be able to do so in my own backyard. So I wouldn’t have to risk my life out on the highways.’”
“Eminently sensible,” I said.
“You want to visit sometime? We just have to give him a quick phone call. He’s in the white pages, under ‘Barron’. He likes to have a couple hours’ notice, before you drop in.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “Val? You interested?”
But she was staring amidships, at the hatch which led below, through which Carter had lately passed.
“What an utter drip,” she said.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
