The Madman of Piney Woods: Chapters 17–21

She became very still and the grating monotone from yesterday returned.

They hailed the captain to and sent a small skiff over to us.

The man in the rowboat said if he did, they had orders to commandeer the ship, and if the captain resisted, they were to sink him.

The captain followed orders and we turned a bend in the strait and saw we’d sailed into the divil’s own home.

We also learned whence the horrible odour came. The river ran thick with the foulness of those ships, with the stench of diarrhea and fever and death.

Ye’d move the little rag of a cloth pallet you slept on and it looked as if the underneath was painted black afore the fleas scattered.

With the little bit of gruel the ship provided, Mother would mix a paste and I believe that made all the difference.

It didn’t have much flavour, but it did add something to the near-water those detestable Canadians gave us.

MEET THEIR GRANDMOTHER’S
 TWENTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD PARAMOUR!

Don’t for one moment harbour the notion that your work will be published in my paper.

You’ve worked diligently and faithfully these past few weeks and you are a capable writer.

A white man and woman in front of me kept looking back at the white man two rows behind who was singing and laughing and taking long pulls from one of the bottles of elixir that were for sale at a booth behind the platform.

Used to be he was one of the best lawyers in Toronto but got run outta town and told he could never work in another court for the rest of his life. So he come down to Chatham and changed his name but botched that too.

Mother had been concerned that I would see something at the sideshow that would disturb my sleep, but her concerns were wasted. The only thing that was disturbed was my appetite. And that was done by the man whose mother was an alligator from Eatonville, Florida, and whose father, the barker with the megaphone told us, was a poor, lonely dirt farmer from Tupelo, Mississippi.

The barker sounded very bored when he said, “Behold the tragic offspring of a alligator and a farmer. He inherited his father’s hair and eyes and his mother’s skin and nasty disposition.”

Do not make eye contact with him and, please, I implore you, try not to provoke him by screaming so loud.

The man with the doctor’s bag said, “I know why you’ve come! I too once was tired and lacked vigour. I too once wondered how I’d make it from one day to the next. But today! Today, three weeks after my eightieth birthday, I have the strength and stamina of a twenty-year-old!”

The poor souls of Buxton, Canada, many of who have already had their backs bowed by the cruel yoke of slavery, found theirself in another horrible pickle when they were exposed to a bilking cheater who took their money and sold them overpriced bottles of cheap liquor called a Magical Youth Elixir.

The poor souls of Buxton, Canada, many of who have already had their backs bowed by the cruel yoke of slavery, found theirself in another horrible pickle when they were exposed to a bilking cheater who took their money and sold them overpriced bottles of cheap liquor called a Magical Youth Elixir.

This fleecer, fraud, and mountebank put on a carnival sideshow first that was harmless to watch.

This reporter, Benjamin Alston, and everyone else there was shocked, shocked I say, by the sharpie shyster’s greed and avarice.

This reporter, Benjamin Alston, and everyone else there was shocked, shocked I say, by the sharpie shyster’s greed and avarice.

One and all should be advised that this smoothie and swindler is very convincing and has a heart of stone.

And every adjective you’ve used to describe this Swami Hawley is a synonym of con artist, so we have bilking cheater, fleecer, fraud and mountebank, scamming shark, sharpie shyster, and smoothie swindler.

I recognize my bias. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.

Now, since you have assured me ad nauseam that you are both an accomplished observer and outdoorsman, you have noticed how at the end of their season, dandelions undergo a beautiful transformation.

They change from a disc of narrow, flat, bright yellow petals to a globe of ethereal, silver-gray, tiny, near-weightless seeds, each one clinging to its own parasol, each one designed to take flight at the least provocation.

Therefore, written words have to be much more completely thought out; they must be crafted, arranged in such a way that they are clear, strong, and unambiguous. There is a great deal more responsibility required when using the written word.

“That, my dear Ben-jamin, is where the art comes in. That is also where we must respect our readers and allow them to draw their own conclusions. At most we must carefully and subtly nudge, never shove.”

“Yes, I’m going to use it, but in my paper? Surely you jest.”

All that scientist would be able to observe would be a redheaded boy shamelessly sitting in his father’s lap, crying his heart out with as much gusto and vigour as any three-year-old.

The man stepped forward to shake Mr. Swan’s hand and said, “Willie, I’m much oblige you ain’t forgot me. I think I will join y’all, if don’t no one mind.”

“In that case,” he said, “maybe I got something to tell ’em after all.”
“The pulpit’s yourn, my brother.”

Something in the air made the younger horses pulling the wagons skittish and prone to rear up.

The falls at Niagara were anything but beautiful.
They were harsh and terrifying. They were ugly and confusing. They looked to me like a festering wound in the earth.

Good sense prevailed and I was just about to tell Mr. Swan, I'm not comfortable with those children walking alone in the woods, sir.

I got attached to the Sixth Regiment Colored Artillery outta Mississippi, and the day I did, we was in a skirmish at Vidalia.

I run down a little swale and could hear a reb right behind me. I didn’t get thirty yards afore a root reach up and grab me and drop me on my face.

But then my ears sharpens and I’m blast by wails and caterwauls like I ain’t never heard afore.

I looks over and seent a different white man pointing a pistol dead at the demon with the bloody knife what was standing astride me.