The Skinner Co. Network
DDoP - 2 - The Confused Stranger
One warm spring evening, a man named Hezen was sneaking a cup of corn whiskey...
Phew, they're confused, stranger. Mills notes make it explicitly clear that, beyond his own arrival and his father's intrusion the previous summer, no outsiders have been to Tecumac in over 20 years, though it is also perhaps easy to understand why the town's isolation was something the anthropology student might emphasize as he wrote his thesis. Still, even one of the earliest stories told by his hosts and folks, a character referred to as "the Confused Ranger," it's telling lately prompted by the junior Milton's unexpected appearance. A paraphrase one telling Bill Trinscribed and translated out of the archaic local English dialect, "On a warm spring evening a man named Hessen was sneaking a cup of corn whiskey from the jug he thought he kept hidden from his wife at the far end of his weed field. As the sun was dipping beneath the horizon he stopped to tuck his contraband into the hollow log that was its hiding place, when, some hundred paces away, along the tree line, he caught sight of a short man with a bald head and a frightened look on his face. Wondering someone Hessen did not recognize wasn't likely, but not impossible. Bill's father's appearance was fresh in mind, and there was the poor, forgotten man, though this is a tale for another time. So the farmer stood and gave the newcomer his full attention, yet all of the children of Tecumac have heard tales of the Confused Ranger, so he did not proceed any further. The man, spotting him, began to flail his arms and shout something, though the words were lost to the breeze before they could reach Hessen's ears. Standing on his heel, the visitor motioned for Hessen to follow, then he stepped into the forest. This time his words almost seemed to reach the onlookers ears. Had he said help, had he said quick? His belly burning with Iksky, Hessen felt compelled to answer the apparent request at least as far as the place the bald man had disappeared into the trees. If the farmer dragged his feet and could no longer see the stranger's path by the time he arrived, at least he could say he tracked. There was the panic-faced fellow, framed by two tall perches, standing on a low stone rock that lifted him above the tumult of the fourth bend. He barely caught Hessen's eyes before he waved again and turned further into the growing shadows beyond. It was at the third touch meeting, the farmer realized he could no longer quite recall which direction was home, that it was almost better to follow than be left to his own whiskey-dull devices. At least the man seemed to know where he was going. This was very much Hessen's last thought as his feet slipped upon a patch of needles made greasy by a recent rainstorm. The starry's cartwheeled before him and his skull cracked open to leak his grey matter upon a jagged stone. How the recounting of events made it back to town, the narrator, Hessen's wife, does not say. Was the man as she speculates one of the ghosts of those who had previously become lost in the woods? Would Hessen one day be seen at the forest's edge, perhaps attempting to lead someone back to the very spot at which he had died? Or had he simply gotten drunk and lost and she could not bear the shame of the truth? Or is Bill himself theorizes in the margin, had she grown sick of his drinking and found a convenient tale to explain away his death? There is, of course, another possibility that hasn't met something else entirely that warm spring evening. You