Far West Prelude

This is the opening of a novella, Far West, that I have been working on and off writing for nearly ten years, its never perfect enough.

PRELUDE:

Before I was known as Margaret Reed Bezzeg, when I was a young girl enrolled at St. Teresa’s in the North of England, now nearly thirty years ago this fall, I often stole myself away from the other students and the sisters.  In those silent moments, I was able to find comfort in the words of my people, who have been given more of the immortal message through the Prophet and the golden plates buried under the Hill Cumorah.  And you need not worry I will not try to convert you; I was merely born into this faith.  It was not a conscious choice only the cards dealt to me in the cosmic game. 

We, the so-called Saints, exist to challenge the decadence that infects those who are overly smug and comfortable with the mediocrity of life and to spread the teachings of our Prophet to the masses who have corrupted the original message.  We are hated with good measure for our lack of humour, fun, and any toleration of social and theological criticism.  Cranbury, on the other hand, was hated because it was failing.  The vultures came out of the woodwork eager to feed on the brass city as it neared its inevitable end.

                Over the course of my life from England to here in the hills of Western Connecticut, I came to ponder these things that went well beyond the scope of a force-fed Ursuline education.  Such thoughts and ideas that were detrimental to becoming the proper and correct Catholic that I certainly was not.  The brides of Christ would be quite disappointed that their carrot and stick, minus the carrot, tact had failed to convince to denounce my false pagan cult religion.  But, that is their vocation and I do not harbor any lingering hatred for their unbelief in our Prophets. 

            Above all of my dull reminiscing, there was one particular subject that haunted me and that was history.  Who will remember us after we are gone? For those of us who are not among the chosen to join the pantheon of the Gods and Saints, who dares remember our mark?  What is the point if nothing survives death? 

             My husband, Audie Bezzeg, our hero of the day, has never known how very afraid that I am of being forgotten—in total oblivion.  To be as if I never were.  He says, “It matters not what waits for us.  It makes no difference, no matter at all, Maggie.”  He is a nihilist.  The influence of Daoism and the other more sanguine faiths have warped his mind into believing in nothing, as disgusting as any Atheist and as delusional as any Satanist. 

            My usual response to his typical indifference has been continually:  “One thousand years from now who will remember anything of our time.  Who remembers history?  Can the history of cities made with all the hopes and dreams of those before us possibly be remembered as they are now?  Ancient cities like Nauvoo, Edo, London, Thebes, Rome, Ctesiphon, Jerusalem, and Babylon have soaked into the collective consciousness of many as these cities once had a great importance to the timeline of human events.  They brought us to where we are and will lead us to where we are going, well where we hope we are going.  For those fallen cities resting in the nothingness of that existential cul-de-sac, some one must remember for the sake of the dead and gone.”

            “Even Cranbury, Maggie?  It’s been dying since before my great-grandfather was even born.  The Ghost City of Connecticut—like some tragic theme park run by the Dolorean Corporation or Carl Icahn.”

            “Even Cranbury.  This city will be remembered despite itself.”

            He will say in that painfully illiterate sounding Connecticut dialect, “Shut up Magpie, yah talk too much.  Yah cry too much.  Yah complain too much.  You’ll be as dead as I will be and there is nuttin’ that can save yah or anyone else from death.  Death is the end and there is no coming back.  Cranbury is dead.”

            Like I have said, he believes in nothing.