HEART OF GOLDENROD

A Short Story

“They say, that he didn’t do it for the mayor, nor for all those others.
For myself, I’m thinking that he did it for you, and for me,
and for these girls here.”
- Martha Douglas, speaking with
interviewer at the 81st annual
Tin Can Celebration, 1974

It was Autumn, then.

That meant things like crackly, yellow-brown leaves—like the ones that a feller or missus might see falling from that lonely maple rooted miles to the east in Rogers County. It meant corn harvest, and the annual Corny Cob Festival. It meant the vigorous sewing-together of wool dresses and scarves. It meant shorter days, and young‘uns back at the one-room schoolhouse to learn their ABC’s and hone their coyote-cussin’ skills.

More significantly, autumn, in this remote corner of the American Midwest, meant yellow goldenrod flowers canvassing a prairie that stretched out in every direction as far as the bloodshot eyes of the outsider could see, as he roamed his sights past the jeering, cheering crowd that had gathered to watch him get shot in the heart.

They trembled. Not the yellow flowers, which stood stock still in the cool autumn air, but the even yellower townspeople of Fort Wood—all three hundred of them. On this fateful afternoon in mid-September, they stood shaking all the way down to their calfskin boots as the outsider, a hooligan known far and wide for his quick draw and meaner attitude, reached for his holster.

It was time for the showdown. Time to see who was the quickest. Time for history to be made. A time for death, resurrection from the dead, and electricity. In a word, it was a time for the Legend of Fort Wood to be born, and for that first goldenrod flower to be placed.

It had all started back at the saloon.

Hap Greenfield, the town tanner, set things into motion when he stepped out from behind a barstool riddled with bullet-holes to address the outsider.

“Awful sorry we can’t oblige ye, bub.” Hap said. “It’s just that, well, we’s not fighters here so much as a bunch of sons-a-guns that like to drink!”

Hap darted his eyes around the saloon in frenzied search of someone drunk and fool enough to relieve him of his duties as spokesperson. His heart rose within him when he heard a rustling over by the bar; then sunk when he saw it was just farmer Johnson, poking his nose over-top the counter to allow his wide, watery eyes a quick peek at the action. That nose, those eyes, as quickly disappeared.

The hooligan got red-faced mad. Unholstering his firearm, he resumed firing at random unwitting saloon-patrons. He fired off also a volley of barbarous taunts, that reverberated through the wafts of his gun-smoke even as the tanner dove for his life behind one of the overturned tables.

Finally, the shouting stopped, the smoke cleared, and the hooligan, his eyeballs dancing in their sockets like freed slaves at a cake walk, offered explanation as to why he had just shot up their Lazy Saloon.

“Okay, yer bastards,” he declared. “It’s duel time! Gimme yer fastest and yer best so’s that I can shoots ‘im in the ‘ed faster than you can say ‘Hey, Joe, our fastest an’ our best just got hisself shot in the ‘ed!’”

Everyone could hear a dripping sound over by the piano. Someone was peeing their britches.

The hooligan rubbed his bristly chin hairs. “Gots to keep up my reputation, see? I shots only three in the ‘ed this whole month. C’mon, give me a ‘ed to shoot at!”

The hooligan lowered his firearm. As he reloaded it, he muttered, “Gonna keep firin’ ‘til one of these boys grows balls enough to take me on.” He slammed closed the cylinder and locked it. Ammo in order, he wheeled his eyes around the room. “Duel time, gos dang it!” he hollered, stomping his foot. “C’mon, free holes in the ‘ed!”

Not wanting to have anything to do with a hole in the head, as it might, if nothing else, minimize their ability to sink whiskey, the saloon patrons continued to hide behind barstools and tables and keep their pie-holes shut.

Finally, a stirring was heard over by the blackjack table.

Mayor Jenks, elected sheriff of Fort Wood after the de facto sheriff, Slim Jim Roberts, ended up on the wrong side of a duel with the last outsider who had slithered into town—didn’t want anything to do with a hole in the head, either. Still, Jenks’ responsibilities as acting sheriff and mayor limited the opportunities he had to cower in corners.

Mayor Jenks downed the last of his whiskey, narrowed his eyes. He rose from his hiding spot behind the blackjack table…only to feel his legs wobble then give way. He slumped to the floor into a red-eyed slobbery heap. Lifting his head, he said, “All our gunslingers are out on errand right now, Mister.” The mayor belched. “Or way too roostered!”

The hooligan wasn’t interested in roosters, any more than he was in excuses. Chin up, he cited his exploits, “First off,” he said, shifting his feet on the tobacco-stained floorboards, “I’s shots folk from Denver, Hays, Albuquerque, and everywheres in-between—in the ‘ed! Two, I’s gots the ability to shoots peoples in the ‘ed. Five…I mean, dangnabbit, what’s that number after two.” The hooligan counted on his fingers. “Oh, yeah. Three, I can sees like a ‘awk, which helps my’s ability to shoots peoples in the ‘ed. My favorite hobby? To shoots people in the ‘ed!”

His own head throbbing, and now, spinning, Mayor Jenks rubbed his swollen red eyes. Finally, he was able to hoist himself off of the floor. “We like our heads just the way we got ‘em, Mister!” Stumbling his way past the bar, the mayor curled his fingers around an unsuspecting cowhand’s mug of suds. “Here, feller—" the mayor with a friendly grin offered it to the hooligan “—courtesy of the fair-playin’, peace-lovin’ citizens of Fort Wood. Ya see, I’m the mayor—the head honcho like, he he—of this here burg, which gives me the right to offer complimentary beers to folk like yourself on behalf of—"

With a single hard shove the hooligan sent the Mayor of Fort Wood reeling. Frothy suds soaked the mayor’s leather vest and flowed in streams down his acting-sheriff’s badge. The hooligan raised his pistol, leveled it at the crouched and trembling figure on the floor. Tempting his finger against the trigger, he snarled, “Compliments of the guy who’s ‘bout to shoots you in the ‘ed…”

Lucky for the mayor, for them all, an individual lurking in the shadows known affectionately to the locals as Tin Can Toby, was just old enough to think he might know a thing or two about hooligans fresh off the high plains with crazy in their eyes, and just young enough to think he could do something about it. Granted, it wasn’t for the sake of mayors and spilt beer that Tin Can Toby would at that moment choose to call over, “Hey, beef-for brains!”

The hooligan lowered his firearm and eyed his now-decided next victim.

With measured paces, Toby strode over, nosed right up to the hooligan, dropped a big looger on his excrement-stained excuse for a boot, turned his back on the hooligan; then arriving at the swinging-doors, hollered, “Shots to the ‘ed are neither here nor there…and so messy. Why not let’s make it a shot to the heart, ‘cause mine’s fulla life and fulla love. Only a shot to the heart’ll take me down…”

The words echoed through the funereal silence of the saloon as Toby strutted his gangly frame through the swinging doors to step outside.

The wily eyes of the hooligan gleamed dully as they trained their gaze on the still-swinging saloon doors. “So be it,” he huffed as he stalked through those doors. “Shot in the ‘art…comin’ up.”

“A showdown!” Toby could hear the pronouncement made from inside. They thronged out after him. Every wide-eyed, wild-steppin’, beer-holdin’ Joe Bob, Jim Roy, and Leroy cut a path out of the saloon—

Into Main Street, the only street in town. It was a street where the blue-eyed and frilly-red-haired Hannah Anderson was searching for a front-row spot to view the powder-burnin’ contest. She, along with the waves of humanity who with similar intent were thronging out of the post office, the bank, the livery station, the schoolhouse…

Toby loved Hannah Anderson. She was his answer to all the evils in the world, not the least of which was celibacy. Toby grew wistful. He closed his eyes.

Of course, standing there as he was, in the middle of Main Street, hands at his sides, waiting for his opponent to readjust his “gos dang gun-belt,” and for the din of the townspeople to lower from the babble of three-hundred conversationalists to the cryings of the few toddlers on hand, Toby had, at the outset, no small difficulty. Then, came a gradual fading of the whole hue and cry of downtown as Toby, in his mind’s eye, hearkened back to that Wednesday of the previous week—an afternoon of mixed sun and clouds in which a passing crow or emboldened squirrel might have witnessed Toby in the act of chopping wood.

Dropping his ax, Toby had called over “Yoo-hoo!” to the woman walking all alone out in the fields of goldenrod, dressed in her lacy silk blouse and high-waist schoolteacher’s skirt, her red hair fastened back by a bun and a bonnet. She walked over. Toby asked if she might like to join him for a coffee sometime at the pharmacy. Hannah surprised him by saying “Um, okay, yeah!” She left with a wink.

Winked—was also what the hooligan then did at the crowd, and in mockery of his blond-haired, green-horned opponent, whose attention remained fixed on his Wednesday afternoon reverie. The hooligan greased the handle of his Colt 44 single-action revolver. He aimed. He fired. He blew the tip of Toby’s ear off.

“C’mon, you’s. Draw!”

Toby came to. He could feel the hotness of his own blood as it dripped onto his shoulder, soaking his shirt. His ear was a burning dull ache.

“DRAW!”

His move. It was Toby’s move—and Toby’s, because even a character as reprehensible as this hooligan was wont to know and abide by the unwritten golden rule for all duelists north of the Rio Grande: The provoked party is always allowed to reach first.

ALWAYS.

The hooligan reddened. He spouted profanities that made the women-folk cover their mouths and the men to cover their young‘uns’ ears.

But Toby first had to see them…the townspeople, this audience of friends, neighbors, and kinsfolk who in the days to come would be either barraging him with a never-ending line of handshakes or would be busy burying him.

At the fore of Toby’s vision stood the postal clerk, Ham Warren, all 6’5” of him, who incidentally happened to be the firmest handshake in town. Tall as a cedar of Lebanon, Ham stood with arms crossed in front of his Pony Express station, eyeing Toby with the glare of one consigned to the putting down of a wounded horse. Toby gulped. He reoriented his gaze to hone in on subjects whom he reckoned to be more familiar with things like the story of David and Goliath. For example, like rosy-cheeked and cheery-eyed Pamela Oppenheim—Toby’s second cousin, and renowned Bible thumper whose equally cheery outlook would, Toby mused, compel her to see in Toby’s holster not a pistol, but a sling.

Robby Jenkins, his buddy from school, could no doubt see a sling, as well. As might Old Mrs. Winthrop, Toby’s next-door neighbor. These, and three-hundred or so others, all standing, none sitting, all charged up, none too calm-looking, cheered while praying, cheered while trembling and calling out things like, “Oh, please, Tobe, don’t miss!” and “Shoot ‘im, Tobe, right in the ‘art!” and “Get yer roasters here…roast-ers…!”

Ignoring the opportunistic vendors like Bill Boone hawking their wares, Toby continued to course his sights over the hometown crowd. Of course, it wasn’t just Old Mrs. Winthrop and second cousins whom Toby had wanted to see as if for the last time. More than anyone he wanted to see, obviously, Hannah. Then Toby noticed something peculiar. No, not the peculiar way the sun boomeranged its brilliance off of the silver necklace dangling from the elegant neck of Miss Hannah Anderson—Toby in the meantime having spotted Hannah over by the emporium, bearing in her arms a gunnysack of grain which drooped over folded arms like a pregnancy. Something even more peculiar than that.

Indians!

About twenty of them. Galloping straight towards the town. On horses. On the wind!

Comanches. That’s what they were all right, with black paint streaked across their foreheads and shoulders. War, those streaks meant. WAR!

Tomahawks? Check. Buffalo helmets? Check. Bows and arrows? Check. Intent look on Indians’ faces…? Toby squinted. Check!

With the hooligan still cackling at Toby’s expense, and the Indians galloping closer, those stakes could not have been higher. Toby squinted the sun out of his eyes and in his mind’s eye envisioned the following: three-hundred citizens—spotting the paint-streaked warriors; three-hundred citizens—forgetting the duel entirely; three-hundred citizens—rushing off to grab Winchesters then firing enough lead into the oncoming cavalcade to challenge the output even of the former Confederate army; three-hundred citizens…three hundred citizens…

Many of whom, their hands clasped in prayer instead of clasping rifles, remained wholly oblivious to the bloody fate one might suppose awaited them. It was all because the bell wasn’t tolling.

Panicking, the thought crossed Toby’s mind: Surely the boy up in the watchtower, the bell tower—the boy whose turn it is to be the town lookout, could see all of them buffalo helmets by now. But the boy, Toby noticed, had his sights on the powder-burnin’ contest, and not in the direction he had been sworn to uphold even in the event of a powder-burnin’ contest, which was west.

The voice of his adversary: “Dagnabbit, les’ go! DRAW.”

The vision faded. In his mind’s eye, Toby could no longer see three-hundred fleet-footed citizens, nor a forest of rifles pointed in the direction of the Indians. Now, all that Toby could see was a flock of sitting ducks, with their eyes upon himself, alone.

And the hooligan, of course.

“DRAW. I’ll keel you like that bobcat I wrestled, like that bear I slaughtered with me can opener!”

Toby wanted to cry out, “Look. Look!” his finger pointed at the horizon. However, he couldn’t. He so much as moved, he’d get shot in the ‘art. Guaranteed.

The hooligan spat. “Varmint, I’m a gonna give ye a tin count.”

A ten count? Toby wondered, though not aloud, lest his speech be misinterpreted for motion and he get waxed.

“That’s right. A tin count.” The hooligan paused, and then, “Tin…”

Wait, what do you mean, a ten count?

“Nine…”

Toby knew what it meant alright. It meant that his efforts to prove himself to the prettiest redhead in town were about to jeopardize that hometown. It meant the Lords of the Plains, the most clever, fearless warriors this side of Geronimo, would, along with their weapons of destruction, soon be here. To be sure, there would be more than just twenty warriors. There would be hundreds more. This was just the advance party, surely.

“Eight…”

Their horses riding roughshod through the stalks and blossoms of the fields of goldenrods in the distance, the Indians galloped closer still.

“Seven…”

Toby shook himself. Options. Need to run through some possible options here. He began to brainstorm.

“Six…”

Hmmm…nah, that won’t work.

“Five…”

Wait, maybe if I…

“Four…”

Hey, don’t count so fast!

“Three…”

So it was that Toby, on the brink of a two count, decided to take his chances. It was the only thing he could think of that wouldn’t spell wholesale disaster for the inhabitants of Fort Wood.

“Two…”

Toby felt his fingers grow warm even as he made the decision that would forever seal his fate, the fate of Fort Wood, the fate of goldenrods everywhere, of people everywhere, of the wide world itself.

In a split second’s time he drew, aimed, then fired, three times.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The redolent sound of lead ricocheting off of iron, ping, ping, ping, in reply.

Another shot rang out.

It was all over.

A body slumped. The winner celebrated. The townspeople gasped, sighed, then hearkened to a sound which suggested that they had better, if they knew what was good for them, look west. With bated breath and livened pulse the townspeople looked west, even as the bell continued to toll.

Everyone saw.

The bell. The Indians.

“Hold it! Hold it!” a man hollered, throwing himself into the very mayhem and waving his arms. “They’re not here to kill us…just to tell us we’re all outdated!”

Neighbor nudged neighbor to quit hotfootin’ it around like crazed steer, to lower that pitchfork, that hoe, that spatula, and look over. Everyone looked over.

The silence of a cemetery. Of the dead, if you will. The mass of citizens veiled their paranoia, shaded their eyes, as Mayor Jenks, with a rueful look on his face, stepped forward to the podium that wasn’t a podium, only a patch of Main Street dirt; and turned up the microphone that wasn’t a microphone, only his nineteenth-century whiskey-soaked vocal chords.

“Attention…fellow citizens of Fort Wood!” the mayor said in a loud voice, disregarding the anathema individual who with flailing arms, prancing feet, and spittle and cuss words flying, continued right on with his victory dance.

It wasn’t a long speech, not even half the length of the one delivered a year earlier at the christening of the new horse stables, but damned if it didn’t stink any less. In between hiccups, the mayor began to put into words how he had forgotten, yes, quite forgotten, to tell everyone that fifteen diplomats, the governor among them, dressed incognito, like Indians, so as not to get killed while crossing reservation lands, were expected to arrive “’Round ‘bout this very time.”

The panicked look on the faces of three-hundred townspeople gave way to three-hundred frowns. Mayor Jenks lectured in praise of the merits and professional accomplishments of the “distinguished gentleman” seen galloping towards them. “Allow me to introduce...Mr. Samuel Atkins III, the no kidding governor of our state!”

The bare-chested, paint-streaked, pot-bellied entourage reared their horses with cries of “Whoa!” Dismounting, approaching the makeshift town square, they smiled while the mayor squawked on about the governor’s praiseworthy decision to esteem their very own—the mayor reared back, “Fort Wood,” to be included in the state’s new and strategic “’Electricity Works: Even Better than Candles, Torches, and Lanterns’ campaign.” Hence, the reason for this unprecedented visit by their governor.

From off to the side, “Thanks for the intro, Mayor,” a throaty voice said. The voice enunciated “E-lec-tric-it-y;” pausing afterward to allow the word to settle over the stunned gathering. Which it did, like a thunderclap over a tea party. The voice said, “Times are changin’, right? So, isn’t it high time towns in my jurisdiction—like Fort Wood, change along with them?”

The mayor turned and asked if the governor would come up and grace the town “with a few additional chestnuts of wisdom and fancy sayins’ that’ll set our hearts aglow like so many of them lightbulb thing-a-ma-bobs.”

A toothy grin. “My pleasure, Mayor Jenks.”

The governor’s broad grin was however not reciprocated by the townspeople, who were still frowning with their attentions since hijacked by a certain bigwig who was no more Injun than Queen Victoria and who was presuming to step up to their podium that was no podium, only a parcel of Main Street dirt.

“Hey, where’re you all going?” the governor hollered at the procession of townspeople who, over the minutes following, swelled to become the mass exodus of all of the townspeople, who with turned backs and stalwart strides did as much as declare that speeches by politicians were not their thing.

A stretcher, borne at either end by a pair of brawny lads in coveralls, headed the advance of townspeople—whose marchers appeared to be the most solemn the governor had ever seen. The governor noticed a young woman with red hair sobbing uncontrollably, and bear-hugging a gunnysack of grain to her bosom with all the torment of love lost.

The governor threw his flabby, paint-smeared arms into the air. “Where in the dickens is everyone goin’!”

* * *

The young man in the Boston Red Sox shirt turned off his cell-phone then tucked it into the back pocket of his skinny jeans. He did this, not because his game of solitaire on the phone’s touchscreen read “game over,” but because it had dawned on him that he was not as bored as he thought he might be by the storyteller’s ramblings on about dead country people.

Frowning, the young man said, “So, I don’t get it. Why did all the townspeople just diss the governor like that?”

The question was lost in the chorus of the tour group’s applause. The storyteller, a distinguished looking gentleman with a white beard and a bow-tie, bowed. The actors, who were the townspeople, all three hundred of them, many of them humming their favorite tune “The Ballad of Tin Can Toby,” bowed then returned with hastened step to their day jobs, and lives, at the schoolhouse, livery station, post office, emporium…

Patting the tour guide on the back, the storyteller announced, “Thank you, folks. Hope you enjoined that little re-enactment of ours, along with my narration and readings of all of these newspaper clippings here.” The storyteller swiped the tattered clippings off of the table in front of him. The dust settling in the wake of the last of the departing townspeople, the storyteller hoisted the table. He moved it from the center of Main Street off to the side of Main Street. “Now, ol’ Dan here will escort you all on to the grave.”

The grave.

It was what the tour groupers had come to see most of all.

It was old. It was mythic. It had been featured on the Discovery Channel.

Tilting back his cowboy hat, Dan, the tour guide stretched a slow smile. He spat out some of his tobacco. “Ready for the real show to begin?”

The tour groupers nodded in earnest.

But first, introductions were in order.

Tom and Maggie, standing to the Red Sox guy’s right, had driven all the way from Nova Scotia, Canada. “Long car ride. But worth it, so far.” Maggie smiled. “Didn’t you just love all of those people dressed up in their old-timey outfits?”

John Stallins hailed from Des Moines. “Not so long a drive,” John said, smiling at Tom and Maggie. “Only a long wait. I was on that waiting list for five whole years.”

Joni Harper described herself as a “Southern girl” even though she lived just outside of Pittsburgh. “Hey, how come you only had to wait five years?” she turned to ask John. “I had to wait seven.”

Ron and Lucinda Walker were from Chicago, “…which is a helluva lot different than this place, ain’t that the truth,” Lucinda said. She thought about it. “Actually, everywhere is different than this place. The atmosphere here. Can’t you just feel it? It’s like something out of a dream.”

Rita Martinez owned and operated a maid service in Reno. She said something in broken English that sounded like she was very happy to be in Fort Wood. She introduced her son, Hector.

And from Albany, New York, there was Meg Klein. Tying back her brown hair into a ponytail, Meg shared that she was on spring break and had traveled “…over a thousand miles in a fourteen-year-old Chevy with no muffler” to come visit “this fairy tale land that ever since I was a little girl I had heard so much about.”

It had been a day long in coming for them all. However long each of these vacationers had forestalled this trip of a lifetime, they all were at long last here.

Except the Red Sox guy, who thoughts were somewhere else entirely, and who was officially pissed off now because no one had answered his question. Instead of introducing himself as Logan Murphy, a recent graduate of UMass and a computer programmer who lived and worked in Boston, he said, “Okay, so, not long after my coworkers gave me this ticket over here, saying that I needed a vacation like the harbor needs fish that don’t smell like chemicals, I did some researching online. I came across this promotion, this pop-up, that read, Number One Tourist Attraction in the Midwest. It was talking about this place.”

A loud, rattling sound forestalled any attempt at rebuttal to the Red Sox guy’s remark.

The tour guide waved everyone forward. “Sounds like a squirrel, dudn’t it? Knocking its way around a bucket?”

“A tin bucket,” Joni from Pittsburgh exclaimed, pumping her Southern-girl fist in the air. “In commemoration of Tin Can Toby!”

“C’mon, I’ll show yahs.”

Thankful to be moving finally, the little band of “Moderners” followed their tour-guide escort and his cowboy hat down Main Street.

The only street in town.

“Good day, Dorothy,” the tour guide waved.

“Good day, Dan,” a woman with a bonnet waved back. “Good day, everyone.”

The visitors hesitated, in equal degrees fearful and not wanting to offend. Instead of waving back, answering, they snapped photos—of the woman, the general store, the barbershop, folks banging away at anvils, bowing, curtseying, loading sacks, leaning up against wood posts with their hands stuffed in their pockets.

The tour guide reached into his own pocket to pull out something coppery: an Indian Head penny. He handed it over to a cart-pushing vendor dressed in coveralls and straw hat. “Watch this,” the tour guide winked at the group. The exchange was made: the copper penny for skewered meat. “See, what I mean? No inflation. Nothing’s changed here, not since 1893.” The Moderners were likewise invited to try some “Roasters.”Smiling, winking, the tour guide clarified, “Roast buffalo on a stick.”

…rickety-rackety-rick…rickety-rackety-rick…

The sound, the summoning, of the tin can!

“Understand please, folks…” The tour guide again led the way, directing attention to the fields of gold that hemmed in the town on all sides and could be seen clearer now in-between some of the larger public buildings and over-top the smaller homesteads and barns. “Contrary to what y’all might be thinking what with our little presentation just now, understand, folks, that that cowboy you see yonder, that milkmaid next to him, those non-mechanized oxen in that field o’er there…aren’t actors, and this is not a set. This is how these folks—and animals—actually live.”

“Amish,” scoffed the Red Sox guy. “They’re backwards. Just like the Amish. Also, let me say this: I wouldn’t eat this janky stuff-on-a-stick stuff if my life depended on it!”

The tour guide halted in mid-stride. Neither pretentious nor easily offended, still he decided to allow himself to sink to this Moderner’s level. “Guess I didn’t mention to y’all that I had the privilege of showing around two summers ago—the Emir of Saudi Arabia? Then, back in ’87…Princess Diana?” The tour guide exhaled. “Tell me,” he said over his shoulder, resuming his stride, his temptation toward sarcasm fading as his usual civility returned, “would any of you deny yourself air conditioning…if you didn’t have to? Shampoo, for no reason at all? Look, we Fort-Wooders are not unreasonable. It’s not because we enjoy doin’ without stuff like laundry detergent, Internet, these walkie-talkies that I hear so much about, rather it’s ‘cause—"

“Of religion?”

The tour guide pursed his lips. “How abouts we call it more along the lines of superstition. Ya see, when Toby shot that bell—”

“Oh, I get it. I get it now!” The Red Sox guy’s cheeks flushed. He flailed his arms as his feet and legs trundled onward. “So, Toby shoots the bell, right?” The Red Sox guy swallowed. “In an attempt to warn the townspeople, right? So the townspeople, touched all the way to their bootheels or whatever, interpret the whole deal as some sort of, like, omen. Now, even with this governor guy galloping into town, everybody already by this point assumes—no, they know—their very own Tin Can Toby couldn’t’ve just shot that bell in vain, that he must’ve known something, and which I’m guessing must have had something to do with that whole Electricity Works campaign of the governor’s, that whole ‘times are changing we need to change along with them’ rap. Heck, you can all but hear the townspeople say to one another, ‘Electricity, and change, and walkie-talkies, are the very horrible things Toby had meant to warn us about by shooting that bell!’”

The Red Sox guy’s smug smile shone resplendently. “Anyways, since that day way back in 1693, or whenever it was, and even, like, until today—Governor Atkins’s modernization proposal, and the governor-after-Atkins’s modernization proposal, and the governor-after-after-Atkins’s modernization proposal, have been straight-up turned down by the people of Fort Wood. They still…” the Red Sox guy lowered his gaze to consider the food item that had yet to cross paths with his mouth, “…eat roast buffalo on a stick.”

The tour guide leveled his brow. “Decided to sneak a peek at the brochure, have we?” He smiled. “That’s right. They heeded the high call of Tin Can Toby’s sacrifice.”

The sound of puking, or of someone pretending to puke.

“Why…” Lucinda from Chicago placed her hands on her hips “…did you even come here, then?”

“Vie?” The Red Sox guy unstuck his finger out of his mouth. “I’ll tell you why. My coworkers, see, surprised me with this ticket last month. At first, I thought it might be a ticket to get me into some wicked awesome place like Fenway Park, or an Adele concert.” The Red Sox guy sighed. “But no, it was Legend of Fort Wood something or other. I had to come. For their sake.”

“Ah, for their sake,” the tour guide echoed. After a long silence, and clearing his throat, the tour guide placed a lid on audience participation when he resumed his discourse on the sad fate of Tin Can Toby.

“And yet,” the tour guide pointed out, “maybe not so sad a fate for our hero. For, was it not Tin Can Toby’s sacrifice…” the tour guide asked in the direction of the clouds and sun above, and the fields of gold on all sides “…that provided that key, cosmic ingredient to that secret recipe which has since given rise to the Legend of Fort Wood?”

The tour guide spoke of the townspeople, past and present; he spoke of magic, and miracles, of sunsets and sunrises, of washbasins and wheelbarrows, of carrying some kind of torch, of the inexplicable crossings over of the conscience and the metaphysical—

“Is that cow poop I smell?”

The Red Sox guy again.

“Whew!” he said, pinching his nose. “Cow’s stink.”

Joni from Pittsburgh said, a bit snidely, “You think it’s for nothing they call places like this cow-towns?”

The tour guide turned, pointed. “Look.”

It was shinier, more rotund than any of them had ever imagined.

The bell tower. The bell itself.

Everyone froze. Flashing lights blinked with the radiance of a thousand fireflies out of the Moderners’ photo-capturing devices.

“Oh how stupid,” a voice cried. The Red Sox guy again. “It’s a giant tin can. Whoever heard of a bell in the shape of a tin can?”

…rickety-rackety-rick…rickety-rackety-rick…

“This is it, then. The very spot…” The tour guide lowered his head “…where Tin Can Toby stood, fired those three shots…where Tin Can Toby died.” The tour guide’s voice faltered, as always it did at this point in the presentation. “The very spot where that first goldenrod was placed upon Toby’s all-too-broken heart by a young woman…named Hannah Anderson.”

“I can’t wait to see de goldenross!” cried the normally-reserved-because-her-English-was-not-so-good Rita from Reno.

The Red Sox guy shook his head. “Can’t wait to see goldenrods?”

They went.

Around past the bell tower, over a hillcrest, through fields of goldenrod, all the way to the middle of nowhere. It was a five-minute walk, which, notwithstanding the prickers, would introduce many of them to country fresh air and to what a real-life coyote looked like.

The little band of Moderners stopped, gathered round—in a field where not a single telephone pole could be seen.

“Okay, folks. Y’all ready?” The tour guide leaned forward. His eyes grew large. He shouted, “Go for the gold!”

It all happened so fast. The tour groupers bolted, singing, screaming, into nature’s treasure chest of milkweed and pollen: the fields of gold surrounding them. The Red Sox guy just stood there, blinking. A minute later, he found the tour groupers back on the pathway, away from the ticks and chiggers, flowers in hand, awaiting further instructions from their guide.

“Have we all got the gold? Okey-doke, off to the graveyard we go.”

“Wait.”

Everyone squinted at the empty-handed Red Sox guy.

“STOP. Please. What the hell just happened here?”

Three Moderners simultaneously slumped their shoulders, and sighed. John from Des Moines sneezed. Apologizing, he put forth that not even a serious case of allergies was going to stop him from going for the gold.

A young woman stepped forward. “I’ll tell you—” the woman grinned “—what just happened here.” However, the grin appeared much too ardent to bode friendly, and not a few wondered if the young woman had not all along been biding her time for this very moment, this opportunity, to at last present itself.

Meg from New York had had a bittersweet taste in her mouth about this so-called Red Sox guy ever since their run-in back in the parking lot—and it wasn’t because she was a diehard Yankees fan, either. Meg rolled up her sleeves, narrowed her eyes. Begging the tour guide’s pardon, she wondered aloud if this so-called Red Sox guy might like to get a clue so they could get on to the grave before next week. Meg eased a smile. Wetting her lips, and petting the ground with the toe of her shoe, she said, “Just kidding.” She asked if the Red Sox guy might like to join her for an “Explanation session” at a Starbucks sometime, after they got back to the real world.

The real world, the others mused. Did it even exist anymore?

Explanation session, the Red Sox guy smiled. Sounds like a time! His mind’s eye hearkened him back to that parking lot scene from earlier, and the expression of anger, then thrill, on the coffee chick’s comely face after he had maybe-not-so-accidentally grazed the back bumper of her car with the front bumper of his.

Maggie from Nova Scotia nudged her husband. “Look, Tom, at the two love birds. Love at first sight. When was the last time you saw that happen?”

Meg fought back a smile. “It’s not love. It’s just, you know, coffee time.”

“Coffee time? Like Toby and Hannah coffee time?” Smiling, Lucinda folded her arms. She looked Meg and the Red Sox guy up and down. “My, my, my. I’m seeing some for-real el-ec-tricity sizzling between the two of you, sure enough.”

Everyone snickered at that.

The tour guide nodded. “Love at first sight? Can’t say it hasn’t happened before in these here parts. The grave. Some strange power from outta the grave. The residual effects of Toby’s sacrifice, preserved by the townspeople, and delivered specially to you for your touring pleasure.”

Meg kept her smile. “I didn’t know that love at first sight even existed!”

Twisting her lip, Lucinda mused. “It was a thing people used to hear about, talk about, way back in my mama’s day. These days, you don’t hear much about it. Love at first sight just never happens anymore.” Lucinda sighed. “The world’s lost that.”

The tour guide put one foot in front of the other. “Well, that’s what we Foot Wooders are here for. To remind people of the good things that once were, and to help bring ‘em back.”

Meg turned to the Red Sox guy. “You bumped me on purpose, didn’t you?”

The tour groupers marched on towards Long Trail Cemetery, located about a hundred yards “in thata direction.” The gravelly path upon which they tread gave way to a tarnished chrome archway the tour guide expounded was of Victorian vintage, and whose iron-work flounces and leafy embellishments cast their shadows over the group’s passing, in this way granting them entrance into the cemetery proper.

The gravestone they were looking for was not difficult to find, situated as it was at the center of the cemetery amidst a forest of crosses.

The party encircled. Stood. Stared.

“Our point of contact—” the tour guide stilled himself “—with the world unseen.”

A heart. The gravestone had been hewn into the shape of a heart upon which no name, no birthdate, no death date, had been chiseled.

“HERE LIES A MAN WHO LOST HEART, SO THAT YOU WOULDN’T,” read the epitaph.

No one dared stir.

Except for Meg.

“Here, I picked an extra one.” She deposited a blossomy branch into the Red Sox guy’s hand. “Just for you.”

“Watch,” the tour guide said.

The Red Sox guy was watching, and closely. He watched as the tour guide positioned his goldenrod sprig atop the grave. The others in like manner garnished the grave with their flower offerings.

“Um, I don’t get it.”

The tour guide had not failed to notice. “Mayhap so. Still, you did get a flower. Which you can place, if you’d like, alongside the others.”

The Red Sox guy positioned his flower. Still, he did not get it. Yet, not five minutes later, upon the gut-wrenching conclusion of Thy Tin Can Runneth Over, a eulogy delivered by the tour guide, strewn with explanation about things like life, death, and flowers—the world would become then for this latest visitor to the number-one-tourist-attraction-in-the-Midwest, no longer the same place.

The tour guide ended with, “The life is in the blood, as they say. When Hannah lay that flowery sprig on the bloodied heart of ol’ Toby—it brought everlasting life to that flower.” His gaze wandered in the direction of the town. “We Fort Wooders have chosen to make a sacrifice all our own, in commemoration of Toby’s. We’ve sacrificed things like, well, electricity, and allowin’ ourselves to venture into the outside world—so that his memory may live on.” He looked at the Moderners. “Live on, it has, with the universe endowin’ its powers—somehow, we don’t know how—to this heart of goldenrod.” The tour guide eyed the grave. “Now, goldenrods left and right are bein’ immortalized.” He sniggered. “Ain’t that sumptin’?”

Everyone retrieved their goldenrod.

Ambling over, the Red Sox guy retrieved his goldenrod.

In solemn procession, the little group padded away from the grave. It was finished: each had attained what they waited a lifetime for.

The Red Sox guy moved not at all. The tour guide came to him. “Why are you still here?”

The Red Sox guy raised eyes that threatened tears. “You mean it won’t die? Ever?”

“Well, this of course depends.”

“Depends…” the Red Sox guy said, as if in a trance. He snapped out of it when he saw, out of the corner of his eye, the woman from the parking lot approach.

Gliding over, Meg slipped inside of the Red Sox guy’s back pocket a tab of paper upon which she had a penned a sketch of a winking cow; under that she scribbled her name, phone number, and the word “Coffee time.”

“On you. It depends of course, on you. And me. And her…” Meg smiled at this reference to herself. The tour guide honed in on the individual who appeared to be having a bungle. “Do you…” The tour guide extended a finger “…you…?”

“Red Sox guy?” offered the other man.

“Aye, thank you. Do you, Red Sox guy, fancy that that flower you got there will from henceforth live forever—“ the Red Sox guy gulped “—never wither, never lose a petal, now that the magic—”

“Magic?”

“—aye, magic, here at Fort Wood, has been found to confer its life-giving touch?”

Something inside of the Red Sox guy was ready to crack. “Um, I don’t know.” He looked over. “Wait, how about you? Do you—you’re name’s Meg, right?—do you believe?”

Meg took a deep breath. “I’m trying to.”

The Red Sox guy relaxed, and was glad. The tour guide had sense enough to give space as Meg stepped over to place a soft hand on the Red Sox guy’s shoulder. The other tour groupers had the presence of mind to return and gather round the Red Sox guy, who was gazing down in wonder at his goldenrod sprig.

“What is it you see there?” Joni from Pittsburgh asked, smiling.

The tour guide stepped closer to the center of the circle which was the Red Sox guy and his flower. He said to Joni, “I know it wasn’t me you directed that question to, sweetie; but may I?” The tour guide beheld the Red Sox guy’s flower. “I see, in each of these lil’ yellow florets here, a world of endless possibilities and new opportunities.” He eyed the tour groupers. “As y’all leave from here, you take into your world of electric lights these here examples of life everlasting. Take them, and go be a light in your electric world that is darkness otherwise.”

Meg wet her lips. “I see…” she said, her eyes fixed on the flower, “the opportunity to get to know someone better over hazelnut latte and an almond croissant.”

The Red Sox guy grinned over. “Starbucks, right?”

Meg nodded, as Joni laughed for joy.

A breeze, a rustle, a current of air, stirred the millions of flowers in the prairie-land surrounding them as if a giant, gentle hand had at that moment passed across.

Silence reigned. It was the nothingness sound of eternity they heard, of years gone by, of something beyond time, something bigger than the world itself…