Edward: A Man Leaves Work One Autumn Evening. An excerpt from Brief Glimpses into the Lives of the Unknown. The newest literary release of Dr. Chancey Squires, Historian of the Obscure.
A note from Dr. Chancey Squires1: My intention with this publication, as with all of my life’s work, is to showcase that which has largely gone ignored by contemporary historians. The footnotes of traditional history, you could say, and on that note, much like the stories themselves, the footnotes within stand as very important pieces to the puzzle. For a casual glimpse it is fine to never stray from the main-text, much like you would do with the editorials and fiction of your local news-circulations, but for the true scholar, I suggest perusing the footnotes as they appear.
From the moment my observations and thoughts expanded past the solitude of my mind and the keys of my Underwood, my detractors have labeled me long-winded, a chronicler unable to present our past in a simple, easily understood manner. To that, I whole-heartedly agree. History, like life itself, is far from a simple matter. One must be long-winded when telling a story the right way cannot be done with short-breaths, and that, for your pleasure or pain, was, of course, the style so crucial to presenting Glimpses as it should be.
Some ten miles west of Riverview2, by way of a yet-unpaved country highway, is the latest incarnation of an area the residents call Sellar’s Hollow3.
1 Abridged from the Glimpses introduction.
2 Which gained infamy as a haunt of controversial penman C.M. Peck.
3 The outer-lying circumstances force me into an awkward wording here. There is no current standard town administration, there are no road-signs, and on anything but a local-cartographer’s work the area appears as nothing but forest.
In times now past, Sellar’s Hollow has served as many things. The earliest, as currently recalled4, as a trader’s post of ill repute5 6. A shipyard7 8, a Mecca-of-sorts for taxidermy9, and an obscure battle-site10, in non-linear order, make up the other notable past-forms of Sellar’s Hollow, checkering the area’s past between times of disease11, famine, riots, and out-right rebellion12.
As it stands now, as it always has, Sellar’s Hollow centers on its industrial focus, although far more varied than the single-minded shadow of its past. Factories line the very grounds Sellar’s Hollow militia-men13 and United States soldiers14 died upon so many years ago. In one of these stark brick factories, just across the avenue from The Midnight Haberdashery15, resides the focus of this section: Edward.
Edward: A Man Leaves Work One Autumn Evening16.
4 I must credit, by the recaller’s demand, state historian Arthur Averland for this information. Mr. Averland’s lineage, as he belabored (many times) in our correspondence has been oddly tethered to Sellar’s Hollow. His ancestors seemingly drawn to return, every few generations, to the area.
5 I do not mean to imply any connotations of prostitution with this claim. Prostitution is a product of civilization, or at the least an inclination towards civilization. The level of “civilization” possessed by Sellar’s Hollow at this point created a far more habitable environment for the act of rapine than any form of payment exchange to sate the lusts of men.
6 Sellar’s Hollow as a trading post would soon dissolve after the theft and local distribution of pox-infected blankets intended for military use.
7 Despite Sellar’s Hollow’s far-inland location, it thrived in the naval industry, producing knife-thin corsairs that became a staple of the novice-smuggler.
8 Months before government action had been slated to cease the shipyard’s production, Clovis “Boils” Henry, the yard’s head-designer and builder, was found dead in an opium-den, his head nearly severed. There were disagreements over who would take over Boils’ position, and the shipyard closed a mere month later after three more deaths.
9 The only records found about this time in Sellar’s Hollow history comes from a few surviving invoices, customers, inquirers, and would-be apprentices, the addresses ranging from New Mexico to the Canadian territories.
10 The Battle at Fence Creek. There were no survivors on either side.
11 Most prominently the bloody flux.
12 Leading to the previously mentioned battle. See Allister’s Nation of Dissent, pg. 342-344, The Postmaster Rebellion.
13 See appendix IV-I Sellar’s Hollow militia uniform illustration & battle-songs.
14 Only three men of the United States army stood as Sellar’s Hollow’s enemy at the Battle of Fence Creek. Pvt. Frank Hershey, Pvt. John Orville, Pvt. James King.
15 Business of Hortensia Croswell, whom Hats Today calls “The single most influential figure in head-wear since Franz Blackfeather.”
16 Unlike the majority of the sections within Glimpses, my correspondence with Edward was purely through the post. Edward would not permit an in-person interview for reasons I am not at liberty to discuss. Despite this, I feel Edward’s story is one of the strongest. In hardly a span of two months, he sent exactly seventy-three pages mapping out the entirety of the events detailed in this section.
It was with the utmost care that Edward put away the tools of his trade17, October 7th, the final day before his retirement. Sixty-three years as the foremost junior-inspector18 of glass eyes at the Dimir Family Workshop & Emporium of Miscellany19 20 21 had come to a close.
The late-afternoon sun was bleeding through the smeared sectioned-windows of the plant, and everything was covered with the odd reds and oranges unique22 to factory with the descent of the sun each day.
After punching out his time-card, Edward paused to listen to the sounds of the factory one final time. By the hour his shift ended, the factory was always empty apart from Edward and the long-mustachioed twins23 who monitored the labyrinth of ticker-tape machines one floor above Edward’s. It was this sound, the chittering call of the ticker-tape that reverberated through the ceiling and into Edward’s ears “like an army of spindly knife-legged spiders”24, that had accompanied him every daylight minute of his service to the Dimir family. Aside from the baroque concertos and sonatas25 carved into wax cylinders that sounded from the ancient phonograph and mingled with pipe-smoke in the employee’s lyceum26, the ticker-tape was the sole musical score of Edward’s career.
With a last glance over the rows of eyes Edward has spent his life hunched over, he retrieved his over-coat and made for the stairwell.
17 1 Dalpe plow plane. 1 brass magnifying glass (that had belonged to his father). 6 brushes of varying length & thickness. 1 18 inch Bradford Union Patented Cast Iron Inclinometer. 1 six-piece set of Greenlee chisels. 1 lacquered mallet. 1 piano tuner (keepsake only). 1 anguistralobe.
18 Senior ranks being exclusive to relatives.
19 Founded by the Dimir, an exiled Romanian noble family (date unknown).
20 The first “modern” & non-tavern establishment of Sellar’s Hollow.
21 See appendix IV-II Dimir Family Workshop & Emporium of Miscellany exterior photographs.
22 Edward could not provide me with a proper explanation to this claim, only that they were colors “…he had never witnessed in the natural world.”
23 The non-English speaking Vig brothers. The only two non-Dimir workers employed previous to Edward. The only two to take residence in the factory.
24 See appendix IV-III Selected Correspondence From Edward.
25 The scores were varied, although Bach was forbidden. It is claimed the long-dead Adi Dimir, while traveling through Germany, had met one of Johann Bach’s sons, and although it is no longer known exactly what transpired, Adi took great affront to what he perceived as a slight. There are no other known incidents in the Dimir-Bach feud.
26 An addition to the factory during Serban Dimir’s limited run as factory overseer. Months later Serban was replaced by his cousin Lucian Dimir due to “an excess of foppish behavior on Serban’s part.” Serban was never seen again in Sellar’s Hollow.
“It’s queer, it was as if they were looking back at me. Somehow there was a tangible sorrow in their lidless stares. Somehow…they knew.”27 The muffled and ambiguous language of the Vig brothers mixed with the impact of Edward’s footfalls until they were silenced by the closing of the stairwell door. Another debate of unknown subjects, echoed back and forth in their identical voices.
The seemingly endless spiral of rusted steel-steps took Edward to the ground-floor, and through the double doors of flaking paint, to what was once the showroom and the reasoning behind the “Emporium” in Dimir Family Workshop & Emporium of Miscellany28.
The rows and shelves Edward passed once held the finest of Dimir products29, but on his final departure, just as every day for the thirty years previous and to the day of this publication, they held nothing but dust, grime, and evidence of the vermin who found no bar to their siege of the forgotten showroom.
The door of the employee’s entrance slammed its farewell to Edward, the harsh thick metal against thick metal and the groaning of the timber behind, and Edward walked into the dimming Autumn light of the outside world.
He was greeted by Dalcia, the love of his life30.
That October 7th there was not the slightest indication of rain in the sky, but she waited, crooked smile and unfurled umbrella, until he took her hand and they walked home.
27 See appendix IV-III Selected Correspondence From Edward.
28 The Dimir family made the decision to convert fully into a distribution-center after an unfortunate incident where a small boy lost his life in the Musket & Wooden-Leg Exhibit Room.
29 See appendix IV-II Dimir Family Workshop & Emporium Catalog.
30 See appendix IV-III Edward & Dalcia, “then and now” photographs.
Reflection: Dr. Chancey Squire’s Concluding Thoughts31.
Lives and stories similar to Edward’s are plentiful in our country’s colorful past – in point of fact, in a brief interview by way of telegraph32 with Cladiu Dimir IV33, I inquired of Edward and after sending all the information I had through the wire: partial name34, factory position, and detailed physical description, I received the response: “you need narrow further sir – C IV.”.
Edward’s story is important and was selected for inclusion into Glimpses because it is not merely the story of Edward, but of many.
The uncelebrated art critic Arthur Bathurst35 once said (on the subject of landscape paintings36)“To view any locale on the canvas as a fixed location is to not understand art itself. Atributing[sic]37 a specific address to a field, forest, or lake-side does nothing but rob the piece of its connectivity. To say “That is Paris.” or “This is the Carpathians.” severs an endless list of people and their experieces[sic] all tied to mirrors of the locale in every part of the known world.” One of my intentions with Glimpses was to show that the same is true of humanity.
Slumbering beneath the thick roots of our family trees we all have our Edwards. They have shaped the face of our modern world, and, sadly, we have done nothing, but turn a sightless, milky glass-eye to their memory.
31 Abridged from book version.
32 It seems a common characteristic of anyone with heavy ties to Sellar’s Hollow to be severely aversive to in-person communication. At least, by my own experience, with outsiders.
33 Fourth son of Dorin Dimir, who receives his numeral suffix (IV of VI) not from ancestor namesakes, but from his father’s odd decision to name all of his sons Cladiu.
34 Edward would not disclose his surname to me.
35 Mr. Bathurst went unpublished until the year following his conviction and life-sentencing as the Southwark Bridge Child-Throttler.
36 Bathurst, Arthur “The Fields of our Birth” The Wellington Cross Daily
37 The Wellington Cross Daily is not known for their editor. Not to say that they are well known at all.
