"Notes on the State of Virginia" - Chapter 1
by Peter Pnin
We begin the third and final week of PILCROW’s Inaugural Serialized Novel Contest. After its conclusion, subscribers (both free and paid) will vote on a Winner to be fully serialized here on the Substack (Finalists are awarded $500; the Winner $1,000.)
Our Finalists for this round:
Seasons Clear, and Awe by Matthew Gasda
Mites by Gregory Freedman
Notes on the State of Virginia by Peter Pnin
We’re excited to have all of you as a part of this endeavor to forge a new path for fiction on Substack. If you believe in what we’re doing, please consider offering a paid subscription.
⚬─────────✧─────────⚬
I sing a hero’s head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man…
From “The Man with the Blue Guitar”
by Wallace Stevens
⚬─────────✧─────────⚬
-Foreword-
I learned of the events underlying this novel soon after their dramatic conclusion in North Carolina on August 11, 2018. A colleague of mine who teaches at Cornell—a person familiar with the murder and Virginia Statusen’s unfortunate involvement—told me about her remarkable story with the added suggestion that it was worthy of my talents. While I demurred at first, curiosity soon overcame me, and I began making preliminary inquiries. As it was, the more I learned about Miss Statusen, the more compelling her tale became.
Though generally a writer of fiction (and a most successful one), I was immediately fascinated with Virginia in a different capacity for myself—that of a journalist, which was, in fact, my profession for three years early in my career. I began thinking about a non-fiction novel about this young lady (similar to Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood). This would be a perfect respite from the world of pure fiction in which I had profitably immersed myself for many years.
After discussing the idea with my wife, agent, and editor, I went to Ithaca to begin research. Next, I tried to contact Miss Statusen. For this, I relied on the intercession of a common acquaintance, who presented my idea to her, along with a request for a meeting. I discovered, however, that Miss Statusen preferred to communicate in writing only. Hence, per her request, I wrote a letter of introduction and intention. That intention, I told her, was to write a novel based on her life in the years 2017 and 2018.
She replied quickly and quaintly, using a black ink fountain pen (a Mont Blanc, I later learned) on classic ivory linen paper. Her refusal was curt: She preferred not to. Before accepting defeat, I wrote back to encourage her to read my novels and poetry. With that, I shipped five books of mine to her (three novels and two poetry collections), plus works by two other authors of this fiction/non-fiction genre.
Frankly, given what I had known about her—a person with a preference for privacy and a penchant for stubbornness—I did not expect cooperation. But after two weeks and one day, I received an unexpected letter from her, which gave me hope. She said, first of all, that she liked the books that I sent (most of all, mine, naturally). Second, she said that she wanted more information on how the book would be structured and written.
Excellent! I thought. For I already had given much consideration to these points. As for structure, I wanted to try something different, something that Thomas Jefferson did centuries ago in his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia. In 1781, François Barbé-Marbois, Secretary of the French Legation in Philadelphia, asked Jefferson for information about his state of Virginia, posing specific questions to him. In response, Jefferson wrote Notes on the State of Virginia, which consists of twenty-three Queries, each Query dealing with a unique aspect of the state. Each begins with a brief title followed by a subtitle. Query VI, for example, is entitled “Minerals” and subtitled “A Notice of the Mines and Other Subterranean Riches; its Trees, Plants, Fruits, & Etc.” (To be sure, these Jeffersonian topics are boring in substance, but carry an approach incisive in concept.)
So I asked myself: Why not here? Twenty-three Queries to develop a person and a story! That should be quite enough. Moreover, by sheer coincidence, her name was Virginia, too! It made immediate sense. I was excited. Soon, I began thinking about how I would physically describe Miss Statusen in Query II, a query, which, for Jefferson, is his description of the boundaries of his state (titled: “Limits: An Exact Description of the Limits and Boundaries of the State of Virginia?”). I could usefully employ the remaining twenty-two queries to tell Virginia’s story as power-fully as possible. I already knew that one Query would be about that fateful date of August 11, 2018.
I conveyed this idea to her in my reply letter, together with a copy of Jefferson’s book, and proposed my intention to blend fact and fiction. This, I told her, required trust—trust not only in me, the author, but also in art. I reaffirmed my faithfulness to truth, but argued for license to creatively bridge gaps that might lie between the facts reliably offered by witnesses and documents. This was, I warranted, a most challenging task—one certainly risking rebuke from either proponents of the purest truth or, most importantly, the main actor and witness herself.
Ultimately, I argued that this mixture, if done right, might produce the most meaningful art, for truth is never perfect or complete in life. Think of me, I wrote, as a painter and she the subject. My task would not be precise replication, even if that were possible, but the realization of more refined textures and greater expression.
She answered and, from her response, I sensed that Miss Statusen indeed held imagination in high regard. In fact, she sent me a poem for my consideration. I was impressed! It was a well-wrought poem with able abstractions and turns of language. Moreover, in it, I saw the shadowy semblances of the very story that gives rise to this novel before the reader.
Finally, after further correspondence, I entreated her to act as my guide, to lead me out of my ignorance with all the truths that she could muster, so that I, with skills of storytelling, could become the reader’s guide on a journey of discovery and inspiration.
That did it! She agreed to provide: (1) extensive written responses to numerous questions that I posed to her; and (2) redacted portions of voluminous personal journals germane to the events at issue. She agreed to furnish those documents on stipulation that they not be reproduced; that only this author view them; and that they be destroyed by fire upon publication of this book. Those requests have been complied with.
In response to my request to meet her, she declined for that moment, although she said that she would make herself available at a future time.
She also asked me to respect her privacy and not to ask personal questions that went outside the scope of facts that she and others proffered.
I assured her that she could trust me, although, to my eternal regret, I betrayed that trust in a moment of weakness when the day of our meeting finally arrived.
-Peter Pnin
-QUERY I-
Courses and Navigation
A Notice of Philosophy and Piety and How They Are Navigable?
October 2017. Cornell University. Goldwin Smith Hall. Room 204. Philosophy 314, “Man and Morality: Plato to Spinoza.” Assistant Professor Robert Brassting teaching.
Professor Brassting, despondent, was in the near aftermath of divorce from wife number two over acts of moral turpitude (his) and financial ineptitude (hers). He sported a philosophical-type beard in sparest form, but with sufficient visibility to demonstrate pseudo-indifference to conformity.
Homicide, however, was still far from his mind.
The class comprised three philosophy majors all of whom would jettison the discipline upon graduation, preferring instead law, medicine, and rabbinical studies. Eleven other students, including Virginia, were present in class for sundry reasons, including, for several, an interest in morality.
Professor Brassting: Okay, class, let’s get started.
The professor was just six months ejected from his marital domicile and thrust into a nice, but rented house in a scholarly area of Ithaca with mostly normal families. His life was a maelstrom of unpacked boxes, five pieces of furniture, inadequate cooking skills, unfinished writings, academic uncertainty, and impulses becoming increasingly distracting.
Professor Brassting: Remember—there won’t be class on Thursday.
Fortunately for Brassting, class would be his usual philosophic Socratic interrogation. No preparation required. Brassting longed for the academic hour to pass—fifty minutes to be precise, not counting those minutes when students with their collegiate prattle dared to impede his rush to the door. His passion for philosophy was being eviscerated by a specter—once infrequent, but now haunting and constant—of the teaching of humanities as futility.
He was forty-seven years old. For over two decades, he had entwined himself in disputations of wise, dead men involving issues of life, death, knowledge, virtue, and evil. But those moorings in his life—men of great books and contemplations—were withering before him as their words became words piled upon words and little else. His rapid marital unraveling was searing and anathema to his desired presentation of a man and woman in union.
He continued: Okay, to begin today’s class would someone recap the Euthyphro
Problem we began talking about at the end of last class?
For physical reasons alone, Brassting would have fled the classroom if he weren’t bound contractually to perform his didactic duties. Three body parts of his were noticeably unsettled—a bladder beset by stubborn infection; a stomach fighting heated dyspepsia; and a head harboring a headache whose pain sliced downward into his backside scapular regions.
Professor Brassting: “Mir, what about you?”
Mir, a Belarusian from Minsk, was usually unstudied and rarely made more than perfunctory pronouncements.
Mir: Well, Euthyphro is on his way to the courts to bring charges against his father for murder. On the way, he meets Socrates, who tries to talk him out of it.
Mir paused here, unsure of young Euthyphro’s exact dilemma, even though he recalled reading the dialogue. Perhaps for Mr. Mir, this was simply an untimely snafu in a refractory brain. In any event, for some students, the awkward silence presented opportunity. Hence, Virginia, well-studied in the Problem, assumed the lead when Brassting’s eyes wandered about for another voice:
Professor Brassting: Virginia?
The professor was enamored with Virginia’s voice, for it carried a light sweetness in a firm verbal carriage.
Virginia: So, Socrates is on his way to the agora to answer charges of impiety brought against him and he meets Euthyphro, who is going to the same place to bring charges against his father for the death of a servant. And Socrates wonders how Euthyphro could do that. In other words, wasn’t it impious, or not pleasingto the gods, for Euthyphro to prosecute his own father?
Professor Brassting: And what was Socrates being accused of specifically?
Virginia: Corrupting youth and not believing in the gods.
Virginia, originally a physics major, is a woman with remarkable scientific aptitude, but one who abruptly resigned from that academic pursuit in an email to Professor Goundry last year (“I regret to inform you that for personal reasons I am withdrawing from the physics program.”). Fellow fledgling physics majors thought that her athletic endeavors were to blame. Those more perceptive, however, knew the cause to be a growing disquietude with a science of an ever diminishing world immersed in elusive particulates and barely conceivable concepts.
Professor Brassting: So Socrates wants to talk to Euthyphro. Why?
Virginia: Well, Socrates is impressed that Euthyphro seems certain in thinking that what he is doing is right, that is, that it’s pious or pleasing to the gods. So he wants Euthyphro to explain piety and impiety to him in hopes that it might help Socrates defend the charges brought against Socrates himself.
(This colloquy was ultimately intended to lead a discussion of Baruch Spinoza, the Amsterdam lens grinder and philosopher, who was the subject of the Professor’s graduate seminar.)
Professor Brassting: So what happens?
Virginia: Socrates asks Euthyphro to teach him about piety.
Professor Brassting: In fact, doesn’t Socrates say that he wants to become Euthyphro’s student in order to learn about piety?
Brassting’s mind, at this point, began drifting, because he had long ago lost interest in piety. More importantly, his eyes had caught a glimpse of Céline, from Martinique, sitting in front. She was an alluring, richly brown-toned young lady, whom he fancied as diabolical (perhaps sado-masochistic) but who, in truth, was a most virtuous lady. She intended to study medicine—an ambition born from her father’s rural clinical practice in Rivière Salée—but, nonetheless, found philosophy antidotal to the rigors of chemistry and other scientific requirements. As Virginia continued, Brassting imagined deep, narcotic kisses with Céline when, in his fantasies, they would retreat to a sanctuary and divest themselves of philosophical pretensions for more pressing sensual needs.
Virginia: Yes. And so Socrates begins asking Euthyphro about the nature of piety.
Professor Brassting: Okay, somebody else? What’s the discussion between Socrates and Euthyphro that follows?
Renker, impressively intelligent, sat three seats behind Virginia and to her right. From that perch, he viewed her shapely legs, exposed by her fine, beige linen shorts on this warm Tuesday morning. But being attentive and of flexible thought, he jumped into on this discussion of piety:
Renker: Well, Euthyphro tells Socrates that he is acting piously in prosecuting his father. Socrates asks why is it pious. Socrates wants to know what distinguishes the pious from the impious. Socrates rejects the idea that an action is pious just because gods love it. He then assumes that gods are rational beings and that, therefore, they will love something only if it possesses some attribute worthy of their affection.
Professor Brassting: So we have to ask ourselves this: Are values based on the inherent nature of actions—that is, their goodness or non-goodness—or are they based subjectively on whims of some higher authority?
Meanwhile, Marla, from Connecticut, tilting leftward, looked at Brassting. She sat behind the wealthy Nathan (a downstate legacy boy with dual parental alumni), sitting two rows to Virginia’s left. Marla’s eyes and Nathan’s were distinctly dissimilar. Her blue eyes moved about dependably with her rapidity of thought, whereas his (somewhat brown green) reflected less mental agility and tended to stare at unmoving objects. His presence here remained a mystery to most of the class.
Coincidentally, at 10:23 a.m., Marla and Nathan looked at Brassting to see his eyes briefly close and his face transform ominously as if calamity had unfolded at the back of the room.
The professor felt a rapid, painful muscular contraction wash across his shoulders and neck. He looked at his shoes and to the old, oak floor and then to the dull painted wall. Suddenly, errant thoughts shot through his head—a failed, recent trip to Maine and Canada as a desperate effort to rescue his pedagogy, and to renew passion for great ideas, and to build a dam against encroaching ennui and a plummet into dangerous thoughts. He had taken old and new books of stories and poetry with him for support and succor. Yet, at the end, upon returning home, he found his being, once so centered and predictable, revealing fearful fissures in integrity and morality.
Then, unexpectedly, a tremor erupted in Brassting’s head as acidic percolations spewed forth, exceeding his powers of suppression. He swung his head right to survey these few, these fortunate few students unappreciative of this professor’s extensive, insightful erudition.
These wastrels, he thought, should be grateful for his intelligence so keen and his teachings so illuminating. Instead, he saw fourteen privileged students sitting, unaware of a man’s brilliance, his suffering, and personal struggle. Were he never to see their inferior selves again, he would be satisfied.
He looked to the wall for a clock and saw that only minutes remained until the end of class. Why not, he thought, test a student’s moxie and mettle for fun and pleasure?
His eyes roamed the room and stopped at Virginia. (Was there ever any doubt?) To Brassting, she was a woman of outstanding intelligence and attractiveness. (And a partner, too, in clandestine fantasies).
But, more importantly, to Brassting, she embodied a delicious duality, because, despite her subtle beauty, she, in his dreams and calculations, was equally capable of evil. Why not? Such was Brassting’s modern fate—to see a person as a mirror of his new conception. Oh!, he would touch her if he could to better sense the subtlety of her skin. But not now! No, for the moment, she would be merely his philosophical prey.
Professor Brassting: So who’s pious here?
The students, having anticipated an approaching departure, were stunned by the abrupt harshness in tone, extinguishing their notion of an expected quick exit.
Professor Brassting: A pious one. Anyone? Here we talk day after day about piety and knowledge and virtue. Well, let me talk to someone who’s pious and virtuous.
His eyes darted about, pretending to search, while knowing full well, their eventual target. Finally, they stopped at Virginia, hockey player par excellence. He moved closer.
Professor Brassting: So let’s talk to someone. I want to talk!. Don’t go anywhere!. Stay still!. Virginia? What about you? Are you pious, Virginia? Please tell us! Tell us!
Eyes are the central players of the face and first outposts of the mind. They join in collaboration with facial fleshes to present a fullness of features from which a viewer may draw conclusions. That said, Virginia became concerned, for she saw danger emanating from Brassting’s eyes. She sensed an unhinging emerging and, fearful that she was quarry, reconfigured herself, abruptly straightening her back as her pulse accelerated.
Years earlier, on August 13, 2006 (at 11:59 p.m., as noted by Virginia on her Rainbow Watch) in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Shenandoah Forest, Virginia suffered a first episode of trenchant fear. She and sister Tedd, ever inseparable, had begged their parents to let them sleep in the tent that night 150 feet from the Statusen cabin.
This was, however, a ruse. Their true intention was to venture off that night (contrary to parental admonitions) to transform themselves into imaginary personae: Tedd, the older, would be Reign Karta of the Kingdom of Larmak and Virginia would be her deputy, Bright Sortal Briant. Suffice it to state, these girls tested limits of creativity early in life and Virginia would dutifully note in her Journal, Volume C, pages 31-34, the story of their search for Sky Regent.
Sky Regent was Tedd’s invention, arising from a mind’s sinuous divides where there dimly burned the glow of a family’s first child—a brother born three years and a month before her and dead four years and two months into her life. Virginia, four years younger than Tedd, became for Tedd, upon her brother’s death, fuel for his recrudescence as a fey spirit lost to two sisters. Once Virginia crossed that line of cognition into the realm of youthful, unbridled thinking (close behind Tedd), she kept near to Tedd and learned of that brother once in being. Soon, the play of two imaginations built on one another and, hence, begat a second, created world. Thus, two children became three when a once-dead gallant mystically appeared. He filled their hearts with pleasure and became their hero as he saved their people from peril. Alas, however, after a fierce battle, he was gone, captured by the Tortum realm. Tedd, now ascendant as Reign Karta, assumed the duty of his rescue with her rising aide Virginia, the Bright Sortal Briant.
In the Shenandoah, with the sun retreated and a crescent moon below the horizon, Reign Karta and Bright Sortal set about to paint each other’s face (with lipstick larcenied from their mother’s purse) in the war design of the Larmak before marching forth with flashlights into the night for rendezvous with Sky Regent’s heavenly passage.
Their father taught the girls about the sky’s stars and constellations. Their favorite story was about Orion and the scorpion. Orion was the handsome hunter, son of sea-god Poseidon, who had given Orion the power to walk on water. Orion journeyed to the island of Chios where, drunken, he attacked Merope, daughter of king Oenopion. As revenge, the king banished Orion.
Orion fled east where Helios, the Sun, healed him. Once returned to health, Orion went to Crete where he fell in love with beautiful Artemis, goddess of the hunt and daughter of Zeus. They became partners in hunting, but Orion became boastful, and claimed power to kill all of earth’s creatures. Fearful, Gaia, goddess of the earth, sent a scorpion to kill Orion. A battle ensued and Orion was killed by the scorpion’s sting.
Artemis sought tribute for Orion and begged her father to raise him to the sky. Zeus agreed and gave Orion stars Rigel and Betelgeuse as beacons in his belt. But as temperance for Orion, he placed Scorpius nearby, the scorpion with bright red Antares at its heart, who every night pursues fearful Orion.
In the tent, Tedd and Virginia sat athwart each other in their private sovereignty away from parental overlord to prepare for their journey. Virginia held a flashlight as focused illumination aimed upwards beneath her chin and rapt countenance above. With lipstick in her left hand, Tedd painted on Virginia’s face fiery Larmak elongations and conflagrations, erupting and curving from the lip’s terminus to high temple. On the right cheek, she drew Antares and other stars of that fierce arachnid, culminating in the blue stinger—star Shaula—on Virginia’s chin.
“Let me take a look, Bright.” Tedd shifted backward and side to side in front of smaller, but strong sister, observing her artistry. “Excellent!”
“Just a little more. You need to look fierce and then you’ll be ready to search with me for Sky Regent.” Tedd continued her coloring labors, moving Virginia’s head left and right, up and down for further inscription until Virginia bore the deadly feral mask of the Briant clan.
“Now, it’s your turn, Bright. Put on my warrior face.”
“But what should I draw?” she asked.
“Paint the sky—make me heavenly, make me the queen of constellations and galaxies.”
So commanded, Virginia, young and reticent, approached Tedd carefully with Magenta Moment, her mother’s favorite, and began with Saturn’s image on Tedd’s left cheek. Virginia then moved higher and, with a brighter red, drew Sirius on Tedd’s forehead. From there, Virginia focused on Tedd’s right cheek where she drew a flaming comet from high hairline to Tedd’s gentle chin where, finally, Virginia, remembering fatherly lessons, placed an exploding nova.
“There, I’m done, Tedd.”
“Great! Get the mirror and let’s look.”
Virginia went to her backpack, produced a mirror, and handed it to Tedd, who examined Virginia’s handiwork.
“Okay, there’s Saturn. And here—is that Sirius?” asked Tedd.
“Yes.”
“And this—a comet. Excellent, Bright. Sky Regent will love these.”
Preparations complete, their duties now lay outside. At 11:37 p.m., Tedd and Virginia emerged, leaving behind the tent and its comfort and certainty to place themselves into an ambiguity of Tedd’s design. The air was noticeably chilly. Tedd looked back once more at the cabin to confirm its stillness and, satisfied that the parents were abed, she took hold of Virginia’s hand and made the first step toward the Owl and Eagle Trail.
“Bright, now we have to go to Witch’s Lookout to look for Sky Regent in the sky. Here’s a flashlight. You take the lower path to the Witch’s Lookout. I’ll take the upper path and meet you there.”
“By myself, Tedd?” Virginia said with a trembling hint of uncertainty.
“Yes,” answered Tedd firmly, anxious to move forward.
“Why? Can’t we go together?” asked Virginia.
“No, Bright, we have to show courage to Sky Regent. He’ll only return if we can prove our bravery by going separately. Okay?”
“Okay.” answered Virginia.
“Do you have your knife?” asked Tedd.
Virginia nodded. As the younger sister—robust, trustful, and loving—Virginia received Tedd’s words with immediate comprehension of fealty, surely as a planet hews an orbit to its star. Yet below, deep in her viscera, magma stirred, flaring a rising, hot flame of fear into her heart.
“Bright, can you do it, please? We’ve done it so many times before during the day. It’s important to do it now.”
Imagination is a dynamic, compelling, transformative collective, moving and trundling a soul forward beyond the commonplace. For Tedd, this creative fury was an impulse that arose from a fallow field where a young boy—a brother no longer alive—had only just begun learning worships and canons when he walked beyond charted boundaries too far away, too soon, into disease and drifted into the distance, head high, to be forever lost.
“Okay, Tedd,” said Virginia, quietly, but decisively.
“Okay, Bright. It should take ten minutes, Bright. If anything goes wrong, come back here to the tent. If you’re not at the Lookout by midnight, I’ll come back here. Okay, Bright?
Virginia nodded and Tedd, leaning gently down to meet Virginia’s eyes, extended arms and brought Virginia tight and spoke in whispers cheek on cheek:
“Please do this for me, Bright. He will only come for both of us. He needs you even more than me, because you’re Bright Sortal, the majesty of Karta, who will forever keep us safe.
Virginia, young and yearning, understood Tedd’s plea and wanted to requite her sister’s desire, so implacable and sure.
Virginia turned and, alone, embarked with her flashlight in hand. Her trail, lightly worn, was the less preferred of ways to Witch’s Lookout. She moved haltingly 10, 20, 30 yards forward as the beam flitted forward, sideways, back, and above, and she scanned for all and everything as her heart thumped mightily in her chest below. The path, so distinct in daytime, was more secretive at night when the marked contrasts of day disappeared in the sun’s absence.
Suddenly, she noticed that her light was weakening. A dimming took hold of the flashlight. Its light became evanescence, slipping toward a vanishing. With a few more steps, it went weaker still. In seconds more, it disappeared. Virginia shook it with no effect and did it again and again. Now frantic and frightened, she assaulted it with a slap, but full darkness, once held at bay, inevitably retook its place as Virginia’s flashlight fell fully asleep.
Thus, the girl that Tedd called Bright—the loyal one of painted face—truest partner of Tedd —and coming redeemer of a kingdom—was now lost to every cause in the dark forest abstract. Her confidence—so deftly developed during her nine young years—was effaced with suddenness by an updraft of terror. Her bold, fearless definition of self known to Virginia dissolved and gave way to base tears beyond her reproach—a feeling hitherto unknown to her. She reached for her knife and clutched it close to her stomach.
“Tedd,” she cried.
“Tedd!” Now louder.
“Tedd!” Even louder as a piercing plea, thrusting itself through the arbored hill.
“Tedd!” Again the name, the word, seizing settled night airs, shooting above to higher lands in search of a sister.
“Tedd!!” Again and again, she cried. “Tedd!”
Tedd, far along on the path to the Lookout, stopped at the initial sound of Virginia’s voice, which was unclear at first, but then, upon its third and fourth volleys, it crystallized in Tedd’s mind as Bright in fear. Tedd shot ahead with a loud cry: “Bright!” and began to run, without regard for the inadequacy of her flashlight, which barely revealed the oncoming path for a girl in a hurry. Moving with a body shaken and shattered, flushed of thought and fancy, Tedd sped to the Lookout repeating “Bright, I’m coming” between rasping breaths.
A primeval forest does not readily form paths and concourses for a running girl. So when the blackened green of this unsunned bastion felt the hurried feet of an intruder in motion, it foresaw the collision of Tedd’s foot and root, and Tedd’s tumbling, rapid fall, the abrading of her skin, and her reddened face and lips striking soils, stones, and other forest crudery, leaving her downed and bleeding. As she tried to get up, she sensed a scorched face and a skinned left hand. The right hand, once clutching a flashlight, was unscathed, but now empty. Then, at this moment of despair, Tedd once more heard Virginia’s call. Tedd would have responded. Yes, she would have, except for the exquisite pain burning in her jaw and a voice unable to be formed.
Her imperative—Virginia’s rescue—stanched the cries and tears that would have otherwise erupted instinctively. Instead, Tedd set to action and rolled to her stomach and pulled forward and again with her left elbow planted in the ground as leverage. She began a sweep with her right hand in dire search for the flashlight. The hand moved right and left and back again for several seconds. With nothing found, she rose to her knees and stood and leaned against a tree. She looked around to recover the sight of her path, which slowly came into view as her mind assembled and comprehended the dim images and reflections about her. Then, moving lower and laterally, she sought the glint of metal that could reunite her with light. Then, suddenly, she felt the flashlight between two rocks. Tedd grabbed it. She moved the switch up and down with no effect. But then she tightened its cap and, to her great joy, a radiant glow grandly emerged. And with that electrical, luminous burst, Tedd found her voice and yelled: “Bright, I’m coming!!” and resumed her rescue with all due speed.
Tedd arrived at the prominence of Witch’s Lookout with the heavens gloriously arrayed above. But Tedd did not pause to search for nor offer a prayer for Sky Regent. She was, however, stymied, unsure of the entryway to Owl’s Trail and the path that would lead her to Virginia. Tedd circled and spun around again and again in vain pursuit of the trailhead while Virginia now went silent.
“Come now, trail!” Tedd thought—reveal a mark, a leveled bush, a wornness of ground, a separation of roots—anything, anything, she pleaded, anything that would allow her to con-tinue her mission. Tedd cried to Virginia, desperately:
“Bright! Bright!”
Tedd went around and around in search of any subtle shift in terrain that would denote an exit and a path to reunion with her sister.
Then, out of frustration, she reversed direction on the Lookout and retraced her steps. And, suddenly, she saw it—a break—a disruption in the perimeter that she had not seen before. Tedd moved closer and saw the path that would take her to Virginia. She stepped into it and felt a brief, steep decline so comforting beneath her feet. She continued and, soon, the path became wider, allowing Tedd to move with greater speed. Her calls to Virginia began again and, as Tedd climbed to a rise in the trail, she heard again Virginia’s voice in full cry.
Virginia, quaking and frozen in fear, sat hunched amid vague shapes and shades of her forest stand. But then she heard Tedd’s voice again, coming closer and closer. She turned toward the voice, and thought of Tedd’s caress, their return to safety, and the ending of this failed night.
Within seconds, Tedd saw her sister low to the ground, hurried to her, picked her up, hugged her fiercely, while repeating, “I’m so sorry, Bright, I’m so sorry.”
Now, years later and far away from Tedd, Virginia was a young lady at university with a cogent mind, an alacrity in purpose, and dedication to achievement. At the subtle demarcation of the conscious-unconscious boundary where the self forms and becomes evident, Virginia had found in herself a pliability and adaptability of thought that would allow her to handle unexpected queries emanating from an untoward professor.
Brassting stared at her. His visage, once merely ruddy, was now infused with a deeper redness beneath the scruff of his beard. She assembled her thoughts: How to speak of piety against a distorted face? What were proper words in this crooked colloquy? Her delay and silence, however brief, forced his repetition (“Are you pious?”). The question came at her with impatience. It was left to Virginia to allay, to parry, to quell an aberrancy in discourse. She answered:
I can’t be the judge of my piety. I’ll leave that to others.
The rejoinder, seemingly sufficient and assertive, provoked a rebuke.
So, you’ll leave that to others, Miss Statusen! Good—if you don’t know something, throw it back to others or maybe to gods. So you’re telling me that you have no sense of your righteousness? You walk among us with no sense of good or evil?
For Brassting, the thrill of this inquisition distracted him from his bodily ailments and furnished, too, opportunity to purge his philosophical bile.
Virginia, however, wisely knew to avoid pietal self-judgment:
Well, I think there’s a distinction between trying to be pious versus a judgment that I am pious or righteous. I try to live a righteous life.
Brassting responded:
So you try to be pious. So who are you trying to please? Are you the god or are there other gods for you?
Brassting was reaching for the center of her soul—an encampment of conceptions and the sanctum of imperfect constructions, comic and tragic.
No, I am not a god. But if there are righteous gods, I would try to act in a way that would please them.
Regardless of the truth of gods?
If I believe in god, then it’s true for me, since at that point I am at the limit of my knowledge and I cannot prove or disprove my belief. If I don’t believe in god, then I still act as if there were a god, one that I would try to please.
Why should we try to please the gods?
Because they are powerful.
So what? So what if they are powerful?
Then we presume that they can do harm to us with their power.
But why do we even talk of gods? And what is his purpose—is it to guide your moral life or to give you salvation? What if I said that there were no gods, Miss Statusen?
That would be your belief and I would put no faith in your belief.
And what if I said that I was a god?
You’re not a god I would believe in.
So is it a matter of choice? I could be your god or not, all depending on the workings of your mind?
Belief should be a matter of volition, I think, to a degree.
So you would agree that someone could possibly think of me as a god. You may think that’s ridiculous, of course, but it is true. Imagination is part of that process, isn’t it? In other words, a person could imagine me as a god, couldn’t he?
But imagination isn’t part of the rational thought process.
It isn’t? Is it irrational to imagine? Tell me, Statusen, you’re bright, when you were a child, did you ever imagine things? Tell me.
In months after Shenandoah, neither Tedd nor Virginia spoke of Sky Regent, of his powers, or of heavenly appearances. But that winter, on a December night, in the fortress of their room, late and dark, Virginia buried herself deeply under her favorite bedding with Tedd nearby. Virginia thought of Sky Regent, her lost brother, and wanted desperately to invest herself in him and his kingdom and to hold Tedd’s hand in faraway flight once again.
Summoning courage in the room’s silence, Virginia uttered two words in a tremulous voice: “Reign Karta?” She waited for a response. She feared that a spirit, that of a brother, was suspended in the balance of the question and the silence. She was scared that Tedd, with these passing months of growth and age, might have walked away from their founded land of larks and stars and a sterling hero. She held her eyes closed, compressed tight, waiting, listening, and hoping. Soon, Tedd spoke:
“Yes, Bright Sortal.”
So pleased by the response, Virginia opened her eyes and answered: “Do you ever look at the sky anymore?”
‘Yes, all the time.”
In their room’s near perfect darkness, Virginia said: “A couple nights ago, I think I saw him—Sky Regent. I saw a light moving fast across Cassiopeia.....and it moved north and continued on up high. It had to be Sky Regent. It had to be him, Tedd, didn’t it?”
Tedd waited and considered the heart and life that she shared with her sister so near and said: “It had to be, Bright. It had to be. And I saw him, too...last night. I saw him near Orion, flying south....and I followed and followed him until he finally disappeared below the horizon.”
“Can we look again together someday? You and me?
“I’d love that, Bright.”
They paused and then, after a moment, spoke these final words:
“Good night, Bright Sortal.”
“Good night, Reign Karta.”
Night begins at a day’s dulled edge when it sheaths the long blade of the dying day and allows the mind’s last exhilaration and exhalation before succumbing to the dreamside layer. At the ligature releasing day into night, Tedd and Virginia there sealed a subtle compact of two lives, discrete and variant, but joining in union for one bold, final thought that an emperor lives and that an emperor rides and that he will always ride for them in the far heaven skies.
To Brassting, Virginia replied:
Yes, I have imagined and you have imagined. We all have imagined--the reasons, the whys, the wherefores. We imagine because we know the limits of the rational mind and that’s what distinguishes us from gods—gods don’t imagine. We know we aren’t gods and only then we can begin to see our gods.
Other students were nervous, seeing Brassting’s increasing agitation.
He spoke again:
And what do you know about the gods? Is that all you can say? But what I want to know is whether you are pleasing to the gods. So, Miss Statusen, are you pious?
They wanted to see this end now, for Brassting was now exceeding bounds of
teaching.
Once again, Virginia demurred:
As I said, I don’t claim to be pious, so if you’re looking for piety, I can’t say.
Something had to be done, they thought.
But Brasssting wanted more:
I don’t understand why you cannot say that: I am pious.
Brassting was unrelenting, now angry.
Virginia spoke:
A profession of piety on my part makes no difference.
No, but enlighten us. We want to know if there is a pious one among us. Are
you pious?
Virginia was at the limit of her wits and did not know how to escape.
The room became utterly still as Brassting stared at her. Then three words came from a different direction:
“I am pious,” he said.
It was Renker, large and tall, now standing six feet from Brassting.
His words were followed by absolute stillness as all eyes shifted to him.
Brassting, peeved and silent in light of this intrusion, turned and moved toward Renker, but Mir, sensing the need to deflect Brassting again, stood himself and said: “I’m pious, too.”
Brassting stopped and saw these two young men waiting for his response to proclamations of piety.
The remaining students became emboldened.
Suddenly, another—Marla—stood up: “And I’m pious, too.”
Quickly, another, Nathan, stood to say: “I am pious, too.”
Then Jack: “I’m pious.”
Then Michael: “I’m pious.”
Finally, Celine and all the others—except Virginia—stood in solidarity to state:
“I’m pious.”
Brassting, frozen amid the rebellion, silenced by these bold proclamations, stepped backwards and away from Virginia. Slowly, he moved to the desk, collected his papers, and left the room, saying in a mumbled, hurried voice:
“Remember, no class on Thursday.”
One by one, students slowly left the room. Unnerved by it all, Virginia rose last and alone. She walked by herself into the hall, out of Goldwin Smith, into the Quad, and walked and walked around campus for an hour until her next class.
Days later, Virginia eventually spoke to Renker and Mir and others to thank them for their help. All agreed that they would soon talk more about the confrontation and perhaps (or maybe not) talk to Brassting about it.
That night, Virginia, overcome by exhaustion, went to bed after one a.m. in her small apartment bedroom. There, recumbent amid a fleeting consciousness, her dimming thoughts retraced a day’s dying, crooked arc—the morning rain, the walk to campus, tea with a friend, laughter, studying, Jeff’s kiss, the discourse over piety, a call to Tedd, and, finally, the muscular release from an arduous late hockey practice.
Slipping into sleep, Virginia arrived at her night station of dreams. There, she sits high in an ancient Mexican land, perched on a pyramid, basking in sunlight, eating chopped chocolates covering a lemon pie. In wonderment, she looks about and spies a Mayan King’s parade with a phalanx of soldiers, musicians, jewels, golds, roses, pigs, and goats. She is elated, thrilling to the ascending music. She must go to the ground, she thinks, go down and join and play among the royal revelry. Yes, she would descend if there were a way. Any way—a step, a rope, ladder, or a holding hand.
The parade is moving away. Wild south winds whip around her. She looks west to the bay and sees high, turbulent waters moving toward her. She feels unsafe. She must now get down. Before it’s too late. Before the water’s too high. Before the parade disappears. She must. The King is leaving. She must. She slides down. She is sliding, sliding, sliding down the pyramid. She must go and join them.
But she is too late. The parade has moved north and far away. In the distance, she sees it melt into higher forest lands, into greens blown by the winds, so shimmering, so glistening, while she stands alone under a star-barren sky as salt waters wash up and float her away.
