The Wind Smoked My Pipe

By Larry Glass

This book is a collection of five short and not-so-short stories, each with different characters. All but one are set on the author's farm across 300 years. Elements of magical realism are all that hold the stories together in a single volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: USA Book Writers
• Release date: May 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869384201

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The Wind Smoked My Pipe

Larry Glass

Copyright © 2024 Larry Glass

All Rights Reserved

ISBN:

Dedication

For Helene, who is not only my illustrator but also my editor, and who read every word at least five times. More than 60 years ago, she introduced me to the joys and wonder of reading and was my guide as I explored all the remote corners of that world. Helene also nurtured and encouraged my creative endeavors and supported my growing belief that there is no dividing line between reality and magic in literature or in life. Thank you.

Acknowledgments

Agnes, a character in the story of that name, was borrowed, with respect and admiration, from Louise Erdrich’s brilliant novel, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse (HarperCollins Publishers, 2001).

The quote on page 95 of Spalten comes from The Snow Leopard, a magnificent piece of nature writing and memoir by Peter Matthiesen (The Viking Press, 1978).

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Artist

Agnes

Spalten

Drop-Tine

Island in the Woods

Kifer Hollow

Notes

About the Author

Larry Glass is a scientist, naturalist, farmer and writer who lives, works and writes on a farm in western Maryland. Until recently, his writing focused on creative non-fiction, primarily nature writing and memoirs. His work has been published in American Nature Writing (2001, Oregon State University Press) and Gray’s Sporting Journal.

His first book, Three Hollows (2019), was a collection of essays and poems.

About the Artist

The original illustrations were done by Helene Glass in watercolor and gouache. Helene is a Signature Member of the American Watercolor Society and has won numerous awards for her work. Helene holds a BA in English from Vanderbilt University and a MFA from Connecticut College. She is the author’s mother.

Page Blank Intentionally Introduction

I can’t write sitting at my desk. I can type and edit, even proofread. But not write. I write in my head. Walking around the farm outside, invariably with a pipe in my teeth. Stories don’t pop into my head. They seep into my mind little by little and are often fairly well- developed before I’m even conscious that they’re more than random musings. In the early stages, stories begin to emerge while I’m engaged in the routine activities that more or less define my day – walking the dogs down to the pond and back, splitting and stacking firewood, working in the gardens. As the concept takes shape and characters begin to peek around the edges, deciding whether they want to be included, I walk deeper into the woods. Inevitably, I end up in the third hollow back from the house. We call the farm Three Hollows.

The third hollow is nearly a half-mile from the house. The deepest part of it is where two seasonal streams come together to form a sort of bowl, with the ridges reaching two or three hundred feet up on three sides and the fourth side sloping into pines where the streams flow together in the spring or after a heavy rain. Where the two streams converge, there is an ancient white pine just above the gully created by occasional washouts. The hollow is quiet and isolated from the rest of the property, although, for reasons that I’ve never understood, there is always a breeze blowing down between the ridges and on into the hollow below the white pine.

It's there – in the third hollow – that my stories most often finish themselves and where the characters talk amongst themselves and with the gentle voices that murmur in the woods. I often sit with my back against the white pine and just listen. I sometimes drift into that place between awake and asleep, listening and, when I return, find that the tobacco in my pipe has burned down to white ash in the wind.

Agnes

He could not remember a time in his life before he could read, nor could he remember a time in his life when he was not completely immersed in and absorbed by books. In truth, he remembered virtually nothing of his life before books. He had earned a degree in literature from an unremarkable college and worked for an unremarkable publishing house in the Midwest. He lived alone in a small house next to a small lake outside a small town in northern Wisconsin. He had no friends or family that he could think of, although he remembered fondly an old man with whom he had lived for some time in the house on the lake. They sometimes walked together in silence around the lake and discussed over dinner books that they were reading or had read. The old man had died some years before, but the circumstances seemed vague to him now.

His house, really not much more than a cabin, was filled with books and manuscripts, stacks upon stacks of them on every piece of furniture, on his kitchen counters, on window sills and on every other flat surface in every room. His job was to read and review fiction manuscripts submitted to the publisher for consideration. He worked exactly 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, reading every word of every manuscript and writing brief reviews, which he emailed to the head of his department every day at 5 pm. He found most of the manuscripts eminently forgettable, and that was precisely what he did as soon as he hit send to email his reviews for the day.

In the remaining hours of the days that he worked and on the two days during which he didn’t, he read. Other than when he went for a walk around the lake or drove into town to pick up groceries or a package of books from the post office, he read almost continuously, often late into the night and sometimes into the hours before dawn. While he was always eager to return to a book that he had been reading or to begin a new one, he was not gluttonous. Each book was a many-course meal and he took time to savor each offering – from hors d’oeuvres to dessert – and only one at a time. He read only fiction and preferred stories with complex narratives, characters and dialog. In particular, he relished magic realism, finding it intriguing and, in some way, reassuring that someone besides him believed that magic is real.

***

He had drifted off sometime well after midnight, reading in the well-worn chair that the old man also had sat in for hours on end, reading and, especially in later years, dozing. There was a faint, pre- dawn glow spreading in the east and reflecting on the mirror surface of the lake. He woke slowly as he often did, particularly when he fell asleep reading, taking several pleasant minutes to transition from sleep. Other than the cone of wan yellow light from the reading lamp next to the chair, the room was nearly dark. As his eyes adjusted, he became aware of a shadow in the doorway to the kitchen. It looked like a figure but reason convinced him otherwise – just a shadow, he thought. The figure was completely motionless but the more he stared at it, the more he came to feel that it was indeed a person. He stared at it for several long minutes then it moved. It took three steps toward him, nearer to the light. It appeared to be a woman dressed in a full- length white dress or shift of nearly translucent cloth. He felt no fear or apprehension, continuing to stare with growing wonder. He became aware of the soft whisper of inhaling and exhaling which erased any lingering doubts as to whether the figure was real.

Good morning. She spoke clearly and strongly with no hesitation. He thought that he detected an accent with a hard edge, perhaps German or Austrian.

Still unsure whether he was talking to a person or his imagination, he nevertheless replied, Good morning, which was all that he could think of to reply at first. When he recovered his composure a little bit, he asked, Who are you, and how did you get here?

My name is Agnes. I came here through you.

Through me?

Yes, from a book, through your mind, to your cabin.

I don’t understand at all. This isn’t making any sense to me. So, you’re saying that you were – or are – a character in a book, and you somehow came to life through me?

I don’t really understand it completely either. What I do know is that when some people – not everyone – read my story, I can hear or, feel or sense their thoughts and feelings. It’s kind of like a conversation, but I don’t think that many readers are aware of it. Each time that you read my story – you read it three times, didn’t you? – I somehow felt like you did. Did you?

"You’re Agnes from The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, aren’t you?"

Although he knew that he could readily suspend disbelief – why else read magic realism? – he was surprised that he didn’t find her explanation completely implausible.

Yes.

But why or how did you decide to come through me instead of another reader?

I’m not sure, but when you read my story, you seemed to understand me and maybe recognize that I wanted more than my writer allowed me to think and do. Without being able to interact with readers, characters like me only know and feel what writers put into them even if the writers interact with their characters at some level. Those conversations, if I can call them that, open the world up to us and make us real. Or maybe more real. It's not as if I pulled a lever and popped out of your head. I’d been wanting to come over for a long time, to maybe be a different version of me but in the outside world. When I met you, I wanted out even more and then it just happened. I don’t think it can be explained in terms that many people would understand or believe. Do you believe?

I don’t know why but I think so. Maybe it’s because I recognize so much of you from the book that it’s hard to imagine that you’re anyone else. I know you’re you but I’m still not completely sure that you’re real flesh and blood and not some sort of very convincing apparition.

She walked toward him until she was in front of the chair that he was still sitting in, leaned toward him, cupped his face gently in her hands and brushed his forehead with her lips.

Does that help?

Yes.

The sun had crested the low hill on the east side of the lake. The lake sparkled, reflecting the faint pinks and oranges of the sky. He stood and, perhaps needing a break to mull over what he had heard in the few brief minutes since he woke, asked, Do you eat and drink?

I ate and drank in the book, of course, but I’ve never tasted.

Would you like some coffee?

Tea if you have it. Do you know how to make fry bread?

Yes, I think so.

He went into the kitchen, filled the kettle and put it on a burner. He took flour, salt, baking powder and a mixing bowl from the cupboard and butter and milk from the fridge. When the water boiled, he made two cups of tea and called to Agnes who had been examining the stacks of books while he prepared breakfast. He put the mugs of tea on the table and she sat down, cupping her hands around the mug.

Honey? he asked.

Please. Have you read all of those books?

A lot of them but some of them were the old man’s and I haven’t gotten to them yet.

Old man? Your father?

No, I just lived here with him until he died. This was his house. I don’t really remember how we came to live together, but we both read a lot and enjoyed each other’s company and used to take walks around the lake, especially in the evenings, until he got to be too old to go out much. After that, we used to sit together on the porch to watch the sunset when it wasn’t too cold.

She arched her eyebrows slightly but said nothing. He had his back to her, frying the bread in lard in an old cast iron skillet, so he didn’t notice. When he had fried most of the dough, he put a plate of them on the table along with plates and napkins for the two of them and shakers of powdered sugar and cinnamon. She ate the first two in silence, looking steadily into his face until he began to feel slightly uncomfortable.

These are wonderful, thank you. I feel like I should have known what they would taste like because I ate them in the book, but my writer never had me tasting things. Unless there was too little food for the People, she didn’t say much about food altogether. This makes me feel like a young child for some reason.

She continued without waiting for a response. How can you not remember how you came to live here with the old man?

I don’t know. Maybe I got hit on the head at some point and ended up with amnesia, or maybe I’ve just read so much that there wasn’t space in my brain and my memories were pushed out. It used to bother me some, but I don’t think about it much anymore. Her eyebrows arched again momentarily, and this time he caught it but didn’t say anything else about it.

She looked past him to the front window and the lake beyond. Can we take a walk by the lake? I’ve always liked being by the water.

Sure, that would be nice. It’s chilly, though, and you don’t have much on. I’ll find you a sweater.

That would be nice. I came here from early in the book when it wasn’t very cold and before I started to dress as a man – Father Demien, the priest.

***

They walked side by side almost halfway around the lake along the path that followed the shoreline without talking. She climbed onto a flat boulder that jutted out into the water and sat down. He followed but remained standing. Both stared out at the water rather than looking at each other.

He broke the silence. I’ve been wondering about something – actually a lot of things – but this has been going round and round in my head. You’re out here but also still in the book, so are there two Agnes’ or one? Will Agnes in the book change as you see and feel things that are here but not in the book?

She turned to look directly into his eyes with a hint of a smile on her lips. "I’ve been thinking about that, too, but I don’t know. When I was only in the book, I was already changing because of my interactions with readers from how Louise, the author, wrote about me, but if someone who had never read Last Report read it now, I think it would be the same as written. I don’t even think that Louise would sense anything different, although I’m not completely certain about that. We didn’t communicate a lot after she finished the book. A few readers who really knew me in the book – like you – might be aware of how I’d changed if they read the book again.