Lost River

By John M. Dunn

Jason O’Donnell is a journeyman reporter whose big dreams of finding the elusive, career-altering Story have been blunted by the relentless demands of daily, big city journalism. Once transfixed by the sight of his articles rolling off the press, he has now lost hope after being relegated to his paper’s lifestyle pages where he coaxes awkward poetry out of stories about prize-winning pumpkins and the best way to floss one’s teeth. In the newspaper business, where the high node of success almost always portends the deep trough of failure, Jason has clearly hit bottom.
In a moment of rare impulsiveness, Jason decides to give his faltering journalistic career one last chance. In search of “the shock of new material,” he flees the suburban conformity of the south to work for the Lost River Journal, “the best daily north of 60" and the central nervous system of a small but byzantine town on the country’s northern flank.
Jason soon meets the enigmatic Roxanne, who has recently fled a secretive religious commune nestled in the mountains that encircle Lost River. He discovers that she is the Rosetta Stone to his biggest Story yet. Her renegade path has directly challenged the isolationist mission of a subterranean network of influential citizens who direct the affairs of Lost River, and her behaviour threatens to expose decades-old crimes and transform the political development of the territory.
Jason seeks a Story of transcendent importance, while Roxanne wants to find the God she thought she knew. Together, they must decide how far they will allow the corruption of small compromises to deter them from their quest in a tale that depicts the search for a higher calling with compassion, humour and a touch of mystery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John M. Dunn
• Release date: Aug 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988115309

Book preview

It was dawn. They walked towards the women’s dormitory, backlit by a clear and remorseless steel-blue sky. Their broad-soled boots crunched as the crystalline snow under their feet compressed, so dry it sounded like styrofoam sheets rubbing together. The Preacher and two elders walked ahead, grim but purposeful. Half a dozen helpers ambled behind, baleful men who were ready to follow instructions. The Preacher had told them to steel their emotions, that this would be a day of reckoning. Martha, already up for her morning prayers, saw them coming through the eastern window of the cabin. She did not foresee the exact course the next few hours would take, but she knew why they were at her door, just as a military wife knows why two uniforms arrive outside in times of war.

I am impressed, husband, she said, opening the door just before he knocked. You are up before the sun today. Surely some great project is afoot. Some great act of courage, no doubt, is about to be performed.

Martha, you and the other women in your care must gather their things. You are going on a journey. There can be no delay or hesitation.

All our lives are a journey, husband.

Tension in the commune had been building for many months as Martha’s writings had become more ecstatic and powerful and word of her charismatic gifts had spread. New recruits had come from farther up north to take residence with the group, and the elders of the Compact had pushed Martha to the forefront as she was bringing them exactly the following they so desired. They did not anticipate, however, the direction or intensity of her thoughts, and they never imagined that this young woman would begin to outgrow the role to which they had assigned her. Slowly, haltingly at first, her sermons began to chart a vision that saw the community as merely the crucible from which something much larger would emerge. She talked about their movement as but a pebble dropped in a pond, that wave upon wave of change would pulse outward, transforming the entire territory. They assumed they could contain this power. She knew it would overflow their levees within time, because she could feel the waves slowly gathering strength within her. Gradually, episodically, the Book of Resonance was taking form. Not as sermons per se, but as spontaneous witness to what Martha was going through, what she was becoming.

Martha and her companions were led out of the meeting house, a cross between a New England town hall and a West Coast longhouse. It was the first structure to be built when the Preacher established himself on the margins of this marginal town, when modesty and spartan functionality were hallmarks of the movement. In the spirit of so many communitarian efforts that had come before, this was Christianity shorn of its decoration, cleansed of generations of arrogant accretions of power and hierarchy. This was yet another attempt to find the true, the pure, the original. And for several years this spirit permeated the nascent community, which was run as a cooperative movement with respected elders, such as the Preacher, but no clergy, no set authority. But with the arrival of the Compact, power began to creep in, seeking its level, coalescing like ground water in the hidden spaces and openings of the heart. As in so many other times in history, a grafting took place, a sleight of hand: two streams of thought appeared to flow together into one. The political dreams of the Compact found their perfect analogue, their perfect home, within the spiritual geometry of the movement. They were both young movements, seeking to assert ancient rights, but looking squarely to the future. They were not so much fleeing the horror show down south but seeking the higher ground from which they could retrench, defend themselves, and re-assert themselves. All in good time.

The original motive of both branches of the movement was, if not pure, enlightened self-interest. Both rested on a vision, a myth, of perfection. One was earthly and man-made. The other transcendent and dreamy, eyes fixed on a distant, invisible star.

Martha found herself at the confluence of these two, great rushing rivers, and could begin to see her power, dammed up by the Compact. She hoped to gently release the pressure, to let the two combine in a way that would suffuse the political movement with spirit. But she began to see that would not be possible. Only a great deluge would decide the movement’s future.

She believed: power would win in the short term. Memory would win in the long term.

And so it had come to this. Power arrived at her door, trying to reclaim a moral high ground that had long ago been shorn off the top of the mountain.

Martha, you are going on a journey. A test of the soul, said the Preacher in his most grave, distant voice.

Through this test, you will come to know what God’s will is for you. You know it’s not too late to turn back, to recast your remarkable spiritual energies and travel the straight path with your brethren. But if not, God must test you.

God tests me every day, husband, said Martha calmly, defiantly, slowly. Throw my body where you will, husband. My spirit will be at home there. But you, I worry about, because you seem lost. You have taken on new friends and have lost your way.

The men standing behind the Preacher shifted uncomfortably in the snow while trying to keep their feet warm as small spirals of breath slipped upward with each exhalation.

You will be brought to the sacred place, said the Preacher. The place where we trek to in the summer. You and your sisters will be given provisions for your basic needs. You will sleep under the stars and you will be allowed to contemplate your situation, my dear, without distraction.

An icy draft wafted close to the ground. The sky was clear, like the surface of a finely-ground lens, magnifying the early morning stars. Lines of smoke rose from the cabins into the metallic night sky.

But you can still pull back, he added, imploringly. You can admit that the path you have taken deviates from accepted teachings. You can bring us back to wholeness, to unity, my dear. It would only take a few words.

There is a greater unity, husband. It is you who must turn back. It is you who are in the most danger.

A series of small sputtering explosions fractured the morning silence as the snowmobiles started up and the air began to smell of gasoline. Martha and six others were guided to the machines, and the journey began with great haste through a thin forest, set against a northern sky both dark and pale, blanched of hope, bathed in the faint, silver light of a January half-moon. After a few minutes they were no longer visible from the compound, having entered a gentle valley in the slate-grey shadow of Mount Butler.

Martha hung on tight, the wind piercing her cheeks and turning the moisture in her eyes to gel. The sound of the snow machines was swallowed through the frigid descent into the valley. Within an hour, they arrived at a barren opening in the woods. The girls whimpered and looked to Martha for a sign of what to do. They were ordered off their machines, and the men unloaded a few small duffle bags of provisions.

Peace be with you, sister, said one of her husband’s chief lieutenants. May God protect you this night and return you to us. And then he was gone, leading the convoy back through the valley, the high hum of the machines attenuating and then disappearing above the rise.

They will come for us, my dears. We may spend one cold night here, but they will come for us, she said with conviction, but with her back to the girls.

Quickly they set up the tents. It was more of a challenge than in the summer, as their hands were growing numb with cold, but very soon they were inside, sheltered from the wind, and began organizing the food. They were given enough for only one day. And they had no way to start a fire.

Once settled inside, Martha dug out a notebook and began to write with a pencil while the girls huddled together. She wrote in a frenzy, barely aware of the fear that permeated the tent. She wrote like someone transmitting the words from a distant source, scribbling, pausing only occasionally to switch pencils. She wrote of a future for her people. She imagined a line that stretched back for longer than memories could conceive, a line interrupted, disturbed, diverted, fractured but never broken. A line of the soul, of millions of souls, that converged at the compound on the outskirts of Lost River. She wrote, like a node of energy in the frigid night, through an almost archetypal loneliness in the heart of a barren wilderness that had once been her friend and sustainer. She wrote to complete what she had begun.

The Preacher stared into the fire, a mild nausea rising in him. A man entered the room, a whiskey in hand, stopping just behind him.

So is it done? said Routledge.

It will soon be too late, unless we act quickly, said the Preacher.

That we can’t do, friend. That we can’t do. You know we can’t have this insurrection that your sweetheart started swallow us alive. It’s a bitter choice, to be sure, but one we have to take if we want to keep what is ours.

And what is ours, Sam? said the Preacher in a low rasp.

A free life, sanctified by God, guided by a new message, our new dispensation. But you know all this, Ed. You wrote the book on it. You gave our fledgling movement its voice and spirit. That’s why Edward Brandon is a mythical name in these parts.

Remind me, Sam. Free to do what? Free to be what?

"You have to work past your pain and see the greater picture we all helped to draw those many years ago, Ed. Our movement cannot be led by a semi-literate girl, by a fake prophet from the woods who cannot reconcile her private dreams with the intense reality of this place and the role we intend to play.

Why did we come here, Ed? To escape the nets that held us down. We saw the machinery of an encroaching, Godless civilization bearing down on us. So we took a risk. We all took risks. We started over. We built something of real substance. And now we must give that creation expression. We must give it a firm base, root it in sympathetic institutions that will give us the breathing space we need.

So we have become politicians, Sam? Building a state, a personality cult?

You can’t dream a new world into existence, preacher. You must bend the will of others. You must create conditions where you can move freely. Power is at its peak when no one can see it, when it is almost imperceptible. Your sweetheart gave us the spark we needed, but it grew to a giant flame. She was far too noticeable, Ed. Far too hot an object for our needs.

Far too true, brother? said the Preacher with a weary resignation in his voice.

All in its own time, Ed. Who knows how many messengers have come to the earth, how many would-be prophets who ran afoul of their time?

Like Jesus, Sam. And yet we remember him still.

The Lord defied the godless, Ed, and he came with a message that was strong enough to withstand the harshest acts of those in power.

And that message was love, Sam.

And justice, Ed. Your sweetheart, on the other hand, defied the godly, the ones who gave her freedom and hope. And her message is but gibberish, Ed. Scattered thoughts, open to any interpretation. We are simply using the power of Caesar to protect what God has given us. There is no contradiction, Ed.

The preacher looked into the fire, trying to find some momentary refuge in the lazy, almost hypnotic rhythm of the flames. He wanted the moment to slow, to contract, to be subsumed by the undulating waves that radiated their heat toward him. He could not fathom how he had reached this point. This point of madness, this moral embarkation.

They will be dead if we don’t do something, Sam. I fear they won’t even survive tonight. It’s going to be minus 46. So cold the earth could crack and swallow them up.

Routledge said nothing, but swirled his whiskey in his glass.

You know I will always hate you for this, Sam. But I have long hated myself for becoming entangled in your sordid life. It’s now my life. I am like you. One of the lost. One of the unforgiven. Get out of my house, Sam. Just leave.

I’ll leave our compound when I know this has been taken care of, brother.

It will be everything you expect it to be, you bastard. Now get out of my house.

Routledge placed his glass on the mantle and walked gingerly to the door. He left without saying another word, as none was needed. The Preacher knew who he was, understood the scope of his power and the breadth of his network. Everything about Routledge was implicit, subterranean, foggy. His presence was all the threat that was needed. But the Preacher hated himself far more than he hated Routledge because he knew that fear of his benefactor was eclipsed by a deeper, colder terror – that his life’s work had been a profound deception. That he had betrayed every dream he ever dreamed, every love he ever loved, every truth he ever bore witness to, every hope he ever tried to breathe life into with words or prayers or acts of supplication. He had not thought it possible, but he was now closed off from God for good, outside of His jurisdiction. He was exiled to his own loneliness for his acts of self-desecration.

He rose and walked down the hall and gently opened the door to Roxanne’s room. The child slept peacefully. The next days would be her worst. She will not understand this abrupt change in her life at first. But she would adapt, he thought. She is resilient. She will find a way through the tangled landscape of her emotions because she trusts so easily. With some guidance, she will outpace her fears, stand on any precipice without hesitation. She will find the peace that her mother could not. Like her mother, love has always been her safety net.

Chapter 2

The star-patterns dissolved before her eyes like fireworks the moment before they wink out, leaving only slender, smoky tendrils. She narrowed her eyes against the wind, and began her journey along the snow-covered path. She knew that she had about three hours, maybe four, before they realized that she was gone. The main house receded in the distance, now just a charcoal relief bathed in the platinum tint of a fragile half-moon.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw the homestead where she was raised and had lived for 24 years. Delicate crystals of ice had started to form on her lashes.

Roxanne made her way down the hill that led to the road through a thicket of slender alders, their trunks bent over like a gauntlet of skinny swords. Far off in the western sky, curdled sheets of pale mauve and green northern lights pulsed and rippled above the horizon. Within a few minutes, she had reached Lost River Road. She trudged at first, then walked with a determined gait, swinging her arms to keep warm. After 15 minutes, she reached a clearing where the road arced suddenly to the right. About five kilometres in the distance, she could make out the rough outline of the town’s perimeter. On the far left side was the Riverland shopping centre, encased in an eerie halogen glare. To her extreme right sat the cylindrical orange refinery tanks of Platinum Road, in the heart of the industrial district. In between were hundreds of non-descript little houses, mostly clapboard, some aluminum-sided, barely visible from her mountain-side perch.

She had only been into town eight or nine times in her life, usually to help her father bring home some seed or building material that the main supply houses weren’t able to deliver quickly enough. Her compound was a northern rendering of the city upon the hill, in which all members of the community worked to develop their souls. She lived in a territory within a territory, far away from the corrupting influences of the Outside. The Outside – the town of Lost River – amounted to a domestic refugee camp, home to eccentrics, non-conformists, red-necks, squatters, those who had failed, those who were overwhelmed, those who wanted to get away, those who had had enough and those who wanted more. Some blossomed in this environment, finding in the generosity of the people and solitude of the surroundings the path to their true selves. Others fell prey to the same demons that chased them from the big cities and hamlets of the south, finding a community with a bar for every taste and enough space in which to lose themselves.

Roxanne lived in a sanctuary of calm and order on the margins of this rowdy little community, warily respecting it but never participating in it. She and her brethren were once-removed from the corruption and avarice of the Outside. All her life she been told to pity the denizens of this town, to pity their yearning for money and influence, their need for attention, their idle gossip, intense rivalries and occasional outbursts of violence. She had vivid memories of driving into town early one autumn, seated next to her father in a battered, rattling ‘72 Chevy pickup as they bumped their way down through the potholes and frost-heaves of Lost River Road. They had awoken to the first frosts; the air had begun to smell like winter, and the dark mauve undulations of Mount Butler were dusted with a thin layer of snow. Try to understand them, my dear, so you will not be like them, said her Father. Their emotions are contagious, as virulent as a virus, and as difficult to protect yourself against.

It was a familiar sermon, but one that Roxanne and her sisters had long-ago internalized. The family had drawn an imaginary boundary between themselves and the ones who lived beyond the gates. Inspectors from the school board and children’s protection branches of the territory’s government had already visited the homestead, stepping out of their shiny Jeep Cherokees and Toyota 4-Runners to gently tug the rope by the front gate and ring the bell. After them came those looking for money to feed the great machines of the outside, tithes to the secular authorities. But by and large, the Preacher had been given the space he so strongly desired when he left rural Alberta in the 1950s to settle on the northern flank of a still-young nation.

Roxanne tightened the straps on her small pack, and began to shuffle quickly down the frozen dirt road. She felt as if she was on a voyage to some outer moon, inhabitants unknown. She was wandering the terrain of the lost, joining the nomads who live far from the centre.

Chapter 3

His skates cut into the glacial ribbon of ice that meandered through the frozen heart of the city. His cheeks burned gently from a fine dusting of dried snow blown by a harsh northern wind, and his running nose began to ice up his moustache. The city’s icy soul was turned outward. Just a week after the winter solstice, it was the canal’s earliest opening in memory.

Only two months earlier, autumn had reigned. University students in roller blades coasted along the bike paths next to the same canal, the baked-tangerine glow of changing leaves lighting their way. Jason