Inn-By-The-Bye Stories—10

By William Flewelling

In an endeavor to find a fresh way into the scriptural text upon which I would be preaching, I began to develop an imaginary world populated primarily by wee folk. I found they - the characters I developed and the way that they evolved in my mind and on the page - served me well as a consideration of how I sensed things happening in the scriptural text at hand. I want to make these stories and the world they represent newly available and so I bring them to book form fifty at a time.

The cover drawing was done by Anne Sullivan, the authors daughter.

The drawing is the artists conception of Missus Duns Sod House in the Hills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524687380

William Flewelling

I am a retired minister from the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) living in central Illinois. Led by a request from Mildred Corwin of Manua OH when I arrived there in 1976, I long developed and led a series of bible studies there and in LaPorte IN and New Martinsville WV. These studies proved to be very feeding to me in my pastoral work and won a certain degree of following in my congregations. My first study was on 1 Peter, chosen because I knew almost nothing about the book. I now live quietly in retirement with my wife of 54 years, a pair of dogs and several cats.

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© 2017 William Flewelling. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/06/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8739-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-8738-0 (e)

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

CDLI

CDLII

CDLIII

CDLIV

CDLV

CDLVI

CDLVII

CDLVIII

CDLIX

CDLX

CDLXI

CDLXII

CDLXIII

CDLXIV

CDLXV

CDXLVI

CDLXVII

CDLXVIII

CDLXIX

CDLXX

CDLXXI

CDLXXII

CDLXXIII

CDLXXIV

CDLXXV

CDLXXVI

CDLXXVII

CDLXXVIII

CDLXXIX

CDLXXX

CDLXXXI

CDLXXXII

CDLXXXIII

CDLXXXIV

CDLXXXV

CDLXXXVI

CDLXXVII

CDLXXXVIII

CDLXXXIX

CDXC

CDXCI

CDXCII

CDXCIII

CDXCIV

CDXCV

CDXCVI

CDXCVII

CDXCVIII

CDXCIX

D

Appendix: Texts For The Stories

About the Author

Also By This Author

Poetry

Time Grown Lively

From My Corner Seat

Enticing My Delight

The Arthur Poems

From Recurrent Yesterdays

In Silhouette

To Silent Disappearance

Teasing The Soul

Allowing The Heart To Contemplate

As Lace Along The Wood

To Trace Familiarity

The Matt Poems

Elaborating Life

The Buoyancy Of Unsuspected Joy

To Haunt The Clever Sheer Of Grace

The Christmas Poems

Life Is Employed

Adrift In Seas Of Strangeness

Devotional

Some Reflective Prayers

Reflective Prayers: A Second Collection

A Third Collection Of Reflective Prayers

For Your Quiet Meditation

A Fourth Collection Of Reflective Prayers

Cantica Sacra

Directions Of A Pastoral Lifetime

Part I: Pastoral Notes, Letters To Anna, Occasional Pamphlets

Part II: Psalm Meditations, Regula Vitae

Part III: Elders’ Studies

Part IV: Studies

Part V: The Song Of Songs: An Attraction

Inn-by-the-Bye Stories

vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

9

Exegetical Works

From The Catholic Epistles: Bible Studies

Paul’s Letter To The Romans: A Bible Study

The Book Of Hebrews: A Bible Study

all published by AuthorHouse.com

Foreword

This set of stories continue their arrival in Ottumwa, this being the first set to be entirely an Iowa production. I learned as the stories became more and more a part of my that the conditions of the time I sat down to write were taken into the flow of the story. I used the immediacy of weather – the sun and the rain, the wind and the snow, the heat and the cold – and of the season of the year to frame the unfolding of the story as it translated (in a way) the scripture of consideration into a narrative set in my imagined world of Hyperbia. This made the Iowa set of stories subject to the harsher conditions (hot and cold alike) that were normal fare in Southeast Iowa.

I once described my process of preparing to preach as finding in myself a collision between what I found in the text at hand – I always followed the lectionary, that from a time long before I began writing the stories and continuing throughout my ministry – and what I was aware of in the congregation and community and world at large. I used the image of two trains under full steam rushing into each other in a headlong urgency. Out of that came what appeared to me to be the sermon. And part of that train wreck situation was the story, a ‘fairy tale exegesis’ of the text on the way toward discovering the genesis of the preached word.

As a result, the place where I was doing my interaction with the scripture, the people around me, the nuances and difficulties and surprises and needs all came together with the text and my inscape processes in order to come to terms with it all, altogether.

Coupled with the externals of the process – different in Iowa than they had been in Indiana, and even more so than they had been in Ohio where I had first pondered such a scheme, there remained the fondness I was ever developing with my characters and the growing awareness of the nuances of the land and history and development that made up Hyperbia. All of this, I hope, comes out in the continuing saga of these stories, each of them on its own yet developing together to form what the whole becomes, even through the remaining fourteen sets of stories.

I hope you enjoy your reading.

William Flewelling

CDLI

Suddenly, everyone was going every which way. The entire City on the Plain was astir, crawling with activity, people going round about, jostling one another, rattling every door, bumping into walls. The space simply was not made to allow so much of a furor in so many hands and faces and bodies, all at the same time. The streets were too narrow; they became choked with the anxiety of many.

Margent sought to keep some kind of a handle on the activity of his normally easy-going, just-busy enough City. He liked to be aware of the activity, to be responsive to the needs of the people. He had prided himself that such had been the case ever since Osburn had left and fallen from power. But today! – well, today there was no space for information, there were no lines for communication. Everything was ajumble; and Margent was frustrated.

While Margent paced in his office, looking out of first one window and then the other, down onto the heads and faces of the overcrowded streets, Osburn also gazed out of his window, up in his hide-away which had become his isolated retreat. Forcibly retired to this high, secluded place, Osburn had never lost his longing to rule that City on the Plain, once his own little empire. Now, he gazed down on the distant flurry of what looked like unrest. He smiled a little smugly that such a mess should occur while he was not involved, at all. He was confident that, were he in that office down below – not the one in which Margent paced, but the larger, more elegant one he had had, up on the top story of that same building – then, this mess should not have stirred up at all. And, if it did, he knew just how to poison the furor and enforce his own sense of order.

Even though Osburn could be smug up on the overarching cliff, Margent felt himself a lot closer to this whole fuss. He didn’t have a good grasp on the problem, and wanted to go out and learn what the people felt was happening. He half-way suspected that no one really knew. The other half knew that knowing would little matter by afternoon, when the morning cool gave way to the Summer’s afternoon. Then, all the bustle and jostling and heat would leave the people in a state of being automatically aggravated at almost everything, and fearful of all the rest, real and imaginary. The City would be a hive. And now it was already mid-morning. Margent pondered how he might approach this situation next.

On the cliff, at his picture window, Osburn stood and watched. His hands were folded behind his back. He rocked forward and back on the balls of his feet. He pursed his lips and studied the unusual scene through pouchy eyes. Such a fuss had not come up since the day he was retired, involuntarily. Now, he felt, that City would finally be sorry for ending his good rule. They trade him for Margent! What a trade! he thought, his lips curling in derision. The fantasy that he would be invited back so that order and right rule might be restored – that fantasy pranced through his mind. He smiled, or rather grinned, coldly, at the thought. ‘Ah’, he sighed, ‘that would be sweet revenge’.

Margent was getting restless. There was such a furor outside. His door, even, was rattled as milling bodies bumped and re-bumped against it. The impulse he felt in his bones was to go outside, to tap popular opinion, to talk on the square, as he often did, on calmer days. Wringing his hands in indecision, Margent furrowed his brow. His entire face was tense and tight. He would have looked tiny, had anyone troubled to look at him. But Margent was alone, increasingly uncertain, afraid, even as the day moved toward noon, and then toward afternoon.

The milling crowds, without any real purpose except this unmentionable restlessness that seethed in them, grew pushier. The thuds on Margent’s closed door – as also upon many another door in the City on the Plain – grew heavier. More weight was behind them; and they indicated a more weighty uneasiness all around. Margent began to fret more. He wandered from window to window. The level of his agitation grew more and more. He licked his lips, which dried almost immediately, so that his tongue began to stick on his dry chaps. Before very long, Margent was no longer seeing the crowd; instead he saw in a blur a churning mass of empty faces. And he was afraid.

Osburn sneered at his window. The Sun was beating in. His eyes had long since grown weary in the direct glare. Nevertheless, he glanced below. The Sun also heated his room, behind this expanse of glass as it was. Sweat had long since beaded on his brow and moistened his body. Trickles had run randomly down his frame. His hands were uncontrollably moist with sweat. And still he watched the agitated crowds, and talked to himself about just how he would correct things, were he in charge (as, he was sure, he ought to be in charge). With a snort, Osburn wondered why Margent hadn’t called on the troops to enforce a true order from above. ‘He must be out of control himself’ sneered Osburn at the pane of unhearing glass.

Mid-afternoon, and the heat of the day came. The Sun no longer shone into Osburn’s big window. But his house was already over-warmed and he grew tired, too tired to muster out his imaginary forces over his imaginary rule. Down below, the warmth and the crowdedness dulled wits and sharpened tempers. The crowds stirred with ever greater virulence. The rumbling discontent still had no focus. No one knew why they were out. No one had any projects to do. They were simply restless and had gone out for a bit of exercise. But everybody had gone out and overcrowded the streets, distracting everyone from whatever they might have been thinking. Margent was unprepared for this. He loosened his tie and flopped down in his chair, totally distracted from the day he had expected.

Geoffrey and Carymba, after lunch at the Inn-by-the-Bye, opted to take a walk. By happenchance, they chose to go to the Great River, planning to see Wilbur if he weren’t busy. The path took them near the City on the Plain. As they passed near, they could not help but notice that the day was very full, and there seemed to be a lot of real agitation in the City. Carymba grew curious. Geoffrey shrugged, and agreed to go in and find Margent. They wove through the crowd, which seemed to open for them, and close behind them, entirely unchanged. They approached Margent’s door.

The two friends knocked, a sound quite distinct from the bumps of all the morning collisions. Margent, in a slight daze, came to the door, cracked it open, and said: ‘Who are you?’ ‘Carymba and Geoffrey’. ‘What do you want?’ ‘Come on out!’ ‘Are you crazy?’ ‘No. You should be out here’. ‘I barely dare try’. ‘Why? We are here, safe and sound’. Margent swallowed hard, adjusted his tie and his coat, moistened his lips, cleared his throat and slipped out the door.

They walked, the three of them, and talked calmly. They went straight to the square. Carymba brought them to a stand in the square. ‘Here, Margent: climb up there and greet your people’. ‘Who? Me? They’ll never hear me!’ ‘Try it … you’ll see’. So Margent repeated his nervous routine and mounted the step, re-cleared his throat. Carymba and Geoffrey were attentive, and Margent drew courage. ‘Hello, my friends!’ he called, over the din.

12 August 1990

CDLII

All day long, a cool, moist and heavy air had clung around Hyperbia. Every smell was strong. And every scent lingered, with musty overtones. The whole was a burden on almost everyone’s morale. Time set them on edge. They really were reluctant to get involved with anything.

Thyruid shuffled around the Inn-by-the-Bye. He felt the cool damp in his joints and in his muscles. Everything twitched and ached. He felt miserable and grumpy because everything was on edge for him. He didn’t like feeling like this. He knew full well that he was supposed to be a responsible, even a reasonable person. He was supposed to be the congenial host of the Inn-by-the-Bye. As such, he was not supposed to be biting people’s ears with his responses and comments. He was not supposed to be sharp, nor sarcastic. The inconsistency made all things worse for Thyruid. His edginess sharpened. He scowled at the world. He snarled at the empty dining room – for Clyde and Geoffrey had congenially offered to take Missus Carney out for a little stroll, to which she had agreed, pleasurably.

Alone now, Thyruid straightened tables, corrected faint semi-smudges in obscure parts of his well-polished brass trim, polished the counter again, wiping away non-existent crumbs, re-straightening tables. He scowled at the cool, clean hearth and fussed some more. He compulsively prowled the room, up into the foyer, even arranging the hangers on the unused-in-Summer coat rack. Restlessly, he examined, and re-examined and, later, repeated the repeated examination of each corner of the dining room.

At last, there being no customers, Thyruid paused at the counter, glanced around the room with furtive, jerky motions, his brows lowered so as to hover over his sunken eyes while his fingers of his right hand tapped nervously on the counter. Slapping at the counter-top, Thyruid grunted and twisted his rounded torso and moved to shove his way through the swinging door. The door rattled after he passed through them, and the dining room’s air seemed to settle and ease, just a bit.

Inside the kitchen, Thyruid began again his pacing. ‘Oh, be still, Thyruid’ complained Marthuida. ‘Why?’ ‘Why not?’ She answered his severe inquiry with a gentle lilt. He scowled. ‘I don’t know. I guess I’m just restless. My legs are so twitchy and tight. I just can’t sit back and relax, as you put it’. ‘Oh. I guess I hadn’t realized your tensions’. ‘I’m not really tense’ he started as he ambled aimlessly, fingering the gadgetry of the kitchen and tracing letters in the flour on the mixing board. ‘I see’ she stated, matter-of-factly. ‘Yes’, he continued. ‘Yes. I am simply a little edgy. It … it’s the … uh … atmosphere today. The air is heavy, hard to breathe. Don’t you think so? Well, whatever, … and maybe I’m tired or something. But everything is just not quite right today’. ‘Oh. Maybe a cup of coffee, or some left-over biscuits would help you out … I’d make you fresh, but mid-afternoon is such an inconvenient time’. ‘Sure, sure: no need. … But maybe I will try a bite to eat. And is the coffee hot already?’ ‘Yes. Here: grab a biscuit or two and I’ll pour us each a mug of coffee. We can go, sit at the counter for a bit, and relax together’.

Thyruid grasped a pair of biscuits in one hand and nodded in agreement. Her voice sounded so soothing that he was certain that things were better than he had thought. His legs were bothersome. They did not want to settle down, relax. Alone for a moment, past the swinging door, Thyruid tried a deep knee bend; he creaked and moaned slightly before he raised himself erect once more. He shifted and tottered roughly, bearing up against the firm counter. His thighs still seemed to creep with indescribable twinges and tinglings of discomfort. They didn’t hurt; they simply rebelled at the idea of staying still. So he began to meander around, nibbling at his cool biscuits and trying valiantly to keep the crumbs corralled. His meander stiffened to a strut. Thyruid felt surly, and his crumb laden lip was curled as proof.

Marthuida brought out the two mugs of coffee. ‘Here: come and sit down. If I’m going to relax over this mug of coffee, you are too’. Thyruid slunk to the counter, heaved his behind onto a stool and snapped off another bite of his brittle biscuit, sending a shower of crumbs out onto the counter top. He glared at them until Marthuida stuck the mug of coffee down in his line of sight. Raising his brow, he became sufficiently distracted, and stuffed the last bit of biscuit into his mouth.

Thyruid silently chewed on his mouthful of dryish biscuit. His mouth felt even drier, and he scowled while he chewed. Marthuida noticed the exaggerated downward curl of his mouth, the funny little wad on his chin, the dull, drab look in his eyes. His cheeks were flaccid, the flesh hanging loosely. His complexion was pinkish grey, losing its vigor in despondency. She chose to sip at her coffee and wait through his silence. Thyruid reached for his coffee and brought it to his lips to sip. Leaning forward over the counter, he placed his elbows astride the crumbs and held his mug of piping hot coffee in both hands, and sipped at it absentmindedly.

The two shared the lonely quiet for some time. The biscuits had been consumed; even the crumbs had been picked up one or two at a time, and nibbled away. And the cooling mug was nearly empty – Marthuida had finished hers some time ago. In that disinterested waiting, the door opened. Geoffrey peeked in first. Seeing it was calm, he led Missus Carney into the foyer. Clyde followed, lending a hand. Missus Carney was flushed and rosy-cheeked from the walk. Her humor was high. She chatted softly with her friends and laughed freely and easily. ‘I’m tired, you know, but so glad for the walk! I ought to go kiss Thyruid for the opportunity!’ Geoffrey and Clyde both chuckled nervously under their breath, uncertain of how Thyruid’s mood might be just now.

Missus Carney took Clyde’s arm and let him help her down the steps, into the dining room itself. She was all fresh and easy. She was also tired and so headed first of all toward her chair. But then, she became distracted, and stopped still. She looked at glum Thyruid and at silent, pleasant Marthuida. And she turned to shuffle their way. Clyde and Geoffrey, her escorts, swallowed hard, and followed