About this novel
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The FLASHBACK Problem
At the bottom of the moral labyrintrh in which our Theseus, C. P.
Byrd, found himself is the scene of the fireside tragedy. The novel
follows the version of the Frankie Silver legend reported by Muriel
Earley Sheppard on pages 31 - 35, of her classic CABINS IN THE
LAUREL, a gruesome tale of a yuletide ax murder. Death of a god
of light at the winter solstice, followed by a ritual sacrifice on an
altar (family fireplace), followed by reborn life (mother and child)
delivered by the dawn of a new day in a new year is. for mankind of
the northern hemisphere, an archetype of the collective
unconscious.
IN RAW TIME
Jeb, violently shivering from the cold, comes into the house from
his wood-chopping chore. He is carrying across his shoulder a
double-bit ax In violation of the Appalachian taboo against bringing
an ax into the house. His face shows that he is suffer from a
hangover. Agatha approaches. He shoves her away. She falls.
He flings the ax to the floor. The noise awakens the baby. He
starts crying. Jeb, shivering and shaking, takes him out of his crib
and lies down on the floor in front of the fireplace. His violent
shivering subsides. He falls asleep.
Agatha slips the baby out of his arms. He does not move. She
picks up the ax and tries to sever his head with one blow. Mortally
wounded, he jumps up, then falls, making horrible noises.
Terrified, Agatha jumps into their bed and tries to shut out the
sounds. He grows quiet. She gets out of bed and with one blow
with the flat side of the ax to his head she gives him quietus. She
spends the rest of the night trying to dispose of the body by
burning it piece by piece in the fireplace.
Comes the dawn. The job is unfinished. She wraps the remains in
a bed sheet, drags them outdoors and stuffs them into the hollow
trunk of a sourwood tree on the edged of the yard.
Heavy snow is blowing into drifts.
Back in the house, she rakes the ashes out of the fireplace and into
an ash pit under the marble hearth stone. With the ax she tries to
chip blood and greasy spots out the bricks.
She scrubs the floor. She washes the blood-stained bed sheet.
She hangs the sheet on on a clothesline.
Back in the house, she wraps the baby in a blanket. Against a
backdrop of sunrise, babe in arms, she struggles through deep
drifts of snow to reach her mother-in-law's house.
IN BULLET TIME
This scene can be made less gruesome and more evocative of
ritual sacrificing by filming it with techniques similar to those used
used in Zeitgeist and The Matrix. Our narrator, Mr. Byrd, never
witnesses that scene. He has to imagine it. That solstice night's
events, in Mr. Byrd's view, were an eruption of the sacred into Jeb's
world, into Agatha's world.That solstice night's events were an
eruption of the sacred into Jeb's world, into Agatha's world .Jungian
Mr. Byrd is quick to recognize the archetypes in that winter solstice
scene: the fireplace as sacrificial altar, a self-sacrificing victim driven
by the death wish, the universal mother carring her babe into the
dawn of a new year, etc. He sees that yuletide event in terms of
the unconscious activity at play. And in his zeitetic imagination the
physical becomes metaphysica and takes on a spiritual meaning.
Beconmes transcendental. For example, in Agatha's cri de cour --
"He tried to cross the river and fell through the ice," hears a
metaphor. The river is Little River, but more than Little River; it is
the river of myth, a boundary between the world of life and light and
the world of death and darkness. The events of that winter solstice
night betray the presence of the paranormal.
Bullet time resources can take the viewers on a journey through Mr.
Byrd's imaginal realms.The dynamic substratum of Jungian
archetypes Mr. Byrd sees at work in this scene can be visualized to
soften the harsh impact of the raw version. The key word is
"visualize" as José Argüelles uses that term in his illustrated lecture
here.
Jeb, prey to an unconscious death wish, suffering from a deep
depression, severe hangover, and a guilty conscience, violates a
taboo against bringing an ax into thehouse, provoks his own
slaughter and provided the weapon.
The scene calls for the skills of a Kubrick and the resources of
Bullet Time. 1945! The year of the atomic bomb. The ax handle
morphs into the stem of a mushroom cloud. The blades of the ax
become the top of the mushroom cloud. The glistening streams of
bloom reflect images of atomic devastation.
The scene morphs again and takes on the trappings of a primitive
religious ritual. The fireplace is a sacrificial altar. Agatha is a
priestess offering oblation to the flames. Comes the dawn, and
against the backdrop of sunrise, she becomes the holy mother
carrying the holy child into the dawn of a new day, a new year -- a
new world baptized in dazzling white transmogrifying snow.
©
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