The World More Full of Weeping (12 page)

And I have odd ideas for stories. How else would I be able
to go from a perfectly innocent, nay, almost heart-warming
story about a smalltown agricultural fair to a story that
has its roots in ideas of pagan sacrifice, the Eleusinian
Mysteries and a willing death for the good of a community?
That's not a logical leap.

And so long as I was thinking about Agassiz, it was an
impossible leap even for me to make.

Agassiz is so rich in my mind, its people so familiar
to me, its landscape so real, so drenched in memory and
experience, that it's literally impossible for me to write
about it. And certainly impossible for me to turn the
full, and more than occasionally destructive, force of my
imagination on it.

Turn it one degree toward the weird, though, and not
only can I turn my imagination on it, but I do. With relish.

Or, to put it another way (and to deliver the pay-off for
the analogy I established earlier):

Imagine a stack of transparency sheets overlaying a
strict, cartographical rendering of the town of Agassiz,
and its surrounding forests and hills and cemeteries and
lakeshore. Look at the whole stack: the cartographical
base; the knowledge transparency, with my deep, intimate
awareness of the town; the experience transparency, with
seventeen years worth of memories (and, let's face it,
baggage); and finally, the resonance level, with the darkness
of my imagination and the brightness of my ghosts.

That, right there, is my Agassiz you're holding in your
hands. My personal geography, in one possibly overdeveloped metaphor.

Now, grab the top transparency, the resonance sheet,
and fold it carefully back while you tear out the other two
transparencies — knowledge
and
experience — and
toss
them in the nearest trash can (or, if you're feeling symbolic,
set them aflame with a Zippo lighter). Now, take out a
Sharpie, scribble over the name “Agassiz” on the base sheet
and scrawl in the name “Henderson.” And finally, let the
only remaining transparency sheet fall back into place:
resonance on top of cartography, divorced from knowledge
and experience.

That's Henderson, right there. One degree of weird —
and an entire universe — away from Agassiz.

Or, as I've always maintained (and if you want to go
all quantum for your metaphors), two very real towns,
occupying the same very real space, but in parallel
universes.

The creation of Henderson (or discovery, really, because
I suppose it was always there somewhere, in the depths
of my subconscious) allowed me to create, not quite out
of whole cloth, a history for the town. A population. A
dynamic and a psyche.

It allowed me to create a world.

And over the last decade and a half, through a dozen or
so short stories, a novella or two, and a shortish, abandoned
novel, I've developed that world with a level of detail and
immersion the extent of which I don't think I'm even
aware of yet. I know where everything is in Henderson,
how settings relate to settings not in the abstract but at a
level of roads and paths through fields and forests. I know
the history of Henderson. I know its people, and who they
relate to, and how.

You've met a few of them now. Some of them you'll see
again, in the way that you'll always run into people you know
in a small town. Especially when they're as significant to
the town and its history as John Joseph and his wife Claire.
You'll hear about the flood of '49. And the year the town
burned to the ground, following an endless summer of
madness and violence and no rain. You'll hear stories of
birth, and of death, and of myths alive and walking the
backroads and paths.

And forests. Can't forget the forests.

Did I say “flood” up there? Ah, yes, so I did. Yes,
Henderson has a flood. Much like Agassiz did, sixty plus
years ago. Things happen like that in the weird relationship
between the two places. Events and locations shift
amorphously from one reality to the next. Take the woods
in
The World More Full of Weeping
: I know those woods. I've
walked those woods. When I was Brian's age, I thought
about disappearing into them.

And last June, during a long-weekend family reunion,
I walked into them again. Not far, because they scare me
as much as they attract me. But far enough to really feel
them again, to be reminded that they were as I had both
imagined and remembered.

Because the woods in
The World More Full of Weeping
are
the ones at the back of my grandmother's house, the house
where, in the novella, Brian and his father live.

It's funny, though: walking through Agassiz, spending
the weekend in the house where I grew up (which is the
house in “The Small Rain Down,” for the record), I didn't
feel any of the surreality that accompanies me so often in
Victoria. In my grandmother's house, I was surrounded by
my family — there wasn't the slightest sense of being in
two places at once, or having my real life and the life I had
created for Brian and Jeff awkwardly juxtaposed.

That's the main thing about Henderson: it's utterly
fictional, even though it might seem otherwise. And
therefore I can breathe easy.

Stepping into the woods, though . . .

Stepping into the woods was like crossing a threshold,
from the heat of the day to the cool of the shadows. From the
noise of the fifty or sixty family members in the backyard
preparing for a group photograph to the not-quite-stillness,
the slow, steady hum of mystery and life unfolding unseen
all around me.

It was as if, in one step, I went from Agassiz to Henderson.
By entering the woods, I had moved between worlds.

Which I suppose is the last word. Because that's what
happens when you walk into the woods.

To get it out of the way at the start: any credit goes to others.
Blame, however, comes straight to me.

As always, a writer is grateful to his readers, and I'm no
exception. I'm most grateful to those readers who get the
story first, hot and pulpy and fresh, whose eyes help shape
it into even a modicum of respectability. For these stories,
my deepest gratitude to James Grainger and to Colin Holt,
fine readers and fine friends both (even when I don't pull
my own weight). And Colin deserves extra thanks, for all
his help — above and beyond the call of duty, my friend.

I would also like to thank the readers on the RWF Yahoo
board. It's a strange world where a group of Springsteen
fans can come together as first readers and fiction enablers,
but it's a world I'm delighted to live in. Thanks, then, to
Ruth, Adam, Fredo, Michael, Kathryn, Ray and Karen. And
to Laurie and Matthias, who also weighed in. Strange how
easily strangers can become friends without even meeting.

Random House Canada was very gracious in allowing this
slim volume to sneak out — my thanks to my publisher,
Anne Collins, for her understanding, and to my agent,
Anne McDermid, for facilitating the whole process.

Most times you can't judge a book by its cover. In this case,
however, I just hope the book even approaches the sheer
brilliance of the cover that Erik Mohr created for it. I stand
in awe.

My deepest gratitude to Brett Alexander Savory and his
partner-in-crime Sandra Kasturi at ChiZine — just two
crazy kids with a dream! Working with Brett has been a
treat, a reminder of times which may not have actually
existed — when book deals were made over pints of beer. . . .
Let not that casualness fool you, though: Brett and Sandra
are the epitome of professionalism, as the beauty of this
book well attests.

And finally, immeasurable thanks to the home team.
Xander is the greatest kid in the world, and very
understanding of the hard work and occasional sacrifices
required to make this writing life work. And Cori . . . I
cannot thank you enough. Your faith sustains me, your
questions galvanize me, and your response to any story is
the one that matters most. A writer could not ask for a
finer first reader, a fiercer first critic, or a more supportive
partner.

Robert J. Wiersema is a bookseller and reviewer, who
contributes regularly to the
Vancouver Sun
, the
Globe and
Mail
, the
Ottawa Citizen
, and numerous other newspapers.
Wiersema is also the event coordinator for Bolen Books,
and the author of
Before I Wake
(Random House Canada,
2006), which was a national bestseller. He lives in Victoria,
B.C., with his wife, Cori Dusmann, and their son, Xander.