Chapter II

My family took trips to the beach once—sometimes twice—a year, and for the most part, we managed some sweet digs at Bright Gulf and at Rockrose Beach. At the beginning at Rockrose Beach, when the Ibiza Pool was abandoned and still as glass, there were only a dozen or so houses, and the sound of construction floated in at around 10am with the smells of sawdust and primer hitting the salt and the the cistus that grew wild there in welled tangled humps bigger than sleeping lambs. It must have been the summer before my 4th-grade year that we were there the first time, at Rockrose, with apparently no one else but Chris of the chairs and the lady at the Icey Shak (which was actually a shak at the time, undeserving of the c, but doling out some snowcones with uncut syrup, sold as "iceys"), and we stayed there at the Hurtle house, which must have been sold to another family with a different name and painted away from its original shockwhite and olive brown.

The Hurtle house was three stories with a closed-in widow's walk on top of that. The first floor was the kitchen and living area, second floor was bedrooms, third floor was one wide bedroom with bunk beds and a ship's ladder heading up.

Of course that ship's ladder was a source of great delight to us kids—but very soon the glamor faded for the little ones. For taller adults, the very top room gave an umimpeded 360º view of the wilderness the neighborhood had cut into, and a clear shot of the beach beyond the dunes. For the shorter adults, and for us kids, the view was curtained off by shelves of books on all eight sides, leaving only a tantalizing glimpse of cloud and sky unless we were to climb the shelves. We were under no circumstances to climb the shelves. Ever. The widow's walk library there up the ship's ladder lost its bloom for everyone.

But I'd forgotten to bring a book.

So I climbed up there, alone one day, my parents trusting me to hold down the fort as they hoofed it to the Icey Shak for the third snowcone of the day, and scanned the shelves, clucking as I went, hemming and hawing over the taste of these people I would never meet. They had Dostoevsky, true, but there was Danielle Steele. Stephen King and Dean Koontz and Agatha Christie and TS Eliot? WB Yeats? Thomas Pynchon? Some of these names I didn't know yet: Wallace Stevens, Jeffrey Deaver; some of them I was all too familiar with: Shakespeare, George Orwell. ...I was a weird kid.

Down the shelves, circling the walls, one by one, striking them off, for reasons petty and grave, getting so close to resigning myself to settling down with the two worn-out Animorphs books I'd found at the bottom of my bag, until I hit a corner. And there, a few books in, nestled among brighter colors and standard spines, was a block of darkness. I stopped scanning, glued to it, blackholed in, trying to remember such a black, checking for a gloss, searching for a title, and I pulled it out, and it was like the entire sky sang. The whole book was as black, tricking my eyes into strange adjustments that bleached out the skywashed widow's walk. I took the book back down the ship's ladder and heard rain against the glass. I remember looking up and seeing shapes in the clouds, movement in the wind that the drops of rain obscured. Then back down into the third floor bedroom, then down again into the second floor where I had a room to myself. Out the door of that room onto the second-floor veranda and into a porch hammock. Rain sounds, and thunder. Swinging through the mug and sop, dry as a bone but breathing the storm, that's where I started the black book, and that's when I learned to love Harry Hardiner.

It's never struck me as odd that the details are so clear to me. It was, and remains, one of the most significant moments in my life. I read through the untitled seventh book of Harry Hardiner's Rosewire series without any context or introduction, and I was awakened on levels I'm only now finding words for. It was as though David the Bell had been struck: I learned my key, and the way I echo off the world. Reading the tale of Center Lake with its seven narrators was a transformative experience: its words and narrative weave had induced in me emotions and sense-memories classically reserved for the wisest of adults. I was aged in hours, not noticing my family slopping in from the rain and crying over ruined treats and showering the chill away, reading certain passages aloud, invoking them, pressing the sound of them into myself to create an imprint.

The book felt like something larger than itself, yes, but in that first read it never occurred to me that it could be the seventh book in a series. Johnny Kite, Good Golly Molly, Trueblood the Native: yes, they all obviously had enormous pasts, and the language of their consciousness belied the changes they had already undergone as the world shifted beneath them, but I accepted that, like the people that I met around me, I would never fully know what brought them to this place. I accepted without question that the end of the book, and the fruition of the Board's plans, marked the end of a world. I never wondered less at the "exchanges" at the Lake than I did about Johnny Kite's unnamed Friend or the Board's operations at Rhodes Rush.

It wasn't until after I'd reread the black book several times that I remounted the ship's ladder to find where it had nested around the octagon. I found its place again, and brought down the books that had surrounded them, only then realizing that the "Harry Hardiner" on the first page was the author's name, and not the title of the book I'd read and reread—that the book had no title at all.

The Hurtle home either did not sport a full collection of the Rosewire series, or, more prudently, it kept certain copies away from their timeshare. I say more prudently because, ashamed as it makes me, I took home two Harry Hardiner books from their shelves. I left money, of course, but I hope they replaced those books quickly; within a few years' time, Harry was gone, and then so were the books, swept out of circulation by the litigious Trust Maghreb which now somehow holds and manages the rights to the author's work. Granted, it's entirely possible that already, other visitors had stolen their own Rosewire books. I left money. I have to keep telling myself that.

Because I took away treasure. The black book, yes, of course, which I carry with me when I travel still, and the Hurtle copy of Green Stone Story, which I chose because it was the longest book in their library. Those two books have been foundational in my life ever since in the deepest sense of that word: it is impossible to conceive of a decision or a flight of fancy after the summer of 1997 that could not be traced back to my first exposures to Harry Hardiner.

This is a point of inflection:

Mathematically, the spot on the curve where the line goes from convex to concave. A change in acceleration, or direction, or velocity, or position, or... really, a point of inflection is the mathematical expression of an event: a change in something. A change that influences everything that comes after... including other points of inflection.

I can pick out those other points as well, big and small, and I know some are missing and some are mistaken. But some of those changes were so clear that even others who don't know me could deduce them. Meeting Dr Rex Patch was a point of inflection. Winning the Tenth Book Award was a point of inflection. Refounding Pinkum Press was a point of inflection.

You may (or may not) have noted my absence from this blog in the past few months. While at first this was heavily attributable to a desire to refrain from writing political posts, and an inability to write anything during the election without political undertones, later in 2016, other forces came into play. Great forces. Points of inflection.

November 2016, Jazra Jaban came to visit with me, to pore over some papers left by Dr Patch whose significance was clear but whose meaning was somewhat more obscured. I'll admit I was excited to finally be sitting down with someone whose correspondence I'd begun to appreciate as much as my lost chain with Rex, and it was a pleasant surprise to discover that Jazra took the time in that visit to talk personally as well as professionally. She's a delightful woman, by the way, every bit as smart as her movies would have you believe, but with a sweet Southern charm I quite frankly didn't know to expect. Turns out, Jazra's from Nashville, and grew up a few miles away from Hardiner Hollow. Turns out, actually, that Jazra's a lot of things.

In the middle of December, after this visit and a few more cordial emails, Jazra appeared on my doorstep again for very different reasons, this time uninvited, but certainly no less welcome. Jazra Jaban had come as a representative of the Society of Algiers.

*

The Society of Algiers was formed in 1996 with little pomp and less circumstance. A group of writers, mainly critics (though more than a few had given prose the old college try and even more had touched on verse in lighter moments), noticed no one else wrote on Hardiner and banded together, loosely speaking, as an appreciation club. There was no constitution, no hierarchy, no logo, no t-shirts, not even a newsletter, which in retrospect is odd. It sucks a lot. Particularly as I've been hired as the Archivist for the Society of Algiers.

It makes me proud to serve in this position, although the Society does not have an official web presence and cannot be swayed to pursue one (yet), and much of the work is covered by a confidentiality clause. I am allowed to say why there is a confidentiality clause: the Trust Maghreb. And that is a story for another time.

Jazra Jaban brought me a different story: an invitation in a pale pink envelope, smelling of woodsmoke, with the following words typed on it:

YOU DAVID SILVESTER HAVE BEEN INVITED TO JOIN THE SOCIETY OF ALGIERS.

MOX FIKRA DYRESVAL EVIGREER;

No. I can't tell you.

Oddly, I can tell you about the induction ceremony. There's Gonna Be a Pinch. That's its name. Or perhaps its motto; or both. It's just no one calls it a ceremony, or refers to a ceremony at all. Whenever they need to refer to it, they always will simply tell you, There's Gonna Be a Pinch. As in, "You need to be in the office at 7 Friday night; There's Gonna Be a Pinch." "Who has their hands on some duct tape? There's Gonna Be a Pinch." "Bring extra pants—There's Gonna Be a Pinch." It's not as fratty as it sounds. I doubt Sig Ep starts its ceremonies with a silent reading of your Hardiner of choice. Everyone was in suit and tie. Nothing culty but the ambiance and the mainly-quiet. Zachary Osgood hums as he reads.

After a moment of silent sustained reading, they bring the reflectant (that's me) to the front of the office hall, where a table is laid with a green cloth and set with a single large ledger. The reflectant sets down his chosen Hardiner beside it (mine was, of course, the Hurtle copy of the black book) and stands between them before the green table. This is the state of the room: dressed all in forest green, dark living green, the significants of the Society sparsed out about the corners, and the middle of the floor (where there is a faux-inlay of two overlapping hands) is open under the candelabra. And Zachary Osgood and I behind the table and the two books, him in a suit and tie, me in a dinner jacket I found at TJ Maxx.

Zachary Osgood asked me three questions:

"How did you discover Harry Hardiner?"

I told him, "The black book found me at a stranger's house." No time for context in ceremony.

Zachary Osgood made a note in the ledger.

"When did you first write about Mr Hardiner?"

I said, "In sixth grade for English, we had to write a sonnet. Mine started, 'In Candlewood did Stavra toss the trees.' I had just reread Green Stone Story."

Zachary Osgood said, "Young."

I said, "I didn't know yet that he had just disappeared."

Hattie Kerlin called out from the back, "Very young."

There was general laughter; some lacunae.

Third question:

"What were you reading before we brought you to the Table?"

I hesitated. It was so on the nose.

"The founding passage."

They waited, so I went on, "When Trueblood the Native is laying out his terms, after the waters have started to fold. The Curse's walls. Areas of protection. Safe zones."

Hattie said it quietly this time but I heard her across the office hall. "Home base."

Zachary Osgood asked, "Reflectant, would you read it aloud to the gathered members of the Society?"

I knew it by heart, but I opened the book. The black book has no page numbers; luckily a great deal of notes have crowded their ways into the margins and the upper corners. This page was marked with a green star made with a fountain pen my father gave me in the eighth grade.

I read.

"'No-one by the crossed palms of the Society of Algiers or under the keystar of the Punic See, no soul allied along the Lazarene Line or trowing the Gulf of Bilfoun, not a pop for the Irisids, no Harbu or Joshuite, and never a silkheaded Beam will fall to the Wanderer.'"

"Would you replace the book on the Table?"

I set it down, open and waiting.

Zachary Osgood made notes in the ledger. Somewhere in the office hall, someone had lit incense. He stepped back from the table.

"Place a finger on the leaves."

He gestured so I knew: one finger on the passage in the black book. Another in a hillock of graphite shaved on the open ledger.

"David Silvester. We seal you to the Society of Algiers."

And he closed the books on my hands. Two fingers in the leaves. A circuit.

"By the crossed palms of the Society of Algiers, stay safe from the Wanderer and sow lights in your footprints."

He opened the books and blew away the graphite from the ledger. The writing of Zachary Osgood is loopy and low and broad across the page. My handwritten name at the heading was in a different style: spiky at the tips like a landscape of towers. This is writing I know. From notes, from letters, from drafts of unfinished essays. My page was begun by Dr Rex Patch.

Zachary Osgood gave me a small green book. Blank. Handbound. I recognize the Kerlin craftsmanship.

"Fill it up," he tells me. "So we can make you another."

They are coming forward now to the table from the corners of the rooms.

"He needs a name," Hattie says, and Jazra Jaban agrees. Hattie is Rosie Gates; her husband Hi is Bullet Gates. Jazra has become Good Golly Molly. Zachary Osgood was clapped the Vice Principal. There are others. Rex Patch was once called Aristotle.

Zachary Osgood looked to my green star in the black book.

"He's the Lazarene."

There was general laughter. Someone just said, "Yes." Someone I don't know.

"Welcome the Lazarene."

They did, with handshakes and facekissing. It was a lark. And that was the ceremony. There's Gonna Be a Pinch. There is no past tense. There's Gonna Be a Pinch. Because there always will be. Also there was coffee and snacks.

*

The invitation to join the Society of Algiers was a surprise, but perhaps in retrospect it should have occurred to me that wheels were rolling up to my door. Once these things get started, they tend to keep going. I remember conversations now that feel like interviews in hindsight; entrances and introductions. It's a filled napkin. Not to be unwrapped. But there's a lingering taste.

There was no other mention of the Society of Algiers in the rest of Hardiner's writing—though it should be noted that his book entitled Conquest of Algiers came out two years after its establishment—but other factions mentioned in the founding statement surfaced in some form or another. In that eighth book, the most literal conquest is carried out by the Gulf League (states centered around the Gulf of Bilfoun); there is a hostel on the faux-Malta called the Iris; both Trueblood the Native and Max Larry are  noted Harbu in past books, adherents to a belief system they overlay in different ways in their very different lives. Once, in Rise and all its jumble, Hardiner has it that Johnny Kite and Hunter 9 crossed palms.

Jazra Jaban came to my doorstep holding an envelope stamped with overlaid hands. It started to flash through my head then: the black book at the beach, learning about Hardiner's disappearance from my seventh-grade English teacher, meeting Rex, a conversation about Twin Peaks with pointed questions, the crossed palms of the Society of Algiers. Opening the envelope. It felt like a straight line.

I had never told anyone but Dr Rex Patch about that time at the beach when I found the black book.

When my invitation came from the Society of Algiers, it was typewritten—but at the bottom was a spiky handwritten note.

"Welcome home to the Hurtle House. You're allowed to climb the shelves."