The Old People

by A. J. Perry

Overview

Since the beginnings of darkest silence the people of a mythical island have spent their days tying the ancient knot that binds them to their ancestors. To tie this knot they must dig a hole; to dig a hole they first must have fire; and to make a fire that is hot enough for hole digging, this knot that they have been tying for countless generations must finally be tied. From silence to mud to rope to knot to wood to words to fire, the Old People will work to tie this knot under the cool shade of the island’s original knotmaking tree.

Subversive in voice and style, without mainstays of conventional fiction, ‘The Old People’ portrays the sights and sounds of a world that has been lost. Using primary words as a metaphor for the island’s seemingly limited yet infinitely diverse and self-sustaining resources, the book conveys the life rhythms of the Old People and their world: the unique cadence that emerges from the ancient juxtaposition of silence, then language, then silence once again. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783081301
Publisher:	Union Bridge Books
Publication date:	04/21/2014
Pages:	100
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

A. J. Perry is the author of ‘The Old People’. This is his second book. www.ajpery.net.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

The Knot

* * *

This is how the Old People tie a knot: first, they dig a hole. To keep the knot from slipping or breaking, the hole should be dug in darkness just after the first big flood of the rainy month when the clouds are thick and the mud is thick and the night is dark enough for digging. Because knot makers cannot be hole diggers and hole diggers cannot be knot makers and because hole diggers dig holes at night while knot makers make knots by day, a knot maker with a knot to make cannot just dig his hole easily and be easily on his way. Just as any hole digger would know that knots tied by hole diggers do not make for holes that are very good the knot maker himself will know that a hole dug by a knot maker will not make for a knot that has been worth its making.

And so the knot maker does it like this. When the place for his hole has been marked and is ready to be dug the knot maker will look far away from the knot to the many things in the village that are not knots and here he will say without words that there is a hole that needs digging. For this the knot maker might visit a friend to trade salt and here he will say to his friend, in passing, If only there were a hole down by the field where the old umbilical tree leans out over the river... . At this the two will do their trading and the knot maker will leave. But later when a friend has come by to trade salt the knot maker's friend will say what was said to him by the knot maker: that it would be good if there were a hole down by the field where the umbilical tree leans out heavily over the river. Again this friend will listen as if he has not heard the thing that is being asked for and only later while trading salt with an old friend of his own will he once again bring up the matter of the knot: It will be good if the clouds come tonight, he might say, For a hole has yet to be dug in that place by the elderly river where the umbilical tree is leaning.

Now these two friends can trade salt and when this is done the friend who has just listened to the talk of a hole will leave with his traded salt without ever learning of the need for a knot. But later while visiting with an old friend he too will make sure to point out what by now has been made clear over the countless generations that these friends have been trading salt: that there has yet to be any hole dug near the old umbilical tree that is leaning out over the river. Having traded salt for many years this friend will listen once again to the talk of holes that are not yet dug and of knots not yet made and later when he goes to visit an old friend he too will make sure to mention, in passing, that he has heard of a hole that needs digging and that the place marked for this digging can be found in the field where the old umbilical tree is leaning out over the river. In this way the need for a hole will go from one friend to the next until it at last reaches the man in the village who is best able to dig the hole that is being asked for: the hole digger. And when this latest mention of digging has at last reached him the digger of holes will gather his digging tool and make his way to the place by the river where the old tree is leaning and where the hole can now be dug.

On this island it has always been like this: knot makers making knots in the day and hole diggers digging holes at night. Of course before a hole can be dug — before a knot can be made — the place for the hole must first be marked. And so to mark a place for their holes the Old People drive a stake into the ground when the sun is at its peak and onto this stake they tie a marking knot to say that this staked place will be worthy of the digging. That night the sun will go down and the darker things of the island can begin. When the hole digger comes to dig — in darkness, never by light — he looks for the upright stake, then the knot, and then using his digging tool, he sets about his work. Here he digs slowly with care not to move any earth that does not need moving and when he is finished he takes the knot for himself — he will need it soon — and lays the stake over the dug hole so that it stretches from the side where the sun has gone down to the side where it will soon be coming up. In final darkness the nighttime digger of holes will go softly back to the place where he spends his days so that in the clarity of the next morning when the sun has indeed come up and the people of the village wake from their sleep to find the hole now dug, there will not be a person among them who can say for sure which of the island's hole diggers has just spent his night digging this hole — or for that matter whose hole it is that has just been dug. This is a very good hole, one of the day people will be likely to say while trading salt, And should make for a fine knot someday.

As always the digging tool that the hole digger uses to dig his hole will be a simple rod made from umbilical wood with a blunt tip at one end and a sharp tip at the other. The hole digger gets the wood from the village's wood carver in exchange for hard stones and fish and the special sacred salt that the islanders use for spiritual currency. He will have these things because he will have gotten them for his own work digging holes: the stones from the people of the quarry, the fish from the men who make their living as fishermen, and the salt from the salt given by the knot maker for the digging to be done. Because the Old People do not believe that a person who digs holes should carve wood, or that a person who carves wood should dig holes, when the hole digger sees that he needs a digging tool to be carved the first thing he does is to take the marking knot that has just been gathered from the end of the wooden stake and to add it to all the other knots that he has ever gathered after digging. Over time these knots will have been joined to each other to form a rope of tribute that is exactly as long as the hole digger's contribution to the art of hole digging. And because he knows that no request for a digging tool should be made using words that are spoken — which would be the worst kind of speaking — the hole digger will simply take his rope of gathered knots and coil it over his shoulder in the direction of the sun and on the darkest night of the month go with his coil to the tree where the wood carver is known to sit during the day with his carving. And there the hole digger will leave his knots for the wood carver to find. When the wood carver comes upon the hole digger's coiled rope the next morning he will uncoil it to full length and look over the chain of knots — each of them on its own and all of them as a whole — and in this way he will remember exactly who tied each knot, when it was tied, and for what purpose; by this the wood carver will weigh the value of these knots in his mind and if he sees that the hole digger is worthy of the tool that has been asked for he will know that a tool should be carved. And only then will he set about the carving of the wood.

To carve his wood the wood carver uses stone adzes that he gets from the adze maker over the course of many months; then comes the carving itself which takes many months more; and then there is the time — no less than three planting seasons — that the carved piece of wood must sit in silence before it can be given away. When the digging tool is finally ready and has been blessed by the island's seeing man the wood carver goes with his wooden tool to the icy waters of the river and there he sinks it deep into the cold mud where it will be left to age for forty generations. The waters will flow above this wood for forty generations and as he waits for these generations to pass the wood carver will go to a different place in the river where forty generations ago a fellow wood carver once sunk the same piece of wood into the cold mud of the river; and here he takes up the tool which is now as hard and as heavy as stone. His tool finally in hand, the wood carver says a short prayer for the birth of the tool and for the digging that will be done with it. Then he wraps the hole digger's coil of knots around the carved digging tool — round and round until the digging tool has been wrapped from top to bottom — and sets it under the tree in the exact place where the original request for a digging tool was once left by the hole digger. That night the wood carver will sleep knowing that his work is done, that it has been done well, and that in forty generations it will be unearthed by a fellow wood carver and given in the same way and with the same prayer to a nighttime digger of holes. In the morning the wood carver goes to the tree to see that the coil of knots and digging tool have been claimed by the hole digger during the night and to pick up the small offering of salt and the bundle of dried fish that the hole digger has left him as tribute to his work.

Of course to do all this the wood carver must first get the wood to be used for his carving. As an expert in the different woods of the island, the wood carver knows the location of every valuable tree or plant in and around his village. He knows where the largest and ripest umbilical trees have been planted for their hard wood purposes: as digging tools, as weapons, as stakes to be driven into the ground. And so when he needs more wood for his carving the first thing he does is consult with the village's seeing man who will tell him which of the many old trees of the island should be the next to be harvested. Because the Old People understand that although all people can carve wood not all people should be wood carvers — and, likewise, that all people are able to see though not all of them can be seers — the wood carver must trust the wisdom of the seeing man to see the things that cannot be seen, especially when it comes to cutting an umbilical tree. And though the wood carver himself cannot choose the tree to be cut — as this would be the farthest thing from seeing — he might make the suggestion, in passing, that, for example, he has heard of a certain tree that leans out over the river and that it is said to be very old and very hard and that maybe it is this tree that should be taken down. The seeing man will listen and on a day that is right for the purpose he will gather his things for seeing — his pebbles and his carved idols and his sacred knots — and he will make his way to the place by the side of the river where the umbilical tree is leaning. Once there he will arrange his things in the way that seeing men do and here he will begin to pray. Over the days that follow he will pray for the wisdom to tell one tree from the other; and for the assurance that the taking of this tree has not been done unjustly or before its time; and for the success of the cutting: that none of the men who do the felling shall find themselves beneath the branches of the falling tree; or be felled by it; or be weighted down by the heavy feeling that comes from having caused a great tree to fall. At this point in his prayer he will take the burden of the tree and place it on his shoulder in the form of a wooden idol. He will whip the branches against his own flesh using the knotty fibers of his sacred ropes. He will crush the smooth pebbles between his teeth, painfully, as if it were the grinding of hard wood against human bone. And when all of this is finished he will pause to wait for the signs that must follow: the windblown movements of the trees that only he can hear and that will tell him that it is this tree above all others, this very umbilical tree leaning out over the river, that should be felled for the sake of the knot maker's knot.

Over the next few months word will travel that an old tree is to be taken down and it is here that the rest of the village will come together to do its part: the knot makers will tie sturdy knots to bind the tree to itself and make ropes that can be used to guide the tree in the hurried moments when it is falling; the wood carvers will build tall stilts so that the tree cutters can cut away the highest branches at the tree's top. Finally, the people from the quarry will bring their stones and pile them one onto another to form a stone ramp stretching out into the shallow part of the river where the tree will soon fall. Everything is now ready for the felling and on the day when the seeing man says it is right the tree cutters will come with their cutting tools to chop at the tree's trunk. With expert swinging motions they will do this again and again, cutting deep into hard flesh until the sounds of falling can be heard. Because it is already leaning the falling tree will fall fast and the men below will shout and scramble and pull with their ropes. But this tree will fall only as far as the sloping ramp of stone that has been built beneath it. And here it will come to rest. For several long moments there will be an ancient silence as the Old People look at the tree on its crooked altar and think about what has just been done, what has just been taken away: the old tree — its limbs, its skin, all its bone and stone and heat — has just been taken away forever and given, forever, to the wood carver with his tool, to the hole digger with his hole, and to the knot maker with the knot that he is tying.

Here the seeing man will say a final prayer over a fistful of salt that he has scattered.

And then while the men from the village drag the wood down the slope of the stone ramp to the dryness of the river's bank where it will be cut up and cured and stored for the wood carver's use the wood carver himself will make sure to mention, in passing, that there is so much wood to be cut up and so many digging tools to make and so many weapons and so many wooden stakes and then, at the end of his speaking, he will add, But before any of these things can be done it would be good to dig a hole near the place by the river where the old leaning tree has just been felled. And his friend will listen. And this friend will pass on the request. And later when the request has been passed on and the salt has been traded and the location has been blessed and the hole has been dug and the stakes driven and the knots tied and the fish caught and the stones gathered and the prayers prayed and the adzes made — when all of this has been done — the wood carver will go to the hole that has just been dug in that place by the river and into its fresh soil he will set a young umbilical sapling to take the place of its felled ancestor.

In time the rains will come. And the sun will shine. The tiny sapling will become tall and hard and will grow into a tree that can be used to make the strongest and straightest digging tools and weapons and stakes to be driven into the ground. Once again the knot maker will go to the place by the river where the umbilical tree is leaning and here he will stand with his rope to give thanks. For the tree. For the knot. For the hole that will be dug. For the tool that has been carved. And when this is done he will begin tying the knot without which no tree can be made to fall — the final knot that will tell the tree cutters to begin their cutting. Over the next few days, while the tree cutters are readying their cutting tools and the people of the quarry are bringing the stones to build their ramp and the seeing man is sitting on the ground with his many things of prayer — while all of this is happening — the knot maker will stand to the side tying the umbilical tree's knot of passage, the knot that will mark the journey of the tree from this life to the other. And as the knot maker works to make this knot, his hands looping and tucking the knot into shape, the crowd will avert its eyes. The men with the ropes will lean back into their ropes ready to guide the tree to the ground once it has begun to fall. And the men with the tree cutting tools, their cutting tools raised high over their heads, will eye the hard neck of the leaning tree waiting for the exact moment when the knot maker has finished his knot so that their cutting can begin.

(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "The Old People"
by .
Copyright © 2014 A. J. Perry.
Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---