tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-75943501698438261512012-02-16T07:00:57.867-08:00Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.comBlogger291100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-76664836540084720602009-06-21T19:42:00.000-07:002009-06-21T19:45:53.211-07:00

Nearly a month had passed since I began following the old Leatherman, and I had failed to get any closer to him. I stood at a distance and watched him eat with dozens of families. Each had its own ritual for his arrival. Each fed him with a differing amounts of attention or indifference. I met boys who followed him to his rock shelter and watched him, and sat with him, and I had heard

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-17455278119966622162009-06-03T14:53:00.000-07:002009-06-03T14:57:07.505-07:00

In September of 1856, Marie and I had been married for three months, yet we both lived separately in our parent's houses. By this time she let her aunt in on our secret, and Agetthe abandoned kitchen, hearth and bed so that our marriage would not go unconsummated. Where Agetthe disappeard to was never revealed, and I was wont to question lest our luck change, but her accomodating ease led me

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-38704589677732365752009-05-18T19:00:00.000-07:002009-05-18T19:10:11.791-07:00

Seven days, and I knew that he knew I was here.He didn't seem spooked by it, but it was clear he felt my presence. After the first day the following got easier. I stayed behind him because I learned quickly that his route was often erratic, and I needed to follow. I learned that the quickest path between two points was not necessarily his preference. He had all the time in the world, and

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-45509676536740179882009-05-18T18:15:00.000-07:002009-05-18T18:26:04.935-07:00

Our wedding was a secret. We were married in the small town of Ste. Lucie. Neither Marie's father, nor my father knew. We were married amongst strangers. Strangers for attendents. Strangers for witnesses. And a sleepy-eyed priest with two hundred francs in his pocket performed the ceremony. Once we were married, I do not recall how we reasoned that we should keep our marriage a secret.

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-3327556442947135972009-05-18T18:14:00.000-07:002009-05-18T18:15:46.325-07:00

It's been three weeks since I posted a chapter, but a bout with the flu knocked me off course the first week, and pure procrastination kicked in after that. There will be two more chapters up by midnight, and hopefully I'll be back on course.Ed

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-19457256768457106932009-04-29T13:21:00.000-07:002009-04-29T13:42:44.500-07:00

On the day that I finally left town, I did so with much fanfare. I was sleeping off an evening of penny poker and beer not nearly so dear. My head seemed as stuffy as the room, and it rang like church bell for the funeral of a bishop. So the knock on the door, no matter how enthusiastic, no matter how important,t was not welcome. "Go 'way," I croaked. "Jack, get up. The Leatherman's

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-89600495869070354202009-04-22T18:24:00.000-07:002009-04-22T18:33:58.382-07:00

At the Fisher Farm today my emotions overtook me. I approached the farm from over the hills in Middlefield. I saw some activity in the small grass plot in front of the large house. The house sat close to the edge of the wide stage road called Washington Street since, I am told, thought I don’t ask, General Washington marched his troops down the wide corridor. A path off the road led to a

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-61666463027894847272009-04-22T17:22:00.000-07:002009-04-22T17:24:29.621-07:00

(Last week I neglected to add the final two pages to chapter Twenty One. These are the missing pages.)Burke lay his head back on an uncased pillow, piping dark with the sweat from his head. His eyes closed, and I stood and watched for a minute, thinking that he might have fallen asleep again. I scraped my soles on the gritty floor, and he stirred again. "You still here?" he asked. "Do you

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-27188767143901621652009-04-13T18:55:00.000-07:002009-04-13T19:02:38.234-07:00

Six months. We were opened six month before the sheriff showed up. And McDonough was ready. "Jack, fetch me Flynn, now," McDonough whispered to me as he spotted the sheriff and his men entering the stage door. I ran past the men, who smelled of whiskey and sweat. They saw me, and would likely have stopped me, but I was mighty quick. I heard one yell, "The kid" as the door slammed behind

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-73763858968006254602009-04-07T09:42:00.000-07:002009-04-07T09:48:55.505-07:00

My friend Pierre warned me. In this he knew my own father better than I. "He will not let you have this woman as a wife." I, of course, told him that he was mad. Everyday I saw my father working with people below his station. He always treated them with respect and dignity. He never condescended. He always made them feel as if they were worthwhile. "It's business," Pierre said. "He

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-38572348206642458702009-03-22T16:07:00.000-07:002009-03-22T16:13:57.073-07:00

I saw a boy whom I have seen before. This of course, in itself is not strange. I see many boys, many people, repeatedly. After all these years my wanderings have taken on a regularity that has astonished even me. I wander in a wide, irregular-shaped circuit, though I have never checked its shape on a map, I have a feeling it is a large craggy oval. I know this, I wander no further east

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-79765684845487318592009-03-17T18:39:00.000-07:002009-03-17T18:43:26.968-07:00

For someone who was such a close friend when we were young, Will Selden was a stranger to me now. His perspective and reach included Middletown, sometimes a summertime outing to the seashore at Hammonassett, very occasionally a trip to Hartford or New Haven, but Will seemed very content to stay put on the farm. When Will and his brothers sat down at the table with us to eat, his mother

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-29324263329956274692009-03-08T14:40:00.000-07:002009-03-08T14:47:03.234-07:00

By the side of the road today I found several woman's magazines. They appeared not yellowed with age. They were dated in the year 1877. If they are recent magazines, then I have been here in this country for nearly thirty years. Thirty years. I remember a time when I didn’t have thirty years under my belt to remember. Thirty years. As old as I was when Marie met death, and left me.

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-78314670565362590012009-03-01T14:16:00.000-08:002009-03-01T14:21:45.092-08:00

When I was out on the road with McDonough, we'd were back to Middletown several times, though never for more than a week at a time. Just enough time to visit family. My family had grown, Lizzie was now married to a stevedore she met when he was a hired hand at the asylum, in fact, the hired hand who replaced me, at the insane asylum. Since the last time I was home, I became an uncle to a

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-15920107391710002602009-02-22T19:17:00.000-08:002009-02-22T19:29:39.027-08:00

I found Marie a year later. She remembered me as we passed in market. I had given up my search for her, but I knew her as soon as she placed her hand on my sleeve. "Monsieur Bourglay," she said. "I am right, aren't I." "Marie." "Hello, sir. How are you? And your father?” She had taken my breath away, and I gulped and stuttered to answer her simple enquiries, never once stopping to

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-64273121535979719312009-02-15T20:28:00.000-08:002009-02-15T20:31:30.143-08:00

I had to admit to myself that I burned with a kind of inner fire once I stepped off the stage and stood in the wings. “Billy Reed’s my name,” the minstrel said to me, as he grabbed my hand. “I saw your whole act. You’d make one hell of a partner.” I smiled and nodded, but I wasn’t really listening to his offer. Another of the blackface dancers tapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s go

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-41012989737868266782009-02-08T16:55:00.000-08:002009-02-08T17:01:53.098-08:00

At the age of fourteen my mother, my brother and I moved from Persia and back to France when my father bought the leathergoods company in Lyon which employed him for fifteen years.In the years when I lived in that exotic city, I learned much from the man in the garden. I learned to speak the language of the country in which I lived, something which no one else in my family, no one else in the

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-32074338076003421642009-02-01T20:36:00.000-08:002009-02-01T20:38:28.674-08:00

Sing-sing was famous for nothing more and nothing less than its ability to prevent people from departing when they wished.Those people, of course, were not the residents of the town, but the prisoners in the state penitentiary, which sat like a dull unpolished piece of granite on a bluff above the Hudson River. It had the best views of the river, and in that way, it reminded me of the Insane

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-71146682128807091942009-01-25T18:43:00.000-08:002009-01-25T19:18:03.671-08:00

Something has happened. I have, out of necessity, become a creature of habit. I wish to speak to no one, so I do not. I have found my meals with friendly folk, who, at first required me to perform some odd job, some task in order to earn the day's fare. I've returned to these kind folk again and again, until they grow to expect me, until they no longer require of me the chore, the task, for

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-60569508402858285472009-01-18T18:11:00.000-08:002009-01-18T18:14:41.657-08:00

It was a week after my sixteenth birthday that I left McKinley's leather goods and tannery for the last time. I moved from scraper to hide bearer, and cleanser and by the end I could make a nice piece of leather. Old man McKinley, before he died, said I would have made a good tanner too. I was sad, when he passed on. He worked me hard, but he was good to me. His family needed the money,

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-24286619248163939952009-01-11T18:08:00.000-08:002009-01-11T18:28:56.800-08:00

Before long, I found that I would not be able to keep myself in cotton pants without begging money for the cloth. And the leather coat has proven so resilient that I decided to fashion a pair of trousers in the same way. A hat followed shortly. This was also the time when I found my wanderings to be taking a rather regular course. I am, I will admit, a man of habit. The angel and the

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-57542782269532674212009-01-04T03:46:00.000-08:002009-01-05T20:51:55.443-08:00

When I woke up I knew two things. I missed seeing the old man Leatherman, and missed the chance of earning some of his luck. I also knew that someone had hit me on the head again. I had that same miserable feeling like I was tired, but tired of sleeping. And my head throbbed. "What day is it?" I asked the old man staring into my face. "Wednesday," he said. I smelled whiskey's sweet words.

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-2125578728953886012008-12-28T10:53:00.000-08:002009-01-04T03:32:29.969-08:00

The smell of leather is the smell of my father. Always and forever. I remember, before I can remember, like the taste of the teat. Like the smothering warmth of my fair mother's embrace. So was leather to my father. He'd come home from work perfumed with that strong sultry musk of cured leather. And that is my earliest memory. One that has never changed. Always, the scent of a new purse

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-33621774233420225352008-12-21T19:48:00.000-08:002008-12-21T19:50:46.188-08:00

My friend the courier called himself Will. Will Selden. He lived with his family on a farm, up the hill toward Middlefield. He had fourteen brothers and sisters, and said he was working on his third mother. Though his first mother died before he was born, and his second mother was his real mother, who died in childbirth with a younger brother, Luke. His third mother was his stepmother,

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-51947694569004031852008-12-13T18:49:00.000-08:002008-12-13T19:00:46.561-08:00

I have arrived in this country at a precipitous junction.Not only for myself, but for the country. Having once prided myself on being accomplished in the affairs of the world - a student of politics, if not a practitioner - I feel ashamed that I know little of the recent internal upheaval here in the United States.I know more now. I could not help but absorb it. I have wandered now, true to my

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-90857683656275388652008-12-07T03:41:00.000-08:002008-12-15T08:31:39.735-08:00

I walked onto the grounds of the asylum barefoot and with a beggar's ragged blanket wrapped about me.My head ached.Blake made off with the little I owned. I awoke beside the ashes of his hut, and the cold grey mound that was to be our cookfire. I looked at the stars and tried to determine the hour the way Vinny would, but the sky kept its secrets from me. The air was cold and wet, and my hair

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-2453478539006486032008-11-30T19:48:00.001-08:002008-12-01T08:15:22.618-08:00

Sept. 5Yesterday, still on the sea, I was Jules Bourglay.Today I am nobody. I am like a pane of glass. Clear. Brittle. People look through me and see only what is beyond.My former life is buried in the waves, and blown by the wind that carried me to this new country. This country where any criminal, any sinner, any saint may begin anew. This new land, America.Today a new life begins.This I

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-49014867110946507492008-11-22T09:18:00.000-08:002008-12-01T08:17:51.906-08:00

From down in the village these brick buildings up here look mighty handsome. Aside from the Methodist college they're the only real institution in Middletown.And the college buildings, at Middletown's other institution, on the hill opposite this one, most of them don't look like they were built by the same hand, yet most of them's made of the same red brick as this place. Dug out of a pit and

Ed McKeonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14767520306585909279noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7594350169843826151.post-64820600206612176402008-11-17T08:19:00.000-08:002008-11-17T09:22:58.129-08:00

I was working the hay field across from the insane asylum. Pierson had a gang of us out there with rakes. It was the first week of August, and hot. The locusts were squalling. I could look down and see the broad blue elbow of the Connecticut River in the valley below, and it only made the heat worse. The sweat ran in currents through my scalp and down my neck. And the haydust clung to my skin

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