Sunday, September 9, 2007

Work in Progress: The Well

I was seventeen years old when my father murdered Rose Acres, and while I haven't yet decided if the term murder fits, that's the word my father used. A week after he'd done it, he'd driven his car off a cliff and was dead also. I was left alone to face a town that was still reeling from the events and divided over what was truth and what was fiction.

Since the fire destroyed almost everything I own, I can’t help but feel as if some of what my father said over the years is true. Perhaps he was as sane as anyone after all. But that's something I can’t decide for myself because it's no longer my father's sanity that's in question: it's mine, and a person shouldn’t try to decide on his own whether or not he’s crazy.

In the hours before he committed the murder, my father filled the pages—front and back—of three spiral notebooks. The words in those books, written in my father's clumsy hand, served as the explanation behind what led my father to his sealing Rose Acres' fate.

***
The consensus was mixed: about half the population wanted Rose Acres eliminated as quickly and mercilessly as possible, while the other half was in favor of a stay of execution—provided it was followed by a carefully planned rehabilitation period. And this was not the first time Rose Acres had been on the verge of death. The last time, about forty years earlier, Rose Acres' identity hadn't been clearly established; in fact, most of her best-known features hadn't yet taken shape. But even then, she had straddled the precarious balance between life and death without seeming to care which direction fate swung.

The earlier decision to exonerate Rose Acres had hinged almost solely on her historical significance. The bronze dedication plaque, a wrought iron bench, and a small patch of more-yellow-than-green grass were all that separated her from any other undeveloped bit of land, but the plaque and bench had been installed to mark the town's establishment, and although the center of town had shifted away from the bench and plaque, the town council simply could not bring themselves to remove either of those land marks.

Since her first brush with death, Rose Acres had grown into a respectable, if small, park—due primarily to the addition of a wishing well, a swing set, another fifty square feet of grass, several strategically placed trees, and an automatic sprinkler system. The uneducated often wondered where the roses were and why the park wasn't several acres in size, but those who were observant would have caught that Rose Acres was the name of the first Mayor's mother—it said so on the bronze marker.

The issue that had the town in fits when my father intervened and sealed Rose Acres' fate had to do with money—at least on its surface. Rose Acres had grown out-of-place in a town that had become more city and less country. She remained the only real bit of nature among brick buildings, parking garages, and moderately-busy streets and stood as an oasis of sorts—a sad reminder to the older residents of the town of what they had lost in the name of modernization.

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