A novel untitled

The press were impatiently waiting until the Order to Spread investigators granted permission before breaking the story. (The CONFIRM Act of 2012 banned premature news coverage, requiring journalists to obtain the consent of the US government prior to releasing information to the general public. It also mandated that a full biographic sketch of any source (including name, phone number and address) be printed and archived along with the name of the news organization.)

It was funny to see the distress on their faces, wondering which station had parked its news-truck and positioned its camera to get the best coverage. Strange was their worry, since they were the only people waiting. The citizens of the city were not in attendance. They had long since congregated at Stratton’s Bar, content to get their news second hand from the village idiot, convincing themselves that the arrival of the US military and CNN was just more proof that big-city dwellers were prone to hysterics. But the main reason they stayed away was primarily due to the trees which surrounded Milton’s city hall; figuring there was nothing to see no matter where they stood…….they sat on barstools and pretended not to wait.

The trees were still lined up on Summit Ave, exactly where Everette Magnus planted them in 1976. Even though he spent hours picking out a spot for each tree, they were not equally spaced, nor were they in a straight row. Nobody living in the town of Milton knew what the reason might have been behind his placement of the city’s trees, or why Mr. Magnus had been stuck with the job of planting them in the first place. The concrete guys, who were hired years later, to pour the city’s sidewalks had plenty to say about it, but they were from someplace else so nobody cared.

As a rule, nobody in town ever questioned Everette Magnus. After all, he was the treasurer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and because the church’s books were always in the black, everyone was content to smile and nod on Sunday mornings. Years later, after the finances had been turned over to an accountant, the church discovered that Mr. Magnus had been paying for the church’s light bill, the ninth grade confirmation pictures and occasionally the taxes out of his own pocket.

Everette Magnus was also the town’s mail-carrier in those days. The Milton post office sat on small corner of land that had been donated by the American Legion, but very few people lived in town and most of the mail deliveries were miles out, on nameless dirt roads.  (A divorced woman, married a bachelor on Friday, they moved into their newly built home on RR#1 following the ceremony, and were joined later that same night by her children from her first marriage, who all had their father’s last name. The next morning they all received mail.)