Archive of the Odd

Welcome to our newest web feature, Found Fiction Friday! With authors’ permission, we’ll be posting stories from our issues online. Formatting is still unique to the books, but the story is free for all to read.

First up is “PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE (Refrain)” by Samir Sirk Morató. Samir Sirk Morató is a scientist, artist, and flesh heap. Some of their published and forthcoming work can be found in A Coup of Owls, Slippage Lit, and body fluids. They are on Twitter and Instagram @spicycloaca.

Author’s Note: Sources / inspirations for this story include the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and Lebtown’s articles on the legend of the hounds, Lingua Ignota’s song of the (nearly) same title, Ruth Ann Musick’s “The Telltale Lilac Bush”, and “Harlan County, USA”, both the documentary and its accompanying album. I highly recommend all of them.

Warnings: Violent animal death—really, there is a lot of harm to dogs and it can get graphic. Also fire, and referenced genocide.

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Written / Edited by Elizabeth Miller
Draft 1

INTRODUCTION:

In 1933, John Parsons, 24, a young miner, lost his closest friend, Frederick Hyer, 19, in a sulfur ball explosion. At the time of Hyer’s death, both men worked in the Riverknell mine as strikebreakers. Hyer’s body was never recovered. When a collapse occurred a month later, Parsons was one of the thirteen men (and the sole survivor) caught in the crossfire. Parsons claimed that after he awoke in the rubble, the headless ghost of Hyer appeared with his head tucked beneath one arm. Hyer’s apparition soothed him by encouraging him to pet his canary and telling him stories until help arrived. The instant it did, Hyer disappeared.

This experience greatly affected John Parsons. He proceeded to join the union, then picketed the Riverknell mine until the Coal Wars ended. When an interviewer spoke to him in 1943, he recited the following stories to her as Hyer’s ghost purportedly did to him.

Though the interview is clouded by confusion (Parsons has many traumatized outbursts and believes he’s speaking to a news reporter, for starters) I am fascinated by the folklore he shared as a matter of compelling fiction. In the interest of clarity, I’ve tidied the transcript by removing archaic dialect and irrelevant anecdotes. Beyond that, I’ve edited Parsons’ transcript into a cohesive narrative to make it more literary. Transcribed folklores are often dry, bleak, and convoluted—qualities that I hope this adaptation avoids.

Miller, August, 1980. Richmond, VA.

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In 1802, Ironmaster Samuel Jacobs of Colebrook, Pennsylvania chooses to murder his dogs.

It’s a simple story. After hours of forging iron and beating his apprentices, Jacobs relaxes by fox-hunting. He owns a pack of fine hunting hounds, led by the finest dog of all, a white beast named Flora, who loves her master even more than she endures him. One day, after hours of boasting, Jacobs invites a coterie of huntsmen to witness his hounds on a chase.

Of course they fail. The dogs are too ragged to perform. So much so that they let a fox slip past by their noses. Jacobs, enraged, decides then that they cannot live. Their crime of imperfection doesn’t allow it. He drags his pack to the Colebrook furnace. There, whip in hand, he cows the other huntsmen into throwing the dogs in one at a time.

Flora is the fortieth dog to go. The last. She’s bred to withstand cruelty. It is her job, so it is her life. She knows nothing else. All beasts of burden die. Flora licks Jacobs’ hand as he hurls her into the furnace. Her white coat makes her kin with the flames even before the coals do.

Samuel Jacobs lives a long, comfortable life. Flora dies in her prime, loyal and complaintless. In agony.

The end.


In 1802, as Flora watches her master’s company throw dog after dog into the flames, as the reek of roasted hair and offal scorches her nose, she becomes uneasy. She is used to killing, but there’s no end to the crying here. All her children, siblings, and lovers are going up in smoke.

This will end before it reaches me, she thinks. Her master hasn’t thrown anyone onto the pyre. Only the other huntsmen have, when they aren’t vomiting at the smell and sound of everything. Samuel beats Flora worse than the others, but he also offers her the most scraps from his palm, and combs her most. He loves her best.

Flora realizes she’s wrong when Samuel seizes her by the scruff. There are no other dogs left. As she’s hoisted into the air, Flora registers that the old contract between her people and his has been broken. He means her harm. He always has.

All her fear and heartbreak fly to her teeth. She bites Samuel. He howls as his arm shreds beneath her fangs. Blood splatters the bluestem grass. Still, Flora is too late. Jacobs, betrayed, bashes her against the furnace rocks. He does so until she’s broken. Then he throws her twitching body in. Samuel throws her into the furnace like the other dogs.

Samuel comes to remember Flora not as his best dog, but as a traitor. His fondest memories of her sour. He seethes about how she broke bad until the end of his life. Something was wrong with that bitch, he’ll say, a tankard in hand. Something in her breeding. Whoever sold her to me gave me a bad lot.

All of the huntsmen who watched him kill her nod in agreement. The apprentices say nothing even though they’d like to. They, too, are afraid and helpless against their master’s alcoholism.

The end.

Though Flora makes it to 1802, she never sees the final hunt. When Samuel Jacobs orders her to chase a deer out of cruel curiosity, she does. Flora always obeys. Everyone else in the pack gives up before her, are whipped for giving up, but Flora the favorite keeps going. She runs until her pads wear away and blood slicks her decimated feet and webs of slobber coat her neck. She runs until she leaves everyone behind.

The buck Flora is chasing dies when he plunges into a cold pond and has a coronary. What’s left of Flora collapses in the shallows and drowns. Jacobs changes nothing about how he treats his dogs. He replaces Flora with a black hound. Forty dogs still die in the furnace during autumn. Jacobs, stunned by the death of his darling, has a change of heart. Though disease, age, and accident will take some of his hounds in the years to come, none of them die in the furnace come autumn.

The end.

When twenty of the hounds are gone, when their dying screams caulk the furnace walls alongside their ashes, Flora knows she’s next. She doesn’t know when. She does recognize a cornered fox when she sees one. In this case, the role has fallen upon her.

Flora goes mad. She cannot die this way. She refuses to. Whose side does Samuel think she’s on? Whose side is she on? She cannot let the others die such a horrible death. She aims to spare them. A beige hound with her eyes, the oldest of her sons, yelps when Flora assaults him. He expected his mother to turn on him less than he expected their master to. He tucks his tail between his legs and cries, and cries, until Flora bites his face into nothing.

This stuns Jacobs so much he stops yelling at the huntsmen. His mouth falls open. All of the huntsmen stand there, baffled, while Flora begins tearing her comrades apart. killing the other hounds. This continues for twenty seconds until the snarls and screams spur them into action. A huntsman rips one of Flora’s furious lovers off her before tossing him into the fire. Dog blood wets the furnace; skin streaks the dirt.

Flora’s viciousness desperation provokes Jacobs to spare her. Only thirty-nine dogs die that day. Flora, gnarled with scars, bears her master’s love for three years loves her master for many years after 1802. Samuel Jacobs keeps her until she’s of no use to him anymore old.

Flora is confused when Samuel walks her to the anvil behind the shop one day. She hears his weeping. Spies the hammer in his fist.

Still, her world is one of darkness. Arthritis means she cannot run. Seizing fits means she has long been punished for acts she doesn’t understand and cannot lacked control of herself. Flora makes no objection when Samuel forces her head upon the anvil. She is barely seven years old.

Jacobs crushes her skull in one blow. Flora dies young, alone, and afraid. He cremates her in the furnace that genocided her kin. He forever waxes about her virtues. Flora remains his treasure until he dies, his polaris of hounds.

Before then, Samuel Jacobs has business to do and hobbies to indulge. He replaces Flora with ten more fine dogs. Whether they suffer or not isn’t remembered. That aint important. They all probly do. He tends to the rest of his hounds until they pass. They are forever thankful that Flora taught their brutish master kindness with her loyalty.

The end.

Flora hears Death’s robe dragging across the leaves before the others do. She’s the most faithful hound. She isn’t the stupidest. When a huntsman caves beneath Samuel’s beratement and hurls the first dog into the furnace, Flora sprints into the woods.

None of the yelling men’s commands call her. None of them catch her. The fox runs long but Flora runs longer. As she escapes, Flora hears her family’s calls in the distance. She smells the rancid smoke pouring from the furnace. It isn’t enough to make her turn around.

An apprentice guiltily offers Flora sustenance after finding her collapsed in his barn. After all, when she takes beatings, he doesn’t. He’s always had a soft spot for her. Flora cannot accept it. There are checkered hens here, and soft hay beds and silence, but there are no other dogs. She’s abandoned everyone. They will never accompany her again. None of the apprentice’s coaxing changes that. Flora refuses food until she dies of heartbreak three days later.

The end. Though Flora initially refuses the food, time and hunger soften her. Has this man not suffered alongside her? Are they not siblings in resilience? She comes to trust the apprentice. There are checkered hens here, and soft hay beds and silence. Though everyone else may be gone, she deserves peace. Flora lives to a loved, ripe old age. She doesn’t realize how extraordinary this is.

During that fabled hunt in 1802, Flora’s pack breaks. They are being run into the ground. They are dying. Flora sees their future in her children’s scarred noses and torn jowls, in her lovers’ dull eyes, in her sisters’ emaciated bodies that mirror hers. The hunts are constant. Their beatings more so. No number of slain foxes will save them.

No more, Flora decides. While Samuel is screaming at them for resting, Flora rises. She snarls. The closest huntsman doesn’t realize she’s threatening him until she tears his calf open. He screams as high as a fox does. Had Samuel been closer, Flora would’ve attacked him instead; all masters are the same, all masters must die. he’s an evil man, and he’s done her and her kin wrong.

The huntsmen haven’t regathered themselves before Flora’s beige son launches himself at Samuel. All forty hounds rebel. It’s a fierce, coppery triumph. It’s also short-lived. The huntsmen have guns. The dogs have no plan. The first gunshot thunders through them with the finality of Gabriel’s horn. Flora watches one of her brothers’ skulls explode before shot tears her flank apart. The next gunshot annihilates her.

After fifteen of the dogs die, the remaining ones scatter. They outnumber the men, but they are confused and afraid. Some flee into the woods. Some are seized by their collars and meekly tied to trees. The captured ten are dragged to the furnace. Seven of those that flee slink back days later, hungry, tick-ridden, and desperate for shelter. There is no furnace for them. Jacobs beats them to death or sells them. The eight who stay gone die in the woods or find their own ways in the woods.

Flora doesn’t live to see her eldest son worked to shreds for her deeds.

The end.

Flora always bleeds. Always dies. Higher powers never save her, and the apprentices never step in. Does that make what happens matter less? Does that make us matter less? “Listen to what I caint say. Dogs thatre beaten get their reckonings. They come back as haints full of teeth and rage. Pore beasts like us kiss the hand that beats us even when we’re dead. My dear, darlin Johnnie, keep this up and you’ll die at the foremasters feet sayin ‘well they feed us!’. The shroud aint got pockets for scrip if they even find you”

One more story.

After incinerating his hounds in 1802, Samuel Jacobs is never right again.

Comfortable? Yes. Whole? No. He lives in isolation outside of work, murmuring to himself, a hermit among men. His drinking increases. Any hex signs he hangs outside his business break before a month is out. While other huntsmen continue purchasing goods from Jacobs, they avoid comradery with him. Everyone does.

Jacobs beats his apprentices until most of them quit. Most of Jacobs’ apprentices quit in disgust after his huntsmen friends kill his dogs. All but one. Never again does Jacobs own a hunting pack or swim in fox fur. Sometimes he broods over that. His guilt, if he feels it, entwines with his failure to be Adam, the man that all other beings bent to. The hounds’ deaths humble him in that way. Not in any other. When he misses them, he misses them in the way a whip misses a back.

Samuel Jacobs’ last apprentice, the one that would’ve sheltered Flora, loved Flora, is there that day in 1843 when Jacobs turns to the furnace and screams.

They’re here! Jacobs wails. He drops his tongs. Sparks and metal fly. The apprentice startles. My God, the hounds are here! They’ve come to drag me to Hell!

And they have. A union pack of forty spectral hounds bursts from the furnace, dripping gristle and vomiting soot. Per Flora’s orders, they surround him. The ironmaster heaves as the fiery circle of hellhounds close in. They’re molten with rage and all they’ve left undone. Flora, the white lick of ten thousand furnace flames, shines with wrath.

Look upon me, Samuel Jacobs, she commands. When Jacobs writhes on the floor, protesting, Flora speaks again: I said look upon me!

Jacobs does.

I have not forgotten. Flora speaks with the judgment of thousands. I have not forgiven. It’s too late for justice, but its shadow will be ours. Justice will be ours! If not in this kingdom, then the next.

When Jacobs pleads for mercy, the hounds howl. The apprentice covers his ears to avoid going deaf. Flora speaks when all is silent again.

Mercy? I know nothing of it, she says. I never have. All that’s left to me is retribution. Since I was forbidden from it in unlife I will have it now. What God and the Devil won’t do for downtrodden beasts, I will. Surrender.

Samuel Jacobs dies on the spot. The hounds ensure he never sees peace. Ain’t no grave that can hold their bodies down ain’t one that ever will. Every night after that, they chase him through hills and hollers until he falls, then tear at his innards, rip away his fingers and nose, crush his balls, and crunch at his marrow. Their brimstone fangs flay him to fire bone. Colebrook residents hear the hounds baying about every winter. Theyre huntin Samuel Jacobs still.

The apprentice who saw Jacobs die runs for help when the hounds disappear. He’s arrested for murdering Jacobs until the authorities release him out of pity a week later. Jacobs’ community-wide hatred saves him from lynching. The apprentice flees Pennsylvania the day after he’s released. He goes on to own one spoiled, fat foxhound after another. He tells his children the hound legend. Flora’s vengeance is passed down for generations.

Until his great, great grandchild loses his head in a mine, til the world falls in on Harlan, none of them learn anything from it at all.

She is finally at peace.