One of the Horsemen

This line from literature haunts me, “I’m not going with you this time — ride on!” Katherine Anne Porter wrote it in her book PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER after personally experiencing the severe illness brought by the flu pandemic of 1918. The title is in reference to one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse seen in the Book of Revelations. In her feverish nightmare she sees this indistinct shadowy horse and rider moving in beside her while she mounts her own horse.

Porter’s book, somewhat autobiographical in that she did fall ill to the flu, is one of the works of literature inspired by the pandemic. I’ve been wondering what literary works will be inspired from our experiences with coronavirus.

My wife and I sit more or less sequestered from the outside world and I know others are doing the same. One of our neighbors ventured out and graciously asked if she could pick anything up for us from the grocery store. Well, butter, eggs, and bananas would be appreciated, so here they came to our door. 

As we busy ourselves indoors, the windows to the outside world become important, enough so that I cleaned them. The view through them reveals a definite cutback in auto traffic but an increase in dog walkers. Wildlife maintains a presence. A flock of partridge wanders back and forth on our lawn, and geese find comfort in scattered puddles of snow melt. There aren’t many places open for a person to drive to, so we can’t go to the coffee shops, bookstores, theaters, and other places where we enjoy spending recreational time. Consequently my billfold remains closed, but then I can count unspent dollars.

Born and raised on a farm, I know what solitude and isolation mean. As much as I wanted to escape it when I grew up, that is what I yearn for again, but the years have taught that we must accept reality. The economic expansion of recent years manifests itself here in south Fargo with many strip malls filled with little startup businesses or empty space not yet filled. I fear many of them will fail after this viral outrage passes.

Fortunately, there are unread books on my shelves plus the big world wide web to wander through and Netflix and Roku programs and videos to watch on the television. And I’ve spent the last several years writing about this and that even if I don’t know much about it. Eisenhower pretty well summed up the ignorant writer, “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” 

There have been a few times when I wrote something that did not prove accurate. My organization of western writers published one of my articles in which I describe how the Roosevelt library would be built in Dickinson. That plan did not survive; it will be built in Medora. There I was “a thousand miles from the cornfield.” I could name a few more flubs, but I like to forget them.  

The successful writer is much to be admired, but if a person wants to know isolation, then become one. Robert Caro is presently at work on his fifth volume in his series about Lyndon B. Johnson which he started writing over forty years ago. The books total over 3000 pages, not counting the length of the fifth.

I’m reminded of Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Digging” which tells of his admiration for his father and other hard working people like him who dug in the earth to make their living. Heaney says, “I’ve no spade to follow men like them/ Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests./I’ll dig with it.”