Author’s proof

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Copyright 2025 James LaFond

A Crackpot Book

Publisher/Medical Coordinator/Remote MUM: Lynn Lockhart

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Dust Cover

On Thursday, May 29th, 2025, four men converged on Staten Island. First on the investigative scene was one Barrister O’Connell, of Manhattan, arrived by olden ways, by foot, ferry and then foot, with backpack containing scientific instruments upon his shoulders. The others came by way of the newest time distorting maze, in a Taxilla 360. These were Barrister Moreno, of Burlington, New Jersey, a member of the mysterious Order of Orion and of The Knights of Christ, whose eyes ever darted for the Door to Advantage. His footman, Werk, a broad, tattooed man, who stalked rather than walked, his manor telling of all the world his foe, secured the door. After him tottered an aged Gaelic waif, a certain Banes, a long lost countryman of O’Connell, thieved away upon a lesser boat. Thus, four sailors upon Fate’s swelling Deeps met at an island where none of them were permitted to keep a home, at Killmyer’s Tavern, a place where the antique tin ceiling should have been older than those who at the long ago carven bar gathered.

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Extended Dust Cover

Barrister O’Connell had called this meeting of his long ago scattered Odd Fellows to gather and curate accounts of a shivered world that of late had begun to wobble oddly on its axis. Little did they know that a fifth Odd Fell, not a fellow but a lass, alike adrift on the gossamer hem of Fate’s tawdry shift, had been cast upon this very lee shore. It was this tap-matron, flung up from far Saint Louis, who realized that she had been stranded on this rock awaiting a weird confluence. With Mareno exchanging greetings from Burlington, Werk from Tampa Bay but with a Flushing accent, and the nameless old wretch from Baltimore, vicious sister sewer of her home pier, the harrowed barmaid, turned about wide eyed. In the Odd Four, she yet recalled a life as a breweress barring an inn door against the rough figure of the one called Mister Werk, of helping the runaway wretch Banes from gutter to inn door, of being convicted in O’Connell’s court, upon the testimony wrung from a laundress by dark-eyed Moreno. Thence she started, poured, retired to the lady’s room to cry, returned, and wove a battlement of glass mugs above her low wooden wall. For these weird four were her ship companions all, and of this she must not let them know, for they long ago in this world were all wrecked. As such, if they were all to gather, the Cruel Captain whose onyx hour glass was full of palest sand, might sense where they stand and turn this their darkly shaded world on its crown again.

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Inspirational Quote

“James, what must our world have been like, to have the luxury to look up at the sky and say, ‘Look, those stars there, they look like Orion drawing his bow.’ Who in the world has time for that?”

-Mister Moreno, Saturday, May 31, 2025

Investigative Cast

Barristers Moreno and O’Connell are actual officers of the laws of this world, so may not be identified lest the masters of their covens take offense. As actual members of the Eternal Crew of Odd Fellows, they have been instrumental in their use of the single life line that may only be cast to one drowning fellow at a time. The various devices bestowed upon the three Taxilla-borne Odd Fellows, by their curator, Barrister O’Connell, are the subjects of the yarns besmirching this slim tome, a burial chamber of sorts, indeed a tomb of odd songs. As the author cannot rightly count, subtract, divide or multiply factors concerning the crimes of the Warden of Earthstrand, eh, ah, hum, ah… These tales may be tallied by the reader as a true relation of their number and properties, in so far as the bumble author has recalled their place and use.

The Lass of Mugs is a real lady of Saint Louis, the authors favorite city, who opined, “Yes, we are nice,” in such a way as to indicate that most inquisitive of her guests were not, sneering the word “Baltimore?” as she dispensed an overshare of her mazing potion to the wretched Addler Banes.

Wretch Banes, who generally goes by the more regular moniker of James, seven tall mugs of pilsner, bock, double bock and such later, is now unable to recall her name. Though her reluctant smile under fearful eyes will ever be recognized as one who once pulled at the oars of that doomed boat, knowingly so, not as do most, in an unseeing, mewing trance.

Mister Werk is a deposed Stone Age chieftain, abducted by our Captain Cruel and cursed to wander Earthstrand as an Odd Scout, for Odd Crews are most dependent upon their scouts, so as not to be found out by the teeming, tame Mews. Some of his reports, are to be found on his channel InTheseGoingsDown. He is sometimes known as Mister Grey, one former moniker being Mescaline Franklin, reflective of his impatience of the desist Founding Philanderer with whom he shared a sir name for near a decade.

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Composition Notes

As the author is desperately trying to complete three histories and 5 novels this year, he has, without beginning new novels, punted to short form. The meeting at Killmeyers, which he is sure must be named after some homicidal, red-leg Jamaican, resulted in an up-welling of short story outlines previously put away. At the same time, the character of Thor Hyerdal Hotep, protagonist of the novel The Warriors remained highly compelling. Yet, once away from Baltimore, the scene of that novel, it has been difficult to get back into that narrative. It is thought, hoped rather, that while the travel schedule of the author accelerates, what in service to the weird compact of the Odd Fellow Crew of Marooned Mariners, that engagement of our more truthful muses, as a reprieve from the haggling of history, might be best served in short form.

The nerve medication the author take to facilitate walking with torn hips and compressed nerves, has, in this second year, begun to take a toll on cognition. It may be soon that a return to pain-wracked gimphood will be required to improve, if possible, this practice of writing. The author addled, an Addler, often not knowing what home, what state, in which he does wake, wondering where his body was while his soul wandered in unkind dreams the night before a groggy dawn. He is now the butt of Robert E. Howard’s barbaric awareness, when he discussed how civilized men woke groggily in a fog. As the author addles on through the bemusing day he will attempt, in these odes to put the dreams away. It is hoped, by the method of these Incidents in the Life of Orion, to faithful preserve some shred of the truthful and often secret lives of the hosts and guides who have helped a stranger across a world ruled by many ever ready angers.

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To The Reader

The accounts related in Incidents in the Life of Orion are true, in that these figments drawn together in story are expanded from actual events in the lives of the author’s fellow weird wanderers. It is this person’s intent to entertain as well as inform.

-Addler Banes, Burlington, New Jersey, Wednesday, June 4, 2025

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Dedication

For Mary Biscotti, who, not long ago, as the word goes, led the Blond Jersey Girl hordes in an uprising, in the world of words, who thence unseated an arrogant Dark Lord of Diction from his scrabble throne. And so scandal never ceases her worrisome song.