Jack McDevitt - The Fort Moxie Branch

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THE FORT MOXIE

BRANCH

Jack McDevitt

Jack McDevitt lives in Brunswick, Georgia. He has been

a naval officer, an English teacher, and a customs

officer. He has lived in such diverse places as

Philadelphia; Chicago; Washington, D.C.; Rhode Island;

New Hampshire; North Dakota; and Yokohama, Japan.

He did not begin writing until his mid-forties, and (an

encouragement to all late-bloomers) he deservedly

managed to sell the first story to roll out of his

typewriter.

His short fiction has appeared in a variety of markets,

and his story “Cryptic” was on the final Hugo ballot in

1984.

The Hercules Text, his first novel, an Ace Special

published under Terry Carr’s editorship, received the

Philip K. Dick Special Award in 1986 and in a poll of

Locus readers garnered the laurel as best first novel of

the year. He has also published a colorful novel of

far-future conflict,

A Talent for War, and a pair of

stories indicating that war is

not inevitable, “Date with

Destiny” in Lewis Shiner’s

When the Music’s Over… and

“Valkyrie” in a volume edited by Harry Harrison and

Bruce McAllister and tentatively titled

The Peace

Anthology.

McDevitt has a natural, self-effacing prose style that

never raises any barriers between the reader and the

tale being told. And ever since hearing him read at an

SF convention in Atlanta, I can no longer read his work

without hearing his distinctive voice caressing each

word—an eerie, but also a strangely comforting,

experience.

Of “The Fort Moxie Branch,” McDevitt writes: “We lived

for a number of years in Pembina, North Dakota (the

Fort Moxie of the story). The town is small, population

maybe 600. It lies on the Canadian border, along the

western edge of an ancient shoreline. The inland sea

that once existed there, Lake Agassiz, covered great

parts of the Dakotas, Minnesota, and Manitoba.

“You can still make out the general coastal

configuration from the air. But Agassiz, in its time the

largest of the Great Lakes, is gone. Lost in the

meltwaters of the retreating glaciers.

“The missing lake has always struck me as something of

an outrage. The ultimate symbol of a relativistic

universe where nothing quite survives. And things get

lost far too easily. So I built Fort Moxie’s branch of a

very special library. With a lot of help (by the way) from

the story doctors at the Sycamore Hill workshop.”

In many ways, this is a wish-fulfillment story for writers,

but it is also a strong psychological study of a good man

and a moving lament for the mutability—the

perishability—of our lives and works. No wonder that

“The Fort Moxie Branch” was also a finalist for the Hugo

Award for best short story. As is usually the case with a

McDevitt story, it resonates in readers’ memories as well

as in writers’.

A few minutes into the blackout, the window in the single

dormer at the top of Will Potter’s house began to glow. I watched

it from across Route 11, through a screen of box elders, and

through the snow which had been falling all afternoon and was

now getting heavier. It was smeary and insubstantial, not the way a

bedroom light would look, but as though something luminous

floated in the dark interior.

Will Potter was dead. We’d put him in the graveyard on the

other side of the expressway three years before. The property had

lain empty since, a two-story frame dating from about the turn of

the century.

The town had gone quiet with the blackout. Somewhere a dog

barked, and a garage door banged down. Ed Kiernan’s station

wagon rumbled past, headed out toward Cavalier. The streetlights

were out, as was the traffic signal down at Twelfth.

As far as I was concerned, the power could have stayed off.

It was trash night. I was hauling out cartons filled with copies

of Independence Square, and I was on my way down the outside

staircase when everything had gone dark.

The really odd thing about the light over at Potter’s was that it

seemed to be spreading. It had crept outside: the dormer began to

burn with a steady, cold, blue-white flame. It flowed gradually

down the slope of the roof, slipped over the drainpipe, and turned

the corner of the porch. Just barely, in the illumination, I could

make out the skewed screens and broken stone steps.

It would have taken something unusual to get my attention

that night. I was piling the boxes atop one another, and some of the

books had spilled into the street: my name glittered on the

bindings. It was a big piece of my life. Five years and a quarter

million words and, in the end, most of my life’s savings to get it

printed. It had been painful, and I was glad to be rid of it.

So I was standing on the curb, feeling very sorry for myself

while snow whispered out of a sagging sky.

The Tastee-Freez, Hal’s Lumber, the Amoco at the corner of

Nineteenth and Bannister, were all dark and silent. Toward the

center of town, blinkers and headlights misted in the storm.

It was a still, somehow motionless, night. The flakes were

blue in the pale glow surrounding the house. They fell onto the

gabled roof and spilled gently off the back.

Cass Taylor’s station wagon plowed past, headed out of town.

He waved.

I barely noticed: the back end of Potter’s house had begun to

balloon out. I watched it, fascinated, knowing it to be an illusion,

yet still half-expecting it to explode.

The house began to change in other ways.

Roof and corner lines wavered. New walls dropped into place.

The dormer suddenly ascended, and the top of the house with it. A

third floor, complete with lighted windows and a garret, appeared

out of the snow. (In one of the illuminated rooms, someone

moved.)

Parapets rose, and an oculus formed in the center of the

garret. A bay window pushed out of the lower level, near the front.

An arch and portico replaced the porch. Spruce trees materialized,

and Potter’s old post light, which had never worked, blinked on.

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THEFORTMOXIEBRANCH JackMcDevitt JackMcDevittlivesinBrunswick,Georgia.Hehasbeenanavalofficer,anEnglishteacher,andacustomsofficer.HehaslivedinsuchdiverseplacesasPhiladelphia;Chicago;Washington,D.C.;RhodeIsland;NewHampshire;NorthDakota;andYokohama,Japan.Hedidnotbeginwritinguntilhismid-forties,an...

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