I was one of the Guardians, a small group entrusted with The Secret, whose job it was to pass it on from one generation to the next. It was time for our select cadre to meet, once every forty years—in a desert castle under the mountains, perhaps Saint Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai. One hundred of us in our hooded black cowls, faces hidden, the night wind howling against the shuttered windows, candles guttering and sputtering.

A wizened old master appeared, holding a long wooden box, which he unlocked: seven locks. He pulled out a huge Torah-like scroll and unrolled it on the lectern. I watched his rheumy eyes slowly reading. Finally he looked up and seemed to see us for the first time. We waited. In silence, anxious, expectant. He spoke.

“We’re fucked!”

He rolled the scroll up, put it back in its box, locked the seven locks, and disappeared. We turned and walked silently out the door, we Guardians of the Secret.

##

Barry Evans gave the best years of his life to civil engineering, and what thanks did he get? In his dotage, he travels, kayaks, meditates and writes for the Journal and the Humboldt Historian. He sucks at 8 Ball. Buy his Field Notes anthologies at any local bookstore. Please.