Farmer Wrongseed
And now,
here at the end of the book, you find yourself with me, old Farmer
Wrongseed. Some say I’m a mythical
figure, yet here I am, sitting on my rustic front porch in a weatherbeaten old
rocking chair that you can just go ahead and assume I made with my own two
hands, which I didn’t, ‘cause my hands never did a minute’s worth of that kind
of work—staring, apparently, out onto some lonely dirt road that leads
eventually to a big city far away, but in actuality, just the notion of my
simple rural craftsmanship and self-sufficiency, is a deception, because all of
this (I gesture about myself with backwoods elegance) is nothing more than a
stage set and you are, symbolically at least, seated before me, although we can
assume that, as a meta-character within this tableau you are a passerby,
standing in my yard. Why would you be
doing that, I wonder? The road, as I
conceive it anyway, is way down there, at least a hundred yards away, and that
where you conceptually stand or sit is just off the edge of my porch. Why would you do that? Are you here on business? It’s nighttime—what business would you have
around here at night? Are you up to no
good? I warn you, as the lead character
in this dramatic presentation, I am indestructible. Even if you did manage to kill me I would
still exist as a disembodied voice, narrating the events of the story to its
conclusion, at which time you would cease to exist too, for all intents and
purposes. See? Even now we fade to black and yet my voice
carries on, losing its rural inflection and taking on a godlike timbre.
THE END
.
