Buer, Louis Breton (Public Doman)
The following was found handwritten on loose-leaf, partway buried in the dirt beneath the merry-go-round at the playground in Gray Hill’s Ronald Brown Park.
I wanted to think it began as many things do. Gradual.
Maybe some kids took to spinning in the park a little more each day. A skater at winter-frozen Wren Lake found it strange that she lingered a little longer in her upright spin than desired. Must be out of practice.
As things progressed, ballroom dancers taking a class at the Y, one asking their partner to please stop spinning so much they were making them scared.
Really, I’ve got no idea know how it began.
But the way things were, many of the people here would not stop spinning. We thought it was a virus. Maybe it was.
I believe that in most cases if you were to try spinning around in circles indefinitely, long past disorientation and discomfort, you would eventually lose consciousness. As I understand it, centrifugal force would impede blood flow to the brain.
Something was keeping them going.
They got violent when they spun, too. What I wrote about Wren Lake and ice skating comes from what I saw out there. Driving by the lake, I saw ice skaters spinning, cutting each other with the blades of their skates. I caught an image of red splashing through the air as easy as ducks lifting to the sky.
We called it the spin virus for a while. We called them spinners. This part of town got shut down, no one in or out. Military vehicles parked at exits, makeshift fences cordoning off. All attempts at journalism were nipped, would-be news makers loaded into unmarked vans and squealed away. Government lackeys in hazmat suits materialized and put up their tents and tubes like it was all one big playhouse at a fast-food restaurant.
People spinning. Scratching others with fingernails and sharp objects. Sometimes biting.
The owner of the nearby hunting goods store was the first I saw to shoot a few of them. In your defense, he later said. My son and I were running into his shop and all I heard was the rifle blast and the ringing in my ears, turned to see the first drop. Another few blasts and I was late in telling my son not to look as grisly, winter-steamed, still spinning bodies hit the asphalt with a WUFFF-WUFF-UF-UF.
My son was screaming near the opening and closing glass doors. Open, close, screaming. The spinners continued to spin on the ground. Muscle spasms, the store owner said calmly. But this was his first rodeo, because these spinners persisted in their efforts to spin on the ground.
We tied up one spinner in the backroom, on a couch, using heavy duty tree stand rope from the shop. The 30-something man continued to try it, bones popping, folds of flesh oozing, reddened eyes rolling and sometimes catching on us.
The tied spinner’s teeth chattered. Chipped pieces of teeth spun out. Shop owner said the chattering was morse code, deciphered it:
I AM BUER. BEHOLD MY WHIRLING ARMS.
That was nuts! Wildly imaginative!
Wow! 👌 👏