One Day in Chazy

One Day in Chazy

By 

Daniel Goethel

Its a semi-true story, believe it or not

I made up a few things, and there’s some I forgot

But the life and the telling are both real to me

And they all run together and turn out to be…

A semi-true story

–’Semi-true Story’, Jimmy Buffett

He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed.  He heard them saying, ‘Life is like that,” but he couldn’t agree.  He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.

You went the way of wishes, and that is never straight.  You went the long way around, but that was your way.

Because now he knew that there were thousands and thousands of forms of joy in the world, but that all were essentially one and the same, namely, the joy of being able to love.

Every real story is a neverending story…..

–’The Neverending Story’, Michael Ende

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For Grandma, obviously. I don’t know much about your life except what we have shared. I’m not really sure what is real and what I’ve imagined; as time goes by everything slowly migrates towards the latter anyway. But, as Magnum said, “Time has little to do with infinity and jelly donuts.”

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Chapter 1:  Mourning Daze

…in that morning limbo of half-awakedness, I remain in a mental labyrinth unsure what is real and what is a dream, which of those lives am I really living?…

The early morning fog clung to the dormant cornfield out her back window in much the same way that she couldn’t shake the sleep from her dreary, but expectant eyes.  The sun began to peak ever so slightly from behind the soft-edged sloping foothills of upstate New York.  Slowly the heating rays burned off the heavy water droplets caught in that limbo between life, as their dewy brethren had accomplished by sticking to any earthbound object that could be found—forging leprechaun befitting rainbows under each blade of bright green grass—and simple non-existence somewhere in the far extent of the upper atmosphere.  Then again perhaps that sudden painless evaporation was just a gentle transition to a new state of nature.  One that could only be explained and known by the foggy predecessors summoned to the hazy clouds slowly meandering in front of the last fading waves of starlight, ending their eternal, almost immeasurably long, journey from the bounds of the universe to this very farm on the outskirts of Chazy, New York.

She paused in bed a moment longer enjoying the tragic battle of life and death playing out over her backyard.  She knew how the battle would end, but couldn’t help appreciating the energetic, hopeful struggle of the eternal underdog verse that overpowering master of the summer landscape, that orb of light—creator and destroyer.  Come fall the tables would briefly turn with a few short-lived victories in the chill of winter as the water seized its opportunity to achieve life on this ever-changing earth by overpowering those same rays with cold and a brief transition to snow; layered upon one another in exultant glory.  But now was the sun’s season, each day was a futile battle.  However, the fog rejoined the war every dawn throwing an endless supply of recruits into the gruesome, merciless battle.  It somehow seemed fitting to her that every battle of man was somehow always described by the survivors in the aftermath as being blanketed in a heart-wrenching pallor of fog; as though earth was taking up the war just abandoned by the humans scarring its sacred landscape.  Completely ignorant of the equally devastating battle playing out long after the guns had been silenced.  To human senses the fog acted to mute the din of both the shovels burying the dead and the bright blood marring the fields, but in reality it was simply carrying on the eon’s long battles that plagued earth from its inception.  Humans would always just be a meager footnote in the wars of life and death on earth; an ignorant, spiteful animal playing out an infinite loop of pointless battle.

A token rooster call—ever-present in the area—quickly burst her out of the early morning melancholy revelry.  Her previous thoughts were quickly stowed away in the focsle of her brain like some unneeded tool on a boat—completely out of her consciousness, yet somehow easily accessible at any moment that her mind had time to wander from that random access memory of day to day life to the more profound thoughts of her deep memory, which was only accessible when the ever present stimulations of living left her alone to simply be; thereby letting her access her true self and think and decide—those profound thoughts that define the person we really are but are often so difficult and intimidating that we normally attempt to avoid them at all costs.  The difficulties of daily living do a good job at burying the difficulties of confronting our own essence.  But she knew that it was only by confronting the vagaries of what it was to be and most importantly to be her—that quiet, modest girl of perky curls and irreverent smile—that she could ever hope to make amends with life and to thereby own it and make it what she wanted and needed.  It was a fine line between becoming overwhelmed with such deep-rooted thoughts and being completely ignorant of them.  The latter could to complacent ignorance; the former to the devastatingly overwhelming weight of incomprehension.  As with most things, balance was crucial along with timing and proper organization.  She made sure to approach her inner thoughts every day, but not let them gather too much weight or else drowning in their vast expanse was inevitable.  She set aside a few moments every day, typically in the morning when her brain had recently refreshed itself and repaired any misfiring neurons.  It was also a perfect time not only because her subconscious dreams often led her down fascinating lines of reason and helped her answer many a question that her waking life was blind to, but also because she found the endless natural beauty out her small frame window inspiring, leading to many thoughtful questions.

However, at times she had gotten lost in the maze of her own mind and it had led down many a dark alley.  The key was being able to know when it was time to turn back.  For no matter how dark, yet provoking a road seems, it must always be remembered that the past can be found behind; thoughts recollected and reanalyzed, and a new path chosen.  Of course, for some the unexpected path was hard to abandon.  What lay at its terminus?  What answers could it lead to?  The problem always is that no matter how noble the pursuit or the questions being sought, the answers are not guaranteed to be bright.  Perhaps the road is endless and the darkness ever increasing.  For many it was easy to push ever forwards seeking the answers they thought they sought.  But like an explorer of the harshest of climes, no preparation can ever be comprehensive.  Nothing, not even the seemingly simple wanderings within one’s own mind, is predictable.  The deeper one ventures into the mystical jungles of the mind the harder it becomes to turn back to reality, until eventually the vines begin to grow back behind you and the path back to normalcy is lost forever.  A slow mental perishing, a Donner Party cannibalistic feeding on the hard fought answers to life’s questions until the darkness consumes all.  No answers remain.  No distractions can be found.  Lost in the mind, one loses touch with consciousness.  Life becomes simply a thing instead of a blessing.  Life continues, but nothing can fill the void of lost and empty answers.  The search for being becomes megalomania that blocks out any sense of awe in the simple beauty of existence.

With her somehow still perfectly formed curls spread evenly across her goose down pillow and staring at the now rapidly rising sun, she knew the perils all too well.  Her grandfather had been a relatively simple man.  He was a bootstrapper.  He had paid for the farm, on which she now lived, nestled on a rolling hill among copses of sentinel pines scouting the horizon for the oak forest militia that lay on the southern border, 50 years ago from the money he was able to save working on the shovel crew that had dug the connecting section of the Erie Canal to the Hudson.  He was a hardworking man with slight shoulders, but long arms.  He was renowned among the Irish workers for his strength with a pick axe.  Unimposing, but the torque he was able to produce with those sinewy, lanky arms was sought after by work crews across Eastern New York State.  When he finally bought the land for the farm he managed to clear all 6.5 acres by himself in only a few years.  But the hard working façade masked a certain yearning for purpose and meaning not often seen in his fellow ditch diggers and farmers.  In his hours of toil clearing fields of New York granite and shale, he often lost himself in thought searching for reasons.  Reasons for everything.  Why was he here?  On this planet, in this state, in this field?  What reason did he have for moving this rock that had happened here 10,000 years ago?  What right did he have moving it with his weak two arms after the force of a glacier, a majestic overpoweringly strong force, had decided that this was exactly where this rock should be?  Each day the questions mounted, but the answers became more obscure, until nothing was clear; all dark.  Everyday continued on as the last.  The farm was successful.  His family grew.  He supported them and loved them, but inside all was obscured until all was lost in his mind.  Every night the drinking increased.  The local cider soon gave way to whisky.  Unlike his friends who drank to unload and became rowdy and thought they were having fun, he drank to numb the mental anguish.  It was all he could do to forget the questions, the drowning confusion of what life was.  He would drink and become complacent, quiet.  He never got violent or lost control.  His eyes would become glassy and one could see the pain that oozed through his rapidly increasing wrinkles.  On good nights the alcohol helped to clarify things, albeit only momentarily.  In the morning, with the return of the burning sun that tanned the back of his English neck, the inversely darkened thoughts would also come back.  He would sweat out his penance in the field, ever following the same endless alley into the recesses of his mind.  

Although he never once lost his temper or performed a single misdeed on alcohol, in her youthful understanding she could see the traps that the whisky set in his mind.  He might have felt like it was helping him down the path of reason to all the answers to life’s unattainable questions.  She knew, though, staring into his glassy and bloodshot eyes from the soft moose hide rug she loved curl up on in front of the large fireplace on the breezy living room floor, as he stared into the popping winter fire, that unbeknownst to him, the alcohol was simply making it impossible to abandon the path and turn back to a point of established inherent truths.  It was creating an ever shifting labyrinth.  Slowly eroding his strong mind and creating new barriers in his return path that would forever prevent any return.

Then came the day in late February, one month before her birthday.  Her internal alarm clock had woken her just as the sun pierced the glossy sheen of the white, snow covered expanse out of that same frame window.  The snow was basking in its glory on the fields of death.  A brief truce between sun and water had been forged, the treaty of peace urged on by the effervescent, fleeting wind.  A neutral third party always lurking, but never quite visible except briefly when the trees gave up their dead in seasonal battles of late fall.  Surprisingly, the rooster was uncharacteristically late in its morning bugle call to the war of the world.  For the moment all was calm as only a landscape covered in new fallen snow could be.  That muted calmness caused by a landscape covered in a deep pact.  The snow was resting after a long night’s journey.  The wind taking a well deserved respite.  The sun illuminating all, but respecting the peace.  Even the animals appeared to be maintaining a moment of bittersweet silence.  The only noise, if anyone had been listening closely enough was the tender crunch of snow under heavy boots.  And the faint, deliberate creaking and eventual cracking of ice on the pond at the outskirts of the farm.  

But she heard none of this.  She marveled briefly in the beautiful destitution and forbiddingness of the white landscape like that of a blank page.  The scene from her window stared back at her and was perfect, unblemished.  In it was contained all stories, all truth.  She shuddered at the thought of imposing her imperfect, tame, even boring story on the endless canvas that was earth; to impose her one path into the perfect bound tome that was life on earth and would, without her presence, continue on seamlessly, endlessly, idyllically.  Nothing intimidates more than the emptiness of what could be without knowing what is.  Snapping out of her short paralyzing, incomprehension she took the opportunity to get out and enjoy the early morning quiet solitude before the farm came alive with the day to day bustlings of life in rural America.  She quietly dressed and rushed to the kitchen to grab a couple buckets to fill with water from the well so she could complete her morning duties after a couple minutes of silent being out in the wintry serenity.  She fumbled with her large and unwieldy deerskin boots.  Tying them required a couple attempts to get the laces done tight in the early morning bitter cold, which made her fingers unwilling participants in the ordeal, reminiscent of children being given swimming lessons against their will, flapping helplessly in the deep end of the pool for the first time.  Once her boots were laced she stoked the orange embers of the fire in the kitchen fireplace and added a few logs to the dawdling remains.

She turned to the door and opened the dark shadows of the kitchen to the magnificent rays of the first morning light.  She took a step out into the crisp snow and momentarily basked in the hard crunch of her boot on the powdery, knee deep snow.  To her there was nothing greater than the sound of the first step into fresh powder, when all other noise was swallowed and silenced by the dense cover of glistening snow.  With eyes closed to blindingly reflected sun, she was immersed in unadulterated quiet solitude.  All that could be heard was the occasional cracking of limbs under their icy loads and subsequent soft crashing of ice and branch into the powdery pillows below.  As though taking a cue, she gave up her battle with gravity and let her body free fall backwards into the fluff beneath her.  The snow embraced her tightly in an all-encompassing bear hug, and, while the sun warmed her topside, the insulating snow reradiated her bodily heat like a perfect blackbody.  The muffled silence of the snow seemed to act as a conductor for the rhythms of the earth beneath her sending ever so slight energetic ripples from the heated magma hundreds of miles beneath through the shifting, floating mantle, vibrating the crust beneath her body causing a jittery communication from snowflake to snowflake direct to her ears completely encased in fur and snow.  The whole sensation was not unlike floating softly on the strong summer thermocline of Lake Champlain where her family spent many a boisterous summer vacation.  Then, like now, she enjoyed that subtle, muted sensation of floating on her back, ears submerged in the gently lapping water, with all sounds drowned out except the various aquatic pressure waves; full of energy, yet quiet and unique.

Slowly and gently she opened her eyes towards the vivid blue of the morning sky.  She quickly closed them again, and while recovering from the temporary snow blindness she recalled one of her favorite Jack Kerouac quotes: “Why is the sky blue?  Because you wanna know why the sky’s blue!”  Carefully, she slowly opened her eyes again, first one then soon the other.  Hesitantly she sat up and took in the perfectly rounded landscape of brightly flowing white snow.  The snow fell from her shoulders and lackadaisically she brushed the remaining snow from her slight upper frame and removed her hood letting her shoulder length hair cascade down.  With a sudden burst of spasmodic energy she jumped to her feet, shut the kitchen door, and bounded off into the wintry fields of heaven like a baby hare encountering the snow for the first time.  She ran and fell and leaped.  The snow flew behind her.  Nature watched in admiration.  Soon the bitter cold made itself known and she was grateful for her wool jacket and the hand knitted gloves she had finished just the week previous.  Taking in the undisturbed beauty of the vast countryside one last time, she adjusted her jacket, knocked the bits of snow out that had managed to sneak under the waistband, and headed off towards the well.

Lost in her own world admiring the exultant beauty of life, she was oblivious to the half-buried footprints in the snow beside her. It wasn’t until she reached the well that she realized someone else had been the first on out that morning. Although surprised, it was not uncommon for her grandfather to rise before dawn to enjoy a few hours of early morning ice fishing. She followed the footsteps down to the pond on the edge of the property where she expected to find him squatting on a soapbox in the middle of the frozen lake. Instead all she found was a discarded whisky bottle slowly leaking its brown contents into the otherwise starkly white snow. Foreboding began to creep upon her. He would never leave such an obvious sign of his struggle. Her grandfather would never drink from the bottle let alone so haphazardly discard a liquor container where the children might see it. He was meticulous about his drinking. Never did he drink in front of the children nor did he even keep alcohol in the house. More strikingly, he savored and valued the pristine beauty of this country too much to litter it with the signs of human degeneration.

Josephine paused on the pond edge, immersed in the celestial beauty of the virgin landscape, basking in the reflected sun off the frozen pond. Like a groundhog emerged for the first time in months, she stood blinded by the timelessness imbued by the brisk crystal winter landscape. Soon though slowly, the landscape refocused from the blurred nothingness of her eternal thoughts. The hard stomped trail of bootprints narrowed in her gaze, leading straight towards a thinly glazed over, perfectly cut whole in the ice. Nose red from the chill, Josephine made a slow turn across the landscape noting the remarkable calmness of her icy world interrupted solely by the grotesqueness of the discarded whisky bottle that hinted at man’s inability to grasp the eternity hinted at by such eternal panoramas. In a swift, yet delicate motion, she bent down as she turned, grasped the cold, dead bottle, and carelessly, though reluctantly, made her way back towards the house.

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Every man writes his own journey and so Josephine rejected regret. She concluded that any thoughts that she might have somehow changed his path was naivety. Josephine’s mental mourning was deep and intense, but it was also full of learning–a last lesson she was sure her grandfather would be proud of her for understanding. Life was not about following a single path blindly, simply because it was so neatly laid out in front of you. Struggle was a part of existence, knowing your way is not enough; a person must be ready to outmaneuver the obstacles of depravity and sadness deceptively placed along that path. Ultimately, she learned that there was much to be learned from the pain of others and that instead of being ashamed, she found herself proud of being able to turn life’s sorrow into a guide for her own way.

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A slow, painful coo of a mourning dove reverberated and slowly faded into the empty stillness of the morning leaving a haunting nothingness like the last note of a sad bagpipe song. Just then its mate replied in kind and Josephine slowly returned to herself snaring her wandering mind, and the loving reply left her wistful, creating a lingering sentimentality for her youthful vigor that seemed to dissipate ever so slowly–a soft, but incessantly dripping faucet–with each ticking of life and its associated burdens. Not so much the burdens of responsibility, for she almost relished her increasing workload, being the shoulder to lean on for her family.  No, it was the burdens of the existential–the pains of her own awakening; the wanting for more understanding of life, of eternity.  The weight of the eternal, of the people and things long gone that seemed to pile on her without ever relenting. How to live with one foot in each world–the rapidly passing now and the interminable eternity. It always fascinated her that a person could simply disappear from this existence and within months be converted into a bookmark, an antidote to those that claimed to love them. There was a certain ugliness to survival that makes everyone downplay exit from the stage. Thinking of death can be crippling, but Josephine believed it could also be uplifting. One need not fear eternity. On the other hand, she had a yearning to understand it. Where was it and what did it mean? How could one enter into such an abstract concept? And did eternity imply endlessness or nothingness? Ultimately, she wondered what happened to those she had loved. It was so hard to believe that people, souls so real and tangible could simply evaporate. For them, she maintained an existential load that could be felt in her footsteps on those days when she wandered the forests and fields lost in her own mind.

These thoughts weighed on Josephine’s mind often, but it would be unfair to imply that they weighed her down. She rose to watch a small chipmunk skitter in front of her window. As she watched, the looming shadow of the wide wings of a red tailed hawk began to tail the innocent creature. As it made its patented screech, the hawk pointed its beak downwards, folded its wings, and began a graceful freefall from the sky. The wrecking ball of feathers and talons fell at terminal velocity towards the scrambling dart of fur, which managed to duck into the furrow of a tree trunk as the hawk bailed out of its decent–an aborted missile strike–just in time to avoid a reversal of fortunes. Josephine tittered happily, enjoying the slight, if effervescent, victory of life over death. With a smile she got dressed in her summer Sunday’s best, a lightweight calico(?) dress and wide-brimmed sun hat with a matching ribbon tied around the brim, and topped it with a lively daisy that she nabbed from her nightstand that perfectly matched the orange ribbon adorned dress and hat. And just like that she jauntily pounced out of her room filled with expectancy and joy for the bright and sunny day ahead to be spent with her new friends of the church youth group.

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Chapter 2:  Sunday Drives

The post-sermon church crowd fanned out on the sprawling lawn and formed small clusters of half-whispering churchgoers, viewed from above each group evoked reminiscences of a randomly filled carton of freshly dyed easter eggs. A cool breeze rippled across the lawn, skirts rippled to the sway of the pine boughs, easing the building heat of the late spring Sunday afternoon. The women gently held their wide-brimmed sun hats with their white-gloved hands. The men dappled sweat from their perspiring foreheads and attempted to ease their discomfort by occasionally fingering the tight collars of their recently starched white shirts, over which their clean-shaven necks rippled like waves across a jetty. Sports coats dangled by a finger behind overly nonchalant shoulders. Biblical formality slowly gave way to neighborly cordiality.

As with most families in the area, Josephine’s were devout churchgoers. For her, these Sunday sessions often helped quiet, though not quite answer, her concerns of the eternal. Church sermons, and the book from which they derived, never quite gave definitive answers, but they at least provided plausible arguments that calmed her metaphysical nerves. As with any argument for the ethereal, the hypothesis presented every Sunday contained holes, but proof of anything from the big bang to quantum theory required a certain degree of belief; unequivocal laws were hard to come by whether they regarded life or death. A leap of faith was not something to be afraid of, it was the personal reasoning behind the leap she was also careful to dissect. Whether scientific or religious, she tended to support the theories that inspired hope, until they could be definitively proven wrong. Dogma was to be avoided at all costs, but any well-reasoned argument was worth a listen. Josephine approached religion much like a scientist approached any unproven hypothesis. She would sit inquisitively and listen to the sermon, consider it, ponder it, question it, and eventually reason her way to her own view of its meaning and degree of truth. Nothing was ever accepted at face value without thorough consideration and investigation. Much like a new lesson at school, she enjoyed Sunday sermons because they made her think, challenged her to test her opinions and notions, made her question her beliefs and ponder the future, life, the world, and what it meant to just be. These Sunday morning hours were not empty propaganda, but a time to clear one’s mind of the weekly worries and focus one’s mental capacities towards a higher level of thought. To learn theories of existence and what it meant to be human, while simultaneously questioning them. Forming, evaluating, disproving, repostulating hypothesis of life and death. And, in the end, a feeling of renewed sense of self, of life, of truly being alive.

As she donned her hat, and exited the swan-white church, she felt almost reborn. The meandering and trying memories of that morning had been replaced with vigor and ecstasy for the life that awaited her. Pausing momentarily on the red brick steps in the shade of the modest steeple, topped with a large copper apple windvane, she scanned the nittany of churchgoers who produced the growing squawking, as though a gaggle of Canadian geese had gotten lost and decided to land in the grass churchyard after a long flight anxious to regale one another with any of a million trivial stories that had built up over the preceding silent hours. She giggled at the thought.

“Over here!” A girl waived her down from the edge of the crowd. She smiled, lightly pinched the edges of her dress, and galloped down the steps in a quick, 

not quite ladylike pounce. A small splash of mud stained her white shoes from the still damp earth, which radiated a slight, barely perceptible steam as it warmed in the growing summer heat. In her typically carefree attitude, she neither bothered to look nor cared about the potential mud assailant. As she approached the group of young twenty-somethings, previously alight with gossip and inane stories of youthful importance, became hushed and waived at her–almost in unison. Imperceptibly, the crowd parted as she made her way through it towards the group of her peers that bristled with a thick almost humid energy. The men beginning to show signs of that typical post-war bravado. The women fanning themselves, giggline, and trying to hide their flushed faces belaying the subtle signs of youthful lust overlayed with uncontrollable exuberance.

Josephine was greeted with hugs from the ladies and overly formal semi-bows and hat tips from the men. The fact was she was new to the group and still maintained that mysterious aura of the unknown–a person that the group had not yet ‘figured out’. A few of the girls she had been friends with in school, but since graduation a few months prior she had not seen them. In addition, her family had just joined the congregation as it was closer to the farm, albeit further from town where a majority of her family friends lived. Given the growing handicaps of her grandmother, the family had decided the shorter sunday commute was beneficial.

At first she had been disheartened by the change. Since graduation she saw her friends increasingly seldom and the post-sermon church youth social events were one of the few consistent chances to catch up, hang out, and perhaps even cause a little youthful, innocent, rabble rousing. Recently, she had gone through a difficult breakup with a beau and was glad to be making new friends with no connections to the young man she had left behind.

“Are you ready for the beach?” The first girl asked, as she swiped her perfectly curled brown locks out of her face from the gentle breeze. She squinted against the bright sun just eclipsing the tops of the pine boughs.

“It’s going to be swell!” A tall, sturdy and well-groomed blond man chimed in.

“What do you know, you can’t even swim!” A short, brawny associate teased.

The blond pushed him playfully. “Maybe, but at least I can see over the hood to drive us there.” He winked towards Josephine.

A series of giggles leapt across the group as the men exchanged snarky comments and pretended to engage in fisticuffs.

Josephine turned from the ruckus. These boys were not amusing to her. Bravado did nothing. As she adjusted her silk ribbon belt, she noticed a short, well-dressed man in a black suit and crew cut hair that was standing on the edge of the group–not quite nonchalant or aloof, but clearly comfortable in his lonesomeness. He was one of the few that hadn’t introduced himself, but she could tell it was less to do with rudeness than not wanting to impose himself on the newly arrived girl garnering so much attention. Briefly they made eye contact. He smiled an assured shyness.

“He’s from the youth group visiting from up North.” Abigail, the brunette, intimated in a conspiratorial whisper from behind her, back turned to the man who had now shifted his gaze and appeared uneasy, as though he suddenly knew he was the topic of conversation.

“He’s a bit quiet, but you should see his car. It’s a convertible!” They both laughed and looked at him as he fidgeted with his tie in silent nervousness.

“Let’s not waste any more of this blessed day.” The patriarchal blonde announced, covered in sweat from the suddenly concluded wrestling match. He had clearly anointed himself the de facto leader for the day. “Everyone pack into a car and we will reconvene on the splendid shores of Lake Champlain!”

A nervous titter soon followed as men tried to woo the ladies into their cars and the women shyly declined whispering amongst themselves, scheming in hushed tones.  Meanwhile, the older members of the congregation, busy spreading the ingredients of the picnic potluck across a plateau of tables, looked on with a mixture of nostalgia, scorn, and empathy–they lived vicariously in their youthful lust of life, frowned on their perceived over-indulgence and lack of customs, but, ultimately, appreciated the sacrifices that the younger generation had undergone during the last decade of scareness and war and allowed that a certain degree of freedom was warranted to make up for the lost adolescence. 

A number of handsome men approached Josephine in turn, inviting her to ride with them, but she politely declined–her eyes never leaving the strangely calm man standing on the outskirts of the group. He neither approached a girl nor did any talk with him. Now and then he shook hands with a friend and smiled, his beautifully straight, egret white teeth seemed to shimmer in the sun. However, few words left his heavy, clean shaven lips. His thick hands mussed in his pockets; periodically he would pull a comb from his pocket and fidgetly run it through his close cut hair, unnecessarily. Slowly the crowd dispersed into various cars of myriad makes. The thumping and revving of starting engines filled the increasingly stagnant air.

He took a step toward her, smiling. Something in her flittered, that combination of dread and unfathomable desire for what might be next. Next now, next toady, next forever. She had that unbearable lightness of being that felt as though helium was being pumped up through her stomach, knocking on nausea and potential lightheadedness. But then he paused, turned, and disappeared behind a row of cars. She was stunned, disheartened. Suddenly, gravity felt apparent, the only law that existed–as though she could never withstand the weight pushing down through her innards. She was stunned, disheartened. What had she done wrong? Her sudden change of spirits left her leaden and sunk, she thought momentarily she might take on the fate of dinosaurs and one day be made into oil to power a future someone’s flying car. She hoped that wherever that someone was heading, their emotions were never toyed with so grotesquely. Temporarily bemused, Josephine pictured this fictitious future person–bereft and filled with grief–nosediving their flying car before suddenly correcting the flight path through thick tears, creating that same nauseous rising and sinking feeling that had just consumed her stomach. Quickly she returned to her stunned self, disheartened. What had gone wrong? Had she imagined his interest in her? The sudden change of spirits left her leaden and sunk. Dejectedly, the spirit in her step drained, she began to search–almost in a panic–for a ride. Most of the cars were already zooming down the pine-lined lane. It struck her that she might have missed the entire party for a fleeting fancy.

A hand gently, almost as though embarrassed tapped her slight shoulder. She flinched uncontrollably under the strong, calloused hand. Slowly, as though the turntable of a record player had not been fully wound and the song was playing at half speed, she turned and met the smiling face, those perfect white teeth, of the man she thought had just tossed her. She beamed back completely forgetting her previous sullenness. She looked into his gleaming, excited, yet unsure eyes.

“I’m sorry to be so forward, but since I saw you emerge from the church, swallowed by the shadows, the daisy of your hate complimenting the vibrancy, of your slight smile, I just knew I had to talk to you alone. I hope you don’t think I am too brazen. I’ve never done anything like this, but I’ve never seen a girl so…” He paused searchingly, his eyes downcast, feet shuffling ever so slightly. “…inwardly vibrant and outwardly, well, just painfully beautiful; for lack of a better adjective.”

She smiled and became noticeably blush, closely matching the cranberry colored lacing of her otherwise white dress.

“Well…thank you! I’m not so sure about all that, but I am surely appreciative. I didn’t think you noticed me when you disappeared just now.” She paused, hesitant, a perplexed expression crossed her face. “Do you always talk so…poetically? I mean your words sound like you are writing a book about this moment.”

It was now his turn for a slight embarrassment. He grabbed the back of his neck and glanced towards the piercingly blue skies. “Sorry,” he blurted out without making any eye contact. “I guess I get lost in my head and I just planned out this conversation for the last few minutes and sometimes, I dunno, I guess it turns into almost a script when I finally get my words out. Except, usually, I stutter and mumble. I guess I was so excited, it all just came out so fast. Plus, as soon as I saw you alone, so confident and budding, I realized I couldn’t just approach you like any other girl. I wouldn’t know what to say. So I stood here just imagining our dialogue and refining my responses.”

She quickly interrupted in her usual inquisitiveness, “So how does it compare to what you imagined so far?”

A bead of sweat dripped from his brow and he quickly wiped it off with his pocket square. “Uhh, well, I guess a lot better than I envisioned. My first round of imagined conversations are usually perfect. Like a fairy tale, I suppose. But then each revision becomes more realistic. By the end, they are usually so pessimistic, that I have convinced myself to do nothing and avoid the impending embarrassment.”

She laughed shrilly. “You are an odd duck.” She smoothed a wrinkle on his suite sleeve.

“Yea, I can’t argue with that.”

“So far, I love it.” She smiled, swatting a pesky fly from in front of her face.

“Well, anyway, as I was saying, I knew I couldn’t just approach you, so, um, I saw these just yonder of that car there and decided maybe it might help me break my awkwardness. Maybe I should have led with them, though….”

From the one hand that had been conspicuously hidden behind his back he produced a haphazardly arranged bouquet of daisies, indian paintbrushes,  even a few johnny jump-ups, and peppered with dandelions. An eclectic mix of whites, oranges, yellows, and reds  produced a pungent odor.

She reached out with a smile that transformed her already unusually kind face into a look that seemed as if it could accept anything and everyone with unmitigated kindness and acceptance. She immediately sneezed, the curse of her horribly debilitating allergies. They both laughed.

“Can I?” he timidly pointed at a particularly large and vibrant daisy.

“Umm, of course.”

He plucked it from the bouquet and gently placed it in her hat brim with the previously lonely flower that she had placed there herself that morning.

“It looked lonely and a girl like you can’t possibly be allowed to pawn such a lonely apparition on this poor world. What hope would the rest of us possibly have if someone like you were to go around acting forlorn and forgotten? It just doesn’t befit you.

“Enough of that poppycock. Are you going to offer a lady a ride to the beach or just stand there blowing hot air all day?”

“Would the lady care to accompany me on this fine day to the beach?

It would be my honor. I just put the top down so we can enjoy this beautiful spring breeze.”

“Well, after all those compliments how could I say no? I’ve never ridden in a convertible before. Not that I am impressed by cars,” she concluded feigning an air of indifference.

“Well, your curls will look even more sprightly and beautiful with the wind blowing gently through them.”

“Uhh. Stop it. Let’s go before they start making rumors about us. I can’t believe I am riding alone with a man whose name I don’t even know.”

“Arthur, pleased to meet you…?”

“Josephine. Well, my knight in sweaty armor. You better get your steed revved up.”

They locked arms, as though it was the most natural, obvious, well-rehearsed motion. A pair of emperor penguins, separated for six months, immediately finding one another through a maze of hundred of thousands of fellow penguins and embracing without a second thought or awkwardness, as though they had never been separated. Despite her desire to jump the door into the passenger seat, her manners caught her and she allowed him to open the door and help her into the low riding car. Josephine lunged into the passenger seat and exclaimed happily as she fell into the soft, warm leather. As she squirmed happily the leather let off a low squeak and she giggled energetically. Arthur rushed around to the drivers side, blood racing, sweat pouring from his armpits. He started the car and they took off down the backroads of the countryside. The smells of spring mixed with the occasional spurt of diesel belched out from the cruising convertible. Trees, hills, flowers, time floated by, but all was lost upon the young lovers immersed in all and nothing simultaneously. They were living in the moment, there was nothing else. It was them and the world and all was one. All awkwardness, all feigned over the top cordiality–all of it had melted away. They talked with that frenzied almost manic excitement–over the rev of the powerful straight six engine–typical of two souls that have been searching for life, and upon finally uniting skip the formalities, and try to convey all at once, in a lighting bolt of sizzling energy, all that has happened, all that was missed, all that could and would soon be. They yelled back and forth sometimes talking over one another. Not in that rude, listen to my more important story attitude–talking louder to be heard over someone else–but instead in the pure unadulterated excitement of two souls communicating directly. They laughed, their hands shaking and pointing and attempting to convey the meanings that were long lost on the triviality of the finite limitations of human concepts, human words.

The world streamed by and all too quickly the shimmer of the lake came into view. Each grew quiet, as a sense of foreboding grew in the small carriage. They pulled into the unpaved beachside lot, wheels crunching the small pebbles. They parked next to the other roadsters and the group came into view. They stood in that usual youthful awkwardness segregated in small groups by gender. Unthinkingly she placed her hand atop his as he set the parking brake. Just as quickly she removed it, briefly looked into his eyes, smiled, and almost lept from the car and joined her girlfriends.

He hesitated briefly, not quite stunned or dumbstruck, but filled with adulation and pure ecstasy. As though searching he had been searching his whole life for something, yet finding it in the least likely locale. Unexpectedly feeling utterly fulfilled and not knowing what to do next, he took a deep, joyful breath and let out a deep belly laugh of contentment, which seemed like a new and somehow abstract feeling to him. He noticed that she had left her hat on the floorboard so it wouldn’t blow away. He was about to grab it when Josephine looked back, gently fondled a pair of Indian paintbrushes from the bouquet he had given her, which she had placed in her hair just above her left ear, and winked. He smiled slyly and left the hat where it lay. Arthur opened the door and threw himself headlong into the playful banter of the men. The alto giggles mixed with the baritone voices and mingled, reverberating off the otherwise silent lake. The soft winny of a speedboat joined the cacophony as the stiffening breeze created a slow lap of miniature waves that splashed the imperceptibly sloping sandy beach. 

“I’ll bust your chops!,” echoed across the lakeshore. One of the young men took off towards the water in an escape from an impending tussle, chased by the blonde leader. Minor pandemonium ensued as the group, already changed into their bathing suits, took off in wild yelps of excitement towards the glistening, inviting waters–much like a lion chasing a straggling wildebeest sets off an uncontrollable chaos of rampaging legs and wildly beating hearts.  

In the crux of branches in a nearby dead oak, a newly returned osprey fed a clutch of newborns before presenting the nutrient rich stomach in a formal and grand gesture to the mother of his chicks. Letting out a shrill screech of seeming fulfillment, he took off again in search for sustenance in the neverending story of life and death. He soared across the lake and disappeared over the crest of a hill on the far shore, while the girl with the flowers in her hair watched  contemplatively–almost unaware of the modern day hunt surrounding her. 

—————————————————————

Chapter 3:  Rambles and Rumbles

Night crept slowly over the horizon. Venus showed strongly in the iridescent blue sky of early evening, while the pessimistic half-empty moon crept over the fluttering pines. Two girls, newly made acquaintances of the pair occupying the front seat, tittered back and forth quickly. As the girls conversed, the front remained quiet, Josephine and Arthur content, contemplated everything and nothing. Synthesizing and absorbing the abundance of life rushing by.

Back in town the streetlights slowly flickered into existence in an exasperated electric hum. The girls exited on a side street at the edge of town amid a flurry of ‘Thank you’s’ and ‘See you next weeks’ and proceeded down the darkening lane arm in arm and giggling to themselves.

The car proceeded on as if gliding and guided by an invisible rail. An exuberant silence filled the car. In no way awkward, but instead expectant and delighted. The quickly fading sun illuminated the sky in hues of dynamic desert reds and pinks, backlighting the distant stringy clouds like long forgotten party favors dangling on the horizon by losse, stringy threads. They glanced at one another with soothing smiles and he winked with a reassuring ‘Isn’t this how we knew it could be?’ sort of confidence. Moments later the trees swallowed the sun and shed their ever darkening shadows over the still road. He flipped on the headlights and deer glanced up from their lighthearted roadside nibbling, eyes shining like marbles caught in the sun, as the convertible steadily passed on by. Occasionally a large moth splattered against the windshield with an audible ‘pfflpt’, smearing its contents and life on the passing car.

As they reached the turn off for her drive, the final beams of daylight–radiating across the purplish translucent sky in a cosmic web–were swallowed up as though suddenly passing the vertical horizon of an eminent black hole, laying in wait just beyond, unseen and predatory. Almost on cue, a swarm of lighting bugs came to life illuminating in tiny speckles the length of the straight, canopied drive. In the summer silence, they watched nature’s light show spectacle illuminating the tunnel-like expanse ahead of them. Each insect fluttered and danced in a seemingly choreographed ballet for a few seconds before the spotlight was altered to a new, randomly selected troupe as though in a slightly offset unison pointing the way down the road.

As they pulled up the drive, her brothers rose from their stiff seated positions along two logs that marked the final entrance to the house. Reluctantly she let out an almost inaudible sigh. He laughed to himself expectantly, loosely patting her hand before downshifting.

The engine died as the light crackle of stone, sounding like marbles being rubbed together in the palm of a nervous child, was all that filled the still night. The car sighed and stalled. All was silent. The headlights flitted off. Stars peaked through the nervous trees like a spying child. He opened his door with a strong confidence, his loafers cracked the overworked gravel. The car ached and creaked as he lifted himself up, rocking gently to one side before self-correcting and rolling to the other. Crickets slowly filled the silent void left by the deafening chorus of the sun-inspired cicadids. Slowly Arthur’s eyes began to comprehend the shapes and shadows around him. He rushed to the passenger door and his cool queen out.

“It’s getting a bit late for joyrides, Josephine.”

“Oh, Teddy don’t you sass me. Arthur was kind enough to drive me home. I didn’t see either of you at church today.”

“You know we had to clear that acre for planting today,” the other shadow pitched in tersely. Wes presented an intimidating figure, slightly barrel chested with just a hint of a paunch around the waste. His eyes never seemed to focus on anything in particular, always looking towards the horizon as though expecting an ambush to materialize at any moment from the fringes of existence. Both brothers stood bent in towards one another from opposite sides of the drive, arms propping bodies from legs resting atop their respective logs. The younger brother, by eight years, presented a slighter, wiry frame, but even in that growing darkness, one could make out the taut and svelte nature of his body. His penetrating eyes peered from behind stylish, but not overly so, horn-rimmed glasses. A perpetual sheen covered his corneas, as though looking on the world rendered him heartbroken, and tended to placate his otherwise menacing outward appearance.

“I know, I’m sorry. I just felt like a day out for once. It got late and Arthur here offered me and the other girls a ride home.”

“So where’d they go?” Wes asked perplexed, producing a pipe from his front overall pocket. Slowly, he filled it with tobacco, simultaneously produced from his back pocket. A swift hand motion followed by a grating noise of a match on boot heel illuminated Teddy’s glasses as Wes leaned in to light his pipe. The stood momentarily side by side, Wes puffing slowly as Teddy shielded the match from the slight night wind, a halo of light around enshrouded them like a safety net in the abyss of darkness that encroached from the forest fringes. Each returned gracefully to their logs and sat down hunched upon their knees as if in practiced unison.

“We dropped them just five minutes back down on Albany street. What do you think we were going to have some of mom’s apple pie and tell ghost stories?”

“Oh…” the brothers murmured, seemingly defeated.

Arthur tentatively interrupted the familial exchange, “‘Scuse me, I’m Arthur, I honestly meant no impropriety. I was coming this way and offered the ladies a ride. I’m mighty sorry for the hour and unseemliness of our arrival.”

“Yea?”

“Where you from?”

“Up Chazy way.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How you afford this fancy car?”

“Teddy!!”

“Oh. Well, I’ve run my pa’s farm for a number of years now. Just saved my money, I guess.”

“You serve?” 

“Wesley, this is hardly…”

“No, sir. Unfortunately.”

“Well, no wonder…” Teddy stated demeaningly, but was quickly interrupted.

“I tried. Many’s the time. Had an accident on the farm, though. Pitchfork hit me in the shoulder. Brothers fooling around. I’d guess maybe you know it goes. Went straight through. Can’t lift my left arm above the shoulder. Doesn’t get in the way of my farming, plus I’m good with my hands, can fix most anything mechanical. Got a deal on this car for fixing a couple motors for that dealership downtown,” he paused slightly to control himself and slow the rapid pace of his speech. His foot nudged a rock, his eyes focused on the low glow of Wes’ pipe, which heaved and smoldered with each puff reminiscent of a volcano crater on the verge of annihilation. “I told the recruiters I could hold a gun, then, after a couple trips I asked to be a mechanic. They said if I couldn’t climb a wall or throw a grenade, I might as well just be a human shield. Honestly, I revere you men that served. I tried to sneak in a few times, but they always found me out. It is what it is I ‘spose.”

The brothers straightened up, fidgeting slightly as they shared a quick glance back and forth.

“Josephine why don’t get yourself to bed. Momma needs the kitchen tidied a bit.”

She bristled at the slight condescension in her brother’s tone.

“Of course, Wesley.” She feigned obedience and curtsied curtly. “Good night, Arthur. It was awfully nice making your acquaintance.”

She turned to walk the short path to the screen door of the enclosed wrap-around porch, but turned and added, “Might we be seeing you again at church group next Sunday?”

“I certainly hope so,” he replied almost shyly, with a gentle smile and slight flush engulfing his face, which to his relief were obviously hidden in the blackness.

“That’d be mighty fine.” She smiled, and in the darkness of the night, unseen to all but the overexcited fireflies, her skin took on a similar shade of crimson as it tingled ever so slightly.

He watched her disappear up the drive and a certain longing grew within him. One that he knew would never be fully satiated.

“So.” Wes’ harsh baritone voice broke his short reverie. He snapped to attention as though a lieutenant had entered the barracks.

“Do you have intentions with our sister?” Teddy added without pomp.

“Well, um, I mean, no sir. But, I dunno, I guess I do, actually.”

“Don’t stutter. Have some pride, man. You got a fancy car. That might impress some, but we only care about character. You seem genuine.”

“That’s something,” Wes chirped in.

“You aren’t lying about your being exempted?” Teddy continued. “I was sunk in Pearl Harbor. I’ve seen me plenty of dodgers. Got no respect for ‘em. None. Even Josephine, there, was a nurse in the war. This family gave everything we got.”

“None,” Wes reiterated.

“I would never lie, sir. I helped out best I could during the war. Like I said, I run my daddy’s farm and we donated half our crops to the effort. I volunteered on the side at the airforce base fixing anything they would let me get my hands on. It weren’t much, but I tried. I swear.”

“Good. How you get along on the farm then? With that injury and all?”

“Well, sir, I’m good with the books, like I said I can fix most anything mechanical, and I help where and when I can with the labor. Planting potatoes, pulling weeds, whatever needs doing. I’m not the strongest, but I’m damned determined. ‘Scuse the language. I’m not usually crude, especially around the fairer sex.”

“No excuse needed. All we want to know is how determined are you with our sister?”

“She ain’t none to be flummoxed by fancy cars and fat wallets. You best not be trying to put on no show. Her last boyfriend,” Teddy let out an under breath laugh, “thought he could win her over by becoming the manager of his daddy’s liquor store. She dropped him faster than bombs on Dresden.”

“Of course not. Also, so you know, I don’t touch alcohol.”

“Good to hear.”

“I just, I…I think she is beautiful and sharp. I guess. I mean would you give me permission to take her out again? At a more reasonable hour and with a group, supervised that is, of course.”

The light of the moon tittered and spun and confused the world it lit filtered as it was through those ever present wavering pines.

The faces of the three men were partially illumined in strands of sad moonlight. Two stood contemplatively, the third anxious with a tinge of nervousness. He could see the unpleasantness, the almost emptiness that the war had left on his two companions. The lostness that slid periodically across their eyes. The pensiveness reflected in the scars of their face. Not, necessarily, of their sister, but of this life, of this being human; what it meant to be alive still, to share earth with those that could kill for sport, to murder in cold blood. To do so oneself, no questions asked. To be bombed. To stand on the front line. To witness death falling like raindrops. To be surrounded by death, yet survive. To feel remorse and guilt and still being alive when so many were not. To defend a country that just as soon would forget your sacrifice. To be pushed to the extremes of existence, to look a man in the eyes, to see his fate, his life, perhaps even his soul–how could one tell who had never been there–laid bare, and yet to pull the trigger, out of desperation; drive, probably love, to see one’s family again. To witness depravity, bend your own soul to its breaking point, then be tossed back into life like nothing happened. To pick up a scythe and cut the grass as though you had never used a bayonet, the same size of blade, to take a man’s life in the bloody, muddy, dysentery of a fox hole. To be forced to lay down at night and pretend as though your dreams weren’t littered with horrorscapes, exploding landmines in the depths of your sleepless nights. He could only imagine the pain they endured nightly. The screams of the fellow ensigns sinking with the battleship Teddy should have been on in Pearl Harbor. The guild of why my friend Walt and not me? Why did I have to be on leave December 7 and not him? Survivors guilt. It was all there. Written in their faces, their eyes, the hardened imperfections of their skin, the slow thoughtful drawl of their voices, but most of all the skitteriness, the always peering around, the fidgeting, the readiness. It was written on them and amplified in the moonlight. The slow bitterness of night. Existence amplified, yet slowed. The chance to contemplate without the heated rush of the daytime buzz. A muted, nuded simpleness that bares all.

Uncharacteristically, Teddy spit, and it crackled on the radiating heat of the gravel. It broke the contemplative silence, just as he intended.

Wes looked about slightly confused, and adjusted his characteristic bolin. Teddy snapped his suspenders. Once again, as though on cue, they both stood up straight in unison, and stared down Arthur who had been lost in his own studied silence.

He fidgeted, hands in pockets.

“Yep.”

“Excuse me?”

“We said yes.” Wes chimed in.

“Next Saturday,” Teddy added. “We are taking dates to Ted’s Soda Fountain downtown. Be here at 3pm. Bring flowers.”

“Of course,” Arthur replied, mildly stunned by his change of fortune.

“Goodbye.” Teddy let out almost in passing already turning towards the house. Wes tipped his cap silently and followed his younger brother up the path lit by the growing glow of the moon. And then they were gone. The banging of the screen door was all that notified Arthur of their absence. On the fringes of the night a lonely owl let out a faint, sad wail.

He stood there stupefied. His hand found the hood of the car for balance as the world spun beneath him. A long week awaited. But nothing would be longer than the ride home without her.

—————————————————————

Chapter 4:  Soda Jerks

They sat around a linoleum topped table in the corner of the busy soda fountain; a pared down group from those that had visited the beach. The small pharmacy attached diner hummed with the energy of an early Saturday night. Patsy Cline twanged from the nickel jukebox. The early evening sun bounced off the plate glass windows across the street illuminating the specials board written in yellow chalk in a neat cursive writing dotted by the hearts of a lonesome, lovestruck girl who hung around the store doting on the boisterous soda jerk, keen to to do any menial task he asked. As she would sit hopelessly for hours at the far end of the counter, twirling idly on the vinyl covered stool, he would bounce around behind the bar, entertaining guests by flinging scoops of ice cream through the air, twirling milkshake glasses, and bantering with the cookstaff in the ever-evolving slang unique to the position. 

“Mike, draw some mud!” 

“Gotcha! Another one, in the hay this time.”

“One black cow over here.”

A storm of words and phrases would volley back and forth from waiters to soda jerks to cooks, at times akin to a good-natured tennis match, but ranging to full on grenade tossing across enemy lines as the booths filled and nerves became frayed.

Meanwhile, in the booth the bravado of the young men slowly grew as exclamations became louder and the crowd grew boisterous. The girls, for their part, tittered and giggled behind gloved hands. Josephine and Arthur were a part yet independent from the building gaiety. An entity of their own, yet somehow engaged enough that no one noticed their mental absence. They sat across from one another each buried on the inside corner of the large, faux leather, red dyed padded booth–bathed in the orange glow of the melting sun. They sat timid and silent, each sipping on their fountain sodas lost to the climaxing conversation crescendoing at their elbows.

“Hey, Arthur, you get it. Dontcha agree?”

He looked up, almost bewildered, just then realizing how disengaged he had been from the conversation–life–at that moment.

He stumbled and muttered out, “What was that?” Growing up on a farm with rambunctious brothers he had learned the hard way what blind agreement could get one.

Before the tall booming blonde could repeat the question, his saving grace interrupted the free flowing conversation and asked to be excused for the bathroom. The table rose almost as if rising, in unison, for the queen. Single file they shuffled out of the booth as she made her way graciously past. He, too, took the opportunity to collect his thoughts and made his way to the exit, which welcomed his exit with the not so subtle jangline of bells.

As she dabbed her face with cold water in the bathroom he breathed deep the heavy, thick lilac-laden air. Their minds wandered freely fixating on no single thought, but in such a dervish as to give each a slight sense of vertigo. In the distance, Arthur could hear a far off ice cream as it began to launch into its melodic summer hymn, projecting its presence to the brightening cosmos. The Marlboro Man stared down on him from the red brick building adjacent, pleading hom to join that elite club of asphyxiaters–but only if he was macho enough.

As he ducked back into the store he gave a nod to Wes and Teddy tucked back into the opposite corner enjoying a smaller, more intimate gathering. As he approached the table he sensed a change of attitude, a foray from youthful fun to adult drama. The giggles and exuberance had disappeared replaced with smirks and secrets passed amongst narrowed eyes.

Josephine appeared from behind the red checkered bathroom door just in time to catch his puzzled assessment of the table. Their sudden silence caught her attention. Everyone froze in silent attention at their return; not a word was uttered, only a few under the breath, nasally giggles. Slowly, with furtive eyes, the group slid back down into the booth to make room. Josephine smiled hesitantly across the table, but suspicion crawled across her face. The pair looked uneasily at one another and on down the table towards the group of expectant wide-eyes. Before long conversation and activity returned to normal. The energy of the group returned, conversation sped, and the cacophony grew much like a colony of parrots just waking and calling across the jungle canopy, easing out of their ceiba tree roosts, stretching wings in the predawn cool of a subtropic morning.

Amid the gleeful chatter, her mind raced, retracing the minutes she was gone, but nothing stood out; nothing piqued her suspicion. Slowly she returned, tried to follow the snickers. Unconsciously she grabbed her soda and put lips to straw, but mid sip she noticed the return of the expectant eyes. She knew instantly. She tried to stop, but it was too late. The smell, the burn, filled her head. For one of the few times in her life, her head spun with rage. She did her best to control it; to retain her composure, to show no outward outfront. 

Josephine swallowed the putrid liquid and noted the smirking face. The glass returned to the table and she picked up her purse, stood up without looking at anyone and walked out the door. The bells chime as though to conclude a eulogy.

Behind her male voices cajoled, “What the harm in a little sip of the sweet stuff?”

“Everyone had a little nip, Josephine!”

The sound of gloved hands smacking leather coats and underbreath scoldings silenced the voices.

Barely had the bells chimed when her short-haired companion, suddenly comprehending the situation, leapt to his feet. Shaking his head at the increasingly disheveled party–staring down the blonde ringleader–he turned towards the door giving her, passive, though inquisitive, brothers a pleading glance on his way out. Under his breath he mumbled to himself, “Sugar on a rag!”

The summer air hung wet and humid, expectant, premonitious, yet languid. The final slanted rays of the evening sun burst through a hole in the gathering and growing thunderheads forming a brief Jacob’s ladder visible at the far end of main street seeming to praise the stores of downtown. Clouds swirled matching the tempest in his brain. The street was broodingly quiet as though the growing heat had stymied all life.

Arthur’s eyes darted about conceiving nothing, looking at and processing only the visage of his intended. Unknowingly his hand grabbed a kerchief from his back pocket and wiped his suddenly sweaty brow; he loosened his collar and fanned his body. A slowly building evening breeze rustled the small oaks lining the thoroughfare. A small chain-hung sign swung briskly above the ‘feed and seed’. Although it felt much longer–he only knew it had been a brief moment given that his pupils were still adjusting to the building darkness of the outdoor world–he soon discovered the arched, funereal silhouette he had been searching. She sat on a slatted bench under the shade of a sprawling willow just across the adjacent, almost miniature town square. Head in palms she stared down the stream above which the willow stood in silent sentinel. Every now and then her body bobbed, inhaling an ever so noticeable sob.

He rushed to her and made the canopy of the willow just as the sky commenced to shed its own palpable weight.

“Promise me two things?”

“Of course.”

“Promise me you had nothing to do with that stupid prank, du–…”

He cut her off, “I promise you, I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t realize what happened until after you ran out. I would nev…”

“I know. I trust you. They think it’s just fun. I shouldn’t let it bother me so. It’s just that…”

“No. Stop. You don’t need to make excuses. Trying to trick a person to drink is childish. You can do whatever you please; you shouldn’t be ridiculed by your friends because you don’t want to take a swig.”

“Well, yes, but it is more than that, and, I mean, I can’t blame them all for having a little fun. I really don’t mind drinking.”

She stopped and trailed off in the now swirling rain.

“I get it. I don’t drink either. It just, it turns people–different; not themselves.”

“Yes. All of them just don’t know the whole story is all.  They just think I’m a teetotaler. That I just have some Puritan aversion to drinking. That’s not it. My grandfath—”

“I know.”

“How?”

“Your brothers told me.”

“Oh.”

They huddled closer, he put his jacket over her as the storm thundered and dropped its deluge. The gentle stream grew to an embattled river.

“Well, then, I should probably tell you something else, but you have to agree to my second promise.”

“I don’t know…two promises in one day? Seems like a steep asking price for a second date with a teetotaler like yourself.”

She slapped him playfully. Rain mixing with the tears inching down her slowly brightening face, which created a deep contrast with the growing maelstrom surrounding their increasing drenched bodies.

“What is it?”

“After this rain stops promise me we can go hunting for salamanders?”

—————————————————————

Chapter 5:  Toppling a Tippler

“It’s just a business, a guys gotta make a living.”

“I know. And you know how I feel about it.”

The pair stood in silence outside the unmarked storefront. The shadows of the ongoing jubilations taking place inside danced across the dirt filled, slushy snow banks. Periodically, the headlights of a passing car would catch them, frozen; each with pleading eyes, squirrels begging for life in the paralyzing glare of oncoming traffic. For, in their youthful romance, this seemed like life and death. The streetlamps dimly flickered above them, struggling for life against the mid-winter wind-infused cold. The sky was an indeterminate New York gray, echoing the lights from nearby towns and the iridescent orangish glow of the neon lights in distant Montreal. Her galoshes slowly–deliberately–toyed with the slushy, dying snow, which lingered half-heartedly against the post-blizzard ‘warmth’ aided in its slow descent by the radiating heat from the red brick sidewalk.

“It’s not like it’s against the law.”

“That is far from the point.”

“What is it?”

“It changes people.”

“We are just going to sell it. It’s not like I’m gonna become a rummy from selling it. It’s not even a bar! What is the problem with people wanting a drink or two when they get home from work? Theys gotta buy it from someone….why not me and my brother?”

“I understand. I’m not blaming you. But, I told you I just can’t be around people that are associated with that stuff.”

A knock came from inside the unadorned plate glass window, a gloved hand beckoned them to come in. A tumbler of whisky shook enticingly in the other. The man outside waved the other off bitterly and gazed down at the darkening street.

“I didn’t think you’d be ecstatic, but I thought, at least, you’d support our entrepreneurship!” he exclaimed emphatically, but muffled by his scarf, still staring at the ground in front of him. “It’s not like any of our classmates are making anything of themselves. It’s better than working as a plow hand on a farm. It’s an honest living and we are our own bosses. Can’t you just appreciate that?” he finally looked up at her, expectantly.

“Of course. I just can’t be a part of it. I appreciate all the work you’ve done, but with the capital you raised, you could have opened any other kind of shop. Like I said, I don’t condemn your choice, I just simply can’t accept it either.” She gazed over his shoulder down the street beyond. Her eyes glassy, but defiant.

“Why?”

“You know exactly why. I told you what I went through.”

“But that wasn’t me!” he implored.

“Maybe. But you are drinking now,” she deplored.

“We are celebrating, Josephine! Can’t I let loose now and then?” he almost stammered out slightly stamping his foot as though a child who was feeling the unfairness in the lack of control over his own life.

“Of course. And I know it’s not fair to hold you to some teetotaling standard. That is life, though. We are who we are based on the lives we’ve been handed. I don’t want to be overbearing; change who you are–make you a certain way in my own self-interest. Yet, I am me. I’ve suffered what I’ve suffered to realize what I need–what I want in life. I don’t begrudge you a drink now and then–that is human. It’s not a fault. It’s just living and enjoying life. I get that. But I’m me and I won’t compromise myself, my needs….my fears won’t be toppled by a few tippled promises. No matter your reasoning, my fears can’t be assuaged. I don’t claim it’s fair. I know you are a hard worker, but so was my grandfather. The only way I can escape those premonitions is if I know those demons are from me. I wish I knew a better way, but…” her voice tailed off as she retreated into herself, thoughts swirling, burning against the night’s cold.

The horn of a train echoed on the outskirts of town, deepening the silent rift between them. Her words were swallowed by the crackling and moaning of the melting snowpack. The semi-rhythmic drip-plop-plunk-plop-drip of the growing icicles created a surreal musical accompaniment to the momen–a sad symphony indicating the melting bond between the young couple. 

A desperate, elongated sigh disrupted the musical night sounds. Slowly, defeatedly, he reached into his back pocket and produced a flask from which he proceeded to take a long, exasperated swig. She watched in growing sadness, his figure outlined by the rising, powerful moon–seen through the quickly drifting gray clouds. A small halo hung around it. Somber, angelic. She remembered the saying her grandfather used to regale: “Halo round the moon, storm coming soon!” Just as before, the warning came much too late.

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Chapter 6:  Does a Frog Get Seasick?

Although the sun had just passed its zenith in the papier mache cloud streaked sky, an appreciable chill filled the late fall air. The smell of mulling spices and cinnamon wafted from the not so distant kitchen window as the two lazed about on the flannel patched blanket. Her head rested gingerly on his thin waist. Both were dressed in the heavy wool of northern latitude fall, braced against the hesitant, yet determined breeze. The sharp rays of sun darted and peeked among the branches and last-clinging leaves of the Macintosh apple tree above them. Nature clung to life against the bitter siege of wintry death lurking in the growing shadows. Arthur bit loudly into a cris, freshly picked apple.

“To my mind, this must be heaven.”

“Oh Arthur, don’t be so apple-ficial.”

“What? I’m serious. If this was the garden of Eden, I don’t think I could pass on this here apple.” He took another loud, exaggerated bite. “But that is just the topping on the strudel. The twinkling sun, the view of that crisp, embattled lake, the ripples dashing the lily pads like toy boats in a tub, the smell of fall–the spice, decaying leaves, that hint of first snow in the air–the prettiest girls since Eve staring into my eyes; everything. It’s….perfect.” He slowly caressed her locks as he stared off into the distance, taking in Saint Peter’s anteroom. Another, this time absent minded, bite. He lightheartedly tossed the apple core down the gently sloping lawn towards the small, shimmering pond. A yawn snuck upon him and he stretched his wiry arms, tilting his back against the whitewashed wooden panels of the house, reminiscent of a dog just waking from a particularly grueling dream.

“Do you think frogs get seasick?” she mused nonchalantly.

“What??” he suddenly awoke completely confused, given further credence to the image of the dog suddenly awaking from its dream in a completely different place and time than expected.

“You know, when it’s windy like this, if they sit on a lily pad do they get sick?” she smiled up wonderingly into his tired and confused eyes.

“Hmm. Guess I never thought much ‘bout it.”

“I guess I get lost in thoughts of things that others don’t care much about. My grandfather always called me Alice, guess he thought I was always chasing rabbits…”

“I bet they must,” he blurted out, almost ecstatically. “It only seems logical.”

As she pondered this he reached down toward her side and poked her ribs just right, eliciting a loud squeak and uncontrollable laughter. He did it again on the other side and soon they were both laughing as she playfully slapped at him.

“Stooopppp….I cannn’t….taaaaake…..any moooorrrreeeee….” her voice tailed off in laughter.

He grabbed her in a strong, sweet embrace and buried his scruffy chin into her smooth neck. He nuzzled her gently with his whiskers and shrieked with playful excitement, “I’m going to get that chickkky meat!”

They both giggled and Josephine jumped to her feet and leapt off the porch. He quickly followed letting out a whooping yell as he flew through the air behind her. He caught her gently from behind and wrestled her to the ground beneath the apple tree. Each rolled in separate directions; Josephine pretending to make a snow angel in the brownish leaves that lay bitterly on the slowly dying grass. On their backs they stared up through the orangish-red undersides of the remaining leaves above them. The leaves shook in the breeze providing the breeze with a voice–a presence–incomparable, but soothing in its uniqueness. Silence enveloped them except for the titters of a handful of chickadees and nuthatches bobbing and bouncing among the branches, apparently frantic over the impending winter.

“Arthur, you are so strange.”

“Oh?”

“It’s really the only redeeming quality you have.”

“Oh good. I was beginning to think you liked me too much and might become a bit clingy.”

“Oh stop.”

“What do you think the best part of apple trees are?”

“Besides the apples?” she asked, slightly perplexed.

“Uh huh!”

“Why?”

“Well, this here apple tree just knocked some sense into me!”

“Oh really, Newton? I didn’t think that was possible.”

He jumped to his feet and stared down into her sparkling eyes and beautiful curls peeking out of her tweed jacket contrasting against the brownish green splotches of earth beneath her.

“What do you want?” she asked hesitantly–confused, but bemused simultaneously.

He reached a hand down, “Stand up!” he proclaimed earnestly.

“But Arthur,” she feigned exhaustion by placing a forearm across her forehead. “I’ve worked just so hard to get all the way down here. I’ve learned something from this apple tree, too, ‘A body at rest tends to stay at rest’. See Newton burns both ways.” She continued in her exaggerated play, “I’m too tired to ever move again.”–arms outstretched as though gravity had pinned her to earth, a perdurable vitruvian woman.

“I hope we never have to. I never want to go anywhere without these God-blessed apple trees. Darling,” he implored again, “please stand up.” He offered a hand with a simple, gentle smile that could not be denied.

“Oh, fine.”

He pulled her to him and boldly kissed her radiating cheek as he surreptitiously reached into his coat pocket. Without losing her gaze he agilely bent to one knee and produced a modest, but beautiful ring that dazzled in the twinkling sun. 

Blushing faintly she laughed at his bent frame.

“Yes, of course. Just do it and kiss me already!” she blurted out uncontrollably.

He slipped the ring on her slender yet wethered finger and jumped to his feet. They embraced in that type of unifying hold where an onlooker wonders who is holding who as both seemed to be held upright by the other. Both leaning so hard against the other that pure gravity–mutual force–held them upright; neither braced themselves, both gave into the opposite completely. No words were necessary. Under that apple tree all was explained, preordained. Love flowed from them and to them, their feet like roots entwining with the New York state sod, sharing and taking from all nature around them. Minutes passed, but time lost meaning as they themselves forgot human constructs.

Eventually they returned to the porch swing, leaning against one another still with gazes fixed over the now dark, abyssal pond. The sun cleft the horizon like an apple falling impossibly slow.

“I’ve always loved this tree, this view,” Josephine’s voice clanged through the endless silence stirring them both to attention. “But, I have to admit that since my grandfather used that pond to stop time, it’s never quite been as it was. I used to stare at the reflection on the water in pure amazement; it seemed to hold the world, the future. After that day all I could do here was reflect–all I could see was the blackness of the pond water, the past, there was no hint of the endless beauty of the future. It was like I could no longer see that reflection, be amazed by life, and commit to the present. I was always looking back instead of ahead. I don’t know. Now, I think, I can see that reflection again.”

“It must be these here delicious apples. They’ll have you pondering the future of life on the moon.”

“Do you ever quit?”

“Does a frog get seasick?”

She gut punched him playfully as the sun set over the pond, reflecting the fading green hills beyond in surrealistic ripples–curving and stretching the canvas of the earth in dream-like confusion. A growing fog hazied the horizon. Frogs began to bellow in an increasingly chaotic chorus for the last time before winter set in.

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Chapter 7: Infinity and Apple Pie 

A certain languor hung in the air as the convertible eased off into the late afternoon warmth. The crowd, hesitant to disperse, clinging in the post war hope that beauty still existed, that love could–would–replace all the nonsensical hate and fear, and that the youthful aspirations of the greatest generation, no matter how weather-beaten, worn, and deprived, could still overcome, rebuild. Just as winter melded with spring to forge new beauty from gray oblivion so, too, could this union restore the onlookers faith in life, in whatever small way; carry them all from ephemeral springs of hope to hope springs eternal.

Meanwhile, hair blowing lazily, the newlywed couple sped north, tin cans clanging off the rear bumper. Minds raced in ease and comfort and simple joy, unaware of the hopes and dreams pinned to their unburdened shoulders. As the reams of unnecessary white fabric billowed in the crosswinds, filling the passenger seat leg compartment with a sea of white like dancing clouds, Josephine lay her head on Arthur’s trim shoulder covered in the subtle pinstripe wool fabric that composed his neat fitting suit.

They rumbled slowly, deliberately up the Lake Champlain coast. Neither knowing where they were headed, nor why. A bemused silence lingered, the engine providing all the chatter that either needed. The water rippled gently as the wispy clouds reflected in the growing orange haze of the early evening. Waves crest and broke–not melancholy and bitter, tormenting, beating them ‘ceaselessly into the past’ as it had previous, post-depression generations–no, the water splashed and tittered, playful and boisterous, ready to carry them headlong into the eternal future; enigmatic and uncertain, but bountiless and full of all possibility. And upon that wave they surfed North.

The thin veil of cook-smoke mingled with the fresh spring blooms filling their nostrils and spiking a pang of wanting, for food–certainly–but, also, something more. As though a desire for change and growth was slowly, unbeknownst, consuming them. The car grumbled as it hesitantly climbed a small bluff. The road curved as the pine lined, lake-side lane suddenly lost itself in a seemingly endless apple orchard. The knotty boughs twisted and turned toward the sky, whizzing by the car in neatly formed rows.

“Stop!” Josephine’s eyes widened in her eternal excitement resembling twirling, shifting black holes absorbing all in her sight.

Arthur wailed the brakes, pulling the car onto the dirt shoulder, raising a stream of dust that flittered out onto the lake below the bluff.

She jumped out of the car without bothering to open the door, carrying her flowing gown in one hand, while racing into the depths of the orchard. He flipped on the parking brake and went after her nearly falling as his slick dress shoes, carrying his feet as though out of his control, contacted the slick pavement.

“Josephine!”

“I’m here.” Her voice radiated from somewhere in the maze of flowering trees.

He found her sprawled on the ground staring into the pink hues of the endless apple blooms; mindless of her white gown and the potential for stains from the dewy grass.

“What’s wrong?” he exhaled, completely out of breath and fearing the worst.

“Just the opposite. It’s perfect. Join me!”

Hesitantly he hiked up his pant legs and slowly grounded himself, an elephant giving up on the humid African afternoon, butt to ground.

“Isn’t this the most beautiful place you’ve ever seen?”

As he sat, arms laying on the length of his legs, black socks showing beneath his foreshortened pants, he finally gazed–truly saw–her perfectly curled hair strewn across the grass, the last rays of the sun splitting the westward branches, the pink-blue sky mingling with the orange-pink blooms, the first stars peering through the nervous twilight, he couldn’t help but acquiesce.

“I think you may just be right.”

“May 31st. I don’t think there will ever be a better day in the entire year.”

They lay back, heads brushing every so slightly, hands bound together. The slight rustle of the evening breeze surreptitiously lowered pink blooms all around them reminiscent of an early season snow shower–testing whether winter had truly started, and realizing it wasn’t quite time, halting just as quickly–leaving them in a thin, almost transparent cover of petals. The moon rose over the eastern horizon imbuing the scene with the gentle purplish hues of dusk, almost making her gown glow in the ephemeral last light of day.

“I’m starved,” she nearly shouted, jumping to her feet. “Let’s go find some apple pie!”

She pulled him up and they tore off, rushing headlong back through those dimly illuminated orchard lanes, as though friendly sentinels loosely guiding them patiently towards their future.

–Miami, March 16, 2019