Homecoming

     Her shoes were impractical. She made her way through the grass, rocks and thickets as he trailed behind her. Her also impractical dress, very long and covered with small blue flowers, caught on a scentbush tangle and he freed it, noticing a small tattooed pagan design on her ankle. They continued on. Calmness descended upon her features in imperceptible increments as their destination approached.

     Few words had been spoken, as she had requested to hike up this way very soon after arriving. Memories flooded their minds, the years fleeting, both settling, fixedly on one youthful summer as they walked through this space that bound them. “Why had she come?” he mumbled to himself.  She fumbled helplessly as he freed her dress of entanglements again. Why was she wearing that damn dress? He remembered her only in jeans and a T. Why the 2:00 AM phone call after her calls had long since tapered off?  Why the cinnamon kiss, her city teeth white in the morning freshness?  She gave a start as the dog flushed a partridge, an explosion of feathers breaking the silence. Paradoxically, her stride strengthened.

     “I often listened to your show when I was on the land, or when going to town,” his icebreaker awkward, humble, tentative.

     Smiling , glancing up at him, she replied, “Hope you didn’t fall asleep at the wheel.”

      “Nawwww, I like it… maybe cause it’s you.”

     “Awwww, you always were the best of us Spider,” her small cultured hand resting on his arm.

    “The best looking?”

     “Most definitely, hehehe,” she grinned.

     He laughed dryly, nervously her tiny hand slipping into his as they made their way through the rough going, avoiding brushy clumps, and the spongy wetness of a shallow spring, a sultry, peppery smell suddenly permeating the air.

     He was conscious of feeling depersonalized, disembodied, him not really being him. A dog barked off in the distance, his yellow hound responding briefly, doggy territory intact for now. New smells greeted them, now the heavy scent of fresh cut clover hay. A bee buzzed round his head, and he casually brushed it away. They continued to walk inexorably towards God knows what, as she talked through him as if she were on television, and him the audience . He resisted a sudden impulse to make a comical face, thumbs in his ears, fingers wiggling, or something equally silly.

      “It is as I remembered it,” she said as they approached the old wooden structure both leaning , panting some, as they walked up the embankment, “Doesn’t anything ever change around here?”  The trestle was rarely used now, few trains passing through here anymore, economics dictating the use of trucks rumbling along the main arteries. The noise of children playing downstream was heard, her impractical shoes made clicking sounds on the old wood. She walked directly to the center of the bridge, turning  to face him. “Remember when we would hang on for dear life when the trains went by,” she blurted out breathlessly. He didn’t remember ever being on the bridge when the train went by, but he was familiar with the distorted memories of those who had got out, later needing memories to ground their pasts. Her shoes made hard sounds once again as she moved around, peering through the light between the wood at the lazy, muddy water moving below, “Michael, why did you stay? Here I mean.”

     “ I don’t know- where would I go?”

      “Why the hell did you buy this land?”

     “Good pasture, good fences, lots of water.” 

     “Doesn’t it bother you, -what happened here?”

     “Not anymore, that was a long, long time ago.”

      Her fingers bemusedly drew circles on his arm. “It has been on my mind lately.”

     “Oh?” he replied as a weary teacher would humor a favorite pupil,” Is that why you phoned three times for no reason in the last two weeks?”

      “Yeah, I have been thinking about what happened for years. My therapist calls it displacement of work stress, and other shit and all, but I don’t believe her.”

     His manner now that of a concerned parent, a little condescending, a little in awe of his troubled adolescent , “You have been seeing a shrink?”

     Smiling conspiratorially, as if she was sharing a naughty secret, she whispered, “ Yeah, she says that I am clinically depressed, and at risk of self harm,” nodding her head mock solemnly. Turning away from him quickly, she began to cry softly, “That summer was so beautiful, so free, so innocent Michael. I thought life was always going to be like that- full of love and hope.  What happened may have been the defining moment in my life, but it is also a great puzzle, a knot I will never learn the inner workings of, a big ol’ ball of yarn I may never unravel.” He gently rubbed her back, soothing him as much as her.

     As he slipped behind her, cradling her in his arms, she flushed slightly, a still presentiment falling over them. Her flush heightened, her face contorting as his strong, hairy laborer’s arms increased the pressure on her neck, she breathing  a soulful sigh of relief, her intuitions of the mystery haunting her confirmed.

   The children’s racket ceased as the giant splash was heard distinctly throughout the curvature of the valley, a natural outdoor stage shell transporting the sound with great clarity. The children resumed play immediately, their undeveloped minds incapable of assigning importance to events, or of carrying small memories forward in time.

      He leaned over the railing, impassively watching her rise to the surface, a contented smile on her face, strangely at peace, her body drifting, turning over and over, her dress billowing, the children’s voices abruptly erupting into screams of terror, little witnesses to the aftershock of a past memory.

     He was tired, very tired, an immense weariness weighing on him, physical in it’s experience, his feet in psychic mud as he struggled, stumbling up the hill, the warm sun on his back. The screen door slammed, the tea kettle rattled on the stove. He turned it off and was forced to seek his bed, sinking, tumbling out of consciousness. He awoke with a start, his forehead dotted with perspiration, his bed wet with sickly guilt, his parched throat constricted. The amber liquid was so very cool on his dryness,  the rising bubbles fascinating to him.

     The yellow dust billowing on the road on the edge of the horizon was his first indication that the inevitable was now actual. The black and white rolled into the yard, the trailing  yellow cloud catching up with it. The mountie fit his hat over his crisp, trimmed hair, notebook firmly in hand walking purposefully, grimly to the door.