Stories from the Walk

He muttered, cursing the boots he wore as he walked and stumbled along the rough paths through the woods along the lake.  He'd planned this for a couple of days, thinking he had considered everything but he realized now he had worn boots for smooth pavement, not for dirt chunked up by horse's hooves over many years.  He knew now that when he'd ridden these paths on horseback with his dad, he'd taken for granted how much of the labor was being done by the horses.  Idiot.  His dad had taught him better.

The cold air, the first blast of the autumn season, made his nose run heavy.  He dragged a ragged leather glove across, failing to do anything more than string out the snot, giving him one more thing to regret.  He wished he'd remembered to bring a handkerchief.  His dad always had one at the ready.

Tucker ran ahead, bounding through the high grass along the path with the abandonment and joy only a Labrador can find in any random moment.  The sunlight reflected off of the chocolate coat of the dog, making him seem more marvelous as he vaulted through the landscape.  It made him smile to see the young dog so glad to be out, even if without his playmate, another Lab named Izzy.  Tucker's mate was back at home, left there because of a bad knee and a general inclination to ignore her master's call once her nose found something more appealing.  He wasn't in the mood for that kind of frustration today.

The gusty wind blew clouds across the sky above, casting shadows on him and bringing a momentary chill before the sun worked its way through to bring some brief early fall warmth.  The leaves of so many trees around him were giving in to the challenge of a new season, having dried up and no longer able to keep their grip on the branches that gave them life.  Their rustling on the ground spoke to him like little songs of random vowels, whispering lyrics he couldn't quite make out.

The surplus army jacket he wore was a good shield against the cool air.  He thought how in a few weeks these temperatures would seem warm but now their newness was still shocking and it was all he could do to stay warm.  Stumbling over an exposed root in the path, he thought how appropriate it was that the day marked a change of season.  His own season had changed just two days before.

His neck was beginning to feel the weight of the chain, three feet of length connected on either end to two boots, a pair of calvary boots his father had worn for a time.  Years ago the two of them, along with their friend, Bob, had joined a Civil War re-enactment calvary unit to ride horses and shoot guns.  That was about when his dad's health had begun to turn and the battle with chronic pulmonary obstructive disease, lung disease, became pitched, even though they were already celebrating his victory of having survived lung cancer surgery a few years before.  He had won a battle but not the war.  The war lasted fourteen years since his cancer diagnosis, nine years since the COPD had begun its advance.  The last two years were the hardest fought and the most painfully lost. 

Only a few of the Civil War re-enactments were done by the three comrades as the older man's health tugged at the practicalities of participation.  A rainy event in Kentucky that resulted in hauling the old man around with oxygen tanks and ill-tempered horses in tow made the whole thing seem ridiculous.  His dad never faltered, though.  He dug in with the rest of them, always smiling through the mess of the event, shooting a wink to his stressed son from time to time.  He'd been through worse and at least he was going through this with his son.

The tall black leather calvary boots, with their square toes and big pull straps, were marked with silver paint.  One with "BRH 12-20-38" and the other with "RIP 10-17-11".  Inside the second boot was a scrolled piece of paper upon which was written a requiem, rhymed lyrics to a song the amateur musician carrying the boots had fashioned earlier in the year when a prior episode threatened his father's extinction for the fourth time in two years. Even then he knew it was only a matter of time, a matter of running out of divine miracles, before the words would have context.

The graveside funeral, without memorial service or other ceremony, was a few days away and he had foolishly appointed himself the officiant two years earlier during a terse conversation with his mother beside his dad's first death bed.  His wife had questioned whether he could handle it or not and wisely told him it would be best if he got through his own mourning before the event.  So here he was.

His need for ritual was a surprise to him most of all.  His education and own theology did not require any such process and yet he desired a moment to abandon himself to the rawest of his emotions.  The day after his dad's death he rummaged through a cluttered basement to find the boots, which were discovered hanging overhead as he searched carefully on the floor below.  Typical.

He took the boots without mention to his mother.  He had started with grandiose visions for a dramatic moment, finding peace in nature and embracing a tangible element of memories shared by he and his dad.   But the wrong turn that led him a few miles in the opposite direction of his destination now frustrated his purposes as he had been taken far away from the peninsula at the lake he had remembered would be just perfect.  The horses had always known where to go better than he. 

So now he recovered from the error and was delighted to watch as Tucker had gone ahead to find the jut into the lake that was his target.  The dog stood at its edge, wagging his tail and looking at the water ten feet below to see if he could negotiate the leap.

"Easy boy.  That's more than you can do." 

A whimpered response indicated the dog's disagreement but he re-focused his attention on a passing leaf blown inland and away from the minor cliff and an argument was avoided.  But this was the place for which the man had been searching.

As he looked up for the right tree he was surprised to find few candidates ready to lend their branches to a hanging boot memorial.  Nothing looked right above and yet to him the spot seemed so perfect down below.  He drafted a reluctant provider, hacking away at the blackberry bush grown around its trunk so he could move close enough to swing the boots and their heavy tether into a crook between a branch and the trunk.  His jacket caught the thorns and he fought nature's grab to force his way close enough to make his attempt.  Pausing to catch his breath he realized what a sight it must have been for anyone to witness should they care to watch.

A 43-year old bald man in the middle of the woods, fighting the wind and the undergrowth of the very forest from which he sought assistance just to hang a pair of cheap reproduction boots in a tree.  Ridiculous.  He began to laugh, slightly at first and then heavily, expelling tears amidst the chuckles and then stumbling into the tree from the convulsions of his fit.  Ridiculous. 

He began to practice his swing of the unwieldy device, catching other branches in the backswing, stopping to prune them into submission and then trying again, dropping the boots over and over.  Once his delivery was proven to be workable he eyed the crook in the tree and cast the boots up, landing them in the tree, although a bit imperfectly to show the painted parkings on the boots.  He looked up, minimally satisfied with his work at first, stepping away to see it from another perspective.

But tears blinded his eyes and the boots were a blur, shifting in the strong winds and his ritual seemed more silly then and he began to worry that he had undermined his dad's memory with such a stunt.  He dropped to the ground, yelling and moaning, finding the wilderness of the place safe for this moment.  He had not yielded to these emotions yet and it felt good to let them have their way. 

However long that lasted was lost on him but he was brought back to the moment by Tucker's attack from behind.  The dog had read his master's prone position as an invitation to wrestle and he was all in for the moment.  Briefly the man thought to rebuke the dog for ruining his orchestrated drama, but then realized the wisdom of the interruption.

Tucker was fully engaged in the real moment of the now.  He was finding the joy in front of him without regard for the loss of before.  Even though a dog's limited sensibilities explain away the applicability of such simplistic wisdom during a time of human strain, the truth of the dog's perspective hit the man like a hammer. 

He gave in to the dog's demands for attention and found himself wrestling with the happy-go-lucky sage, rolling across the damp ground and laughing all the while, celebrating the joy of the moment.  The dog was merciless with his excitement, growling and yipping at his master's enthusiasm for the fight.

Finally, he collected himself back up, leveled another gaze at the memorial that was destined to hang only for a winter, if even that long, and turned away to follow Tucker back up the path out of the woods.  They had traveled several hundred yards when he began to re-consider the whole thing.  He turned and ran back to the tree where the boots hung and disclaimed the entire place as being the wrong spot.  Some minor madness overcame him as he scrambled up the narrow trunk, nearly ruining himself in the effort, and trying to fish the boots out of the tree.

The dog watched from far off, quietly sitting and unable to interpret his master's madness.  They were already leaving, why had they come back?

The dog watched the man stumble out of the tree after having knocked the boots out and a bit down the cliff toward the lake.  He pushed through more underbrush, sliding down the cliff a bit to reach the boots and dragged them back to the top.

"It's not the right spot, Tucker.  Where's the right spot?  Help me."

The dog wagged his tail in response but had no hope of understanding this command.  He jumped and encircled his master, nipping at the boots and his master's coat but received no response to the invitation for play.

"I don't know why I thought that was the right spot.  Where do these belong?" muttered the imploding mourner.

He walked up the path, stumbling and falling, unable to move his legs normally.  The weight of the boots seemed greater than their mass and his vision was blurred by the runoff from his emotions.  He grabbed fallen tree limbs and began swinging with anger at defenseless trees along the path, punching them for an unknown crime.  He collapsed in the path, hugging the boots.  This time the dog waited and watched.

______________________________

Some time passed before he looked up.  He sighed and cast his eyes ahead, a bit off the path and down the slope toward the lake to see an old tree, rotted somewhat with a large hole in its trunk that had clearly been used as a den door from time to time.  Next to it was a young strong tree, growing in the shade of the older tree and a bit downslope.  The younger tree's location benefitted from the older tree's greater roots that diverted flow off the water shed in which they stood around the younger tree so its roots had been able to find a place to take hold.

The older tree was broken in many places from many storms and its days were coming to an end soon.  Its angle suggested it might one day fall upslope and provide even more shelter to the younger tree below it.  The younger tree was growing up straight and strong and reached up to the light in the forest canopy.  As the older tree's branches had begun to fade in recent years and hang low it made space in the canopy for the younger tree's branches to drink in the sunlight so important to its growth.

He knew that this was the place.  He moved into the timberline with the boots swung across his shoulders until he came to the base of the younger tree, eyeing a strong crook about ten feet above him.  All around him the forest floor was clear and it was easy to swing the boots until he had the rhythm that felt right.  He cast up the boots and they found their place right away in the cradle of the younger tree's branches.

Behind him Tucker stood in the path wagging his tail with a polite whimper suggesting they should be done by now.  His master smiled, promised to come along, and began his walk home.

There is a man waiting in a house in a small town outside a larger than small city.  The city is in a country that has become smaller than its dreams, but the dreams were so great that one would be foolish to have ever thought them to be nearly realized.  The dreams were never the man's but he always believed in the promise of them anyway. 

He believed that if he worked hard he would be rewarded for his pursuit of happiness and that the rewards would be certain.  He believed that, being the third son of his father and born a twin to the second son whom he was so unlike, his pursuit would rescue him from his humble beginnings in a much smaller place than the town in which he now waits.  He does not now believe in long sentences to describe what he believes or in long sentences at all, which is perhaps why he so rarely speaks.

The house in which the man waits is larger than the one in which the man was born, and still larger than the one in which his own son was born.  It is not a mansion of any sort but it is a fine house for a man who began in such a small place.  It is the reward for the man's pursuit.  It is the reward for the man's work repairing airplanes for a company that thought him too expensive and that would complain to the man's labor union about these costs whenever it could.  Since the union had always made sure the man was paid the man always made sure he voted for the union's political candidates.  It had been a good arrangement for the man.

He is not by himself in the fine house but he is nearly alone there. 

His son visits occasionally to inquire about his health.  Happily for the man, they usually do not talk about things of relational concern, although he once asked his son if he knew that the man loved the son.  The son then reminded him of a time at a nursing home two years before when they talked about things they had never discussed.  They both thought death was eminent at the time and worked to clear up matters that were gray between them.  It was one of the few times the son had heard the man express love for him by saying the word, and it meant much to the son.  It was one of the few times the son had done so himself as he was afraid to offer the sentiment before it was offered to him, lest the offering be ill-received.  The two spoke often on the phone when the man could not get his modern television to work as he wished.  But the man had not heard well for many years and so conversations were shouted, not out of anger but out of desperation, although frustration usually crept in.  In any case, shouted conversations never seemed to mean much to either of them because the labor for them both was so great.

There is in the fine house a cat with a silly name. The cat was given to the man by acquaintances who had found the cat abandoned in the old neighborhood where the man once lived.  The cat is fluffy with black and white fur and needs brushing often.  The man cares for the cat and the cat seems usually satisfied to receive the care.  The cat is occasionally less satisfied and will then relieve herself in the man's fine house, which used to upset the man.

A woman who is the man's wife also lives in the fine house but it may not be correct to say that they live together.  Togetherness implies a desired coordination of activity or co-existence, and such a desire could not be said to be true of the man and the woman.  Sometime, years before the son's memory of why, they began to quit talking and expressing between them their hopes and dreams and their affection for one another. They replaced those conversations with shouts (maybe because the man did not hear well, or maybe because they had forgotten or never really learned to talk) and time spent working making the house fine.  It took a lot of work to make the house as fine as they wanted because they lived in a neighborhood above their income.  The appearance of their life was not easy to maintain on garage sale purchases and a second hand Cadillac.  It took work and time to create the life they wanted the world to see. 

The woman struggles greatly to be satisfied with the picture of her life.  She considers the man to be only a marginally acceptable assistant in her efforts and often wished she had selected more carefully when she was young.   Of course, how could she know he would become so quiet?  At least he has done good work under her instruction and fixed or made the things she required to be repaired or constructed.  When he is gone she will have to find a replacement for those services but she doubts the son will do.  He is always reluctant to help which she finds is quite a disappointment.

She often sits in the attached garage or on the porch of the fine house and smokes cigarettes throughout the day and thinks about these things.  She never smokes inside the house because her son told her it made things smell terrible and she does not want her fine house to smell as such in case someone came to visit, although people rarely did.  She works hard to clean the fine house and has fought with the cat over its self-asserted right to pee everywhere.  The cat usually wins and this makes the man smile sometimes.

A few times in recent years the man has surreptitiously smoked in a bathroom in the fine house, and then lied about having done it, which angers the woman greatly.  He isn't supposed to be smoking at all since he has been sick and, in any event, he had effectively quit years before.  He often complains to her that it is hard not to smoke with the smell of it everywhere, even on her.  She thinks him to be either weak or reckless for not being able to resist the addiction she has not yet decided to overcome and often complains to the son about this.  The son never seems to understand her and she certainly does not understand why he can't just agree with her.  She has wanted agreement with anyone for quite some time.

The man is visited by others, with some frequency, but they are paid to do so.  Nurses, social workers, chaplains, all from the hospice company that provided support for him as he waited.  They are very good, in the son's estimation, at providing compassionate support and care.  They are not so good, in his estimation, at understanding that not everyone understands love and compassion very well, even at times such as these, certainly not the woman.

The man has taken to lying about things in recent years, although he was not known as such a man before.  He is embarrassed for his addictions, for his failings and he is unable to understand that there can be any grace for him, much less accept it if it was offered.  When confronted about any such things he will deny them until pressed into admission, usually by the son.  The son is intolerant of the man's falseness, not so much because of the poor character it reveals but because of the difficulties it creates for giving the man care and responding to his needs.  His son complains to the son's wife often that the man seems to have no sense of God's love for him, but the son doesn't know how to convince the man.

The man responds to the son's demands for candor because the son has, in fact, saved his life at least once since all this had began.  Even when the man had first been in the hospital over two years before, anticipating death because then doctors had promised it would come soon, the son had not given up.  In the nursing home to which the man was moved because he had not expired quickly enough at the hospital, the son made choices and took action to rehabilitate the man, despite the knowing looks of nurses and doctors who knew this work would be in vain.

Nonetheless, for reasons the man does not understand, he remembers his son came everyday all day long to rehabilitate the man's limbs, atrophied from too long in a hospital bed.  He recalls dimly the son's claims that the exercises were from his computer or internet and that they had to do them on their own because the insurance wouldn't pay for such treatment to a man expected to die.  In two weeks the man left the nursing home to go to his fine house, walking out the front door under his own strength.  The celebration between the two was muted by so many years of silence.  It was also a bit undone by the collapse of the man's bowels en route to his fine home that necessitated the son to carry the man through a gas station to a restroom in order that the man could clean himself, oxygen tank in tow.  So many people, without offering help, oogled at the spectacle that the man's humiliation, which began when his son wiped his ass in the nursing home, was complete.  He was no longer a man but a mere child to his own son.

Since then he has been mostly at home in his fine house, with a few trips to the emergency room following a pulmonary episode induced by closet smoking.  In those instances his memory is usually diluted to nothing and he does not recall his wife complaining to his son and paramedics that he'd done it again, against her instructions to not smoke in the fine house.  The scene would usually unfold with her shouting these things from just outside the front door of the fine house while smoking, the uneven balance of pressure between the inside of the fine house and the outside drawing smoke from her cigarette into where the paramedics were working to recover the man from his oxygen deprivation.  This is usually maddening for the son.

The son was surprised during one such event by the woman's presence inside the fine house, not smoking.  She and the hospice nurse were standing over the man slumped in his chair, making him comfortable, which is quite the point of hospice, after all.  The nurse advised them that death was eminent although she observed only initial signs of active dying.  The son was distracted by the phrase, as he always had been when used with respect to the man's expected demise.  Weren't we all actively dying?

The choice to be made in that moment over the man's slumped body was whether or not to let the nurse make him comfortable and wait for the end or to suspend hospice care and call for an ambulance to take the man to the emergency room to see if he might be recovered.  The son thought it was of no use to go to the hospital but the woman surprised him by saying she didn't think it was yet his time.  So often had she expressed to the son the death of the man in order to relieve her burden that the son never expected her defense of his life.

The son resents her resentment of the man believing greatly that she used up his life so completely that she owes to the man a commitment of support in his dying season.  He has offered to her the promise that she will receive from the son the same affection and compassion she gives to the man, but the son does not think she understands.

The man knew nothing of these events because so many details of recent years regularly liberated from the confines of his mind, especially those too sad to keep captive.

He wonders a great deal about the woman and the son and why they can't get along better.  He cannot tell if he has done something wrong or if their constant disappointment in one another has nothing to do with him.  He was long the head of their house and should responsible for the family's contentment, but they were both adults able to decide for themselves, after all.  He remembers how much he loved his own mother and how gentle she had been with him when his father was not.  He wishes for this between the woman and the son but did not know how to make it so.

He remembers being able to paint pictures of things and build something from nothing but his imagination, more than just repairing the odds and ends brought home by the woman from garage sales.  He knows this has always impressed others, especially the son, and he wishes that he was able now to do such things again.  He cannot.

The son has, from time to time, asked him about God things the man didn't think he could possibly know or understand.  The son is unable to reconcile with the man's refusal discuss things spiritual the claim the man had once made to a hospital social worker that he was Presbyterian.  The social worker checked that box on the admission form but the son was unable to check that box in his own experience with the man as the man had never made any material expression of faith to him.  The man's reluctance to express to anyone the nature of his relationship with his creator made suspect that there was any such relationship at all.

Now the man has waited for his passing for more than two years, which is a long time to anticipate anything, especially eternity.

As he now waits in his fine house he is unable to think of these things and thinks only of the pain of his next labored breath and whether or not the cat needs brushing again.

copyright 2011 Michael Humphrey

His mood turned suddenly, darkening a bit from the hopeful rhythm of just moments before.  Disappointing news can cause a dramatic shift in one's mood when it is unexpected.

"Aaron, are you alright?" asked his wife of nearly nineteen years.

No answer.

"Come on, honey.  It'll be alright."

Sure, he thought.  It'll be alright for you.  You hadn't been counting on this. 

He sat and stared at his breakfast plate, with a strained expression, running through the possibilities.  What other options were there?  He could hear Susan in the background, droning along like a Charlie Brown teacher's voice and making no impression upon his thoughts.

This wasn't simple to solve because there weren't any substitutes, and solutions like those of a twelve year old Aaron using water instead of milk in his Cheerios wasn't the kind of thinking that would help at a time like this.  His thoughts drifted to the culpable party in this instance and he wasn't even aware that he had begun to glare at Susan.

"Aaron!  Really?  Are you going to let bad news like this ruin things?" Susan challenged.

"You don't understand."

"Then explain it to me.  Explain to me why I should be the target of your frustration and my Sunday is going to be dragged down along with yours."

This was a trap, he knew it.  Whether or not laid intentionally by Susan, this was a trap.  If he explained his perspective . . .  his pain, his irrationality would become the topic of a Sunday morning's debate such as bad political pundits exchange on This Week with George Stephanopolous.  He could see it now.

Stephanopolous:  Susan, you've been reporting for years on the Aaron administration's policies toward the subject.  Have they gone too far this time?

Susan:  Well, George, this administration certainly isn't demonstrating a capacity to be responsive and flexible to ever changing domestic events such as you might expect from mature leadership.  This isn't the first time, either.  Don't forget the garage door incident.

Stephanopolous:  Remind the viewers what you're referring to, Susan.

Susan:  Just six months ago administration policy with respect to garage door security was breached due to an internal oversight in which a garage door at the Off-white House was left open overnight.  At the time, administration officials, and President Aaron himself communicated to the public that no unauthorized releases had occurred.  Privately, however, it is well known that President Aaron was embarrassed by the incident and chastised Off-white House officials for their lack of diligent enforcement of the administration policy on garage door security.

Stephanopolous:  Susan, what do you think this says about the status of this administration's competency to lead?

Susan:  I think it says that this administration has a lot of growing up to do in order to mature into then kind of government that can lead into really stormy seas.

Stephanopolous:  Thanks for being with us, Susan.

Susan:  Thank you, George.

Aaron hated it when people replied "thank you" to being thanked for participating in an interview.  It's "You're welcome," for petesake.

"Aaron!  Snap out of it and talk to me!"

"I just don't understand why this kind of thing has to happen, Susan."

"Well, maybe that's because you don't understand how this kind of thing gets done around here, Aaron."

Crap, Aaron thought. Her tone shifted, which means he either had to give this up or go all the away.  Maybe there really wasn't a problem and we were just dealing with an oversight, he thought.

Determined, he moved to the kitchen pantry and began searching, tossing to the side what didn't work.  He created a pile in the counter of dusty jars and boxes of ingredients and toppings they would never use.  His Labrador, Smuckers, moved in cautiously to nose the discards for recovery opportunities, sensing his master's mood and being careful not to draw Aaron's attention under the circumstances.

"Aaron!  You're making a mess, you psycho!"

Oh, yeah, he thought.  I'm the psycho until I actually find it.  Then you'll be found out for the lazily indifferent and uncaring wife you've become.  Let them put THAT on the Sunday morning tv shows.

"Aaron, we've got marmalade.  Come in here and eat your toast," Susan pleaded, watching a disaster unfold in her kitchen. "Your eggs and bacon are getting cold."

Smuckers began to groan, with little agitated yips reflecting the mood of his master.  He could sense a climax approaching.

"Ah, hah!" Aaron yelled.  "Ah, hah!  I knew we'd have some.  I knew it!"

He ran the full seven steps back to the kitchen table, jubilantly slamming down onto the table the treasure for which he had toiled.  Susan rolled her eyes, trying not to give any credit to her husband's achievement.

"I don't see what the big deal is," she said, continuing to read her newspaper and sipping coffee.  "It's just grape jelly."

"The big deal is, my dear, that we are a grape jelly house."

Susan stared at him, turned back to her newspaper and coffee, responding in a muffled tone under her breath.

"What's that, Susan?" inquired Aaron sarcastically.  "I didn't catch that.  Was that your apology?"

She lowered the newspaper enough to glare at Aaron over the top edge, which made the headline facing Aaron a caption for her momentary photo:  "Domestic Turmoil Threatens The Presidency".

"I said, 'You're an idiot!'"

He smiled and thought to himself, "Maybe.  But I'm an idiot with grape jelly on my toast."

copyright 2011 Michael Humphrey