Chapter 2 ( I am printing this just as steve saved it....although, towards the end you will see that steve tried some names on his characters.)
The next day the air turned cold. It had stormed during the night, the sort of front that picks up fuel from the Gulf, and then comes through like a locomotive. And the first truly cold snap of the fall followed on the storm’s heels. The sky turned a deep blue, and you could hear the breeze in the pines. It was my favorite sort of day, crisp and alive.
I found the pathway to their house, and chuckled as I passed through my broken fence. I had never even noticed their house before. I suppose I knew it was there, but it was separated from my property by dense woods. It was about the same size as mine, but whereas mine was a cabin, this was a cottage. As it turned out, they had only moved in early that summer.
I had smelled a wood fire before I had come out of the trees, and now saw the smoke rising from their chimney.
There was an oyster shell drive that came and made a circle in the front. It was bordered by a number of tall crepe myrtles, and a stately old Live Oak in the center. One car, an older Volkwagon convertible, was parked in the drive.
There was clearly some sort of reclamation under way in the flower beds, since the ground had been recently turned, and there were bags of potting soil and a large pile of cedar mulch next to the drive. The back yard had been cleared out up to the creek, so that it could be easily seen from the house. I then remembered fishing in that creek as a boy, and wondered if I should try that again.
The house itself was painted white and had a tin roof. There was a wide front porch with a wooden floor like mine. I love the sound of my feet crunching on the shell drive, and then the hollow drumming of footsteps on a planked floor.
I stepped up to the door and rapped on the window. I could see the man hunched before the fire, with a poker in his hand. He rose slowly, and came to the door. I was ready to greet him, but then realized that we had not introduced ourselves the day before.
“I brought your wine back. Nobody should drink alone…too often.”
“Well, we’ll see if we can help with that bottle. By the way, I’m ____. Come in.”
“Thanks for inviting me. I’m ____.”
I stepped into the house. The center of it was one large open room. I took it in while ____ rummaged for the corkscrew. The kitchen spread across the back, with large windows opening toward the creek and the woods. It was separated from the den by a counter. “_______ will be out in a second.” ______.
The furniture was arranged around the fireplace, with two very comfortable looking chairs, each surrounded on the floor by a clutter of books and magazines. And there was also one very plush sofa.
It seemed that there were bedrooms on each side of the center room. It was a very warm place, and I was about to say something to that effect when _____ swept into the room.
“Hello new neighbor!” She walked and kissed ____ on the cheek and smiled at him as he eased the cork from the bottle, and began to pour. She handed glasses around. We all three paused over our glasses a moment, then sipped.
“Let’s see…can you make a salad?”, she asked me.
“I most certainly can.”
“Well then, you may make a salad with anything you can find, I will wave my magic wand over the oven and see if something wonderful won’t appear, and dear ____, can ensure that all glasses remain filled.”
“First, it’s vespers,” said ____, and he reached for a small leather book on the counter. I looked at him curiously.
“Did you know,” he asked me, “that many old cultures held that the new day began with the sunset, not the sunrise? It’s the loneliest time of day, so, we like to honor it with friends, a little prayer and a toast.” He didn’t ask me if I minded, and I suppose that I didn’t, though this was a little foreign to me.
He opened the book and read this prayer (I found it again later and wrote it down, along with a line, with the initials W.B. underneath, that was penciled on the inside cover of the book- “There is always a fair allotment of lonely men who used nighttime gatherings to fend off between darkfall and bedtime the thoughts that come to the lonely and are hard to suffer alone.”):
“May the Lord Almighty grant me and those I love a peaceful night and a perfect end. Keep watch, Dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love’s sake. Amen.”
There was a silent pause, and _____ said, “To holes in fences, and new neighbors!” We all raised our glasses, and then set about our various tasks. I found any number of good salad additions, and tried to make as impressive an offering as possible. I may have gone overboard.
As we worked, and then settled at the table, they began the interrogation. Both of them asked question after question, taking every little detour to try to put together my entire life story. At times I felt I was talking too much, but they were persistent, and listened in such a way that makes you tell more than you would have intended.
Two hours passed without notice. We had settled by the fire and were working on the end of our second bottle of wine, when _____, who was sitting on the couch, suddenly pulled a quilt over herself and laid down. She appeared to be asleep in seconds.
____ said, “She does that. She may or may not rejoin us.”
“I’ll probably just make my way back, then, before I fall asleep in this chair.” We both rose to our feet. _____ lifted her head from the sofa and asked, “Do you have electricity and heat in that cabin of yours?” I said, “I do.” “Good. Then you can have us over next time.” Her head fell back to the pillow.
____ and I both laughed and shook hands. “Thanks for having me over. I’m glad to have hospitable neighbors.”
“Do you want to try and fix that fence?” he asked.
“Not really. I cancelled my buffalo order, and it seems fitting that people ought to be able to pass back and forth.”
“Good. We’ll work on something else sometime and pretend we know what we’re doing.”
“Deal. Oh, and you can borrow that old truck anytime.” I headed out the door, and made my way back along the path, warm and well fed. And they were still a mystery.
In the coming weeks, we began to pass freely between our two places. A couple days could pass without seeing them, but soon, one or the other of us would appear at the door.
I frequently found them together, on hands and knees, tending to their revitalized flower beds. Sometimes I joined in on the heavy work, but it seemed to be a ritual for them, something they loved doing in each other’s presence, so I didn’t intrude too often.
Sam came over and lent a hand in screening in a section of my front porch. Together we were able to do a fair job of it. I knew I would want to be able to sit there once the weather warmed, but that I would be devoured by mosquitoes in the evenings. I bought a chiminea for the porch, and we ran a metal stack through a hole in the roof. Now I could work and sit by the fire inside and out.
This screened room soon became my favorite workplace, even on colder days. Sam and Mahlon gave me a small, weathered writing table and chair that they had discovered in their attic, and I could write there while overlooking the creek and woods.
From my vantage point, I discovered that I had many hidden neighbors. Often in the early morning and evening, I could see whitetail deer moving through a track in the woods and out into my small field. I also caught a glimpse, on one or two occasions, of a coyote as he trotted past. I hoped that the other creatures would stay on guard when he came around. But I couldn’t help but feel for him. He howled in such a forlorn way at night.
The two had borrowed my truck for an errand one very rainy day, and later pulled up to my cabin. They both dashed to the cover of the porch, Sam carrying a large cardboard box with a tarp over it that he retrieved from the back. “Dogs!”, she said, “we need dogs!” Inside the box were two very frisky pups of some dubious hound/shepherd descent. “We each get one. You pick first.”
I had never thought it fair to keep a dog in the city, but out here it seemed a sin to not have several. I pulled them both up by the scruff, and gave them the once over. A boy and a girl, I chose the girl. I set her down and she began to leap up and down, then scamper around the porch. We put her brother down and the two tumbled around and made themselves at home.
For years to come, except for times she was scouring the woods with Dillard (as he was soon called), she was by my side. I named her “Sass”.
The mornings were sacred for their solitude. One morning I drove down to the beach to watch the sun rise and to run. I passed Mahlon coming from the other direction along the water’s edge. She smiled and said “Neighbor...” I said, “Neighbor…”. And we both walked on without another word.
I began to love keeping vespers. I wasn’t so sure about praying, although I tried to be reverent enough. Those evenings became sacred for being shared in company with friends. Lingering over dinner was a rich pleasure. Sometimes other neighbors, or members of my family (and even the occasional date) were invited, but many evenings, it was the three of us. I was twenty years their junior, but they treated me like a welcome peer. We soon moved into that economy of friendship where there is no obligation- no guilt or need to keep a tally of who did what for who. I honored their solitude, but was free to come and go as I pleased. And one or both of them often appeared at the cabin, Mahlon bringing me something to eat or reading me something she had read. “Listen to THIS!” she would say. And Sam would come to sit and smoke.
Slowly, through the days, their lives unfolded before me. I began to ask them questions now, and they were as free in the telling as they had been in asking. I had felt a mystery about them when we first had met, and now I was beginning to see what it might be. I had been, in the last few months, in the presence of a great love. That love became the story that I must now tell.