 |
| Author | The Book | Movie Pix | Reviews | Sample | Shop | News | Setting | Book 2 | Book 3 |
|
A glint of sunlight from the snow resting on the slopes of Pine Mountain caught the eye of the old man that fateful afternoon. Slowly he straightened him-self as he turned to gaze at the broad shoulders of the peak that dominated the valley. The ache in his lower back com-pelled him to rely on the support of his trusty hoe. “Well, Old One, you call out to me again!” he said as he reached into his rear pocket for his handkerchief. The sun was strong for that time of year. Rarely did the tem-perature reach the eighties in April—after all, they were at five thousand feet of elevation. The old man needed relief from his sweat. He removed his battered gardening hat and wiped his bald pate. His eyes absorbed the mountain’s beauty. “So craggy. So white with snow, and so crisply outlined against a deep blue sky.” He discovered that he was whispering his thoughts, as he was sometimes inclined to do. “Did you call?” a woman asked. It belonged to the wife of the old man. He usually thought of himself as “the old man”, but he never thought of her as “the old woman”. He still saw her as the schoolgirl he had met over sixty years ago. She could never be “the old woman” to him. It was only his accursed mirror that reminded him of his age. And the aching back. And the many prescriptions he need- ed. He certainly didn’t want to accept that age had caught up to him, but it had. “No, love. I was just talking to Old Craggle-Puss up there,” he said while pointing a wrinkled finger toward the mountain. “Sometimes, Joseph, I wonder about you,” the woman said with a well-worn voice. She shook her head as she returned to her petunia bed. “Sometimes? When haven’t you wondered about me?” he shot back with a chuckle heard only in a comfortable, loving relationship that spans decades, toils, children and fears. “When you have that look in your eye.” “What look?” “Honestly! Fifty three years of marriage and you still ask ‘what look?’” You just like to hear me talk about it.” She said, with a whisper of a smile on her face. “Talk about what?” he said with an exaggerated shrug of confusion. “Well, they don’t call them ‘bedroom eyes’ for nothing,” Anne giggled, blushing slightly. Joseph loved making Anne laugh and hearing the sound of her giggle. After all of these years, he thought, she still falls for the routine. He watched as she turned the soil over in her flower garden. How many times had he stood watching as she worked steer manure into the ground? It must be fifty or more, he imagined. Well...there were those two years that they had lived in a cramped apartment so long ago. There was no ground available for her. She had planted flowers in a window box that he had built out of pine scraps from the housing tract down the street. “How long have you planted flower gardens, Anne?” Joseph inquired. “Huh? What?” “Flower gardens. How long have you planted them?” “Oh, I don’t know. Must be around fifty years by now. Except for those years we lived in that crowded apartment, I’ve had one every year,” she replied as she walked slowly over to her husband. He could tell that she felt like talking. He leaned his hoe against a pine tree and motioned with his right arm toward the chairs near the rear door of the house. “I think I could use a few minutes worth of rest,” she said wearily. “So could I.” Joseph watched her as she described what flowers she was planning to put in this year. He was a little concerned that she hadn’t been looking as strong as she had in years gone by. But then, he thought, he probably didn’t look that good either. Life takes its toll after seventy-eight years. Seventy-eight! He couldn’t believe it. It seemed like only yesterday that he was a twenty-five year old newlywed, fresh out of college. How could so many years have... “...and the worms...Joseph! Are you listening?” Anne broke into his wandering thoughts. “Huh? What? Worms?” Joseph stumbled back into the present. “Are you taking your pills? You seem so, I don’t know, so absentminded.” Anne leaned forward, concern etched in her face. “What is going on?” she asked as she gently touched his hand with her own. “Going on? Nothing. I’m just tired, that’s all. Tired.” “No. You’ve been struggling with something recently. What’s bothering you?” Anne’s voice was caring but persistent. “Why do you think that?” “Joseph, it’s me. Fifty-three years of marriage has taught me a few things—like how to recognize when something’s bothering you.” “I don’t know, Anne. I don’t know. I can’t seem to, well, seem to stop thinking about things...” Joseph trailed off. He turned his head back toward Mount Pinos. His mouth quivered, as if fighting back tears. “Things? What things?” Anne asked gently. “It’s hard to…” Joseph fiddled with the button on his lightweight jacket. “It’s hard to...” “Hard to talk about?” Anne finished his sentence. “Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I’m a whimpering five year old. It’s so damned embarrassing.” “I know it’s tough, Joey, but you need to talk about it.” Anne quietly whispered. She stripped away six decades of living, and called him by his childhood nickname. The tears flowed freely as he turned once more toward her. “I’m seventy-eight, Annie. Seventy-eight!” “And I’m seventy-two. So?” “I’m afraid,” he barely whispered. Anne reached out and squeezed his arm. It was good to feel her still strong grasp. “We’ve faced so many things over the years together. We can face anything. So you’re seventy-eight? You still have those wonderful sensitive feelings that made me fall in love with you. So our skin is a bit wrinkled? Inside, we’re still in our twenties.” “No Anne, it’s...” he was quiet as he bit his lip. “Tell me. What can be so bad? Worse than almost losing Sarah at birth? Worse than that time you had to go out of state for work? We can face this too, Joey.” Anne sat up straight as she pat his arm. “Time is running out. I’m scared of...of...” he faded off again. “Death?” Anne simply said what was on Joseph’s mind, if not his tongue. “Death.” Joseph repeated with a mixture of anguish and relief. “We’ve got lots of time, sweetheart. We’ve got so much we want to do.We have reasonably good health, a comfortable pension, a decent house, grandchildren to visit with, and our love. We’re doing fine.” Anne continued, her voice upbeat, “Besides,” she continued, “you have so many projects to finish—so many dreams to pursue.” “Yeah, but that’s the problem. There isn’t much time.” Joseph fought back tears. Anne put her hand under Joseph’s chin, and turned his head toward the mountains above. “When are you going to climb that mountain?” she asked, “You’ve been talking about it for thirty years.” “I’ve just been so busy.” “No! That’s not it. You keep putting it off! You’re down because you’re carrying so many regrets, so many unfinished pieces of business. What happened to that list of things you wanted to do? You know, the one you made seven or eight years ago?” “I still have it. It’s on my closet door.” Joseph began to perk up. “How many of those items have you done? Be honest, now!” Anne had a definite assertive tone in her voice. Joseph recognized this tone. It was the same tone of voice that pressured him to complete his graduate work, so long ago. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe three or four.” Joseph responded sheepishly. “I don’t think so, Joseph Marino. Three or four? Name two projects that you have finished!” “There was that shed that I built...” “Shed? You mean the one that we bought and had the boy from the hardware store put together? Try again.” She was pushing, he could tell. He knew that he couldn’t win this one, it was a repeat of the many “discussions” he had lost in the past. “Okay, maybe I haven’t finished many. But I’ve started a few.” “Hah! And they still sit there. Unfinished!” Joseph knew what she was doing. She was prodding him, in her own indomitable way. “Well, I can finish any one of them anytime,” he said with a grand sweep of his arm. “How about finishing one this month? Pick one!” she urged. “You pick one. It doesn’t matter which one. I could fi nis h any of them!” he boasted. “No, you wouldn’t want that. I’ve always had one specific one in mind, and you know it.” Joseph sunk into his chair. He knew which one she was getting at. It was the one that he’d done the least amount of work on. He had good intentions, but, well, something would always come up. “I know it,” Joseph said in the sheepish voice that had gotten so much practice this sunny afternoon. “Finish it, Joey.” Anne pleaded. He turned to look at her, and was startled to see that she was crying. Her eyes were wide and round, like the ones he remembered when she pleaded with him to have a baby so many years ago. “It means that much to you Annie?” he asked in a quiet, tender voice. She nodded as she wiped back the tears. “I’m sorry, honey. I knew it was important, but I underestimated how important. Why have you wanted it so much?” Joseph had gleaned his own insight in fifty-three years of marriage and he knew there was something Anne had never told him about the stones. “I’ve wanted an ivy-covered stone wall since I was a little girl.” Anne looked up, her gaze tracing the shadows growing on the snowy walls of the sentinel mountain overhead. “And I’m afraid...” “You’re afraid?” Joseph interrupted. “Yes. I’m afraid that I’ll never see it.” “Why is it so important?” he asked. She had never really explained her obsession with a stone wall. Like he dodged the topic of aging, Annie had never confided her closely kept story. Now, as they sat there together, he truly wanted to understand. “So very long ago, I used to wait for my father to come home from the mill,” Anne’s voice took on a reminiscent tone and her eyes welled slightly. “I used to hide behind the wall and pop up when he rounded the corner to come through the gate. Years later I’d hide a bottle of cold ice water for him. I’d smile, say hello, reach into the ivy, and pull out a cold drink. And when a pack of wild dogs chased me home from school, it was the strong stone wall that saved me from them. Joey, so many memories of my childhood were in that wall. It devastated me when they tore down that old wall and house to make room for that damned shopping center. Can you understand? Does it sound senseless? Part of my heart, my life, was there.” She had a grip on his arm that was vice-like. It was the same grip with which she had locked onto him during childbirth. “I understand,” he said in a whisper, “and I’ll do it. For you.” “For us, Joey...it is something we can do together. You do so much better when you accomplish something.You need goals. I need a wall. For us.” She wiped away the tears that had spilled over onto her cheeks. “For us. For us.” He repeated. The old man stood up and stretched his legs. They made a creaking sound and even felt creaky. He looked beyond the garden patch that they were working in and looked at the rudimentary beginnings of the stone wall along the road. He had to do it, he thought. For her. She had given him so much in this life. Companionship, children, understanding, and a good tongue lashing when he deserved it. He wanted to give her something back—something that touched deep inside her. The wall. “You go back to your garden, Annie. I need to look at something by the road.” Anne followed him part way down the path, but stopped to watch as he began straightening the few stones piled at the bend of the road. She smiled as she returned to working the soil of her beloved garden. Joseph took stock of the stones, and realized that he was woefully short. He estimated that he was only about five percent finished, or, more realistically, ninety-five percent unfinished. He turned to look back at his wife, who had resumed her stooped over position in the garden. “It will be finished, Annie. I promise you.” Joseph whispered the words with clenched fists. He realized that he didn’t feel seventy-eight at that moment. He knew he was a man of thirty-eight. Well, maybe forty-eight. He looked down at his wheelbarrow, which had been sitting next to the unfinished wall for a year now. It had rusted a bit over the winter, but with a little oil and elbow grease, it would soon be fit for transporting rocks again. He grabbed on to the wooden handles and lifted, feeling renewed strength in his arms. “Anne! Hey, Annie!” Joseph called out. “What?” Anne turned with a quizzical look on her face. “Forget seventy-eight! Look...forty-eight!” Joseph beamed as he struggled to push the rusty wheelbarrow up the slight slope toward the house. He was showing off. He felt like he was a teenager again. He remembered how he used to flex his muscles for Annie when they were in school and how she would giggle because a big, strong older boy paid attention to her. “Oooff....!” Joseph hit a rock with the wheelbarrow and nearly fell. “Hah! You haven’t changed a bit!” Anne laughed. “But…” Joseph started, as he was trying to catch his balance. “You still show off. Only now I can see through your ‘muscles’. You are still trying to impress me!” Anne laughed. Joseph regained his balance, and smiled a shy, embarrassed smile. He felt a deep happiness as he looked into her eyes and heard her laugh. His smile disappeared, though, as he noticed a change in her expression. “Joey...Joey...” Anne called out. She dropped her small shovel, and clutched at her chest. She was reaching for a nearby tree. Something is wrong, he thought. Oh my God! She is falling! Joseph dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow and ran toward Anne. She was not going to reach the tree. He felt the cold, clammy sensation of panic welling up inside of his chest. He could feel his labored breathing as he stumbled up the rocky path toward her. He began to pray. “Oh, my God! No! Jesus...NO!” His labored breathing muffled what he wanted to be a shout. Anne was heading toward the ground. She fell first to her knees, then slumped over on her left side. Her right arm was still holding her blouse, over her heart. Her left arm was extended away from her body. Her head was back, and she appeared to be staring at the sky. It seemed like minutes stretched into hours for Joseph. He felt like Anne was falling at full speed, but he was running at half speed. He stumbled and fell as he got within a few feet of her. Joseph didn’t want to waste the time to get up, so he crawled toward her. Terror gripped his heart and mind. The terror of death. As he reached her he put his hand under her neck. He tried feeling for a pulse, but his panic, trembling and own shallow breathing hampered him. Her eyes stared blankly at the sky. “ANNIE! ANNIE! Talk to me! ANNIE! You can’t die!” he sobbed. He heard a raspy gurgling coming from her mouth. She seemed to stir. Her eyes closed slowly. Her breathing was shallow and erratic. He fought the panic inside. “Got to calm down. Got to do something. What can I do?” Incoherent thoughts raced through Joseph’s head. Everything seemed hazy as he struggled for focus. Joseph took a deep breath and looked at Anne’s face. The face he had looked upon every night for over a half a century. The face that he had pushed wedding cake into so many Octobers ago. “Phone,” Joseph’s mind cleared. “I have to get to the phone!” Joseph tried desperately, but he couldn’t lift Anne. He turned his head toward the house, and back to her. He had to leave her. But what if she...? Panic gripped him, but he stuffed it back down. He ripped his shirt out of his pants, unbuttoned it, and placed it under her head. Rising, he looked into her face one last time, turned, and ran to the house. It was a terrible fight to keep back the tears. Joseph pushed open the door, ran to the kitchen, picked up the phone and pushed the buttons: 9-1-1
|