Happiness in the Distance

Happiness in the Distance

 I

Six a.m. The alarm goes off and I pick my way downstairs in the dark, hoping to not trip over any sports equipment or cast off clothing, to find the coffee pot finishing up brewing a quart of Starbuck’s finest.  I pour coffee into mugs with logos like “World’s Greatest Dad” and “I (heart) Virginia.”
 

So there’s two cups of coffee on the counter and I snap on the counter top TV and hunch my butt onto a stool and stare at the screen, listening to the news, but not really hearing it, not really.  Occasionally a useful bit slips through the banter and glib chatter that passes for news. 
 

“Watch for that rollover on 96 east bound, near Greenfield.  Traffic’s slowing for gawkers there.  On the Lodge, the ramp to 8 mile is closed for repairs.  Ninety four is moving well, with brake tapping at the interchange with 23.  Next up, Chet has the weather, don’t you Chet.”

“That’s right Arlene,” says a toothy, blow-dried over-tanned 30 something in a dark suit.

I realize I don’t really hear the news because my eyes are focused somewhere 12 inches behind the screen, on the tiled counter.

Across the street, Mac is pulling out in his black Suburban, the headlights washing across the living room as he turns onto the street.  Sometimes its like a beacon, a lighthouse, as cars turn the corner down the street, headed for the expressway south, then east or west on 96. 

I sip my coffee though I don’t realize it, finding the “I (heart) Virginia” mug in my hand and World’s Greatest Dad on the counter, empty. The tv is droning on, Arlene and Chet nattering about partly cloudy with a 30% chance of rain, clearing by noon and cold overnight with temperatures dropping down into the 40’s.  I think.  Chet barks a laugh and Arlene grins a white capped smile before the screen fills with ads for coffee and diapers and toothpaste and credit card companies and I snap it off and take the second cup up the stairs.

I flick the light on.  The landing is clotted with a green sweatshirt and athletic shoes that got dropped there last night.  Mental note to Catherine:  My neck is worth more than your convenience.  Or laziness.  Her door is shut and a radio quietly drones pop music, her white noise. 

Dad, I can’t sleep without it. 

Peter’s door is open, the light from the hall spilling across his bunk beds.  Yeah, bunk beds plural.  We’d hoped for a third.  No joy.  He’s sprawled everywhere, all legs and arms, thin as sticks, in a sudden growth spurt that’s made him awkward as a new calf, tripping over his own feet when he’s not pushing his hair out of his face.  To be 14 again. 

I shave and shower, pausing to peer through the steam at my retreating hairline. I decided there was no really valid reason to NOT go to the office.  Couldn’t think of a family member who’d recently died.  Didn’t myself have a fever. There were any number of good reasons to not go though not really valid.  I tried to not think of those.  That was then, this is now, through the steamy glass.   I try not to look at the extra baggage circling my waist.  Too much sitting, not enough running.  Well, no running at all, except errands.

The mug is empty and I’m awake enough to fumble into suit and tie and shoes.  Beth sleeps on her stomach, her alarm set for 7, time enough to rouse the kids, shove them out the door to buses before she has to walk the half dozen blocks to her day care.  Her day care.  Her business.  Started up 2 years ago on a shoe string, grown by word of mouth, now with a 6 month waiting list and 3 assistants. 

Her blond hair catches the light from the bathroom.  How can she sleep through  opening and closing doors, running water, my thumping on the stairs?  She does though, or at least never stirs to complain.  I give her a peck on the cheek. She sighs deeply, smacks her lips once, twice. 

Breakfast is something.  See, some days I don’t remember by that evening what I ate.  Nothing memorable.  That’s saved for Saturday mornings when I make French toast and sausage and fresh squeezed orange juice.  Or Beth makes muffins to go with scrambled eggs.  Today?  Bowl of cold cereal likely, looking out the dining room window, up the slope behind the house.

Ten years ago, when we moved in the sub was new, on the periphery of suburbia.  We found a lot at the back of a cul de sac, right up against a green belt which would never be developed.  The land behind us once was a farm, now it grew wild flowers and tall prairie grasses and each year, on its southern flank, the forest grew a bit closer, shedding seeds and sprouting young oaks and maples and elms.

Each morning I gazed out the bay window, up the hill that so reminded me of the way my life used to be.  In the pale autumn light I could see that the last of the wildflowers, the queen Anne’s lace, were nodding in a soft breeze and the prairie grasses were fading to brown.  In early summer there’d be butterfly weed, tall coreopsis, sunflowers, blazing star, wood lily, Culver’s root, prairie rose, ironweed, New England aster and blue gentians. I could have sat for hours watching the light change, the shadows shorten throughout the morning and then lean the other way, in the afternoon.

6:45.  Oops and darn. Late again. Maybe I could make up time on the freeway.  Right. Along with everyone else who dawdled over coffee or the paper or stopped to argue with the kids.  Or feed the dog. 

The dog.  Geez.  Forgot Harley.  I popped open the mud room door where Harley slept and he bounded into me, shedding a handful of yellow fur onto my suit, and trotted to the door wall.  My job was to let him out.  Beth would let him back in and feed him.  He trotted out into the back yard, enclosed with a low fence, to greet the morning, bark at squirrels and do his business. 

On the porch, the Freep is lying in a plastic bag, filled with mayhem, scandal, stock reports, Macy’s ads, editorials.  My crossword.

It’s 17 miles as the crow flies, door to door, but more like 22 with the vicissitudes of city planning, altering the logical to become the impossible commute.  Still, commuting downtown, 35 minutes each way, weather and idiots and construction allowing, beats other options.  A factory job on the swing shift.  The 4 to 12 at MickeyD’s.  Unemployment. 

Traffic is predictably sluggish at the interchange, brake lights like chains of winking rubies as far ahead as I can see, till the highway crests a rise and disappears over the hill. 

I cluck my tongue at the lane hopper in the black Magnum who switches constantly, evidently having either a more interesting job to get to than the rest of us, or feeling frustrated that he and his hemi are going nowhere faster.  Then I cluck my tongue again when I realize that the travel mug is empty and there’s half a pot of Starbucks in my kitchen, steaming fragrantly. 

What could I have been thinking?  Likely not much. 

Lets get there, folks, no hurry, but sometime today. 

Around me I catch others stretching, yawning, sipping.  One lady is putting on make up, another is, good grief, reading. Everyone is on a cell phone. 

I groan as mine, plugged into the dash outlet, begins to throb with Clocks.  Thanks, Catherine.  I snap my fingers for 4 beats, press talk, hold my breath.

Hi, Hon.  What’s up?

It’s nothing really, Bradley, but you have to talk to Peter.  He missed the bus again. 

He walks next time love.

That’s 2 miles.

And?

 A short sigh. 

Yeah, well.

Yeah, well, nothing.  Consequence is the teacher of the stubborn.

I hear a sniff. 

I think I burned the toast.  I’ll see you later hon.

Love ya.

Me too.

Ahead, traffic starts to move along as we clear the interchange and everyone settles into the driving groove.  Pedal down, the Cherokee surges ahead in the fast lane where I hang out with the Beemers and big sedans and shiny new pickups.  Twenty minutes later, I take the downtown exit, flanked with big green signs, arrows pointing toward the stadium, the civic center, destinations beyond. 

The sun has topped the low rises to the east as I take River  Drive and follow its looping track by the old bridge, past the redeemed factories, now condos and lofts and artists studios, all brick and glass and wrought iron. 

I catch the yellow light at 14^th and slow for the driveway into the office plaza. Behind me a horn blares and I look up to see a pedestrian scramble back to the curb as a car runs the red light.  His hand comes up in a familiar gesture and  the front of the car dips as the driver brakes hard. 

This should be interesting. 

The pedestrian is facing down the street, one arm on a hip the other slinging a hard sided attaché case.  The car actually stops. 

Oh, here we go. 

I look back to the traffic in front of me, slowing for others who are turning into the plaza and then down into the parking garage.  Waiting my turn, while they trundle through the ticket spitter and yellow lift gate, the door of the car pops open and a foot hits the pavement. 

Not today, please. Not now.  Lets all just go to work, huh?

The pedestrian signals the driver again, that universal sign of brotherhood denoting oneness and love, but the driver, maybe sensing the brash defiance, slams his door, snaps left around traffic through the center turn lane and, burning a bit of Goodyear, accelerates away. 

I feel a sudden tension go out of my chest and realize I was holding my breath.  Ahead the other cars have cleared the gate and it’s my turn.  I punch the ticket spitter, and drive down to the second level and park.

Reserved for Bradley Skinner proclaims the sign bolted above my space. Boy, did I have to defend my honor over that one during high school. Whether it was my initials or endless variations on the name …mule skinner… skinnier…sinner.  Kids can be cruel, ya know. Or maybe just dumb.  Both, I think now.  Some of them still are.

As I head for the stairs, other cars are parking.  I’m first in, last out most days.  Nature of the beast.  Horns honk, electronic locks cued by key fobs.  Tires squeal against the slick concrete. The fumes are building as more commuters arrive, circling the garage, hunting spaces.  It’s a perk to have my own space, but some days I kinda think, so what.  Big deal. The steel stairs rattle underfoot as I climb and exit into a wide hall that leads to the lobby and from there to the elevators.

Fourteen stories up, my office suite is drowning in the morning light.  Monitors gleam from every desk top, twenty in all.  For a moment or three it’ll be quiet.  I make more coffee, indulging in the secret stash of French roast, making enough to start the office off.  After that its every man for himself with the miserable Maxwell House.  Or the latte stand in the lobby. 

It’s like this where I work.  Let me bore you with the details. No really.  We manage health care from here.  There’s no field work, so sometimes it feels like its no work at all. Not real work.  Its paper pushing.  Well, there’s really no analogy that comes to mind, but it’s all electronic these days, with occasional notes on legal pads.  But still.  We push paper.

Times past, I hoisted rock and landscape timbers, cut wood with a chainsaw for my stove, stretched barb wire for fencing, cleared brush with an ax, dug ditches with a shovel, pounded nails, mowed grass.  That was work.  Sweat was work.  Injured on the job was work.  That.  Was.  Work.

Where was I?

We manage health care.  Analyze, approve, project.  Evaluate, demograph, calculate.  Numbers flow like water across screens, phones ring for prior authorizations.  Medical offices solicit our favor.  Will we pay?  Yes, no, maybe, send records, justify. 

Geez, how did I ever get here I often wonder.  What dreams did I abandon for this?  What was that one about a cabin in the woods, a kayak on the porch, a river at the front door?  A hammock slung from the porch posts, a typewriter on a desk in the window. 

Criminy.  Jeepers. 

The fog rolling over the hill behind the cabin.  Stars so profuse at night that I could walk the ranch without a flashlight.  Moon peering in my window, and me peering back having nothing more important to do. 

Stacks of books by my elbow and the mellow light of a kerosene lamp over my shoulder.  My six string Gibson under my arm most of an evening.  A tape deck running off a 12 volt battery under the floor. 

Sigh. 

How indeed. 

No, I won’t bore you with all of the details of the office.  I really do want you to read the rest of this.  It gets interesting.

Promise.  Scout’s honor.  Stick a needle in my eye. 

Work comes and goes across my desk.  Phones ring.  I answer.  Emails flood the OE corner of my screen.   I reply.  Despite the attempt to go electronic, I still shuffle some paper.  Some days it feels like it goes from the left side of the desk to the right.  And back.  Same paper.  You know what I mean.

Lunch is a burrito from the machine, nuked, steaming on a paper plate in the break room.  My co-workers come and go, some with a newspaper, precious moments to catch up on the Tigers, the war, the gossip column.  One flips a fashion magazine, another has Discovery.  I have the cross word.  We’re not all in our cubie cocoons.  Not always.  Though some eat at their desks, scrolling through personal mail and reading the news. 

Hey Andrea, what’s a seven letter word for…boss?

Bradley?

Yes?

That’s it…

What’s it?

Bradley!

What?

That’s the word.  Seven letter word for boss…

Thanks, but I think they had something else in mind.  Fifth letter is G…

Hard vinyl covered chairs.  The coffee pot refilled.  Laughter with the bad jokes. 

Ah.  Manager.

A birthday card goes around for one of the programmers.  I hear middle school soccer scores reported proudly.  Accounts of last night’s tv shows.  Here we share the inane, the trivial, the superficial, with moments of keeping it light and impersonal. Well at least most of the time.   Sometimes, not often, there’s the drama of a family argument, carried over into the office, cell phone versus cell phone.  Last month one of the younger clerks got married. We had a big surprise bash in the break room for him, cake, presents, the works. After the honeymoon, he brought his bride in to meet us all.

After work, some few will descend on a downtown bar, watch the game, talk about the headlines, shake their heads at the insanity of the world, struggle to find where they, like me, got lost.

But some, you admit, love what they do.  Numbers crunching like breakfast cereal to them.  I want to meet that person.  Right.  Don’t think he works in my office.

I’ll spare you the second half of my day.  It’s like the first half until 3:05pm.  My cell phone rings again, Clocks, which prompts a young lady across the aisle to raise her arms, chair dancing.  I laugh, let her dance a few more beats,  push talk.

Da-aad? 

It’s Catherine.  The pouty, ascending tone tells me a question will follow, and that she already knows the answer.

Yes, daughter dearest.

Ashley’s having a party tomorrow and…

So what adult will be there? 

Her parents, Dad.   This with a sigh of exasperation. 

And ?

And I’ll be home by 11.

And?

Mom said I could take her car. 

I feel safer with her in her mother’s Taurus than in my Cherokee.  Less power, lower center of gravity.
 

And?

No alcohol, no R rated movies, no fun…

Catherine, I start, but she’s got me.

Kidding, Dad, kidding.

The exasperation is easing, she must sense pending acquiescence.  It’s the on-going negotiations about Friday nights as the fledgling seeks the wind for its wings and papa bird frets from his vantage, many years overhead. 

Let me talk with your mother tonight.  But it sounds alright. 

One tiny sigh again. 

Thanks, Dad.

It’s not total freedom, like she’d want, but it’s a start and she’ll be away from Peter for the evening.  That kid knows the thin parts of her skin and gets under them with finesse.  To be 14 again. 

I never did that to my sibs. 

The heck I didn’t.  And enjoyed it wa-ay too much.  Soap on the bristles of my elder brother’s toothbrush.  Dish soap in the shampoo bottle.  Salt in the instant iced tea.

The work day winds down, the last half hour creeps slower for the clock watchers, the hourly worker, the soccer mom with a game at 6:15,  the programmer with a date.  Outside traffic on 14^th is already picking up. 

At last I log off, shut down for nightly maintenance.  In the far corner the janitor has started with the trash cans.  His name on the breast of his navy shirt embroidered in red, Hubert.  I got teased for Skinner.  Hubert.  Must have been worse for him.  But, hey, he’s always got a smile for me, crinkling around his eyes as his mouth reflects some inner mirth, a secret he won’t tell me, the unspoken punch line that’s made him laugh.  He’s got a salt and pepper goatee framing his smile, and startling blue eyes, wide set above a slightly generous nose.  I’m jealous of his full head of hair, even though it’s white as copy paper. 

Have a great evening Mr. Skinner.  From anyone else’s mouth that would sound trite.  Hubert makes it sound…how…like a blessing.  I wave back.

Thanks, Hubert.  You too.

No doubt, Mr. Skinner.  No doubt.

Hubert will spend the next few hours emptying trash, vacuuming the flat pile carpet, dusting monitors and desktops, squaring chairs in the break room.  Clean out the coffee pot.  And sometime, during the wee hours, he’ll clock out and go home. 

The street is busy as I exit the garage, handing my ticket to a curly haired hippie in the booth who doesn’t make eye contact but swipes the piece of paper and waves me through. He’s new, the last kid gone who knows where. He’s tall, dressed in requisite jeans, dark sweatshirt. They come and go, faceless and nameless.  This one’s got a fat hardback book propped up on the register but I can’t see the title.

Someday they’ll give us key pad codes or swipe cards and he’ll lose his job. 

Does he care, really?

I wait for a break in traffic that finally comes when the light down the block changes to red.  I half expect Mr. Attaché to try to cross again.  I pull out briskly, beat the next yellow up to River Drive, merge onto the ramp and promptly come to a dead stop.

Words enter my mouth.  I don’t speak them.  As far ahead as I can see, traffic is mired.  Going nowhere in a hurry.  The dash clock tells me its 5:45.  Nothing to do but guess the cause, make a bet with myself, find out later if I’m right.  Or not.

WJR comes through scratchily on the AM.  Weather and traffic on the 8’s.  I’ve just missed the last update and wait, like a few thousand others, for the next. More words come to my mouth but I let them out as something between a groan and a sigh.  I punch the home number shortcut on the cell, wait for it to ring.

Hi, you’ve reached the Skinner’s. It’s Catherine’s voice on the answering machine.   (Peter stop that she hisses.  I mean it.)  Louder now.  Please leave a message and we’ll call you back.  Maybe.  If you’re lucky.

Sometimes she borders on the rude while trying to be funny. 

Catherine?  Peter?  Pick up guys.

Silence.

Okay, well I’m truly and goodly stuck here at River Drive and who knows how long I’ll be here.  You guys go ahead with dinner.  Save me something edible, ‘kay?  I’ll call mom on her cell. Love ya. Bye.

I punch the short cut for Beth. 

Beth Skinner.  She doesn’t’ have to identify herself, my number I.D.’s on her phone.  Habit, I guess.

Hey love.

 

Hi hon.  Are you on your way?

Well, in a manner of speaking.  I made the freeway before traffic locked up tighter than your mother’s checkbook.

Bradley!  But then she laughs.  Her mother is infamously penurious.  Sheesh.

Don’t wait dinner.  But leave me a sample.  And maybe open that ‘02 cabernet we’ve been saving. 

Got it, love.  Any ETA?

Yeah, sometime between now and midnight. 

Beth sighs. 

You spend too much time on the road, love. 

So I should come work in your day care? 

It’s a conversation we’ve had before, without resolution.

Well…she lets the rest hang.  It’s not a bad idea.  We could expand the program and work a little less for a lot less income.  Practical huh?  Still it has appeal on a night like tonight.

Car lights are winking on as the autumn sun dips lower on the horizon, the east bound traffic dawdling smoothly along unlike the gridlock of westbound. 

Time was when I watched Sol go down over the Pacific.  Or over fields of ripening wheat.  Once over California’s  Central Valley, perched on a barren granite crag, 7000 feet up in King’s Canyon. 

Honey?  Bradley?  You there?

My mind is somewhere out west, reminiscing. Splitting wood, nailing on roofing, planting a row of corn. 

Yup. Still here. 

Be safe. See you when you get here. 

Right.  Love ya. 

Me too.
 

No wonder I was bored, weary of the routine, tired of the commute, the sameness of the job.  Well, not the people that I worked with.  Andrea was fun, Hubert, solid as a rock and always seemed genuinely interested in others. 

And yet, that’s the way my weeks go.  And go.  And go.

That’s me.  The energizer bunny.  Running, running, running.  But feeling like, hmm, like an automaton.  Wind me up in the morning with coffee and I run all day.  Sheesh.

Sigh.

  III

It’s Friday evening and Beth and I have the house to ourselves.  Catherine is over at Ashley’s party.  Peter is playing soccer then out for pizza with the team.  His best friend’s mother will drop him off later.

The end of an uneventful week.  Went to work downtown for 5 days.  Processed a lot of requests for P.A.s. Drove home with the entire county on the same road. Maybe two or three counties.  Madness.  Just madness. 

I’ve got the paper and Beth is loading the dishwasher, wiping down the dining room table, setting up coffee for the morning.  The last of the wine is in a glass at my elbow.  Two, no more.  Ever.  It’s the way I am.  Besides, it’s a waste of good wine to get drunk on it. 

The Tigers have won another game, setting Comerica park on fire with their pitching and hitting. 

Bradley.

Hm-hmm.  Detroit’s happy about that and the park’s been filled for almost every game since.  Ever since they went 13 innings against the Devil Rays and won by a point.

Bradley.  Louder now.

Yes, love.

I think you should come look at this.

Can it wait a few minutes? 

Honey, seriously.  You need to see this.  Really.

It’s her tone, a faint frisson of fear.  Something Beth never admits.  Never. She’s just that way. 

I rattle the paper in mild frustration and let it slip to the floor.  Beth is standing by the back window of the family room, which looks out across the broad pasture to the west,  then rises to a hill.  Many days, we see a deer maybe three, sometimes a fox.  In early fall, it’s a fading green with nodding heads of Queen Anne’s lace. 

There, cresting the slope, are at least a hundred men on horses.  From here, it looks like they’re armed.   Bows, spears, swords.  That’s what I can see from here.

And. 

They’re all looking.  Right. At. Me. 

I’m sure of it.  Real sure.  But how could I possibly tell from here?  Not like I could see the whites of their eyes.  It’s more like a…feeling.  This one makes the hair on the back of my neck move.   That’s the only place it grows anymore. 

Geez, what the heck…

Suddenly they wheel and scatter over the horizon, a dust cloud in their wake.  And not a sound.  Wouldn’t a hundred horses make some kinda sound?  

Geez, hon.  I mean criminy.  What the heck was that?

Kids?  Kids?
 

Then I remember.  Peter’s at soccer.  Catherine’s at Ashley’s. 

Criminy.

I slide the door wall back with trembling fingers.  Beth joins me as I stride across the yard and hop the low fence.  Harley follows, clearing it like a deer, hardly trying.  Beth takes my hand and we stride briskly up the hill.   At the top, winded, my cuffs are full of wildflower seeds. 

We crest the hill and see…nothing.  Well, not nothing.  There’s the wind tossed grass, bending in long looping waves, and a distant fence, a cloud scudded horizon, turning pink and orange with the sunset.  But no sign of horses or the men who rode them. 

Nothing. 

No hoof prints, no bent blade of grass, no turned soil. 

Nothing.

I saw them honey.  I’m certain.  Beth’s voice is a stage whisper. 
 

I know. I did too.  My hands are trembling.

We stand a long time staring out across the dying grass, paling with the change of season, watching till the sun is gone down all the way and a chill breeze caresses our bare arms to goose bumps.  Beth shivers and I put an arm around her.  Like I did when we were first dating.  Like I do all too seldom. 

But her shiver is as much about what we saw as it is about the chill.  Thought we saw.  No, we saw it.  We did.  I’d swear on a Bible if I had one in my pocket. 

We turn for the house, descend the hill, just realizing that we’ve both walked a couple hundred yards in our office clothes.  My loafers are dirt dusted, her pumps are scuffed.  We stop so she can shake a cornucopia of dirt and grit out of her shoes.  Then we walk the rest of the way, hand in hand. 
 

I have to call Harley, who’s not generally inclined to linger afield.  I don’t care what other guys dogs do.  Harley, for all his pedigree, and a darn handsome dog he is too, is not interested in wild life.  He likes his back yard and an occasional walk. 

Anyway, I call Harley who’s still at the top of the hill, running this way and then that, tail held high like a unit banner, bounding from one spot to another.  I call him a second time to no effect.  Then Beth whistles.

Something I have always admired about this marvelous  woman that I married.  Aside from her knowledge of wine, her way with pre-schoolers, her fashion sense, the dulcet caress of her voice when she tells me how much she loves me…she can whistle up a taxi in downtown New York in a heartbeat.

It’s a whistle that stops traffic, silences noisy preschoolers, ends arguments between Catherine and Peter. When I’m in the basement on a Saturday night with the stereo cranked up loud enough to rattle windows, she overrides Wagner or Clapton with ease.   It’s a sharp piercing shriek of a whistle that she makes with her thumb and first finger held in a circle to her pretty mouth. 

Harley alerts to the whistle, springing to face us.  His tail waving slowly, back and forth, swept up over his butt.

Come on Harley.

Beth whistles again and he comes flying down the hill, beats us to the fence and is at the door wall in two shakes.   Back in the house we sit on the couch and stare at each other for several moments, utter silence envelopes us.

Then Beth and I rise at the same time, go to the wine cabinet.  She picks out a merlot and I grab two glasses and the corkscrew. I find our sweatshirts in the hall closet by the front door.   We go out onto the deck and plop into Adirondack chairs and I finesse the cork from the bottle with a satisfying pop.  I’m about to exceed my limit.  The wine gurgles into our glasses, nice Swarovski crystal from…somewhere.  Beth holds hers out a moment longer, and I touch it with mine, drawing a clear chime from the fine glass. 

This is a ritual when we have a serious conversation. We sip and money matters get balanced over wine, Catherine’s driving privileges get extended, cruise or bike the next vacation, the last time I unwittingly snubbed her mother. 

The wine is  really too good for second bottle of the evening.  At least without guests.  But we are soothed a bit and the ritual seems to anchor us to our everyday life.  It always does.  We talk about what we saw.  What we thought we saw.  We did see it.  I know we did.  But for now we’ll say nothing to the kids.  Or to Margaret and Clay next door, who’ve also climbed that hill. 
 

Its back to work on Monday.  Neither of us have slept well, seeing that hill crowded with horsemen.  Is something wrong with us?  Is our water tainted?  Wrong kinda mushrooms in the pasta?  Did we slip into a bad sci-fi story? 

IV

Monday grinds by like all Mondays.  The commute is slow as a funeral procession.  One of the servers does a number and it’s hours before our techs have it back up.  I have time to organize my desk, shift paper into neat stacks, toss out all the pens that don’t work, sort my paper clips by color and size. 

I end the day with an unpleasant discussion with Myrna, my assistant, about the reports she owes me.  I hate this part of my job.  Can’t we all just get along?  But Myrna, being Myrna, will sit on a report till I all but threaten to fire her.  And me, being me, rise to the bait of her excuses until I am full up-to-here and we have a quiet, intense conversation.

Today, Mryna, today.

I’m busy Bradley.

We all are.

Bradley, (she repeats my name with every sentence.  She seems to think it will somehow sway me).  I told you I’d try. 

You know the deadlines.

Bradley, I’ll try, really. 

Do or do not.  There is no try. 

She fixes me with a gaze that’s intended to make me feel like a moth with its wings pinned in a display box.  Take that, you Bradley you. 
 

Myrna.  On my desk.

I tap the top of the desk with a finger.

5:30. 

She tries to stare me down, her mouth working into a world famous pout.  It’s a bit like a staring contest with a cat.  Pointless and time consuming. 

5:30 Myrna.

I swivel my chair around turning my back to her.  She leaves my cubie in a huff, and if the floor had been terrazzo you would have seen sparks flying from her high heels.   But the report will be on my desk at the end of the day. 

You know how it gets some days. 

5:30. The report drops onto my desk.  I turn in time to see Myrna hurrying away. 

5:35. Down the elevator.  Oh, great. The Cherokee has a flat.  Just what I wanted to do at the end of the day. Or at any time of day.  Great.  Just great.  I wrestle the full size spare off the tail gate, loosen lugs, bark my knuckles pulling out the jack. 

I suck on the abraded flesh, set the jack, lift the car and spin off the lugs.  The spare goes on easily enough, though my hand’s bleeding down across my wrist.  Feels like work.  Hoist the flat onto the rack and snug down the lugs.  My knuckle’s starting to throb. 

Finally I get into the car to start the drive home.  Only took me twenty minutes extra to do the tire switch. 

Up the ramp and at the gate, the urchin is deep in his book. As I pull up I can see the cover.  Fellowship of the Ring.

He scans my card without looking up but when he hands it back….

Hey, I read that in college.  Something about my tone, the right shade of sincere, I guess, gets his attention.

He turns his head, a faint smile creasing his face and sticks a finger in to mark his place as he picks the book up. 

Yeah?  It’s the best, man, all the best adventures are in here. 

What part are you on?

 The Argonath…

Ah…the ancient kings, those humongous figures…

A horn honks behind me.

He smiles and turns toward the car behind me.  He’s got to have a name.  

Hang on a sec, he mumbles.  

Yeah?  Its got the best adventures anywhere.  The best.  Can you imagine seeing those gigantic statues for the first time,  towering over everything, the river running between them?  Man….

He’s got a shy smile and despite the longish hair, he’s actually a good looking kid.  Dark eyed, a thin short nose and a tiny patch of beard under his bottom lip.  What did Catherine call those?  Oh, yeah.  Soul patch.  And his eyes, one blue, one green. 

The horn sounds again, longer now.  I smile up at him. 

Yeah, what an adventure….hey, my name’s Bradley.

Alden. 

And he stretches his right arm out the booth, hand in a fist, palm side down.  I’ve seen this in a movie.  I do the same.  And touch his knuckles to mine.  Now the car behind me leans on the horn and doesn’t let up till I pull out, waving back at Alden. 
 

V

Some nights I lie awake, looking at the ceiling.  Beth turns over to hug me.  Neither of us have made any sense of that….whatever.  And try hard not to because the impossible never makes sense.  Might as well try to explain nuclear fusion to a preschooler.  Its like when you dream that you’re flying through a cave full of purple squid and one stops you to have a conversation about how far away Antares is from Sol.  That’s how much sense it makes.  Just so. 

Friday evening comes and goes and we settle into the weekend, sleep in late Saturday, have coffee in our pj’s. Beth found this wonderful blend.  Rainforest something.  Its like a really good cabernet, that toothy, but hot and with caffeine, subtle chocolate and something berry. 

Yeah, we’re coffee snobs too.

Saturday. We rake out the lawn thatch, edge the grass.  I get out the snow blower and make sure it starts and runs.  That’s a bit premature but I’m looking for things to do.  Catherine leaves early afternoon to go study at Ashley’s.  Peter is at Timothy’s, spending the night after soccer practice. 

It’s just Beth and I tonight.  We like an evening alone now and then.  We catch up on cuddling, watch a movie, indulge in chocolate somethings. 

After dinner, we’re both in the kitchen, putting away the left overs, rinsing out the wine glasses, filling up the dishwasher.  In the routine, I space out a tad, preoccupied with the week coming up. The audit.  The Taurus needs an oil change.  Peter’s getting braces.  We need to find a new tax preparer, the last one having retired and moved to Arizona. 

The brittle shattering of crystal brings me back.  Beth’s dropped a wine glass on the tile floor and a zillion pieces are underfoot.  She picks up the big shards while I get the broom out of the closet.

And.  Passing the door wall on my way back with the dustpan and broom…

There they are.  Again.

A hundred men on horses.  No kidding.  Not that I can stop to count them but it might as well be a hundred.  This time they’re half way down the hill in a sharp V, the wings of it trailing up to the hill top.  At the front is a tall, muscular man in a helmet that obscures a good part of his face, like in that movie.  What was that?  Something about a gladiator. 

My mouth is dry and my throat feels clogged with dust.  You know how in dreams you try to speak and your voice won’t work?  My mouth works, forming words, a faint wheezing noise escapes my throat.  Its like when you try to yell in a dream and nothing comes out and finally you wake up, echoes of your voice unsettling the dark bedroom. 

Honey, I say when I can finally find my voice. 

Honey, look outside.  Please.

The pieces in Beth’s hands hit the floor again, and I’m thinking, we’ll be finding those shards for months. With our bare feet.   Beth is looking out the kitchen window,  a deep-silled mini-greenhouse with small pots of herbs that scent the kitchen in the summer.  She joins me by the doorwall, open a hand width with the last warmth of the autumn sunlight puddling on the tile and a gentle breeze stirring the sheers to ghostly life. 

Gladiator-helmet shifts on his horse and the horse in turn shakes its big head.  The others are farther away, but I can make out details.  Sabers, spathas, a claymore in one man’s fist.  A cavalry hat, helmets, feathered head pieces, rusty steel barrel helms, a buffalo skull with horns.  They’re not moving save a twitch in a horse’s flank, a swishing tail.

Gladiator guy.  He’s staring right at me.  Its silly, I know.  Even from a hundred yards, I can see his head tilt, like he’s asking a question. He turns the horse and looks over his shoulder.  Back at me.  Then he kicks the horse’s flanks and begins to canter up the hill.  The whole host turns with him in a cloud of dust and they break into a gallop, churning up the soil, clods flying through the air, thundering out of sight. 

Beth and I stand transfixed at the doorwall.  She turned to me, the unspoken question on her lips, wide eyed. 

Please tell me this isn’t happening, she whispers.

I slide the doorwall open and slip back the screen.  We’ve got jeans and t-shirts and sturdy shoes on, dressed for working in the yard.  Harley gets up from his spot at the corner of the deck and trots over to us.  This time the fence seems no object to any of the three of us. 

We tear up the hillside, reach the top, panting like winded dogs.  Well, one of us is, after all.  In the middle distance, a cloud of dust is drifting with the wind, sliding northeast, dissipating.  Beneath my feet, I find turned clods of earth, horse droppings, hoof prints aplenty.  Crushed Queen Anne’s lace and big bluestem grass. 

But there’s nothing else.  The horizon is bright with the sun, now setting, red in a distant haze.  Overhead a pair of geese fly by on silent wings.  I can smell the sharp aroma of the fresh droppings.

Harley scrambles back and forth, nose to the ground, whining, yelping.  He starts down the far slope and won’t come to my call.  Beth whistles him back.  I’m not sure how long we stand there.  Long enough for the sun to go down and an autumnal chill to force us back inside.

This is crazy, Beth says, once we’re seated on the couch.  Things like this can’t happen, don’t happen.  I mean, its like a book or a movie. 

I nod.  It is impossible.  It is. 

We don’t sleep very well that night and twice I am up at our second floor balcony to look up the hill, now illuminated with a half moon. 

The weekend goes by.  Peter helps me wash and wax the Cherokee, his tireless teenage muscles making short work of the chore, then volunteering to vacuum out the interior.  Catherine’s got a flute competition coming up with the symphonic band and is in her room practicing Holst’s Second Suite.  She’s struggling with the off beats of the Song of the Blacksmith but determined to get it right.

The weekend ends quietly.  The week goes by uneventfully. Myrna does her work, more or less on time.  Alden is off a couple of days and when he’s back in his booth I stop to chat a minute, or until the car behind me shares his impatience via the horn. 

VI

Thursday night I leave work early, but instead of driving out in the car, I walk the ramp up to the booth, where Alden is reading and waving cars through.  He looks up at my footsteps.  We touch knuckles. He’s silent for a handful of heartbeats.

Sup, Bradley?

I know, I’m twice his age at least.  Look at the two of us. Me in a neat dark pinstripe suit.  Him in jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt. 

You ever have anything happen to you that you can’t explain?  I realize my voice is trembling just a bit. Can’t talk about with anyone cuz they’d think you’re crazy?  I mean, I can talk with Beth.  She’s my wife.  Something impossible but it happens anyway? 

I suddenly find myself nattering to this kid, this total stranger,

He looks at me for several long moments, pulling at the patch of hair under his bottom lip.   My shift ends in half an hour.  Meet me down at Garrett Keallach‘s.

Keallach’s is a pub with a bohemian crowd.  Old hippies that became small successes in music and art hang out here of an evening, drinking stout, eating beef pies. An occasional office worker, some blue collar types.  Saturday the Irish bands descend on the place to play low whistle, North Umbrian pipes, bouzouki, and sing. 

I’ve spent a few evenings here with Beth. She comes down after closing up the preschool.   They’ll open a bottle of good chardonnay for her, if she takes the balance home. So she sips wine while I quaff the stout.  The music is always good and, smoke free, it’s the homiest pub I’ve found this side of the pond. 

Alden. 

Oh, yeah.

I find a small table in a corner and waiter takes my order for a stout, a pint.  It comes in pints you know.  I sip the heady thick brew, admiring the bitter coffee under a dark nutty taste. 

I see Alden come in the front door and I raise my glass to catch his eye.  He sits down opposite me, book in hand, dark thick sweatshirt with the sleeves tied at his neck and the shirt down his back.  He’s taller than he looked in the booth, with muscles I could only envy. The waiter takes his order, I’ll have what he’s having, but not until he’s checked Alden’s ID.

His drink arrives and we tap glasses before pulling long and deep.  Alden sets his pint down with a thump.  Now that’s a good stout. 

So. 

He eyes me curiously and I feel like a canary being sized up by a cat.  I am distracted by his  mismatched eyes, looking from one to the other,  which must be equally distracting to Alden.

So indeed. 

You’ve had a, a something, you can’t explain it and if you did, likely you’d be thought crazy.  No?

I nodded, running a finger around the water rings on the table top.  The after work crowd is trickling in, pints and halfs are clinking, the laughter a shade louder. 

I nod.  And again.  I feel like a Tiger’s bobble head.  Words fail me. 

So.  Alden eyes his pint then looks up at me. 

So.  Tell me. 

This is really loopy.  I’m having a beer with a kid I don’t know from Adam, he’s half my age, and I’m about to share with him the most bizarre thing that ever happened in my life.  Correction.  I’m having a stout…one darn fine stout. 

So.  I tell Alden about the horsemen.  One word at a time, along with Harley’s reaction, the broken crystal wine glass, our conversation on the deck, all of it.  I tell Alden the story.

I find my glass is empty and my arm is up signaling the waiter.  I pull out my cell phone, check the time.  Oh, great, I forgot to call Beth.  I punch her short cut and she picks up on the second ring.

Beth Skinner.  I mean, hi honey.

Hey babe.  I’m going to be home a bit later. 

Oh?  Well, I hadn’t planned anything for dinner.  What’s up? 

I’m…I’m talking with Alden.  About our…visitors.

Oh?  Who’s Alden? 

He’s in the ticket booth at the parking structure.  We just started talking.

Honey, be careful who you share that with.  People might think we’r

Crazy?  Yeah. 

 

Yeah…her voice is fading, like its being carried away on a breeze.

No, Alden won’t…think we’re crazy.

Across the table, Alden drains the last of his pint and signals the waiter, who seems to have forgotten us. Looking back at me, he shakes his head emphatically and draws circles next to his ear with an extended forefinger. 

Are you at Keallach’s, honey?

Yes, as a matter of fact. 

Alright.  There’s a pause and I can hear the distance in her voice as she’s thinking, turning it over in her mind.

Honey, it’s okay. 

Beth sighs.  It’s her sigh of agreement.  She’ll leave it alone now.

Okay.  Bradley?

Still here, love.

Don’t be home too late okay?  And get something to eat. 

Got it love. Good advice.  I’ll be home by nine.

Love you honey.

Love you too.

The connection goes dead and I fold the phone over. 

Our waiter decides just then to show up. Finally.  Without looking up at him, Alden orders.

Two pints, and two pies.

I nod. 

That’s quite a story Bradley. 

He pulls at his soul patch, scratches his scalp with long fine boned fingers.  The different colored eyes distract me.  I can’t focus on just one, my gaze shifts back and forth. 

Alden, you said that Lord of the Rings had the best adventures.  I paused, groping.  I used to have an adventurous life.  Building cabins, hiking the Rockies, growing my own food, rafting the Selway. 

And now?

I sighed deeply. And now I sit in a cubie, department manager for a medical benefits management company and process prior authorizations all day. 

And you wonder where your life went? 

And I wonder where that life went. 

What about your wife and family? 

Sure Alden but, the adventure, the danger, the edge of disaster, the struggle. 

And there’s no adventure in…being married, paying for braces, stocking up the wine cabinet, driving to soccer games?

It’s the awful predictability, the day in day out sameness, the grinding commute…More like challenging tedium.

So tell me there was no adventure in courting Beth, in watching your kids being born, in seeing their first steps…

He had me there but it wasn’t…adventure. Not that kind of adventure.

Well, yeah.  There was that.  But now…but what about you Alden?  Is your only adventure in between the covers of a book? 

He cups his chin in one hand and fixes me with that cat-canary gaze, unsettling but not intimidating, his head tilted to one side, like he’s waiting for me to speak again.  A quixotic smile lifts the corners of his mouth. 

Bradley, I live a good bit of my life in books.  Some times they’re just more interesting than the other stuff around me. But I know that there’s more to life than the books. 

Alden leaned forward, and in a conspiratorial whisper, offered…I think that if you aren’t crazy, that the horsemen are here to offer you something.  And if you are crazy, then they’re part of your subconscious trying to reconcile your past and present. 

Which is almost as crazy as thinking that the horsemen are real.
 

Almost.  Almost. 

The  pies and pints arrive.  The pies steam fragrantly, and my stomach growls. 

Alden grins over his pie, hoists his pint and we clink our mugs again.

Adventures, he says.

Adventures, I return.

I cut into my pie with a fork and hoist potatoes, beef, carrots, dark gravy.  Alden digs in and for a few minutes we simply eat, we two incongruent unexpectedly new friends. 

Between bites and sips and sighs of gustatory acclamation, we turn the conversation to slightly more prosaic topics.  Alden’s a recent college grad, dual bachelors in English and Psychology, living with 2 friends in a shared walk up, stashing cash from 2 or 3 jobs to take a road trip.  He’s thrifty to a fault except for an occasional night at Keallach’s when he brings a friend over for music and pints.  His clothes are second hand but neat and clean and he shops on-line for used books.

I fill him in with more details though he seems to have discerned more from my suit, my car, the phone, the short conversations we’ve had, than I’ve actually said out loud.  How I met Beth, Catherine and Peter’s testy relationship, Harley the not-a-wonder dog. 

Alden leans back in his chair, beef pie gone, half a pint still in his glass, which he now nurses slowly.

So you’ll take a road trip and find…adventure.

He nods, blue eye, then green eye catching the light.  Keallach’s has filled up, the evening crowd well into third rounds and beef pies.  The waiter brings the check, unbidden. 

And?  I press him.

And…you have the life some of my friends dream of.  Family, home, two good kids, great wife, career, money in the bank.  And yet you’re so conflicted.  Does Beth know your suburban angst?

I look down at the remains of the beef pie, as if an answer can be found there, like reading entrails. 

It’s true, Beth must only suspect, but my unrest pierces only my heart.  I’ve walled it off, not wanting to frighten her, we’ve had such a good marriage.  No major issues, no big debts outside the house, good health, an occasional lavish vacation.  But.  The vacations only stoke my appetite for adventure.  They’re a poor substitute, sanitized, safe, with guides and maps and roads. 

I slip my credit card out of my wallet, and the waiter appears suddenly, scooping it and the bill off the table.  We finish our drinks by the time I sign my name and I grab my coat. Outside, it’s started to drizzle, the neon and street lights dancing across the obsidian pavement.  Alden pulls his sweatshirt on hastily and produces a compact umbrella that he pops up over his head like a mushroom.

Bradley.  I think you ought to follow them.

Follow them?

The horsemen.  Next time you see them.

The rain is drizzling down behind the collar of my topcoat, icy fingers down my back.  Even in the rain and dark, I can see Alden’s bi-colored eyes.  Cat and the canary.

He stretches out a hand, open this time, and I take it in mine.  His grip is firm and warm and his face lights up with a smile.
 

Go with them, Bradley.  Follow your dreams.  That is, unless you want to quit dreaming. Then he turns and walks quickly up the street, umbrella shedding streams of the drizzle.  Suddenly it’s raining in sheets-buckets-cats-and-dogs and I run for the parking garage where the Cherokee is waiting.

 

But what about Beth and the kids?  I turn the key in the ignition, fasten the seat belt, shake water from my head.  If I were to go with the horsemen, where would we…go?  Such thoughts as these pursued me home, from downtown onto 96 up to the interchange, with me at the exit, and the long slow wind up to the sub.

Inside the house it’s quiet for a Tuesday evening, even at 9 p.m.  Peter is doing homework at the computer and grins as I walk in.  I stop to chat, ruffle his hair, check his work.  Harley thumps me with his tail as I hang my overcoat in the hall closet.  Catherine is on her phone when I knock on her door but I hear her say I’ll call you back in a few.  She calls it open and I sit on her bed while we talk about her day.  The high point seems that Peter didn’t annoy her too severely and Beth got pizza for dinner.  Catherine combs her hair with her fingers, back from her forehead, tucks the sides over her ears.  It’s a gesture I’ve seen Beth do a hundred times.

Beth is reading in bed when I finally reach our end of the hall.  I sit beside her on the mattress and bend down for a kiss. 

Hey babe.

Hey love.

How was dinner with…Alden?

I give her the capsule version and when I tell her Alden’s final advice, something changes in her eyes.  There’s a distance, a focus beyond me and the kids and the house.  Like she’s looking into…how can I say this…otherwhen.  Then her gaze comes back to me, that one I remember so well, when I asked her to marry me, that inexpressibly tender, overwhelmingly lovely, undeniably committed to me, to us.  She’s fixed me with that gaze and I find myself melting.

What will you do?  And she takes one of my hands in both of hers.  I raise her hands to my mouth and kiss one, then the other.  They’re warm with a hint of gardenia from her favorite lotion.

Inside me there’s a tempest but down at the core is the love of this woman.  And my children.  Well, okay and the darn dog. 

I don’t know honey.  Let’s sleep on it.  I won’t do anything rash. 

Right Bradley, I think to myself.  Like you ever did in the last 20 years.

Now she pulls my hand to her mouth and kisses it.  Her breath is warm on my skin and her lips feel like something just this side of heaven.

I believe you Bradley.

And right then it’s like I signed a pact, committed myself to a holy promise.  The tempest in me subsides a tad, and the core of love, that sustains me, expands.  I get up to change for bed and Beth puts on her robe and leads me out onto our little deck.  We lean against the railing, smelling the rain fresh air and spy the moon, in its last quarter, peeking through the wind shredded clouds. 

There’s the hill in front of us like a subject we’ve deferred, the elephant in the room of our relationship.  But for now, we are close and at peace, relatively speaking.  Nothing will change tonight.  I fix on that.  Nothing will change tonight.  And I take her in my arms for a long kiss before the chill drives us back inside.

VII

They come back you know. 

Its always on a weekend night.  But Friday evening comes and goes.  For a change both kids are home and we have a rare family evening, games at the dining room table, popcorn in a blue pottery bowl, Johannes Linstead on the stereo, which, surprisingly, we all like.  Upbeat Latin guitar.  Peter and Catherine are unexpectedly copasetic, almost like they grew up together. 

Then Saturday Peter goes off to soccer practice and Catherine and Ashley head for the movies.   I poach salmon, make an endive salad with fresh mozzarella, roast new potatoes.  I’m the chef tonight, but Beth is on line with an apple cobbler.  There’s a new DVD waiting on the coffee table. 

Dusk is just settling dark wings over the hill, long shadows creeping down from the trees toward the house. I put Mozart’s string trios on, the elegant and deceptive simplicity of violin, viola, and cello in alternating adagios and fugues. 

We sit at the dining room table with a candelabra blazing near our plates. The curtains drawn back with the hill in view. The wine is a good chardonnay, creamy oak, apricots and a hint of grapefruit.   The salmon melts in my mouth, the endive is a suitably bitter contrast, mellowed by the potatoes.  The meal done, we sit just staring up the hill, waiting.  Finally Beth gets the cobbler and ladles out princely portions topped with vanilla ice cream.  We pour fresh coffee in small china cups.

Could heaven be any closer than this?  We sit with the soft music stirring around us, pleasantly satiated, a mellow glow from the wine, our palates soothed and caressed. 

Then.

The last bite done, in the final light of the cloudless sunset, as a skein of geese skim the treetops and crickets serenade us in between a fugue and an adagio. 

They come. 

I see the front of the V first, cresting the hill and then the wings of the formation as the horses walk with their riders down through the brittle brown grass.  Beth takes my hand in a crushing grip, the one she uses during scary movie scenes.  Half way down, the main body stops, but gladiator guy comes all the way down and only stops when he’s up to the fence. 

Bradley.  Bradley. There’s a feverish intensity in her voice and her pitch and volume rises on the repeat. The last time I heard her say my name twice like that was when Peter was four years old, with a split chin from tumbling down the stairs and stopping his fall at the landing with his face on the parquet.  Nine stitches.  She was holding Peter with blood streaming down his chin, down his neck onto his Oshkosh overalls.  He was screaming fit to wake the neighbors and she looked up as I rounded the corner from the family room to take in the wailing child, the blood, my pasty faced wife.   It wasn’t fear I saw in her face, but anguish as she pressed her palm to his dripping chin to stop the bleeding.

Not fear, but pain for our child’s suffering.  If she could have taken that one on her chin, she would have.  No doubt. 

We rose from the table together, dessert forgotten and went to the door wall.  Harley bounded from his mudroom bed at the sound of the slider easing back.  I stepped down onto the patio alone and stopped.

I turned to see Beth, tears welling up and spilling over.  Harley’s tail wagged so hard I thought it might crack like a whip. He whines and his front claws do a quick castanet on the tile.  Then I turned and strode across to the fence. 

The horseman’s face was shielded in shadow under the broad brimmed gladiator helmet, the last faint light retreating from the hilltop behind him.  His head tilted to the side, like he’d just asked a question and was waiting for an answer.  Hair curls in unruly ringlets at the back of the helmet.  The horse stirs underneath him, a muscle at the shoulder flexes and twitches momentarily.  Gladiator’s left leg and right arm bore armor and a short sword hung from a belt around his waist.  A small round shield was slung over his back.
 

There’s the pungent horse sweat hanging in the air against the crushed smell of dry grass turning to hay, fading, falling over.  Up the hill, the other horsemen sit on their mounts, silent as the light, still bleeding from the evening.  There’s a blowing of horse nostrils, a distant whinny.  Harley whines, then barks as if answering himself. 

Why are you here, I ask.  The question is as much for me as it is for him. Gladiator’s face is turned down at me, eyes hooded.  He extends his left arm to me, his hand open as if to grip my arm.  Long slim fingers.  

I look back at Beth limned in the light.  Tears are streaming down her face and one hand covers her mouth.  I can see her shoulders heaving.  Inside all my resolve is crumbling.  But still, there’s that core of love, family, wife. 

I won’t do anything rash.  Sure.  Suddenly my mind is filled with clichés.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  The longest journey begins with a single step.   Half the fun is getting there. 

His fingers flex and extend, beckoning.  I turn and walk back to Beth and put my arms around her.  I feel the tears soaking through the front of my shirt.  Gradually her sobbing subsides. 

Don’t go.  Oh, God, Bradley, don’t go.

I have to.

Why?  It’s as much a challenge as a question.

I don’t know.  But I’ll come back. I promise.

I’ve never made a promise to her that I didn’t keep.  I wasn’t about to break my record now.  Despite my unease in my suburban commuter life, I loved Beth beyond all reason, beyond understanding. We had a history, a legacy of two great kids, our memories of loving each other, of trials and triumphs.  Who could give up such a thing?

Still, the pull to go is like gravity, drawing me away.

I push back from her, holding her hands and lean in for a kiss.  Then I turn and run for the fence.  Gladiator’s arm comes down as mine comes up and he hoists me onto the horse as if I were but a child. 

With a tug on the reins, the horse turns.  Heels to flanks, we’re suddenly pounding up the hill with the others closing in behind us.  You ever heard a hundred horses thundering up a hill in full gallop?  You’ve not lived till you’ve felt a horse in full flight, flexing and extending, muscles bunching and unfolding and the ground flying beneath you.

I expect a long ride but as we crest the hill, in the placid folds of farmland I see a scattering of open fires, like a handful of gems tossed across a dark wrinkled cloth.  In the sky, stars are winking on, vast numbers more than I see in suburbia.  I look back and the sky behind us is dark, no street light glow, stars more numerous than sand.  The short gallop ends with a hauling on the reins.  My butt is suddenly aware that the last time I mounted a horse was more than twenty years ago. 

Gladiator walks the horse a slow pace between the fires.  Here and there are men in various kinds of armor and hand weapons.  It’s like a catalog of war craft  steel:  hammers, axes, pikes, long swords, spathas, spears, maces. And there’s that guy with the claymore.  Cross bows and long bows.  Helmets abound, tucked under arms or on top of heads or being used as seats. Roman legion helmets with tall crests, winged helmets, barrel helms.  Things with visors.  Gleaming, rusty. 

As we ride through, men raise their hands in greeting, sometimes lifting a weapon, apparently in salute.  In turn, gladiator (he’s got to have a name) raises his free hand. 

Further down the hill, where there should be the fence, a half dozen men are gathered around a fire, one is singing a song that is sad and sweet with a melody that rises and dips like a swallow in flight.  His high tenor voice lifts in the air and the men around him sing along on a chorus.  But it’s in a language I don’t know nor is it even slightly familiar.  Still the lilt of the melody and the gentleness of the singer brings a strange stirring in my heart, a longing that I cannot fathom.  A yearning for…something.

Gladiator nudges me and gestures at the ground.  He slides off the horse and I follow.  The men are young and old and middle aged, gray beard, and beardless youth. As I look around the circle, there’s a common theme in their faces but just now I can’t put my finger on it. 

To my left is the young tenor, crossbow slung across his back, quarrels in a scabbard.  Then a rough looking character wearing a kilt and claymore across his knees, cross legged on the ground.  A man in breastplate, greaves on his lower legs, a helmet with a tall plumed crest, a short sword, clean shaven.  Across the fire a painfully skinny, tall dark skinned fellow with a long pike that towered above the whole group.  And others.  A motley crew.

Gladiator gestures at the circle and nudges me.  He still hasn’t said a word.  But the men around the circle murmured greetings:

Well met stranger.

Hail fellow.

Welcome, sir.

Pleasure to make your acquaintance. 

 Some only nod, another raises his hand, still another extends his to grip my forearm in some old form of a handshake.  Then I’m startled when one takes my hand in a soul-brother grip, around the hilt of my thumb. 

 I look around the circle. Gladiator is seated on his shield, well back from the firelight, his face turned down.

 I.  I’m Bradley.  And then another round of greetings and names. 

 Azubuike, a startlingly dark skinned man, tall and lean.  Bernard, who was burly and bearded with tattooed snakes crawling up both arms.  Gerald, the youth with the crossbow, beardless with curly red hair.  Francois, dark hair in a long pony tail and fair skinned as Azu was dark.  Wojtek who was blond, and muscular.  Barak, who was olive skinned with short dark hair and a beard. 

 Sit, one said, gesturing at the ground.  Suddenly I realize that I’m in slacks, loafers, a long sleeve knit shirt.  And the night is chilly.  But I sit, there in the dead autumn grass, crushed down by the passing of horses.  Someone tosses me a heavy wool cape that I draw around my shoulders. 

 What…what are you all doing here?

 You called us Bradley.  We came, said Azu, a dark skinned muscular fellow with a stout spear and hide covered shield.  His voice is deep and resonant.

 I called you? 

 Who else would have? 

 It takes a minute for me to sort through my thoughts.  What did Alden say?  That if they weren’t real maybe they were part of my subconscious. 

 But why would I have called you?

 There are faint sighs around the fire, a chuckle from the highlander, another looks me in the eye, shaking his head from side to side.  But smiling.

 Are you happy Bradley? queried Azu. 

 Happy?

Do you always answer a question with a question? 

 Do you?  I riposte.  Laughter ripples around the fire.  Wojtek, a burly blond with an iron mace and large round shield, pulls a pot from the fire, pours tea into metal mugs.  The cups circulate around.  I think about the question as the tea comes round.  Happy?  Content, sometimes.  In love, always.  Proud, without a doubt, of my kids.  Happy?

 The tea is strong and smoky and the hot mug feels good to my hands in the fall air. 

 Azu puts the question to me again.  Are you happy Bradley? The tea pouring and passing has given me time to think. 

 Happy…now there’s a concept.

 More laughter.  

 So…?

 I guess I am…sometimes. 

But not always.

 Who can be happy all the time? 

 You have a family?  Are you not happy with your woman, your children?

 Yes, but.  Well.  I miss the life I had before. 

 And what was that Bradley?  Said Barak.

 I sighed and stared into my mug, looking for answers that I’d already asked myself a hundred times.

 Rafting on white water.  Riding a horse under moonlight.  Building a cabin.  Paddling  my canoe through the Boundary Waters and along the length of the Au Sable.  Cutting my own firewood and running out before the end of winter. 

 There were murmurs of agreement around the periphery.  Out in the distance a coyote yipped briefly and then let out a long mournful cry.  Shivers ran up my back despite the wool cape.  Such a lonely sound, that howl.

 Wojtek moved closer from around the far side of the fire.  And you were younger then, no?  Closer now I could see that his hair was not so blond, streaked with gray and his face, though smiling, was haggard, with deep furrows framing his mouth.

 Well, yeah.  I said with what I hoped was the right shade of sardonic.  I would have to have been to do all that. 

 And were you happy then?

 Heck yeah.

 Really?  Then why did you leave that life? 

 Francois stood up, using his halberd to stir the fire.  He left for a moment and came back with an arm load of fire wood, and tossed half of it in, one thick branch at a time.  Sap sizzled at the end of one,  and a fragrant pitchy smell roiled up.  Deep in the fire a knot exploded, sending sparks heavenward.

 Francois spoke then, clear English with a distinct French accent.  I turned to look at him and saw a deep puckered scar running from his right ear to the top of his head. 

 Something missing then, mon nouveau ami?

 Was something missing back then?  I searched through my memories of those times, two cabins, one collective, the long wilderness trips, the immense vegetable gardens, the evenings of song and solitude.

 Solitude.  And then it hit me, like a brick to my thick stubborn skull.

 Solitude.

 You were missing solitude?

 No.  Solitude was how I lived. 

 Oh?

 Yes.  Alone. 

 One evening, probably 25 years ago, I’d sat out on my porch after a fine meal of beans and vegetables and rice, and pulled out my 6 string Gibson.  There was a Hank Williams song I was learning after hearing Jimmie Spheeris perform it brilliantly.  It was the Aminor7 chord that got me every time where it fell on lonesome.

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill;

He sounds too blue to fly.

The midnight train is whining low

I'm so lonesome I could cry.

I thought that it so succinctly identified the deepest saddest thing any person could experience.

Did you ever see a robin weep

When leaves begin to die?

That means he's lost the will to live

 I'm so lonesome I could cry.

 Loneliness.

The silence of a falling star

Lights up a purple sky;

And as I wonder where you are,

I'm so lonesome I could cry.

 Loneliness like a deep well into which you’d fallen and could not ever hope to escape.

 I've never seen a night so long,

When time goes crawling by;

The moon just went behind a cloud;

I'm so lonesome I could cry.

 Tears began to flow down my cheeks as I recalled how I’d felt all those years.  Oh, I was busy trying to fill the loneliness with adventure.  But each adventure had not satisfied that craving for companionship.  Each new trek left me bereft despite how gloriously fantastical it had been, running class fours all day, lying under the stars at night.  Oh, for the moment I felt incredibly alive, but at the end, when the rafts were packed away, the fire covered with sand, the loneliness came back like an infection I could not shake.

 Solitude.  Alone.  Lonely.  There was a line between those words that now blurred, even as my tears blurred my vision of the men around me, the snapping fire, the stars burning overhead brighter than Solomon’s legendary glory. 

 You can chase away loneliness for a moment or an hour or a day.  There are many ways to chase it…wine, adventure, books, movies, work even….but in the end, it comes flooding back.  It never really goes away. 

 It never really did. 

I sat there in that circle of men, good companions by the look of them, who would bare any burden for their friends.  But hard men, with flinty eyes, and careworn faces.  I looked around at them and knew I had the answer to Francois’s question.

Yes, Francois.  Something was missing.

The men stirred, pulled capes tighter, sipped hot tea, shifted on their shields, looked at me.  To a man, they looked at me, faces reflecting the amber flames.  

 Love.  I said.  Then more loudly.  Love. 

 There were murmurs then, heads turned, beards catching the breeze, twisting.  Bernard and Azu leaned toward each other, voices too low for me to catch.

Bernard rises and disappears into the dark, returns a few minutes later with an armload of greaves, a small shield, a helmet, a leather breast plate, a short sword, a tunic, thick leggings,
 

He dumps the armor and weapons in a heap next to me.   

From his seat across the fire, gladiator appears to be dozing, chin on chest. 

Bernard’s voice was deep and resonant. 

Will you now choose, Bradley?

 Choose?

Love.  Adventure.

 I have to choose?

You see us Bradley?  Long ago we chose and now this is the life we must live.  Adventure, danger,  continually out on the precipice.  The knife edge of life, uncertainty.  The unknown just over the next horizon.

 He kicked at the pile of armor and fixed me with his hard dark eyes.  But he smiled.  And in that smile was understanding. 

 We know your dilemma, Bradley.

 Do you?  It was my way of stalling. 

 Beth.  Catherine.  Peter.  My mind was flooded with images of our times together.    I realized that I was not fully engaged with them, though I loved them beyond reason.  The tears welled up again running down my cheeks onto my hands.  I felt my shoulder shaking, my throat burning.  I buried my face in my hands, dropping the mug of now cold tea. 

 A large arm enveloped me from one side, from another a coarse hand took mine in a comforting grip.  There was another hand on my head, and one on my back.  I looked up to find Azu, Bernard, Wojtek, Barak gathered around me.  Though hard faced, flinty eyed, careworn, their smiles spoke volumes of understanding.

When I could find my voice, I spoke.

 You gave up love for this?

 Heads nodded.

 And I would be giving up love.  For adventure. 

 More nodding.  Across the fire, gladiator rose and stood, not moving.

Catherine would be graduating in the spring.  Peter started 9^th grade, probably playing soccer, baseball and excelling in English and humanities.  And Beth.  My Beth. 

I could not leave what I truly love. 

We know, said Francois.  Once we thought we could.  And when we did, we found that the loss was like losing an arm.  But we cannot go back.

Barak squeezed my shoulder.  We would love to have you in our company, Bradley. But you must do what you must do.

 I rose then and took in the spectacle of the men around me.  The armor, the weapons, their….loneliness. 

I looked at the pile of armor at my feet and turned away and began walking back up the hill toward the subdivision, gravity now reversing toward the center of my universe.  Home.

 Voices called farewells but I could not turn and look or even speak.  I was afraid that the strength I now felt would leave me. 

 Bradley.  There was a man at my side, leading a horse.  It was gladiator.  He pulled his helmet off.  I turned and the light from the neighboring fire caught his face. 

One blue eye, one green. 

I stopped, not knowing whether to laugh or scream. 

 Alden.

His smile was broad, his eyes full of mirth.

Follow your dreams Bradley.

But you said…

I know.  And now you’ve chosen.  And chosen well. 

And now you are going on your road trip?

 Alden extended his hand and took mine in a firm warm grip that lingered.  You have what many men can only wish for.  And you have it in abundance. 

 I pulled him into an embrace and felt his chin rest a moment on my shoulder, then he pulled back.  Yes.  Yes I do, I said.

 Did I see a tear begin to well up  in his eyes?

 He tossed me the reins.  He’ll come back on his own.  Go. 

 So I rode home.  As  I crested the top of the hill the night was beginning to fade in the far distance.  Down below was darkness, faint outlines of trees limned against starlight.  My heart was full and overflowing.  The horse picked out a path, and the further down we rode, the more things began to take familiar shape.  A roofline, a fence swam into view as if rising from dark water.  Deep in the trees behind me an owl hooted, mournful.

 There was the fence, the door wall, light spilling out onto the patio.  I threw a leg over the horse’s back and slid down, my body suddenly remembering how to dismount  bareback.   Sure enough, he turned and ambled back up into the darkness.  I hopped the fence and Harley scrabbled at the door barking excitedly.  Beth appeared and threw the door back and pulled me into a crushing grip with both arms.

Oh, Bradley.  Oh, thank God. 

 Adventures end. 

Love never does. 

 I went back to work that following week.  Alden wasn’t at the booth.  I knew he wouldn’t be there.  But that was okay. 

By winter, I’d left the corporate world, started doing the books for Beth’s day care and working there with the kids. 

Beth and I walked that hillside every evening while the weather would let us, before the first fall snow blessed the landscape.  We found no hoof prints, no droppings, no fire rings.  The fence between us and the fallow farmland stood as ever.  The forest still encroached the old fields, gradually reclaiming the land. 

But I did find one thing there.  A helmet with a broad curved brim.  And inside a note written on heavy paper : 

 The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise man grows it under his feet.  Alden.

I hung that helmet over the fireplace.  Whenever I get to feeling restless I go to it and take out the note and read it.  But that’s not often these days.  No, not often at all. 

                                                                         END

 

The men’s names are all authentic ethnic names with their own meaning.

 Azubuike (your past is your strength: African).

Bernard (bold as a bear: English)

Gerald (spear ruler: Welsh)

Francois (free: French)

Wojtek (happy soldier: Polish)

Barak (lightning: Hebrew)

 

Any resemblance of this story to any part of my personal life is purely intentional and is autobiographical.