The Crossing Point

by August Arrea

  For a moment all was still and quiet, except for the patter of the rain. The pounding of Jacob’s heart, which made itself heard in his ears, kept time with his jagged breathing as he stood wondering how he had managed such an incredible acrobatic feat while staring wide-eyed at the deadly looking branch aimed menacingly at him. His attention was then suddenly drawn to a fluttering movement he felt and heard pass by overheard. The tops of the towering trees surrounding him swayed in unison like blades of grass hit by a strong gust of wind before snapping back into place. Still slightly dazed and spinning from his fall, Jacob scoured the vacant treetops. It was there again, that familiar feeling which had been dogging him for the past few weeks, as though someone was following him, watching him.

  His feet ignited again, and he was once more in full gallop, snaking his way through the cluster of trees that surrounded him like a wooded coven. Jacob soon spied a break where the woods were suddenly interrupted by a small clearing and he began running even faster. He oftentimes escaped to this peaceful nook as a young boy to search for frogs and lizards and watch the deer come to graze on the field of knee-high grass. Emerging from the dark thicket of trees, Jacob continued toward the center of the clearing before exhaustion finally forced him to a halt. The meadow was alive with the chorus of frogs chirping loudly from within the carpet of thick grass as they basked in the welcoming shower and frolicked in the pooling water. The deer, however, were nowhere to be seen, favoring dry shelter deep within the woods over a tempting meal of sweet, rain-washed grass.

  With nowhere else to run, Jacob began pacing in an agitated circle in the center of the clearing, his hands cupping the back of his head as he fought to catch his breath. He was soaked through, his shirt, pants and shoes all caked in mud and pieces of dead leaves he had picked up from his tumbles on the ground. His chest heaved deeply straining both for air and attempting to stifle the great dueling waves of sorrow and anger welling in ever strengthening swells from deep inside where the pit of his being dwelled.

  “Who are you crying for?” his mother’s voice cooed gently in his ears.

  Even the rain dribbling down Jacob’s face couldn’t camouflage the tears streaming from his reddening eyes. Jacob could feel the heat of his anger in them as they drooled their way down across his cheeks, and he tasted the salty bile they carried to the corners of his mouth.

  “If your tears are for me, then you are wasting them. An end of one’s time is not one to be mourned, but celebrated. For it means a door leading to our ultimate destiny is finally being opened to us, where not the grim figure of death awaits, but life.”

  The more his mother’s voice rang inside his ears, the more briskly Jacob paced.

  “Listen to me Jacob...what words have I made you take to heart to hold before you like a shield of armor when it seemed like all the rest of the world was lost to you?” she had asked him the night before while staring deeply into her son’s eyes, even as his did their best to avoid hers. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

  Jacob knew the words even before his mother began reciting them. They had been instilled into him by his mother and committed to his memory from the earliest moment he could remember the pedals of his consciousness unfolding. And while Jacob had always been leery of the lighted path of faith his mother had blindly steered herself down, these righteous words, whether he liked it or not, had somehow taken root inside him and could be recalled without so much as a straining thought, the same way he inherently knew the fact that his hair was brown, or that his eyes were opposing hues of blue and green.

  “Say it with me,” Isabeth had sweetly urged her son, whose lips began to move along with his mother’s voice even before her request as their last moments together quietly played themselves out. “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

  However, the echoes he heard within the ghostly memory brought Jacob no comfort. If anything, it only served to further stir his rage and he suddenly became conscious of the rosary still hanging around his neck, and he reached for it. And as he did, he was reminded of the fear he was left with of losing his mother when he finally left her room. It was a bludgeoning fear that guided him back to his own room and lured him to the bottom drawer of his dresser where he quickly rifled through his balled-up clothes flinging several T-shirts over his shoulder onto the floor behind him until he uncovered buried at the bottom a holy hoard of a couple dozen rosaries of all shapes and colors his mother had given to him over the years in her failed attempts to pass her enlightenment onto him. He would always take them because it made her happy and then discard them in the drawer until his collection began taking on the appearance of an interwoven nest of beaded snakes.

  Standing in the middle of the meadow, Jacob recalled reaching for the rosary which now hung around his neck from the top of the viper pile and studying the beauty of the rope of beads, a beauty he had failed to recognize when his mother first gave it to him. It was made of fine polished wood, and each bead had been delicately hand-carved into blossoming roses. Holding it also brought a strange feeling to him; a queasiness of sorts. It had been a long while since he last said the rosary, on his own, that is, without the guilt-filled urging to placate his mother. Yet say it he did, that night, while stretched out across his bed. And as he stumbled along trying to remember the order and words to the various prayers, he could hear the echo of his mother’s voice reciting along with him, guiding him through the verses in that soothing supportive tone she had when she first taught him.

  “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee...”

  While making his way through the recitation, Jacob kneaded each bead between his thumb and forefinger as though he were rolling mini meatballs. And through it he felt a quiet awkwardness, as though he had been locked in a room with a friend he had just been in a fistfight with and told not to come out until hands had been shook, apologies had been made, and the friendship mended. The problem was his fight was with God—all of Heaven, actually—for what was happening to his mother, and his anger remained a festering wound which refused to heal. The rosary felt to Jacob like a strand of apologies he was being forced to make for a fight he had not provoked. Yet he had finally been pushed to the point where he was willing to try and let go of the grudge that sat in his core like a hardened peach pit, to shake that hand, to mend that friendship. If anything, for the sake of his mother. It was for her that he clutched those beads like a drowning man clings to a life preserver, mouthing the prayers over and over in a desperate mantra, hoping that the words would somehow come together like a secret password that would unleash a genie from within the magical rope and grant him a wish. Not three, but just one.

  Only there was no genie. There was no magic, and certainly no granting of a wish. There was only the waking up to the news that his mother had been taken from him. Heaven had turned a deaf ear to Jacob, perhaps even laughingly so, despite his olive branch, despite his pleas. And for that, he had only three words left for the one with whom he had attempted to make amends.

  “I hate you,” he muttered quietly to himself before directing his gaze upward in the direction of the dark clouds which could be seen moving fast across the sky and appearing more like the smoke from a forest fire. Yet the true fire was in Jacob’s eyes. For all the sorrow leaking from them, there was a glint of intense rage that was fixed and dilated on the sky above, yet directed beyond the cover gray blanketing it.

  “Do you hear me?” Jacob called out louder. “I hate you!”

  His grip on the rosary around his neck tightened, and with a sharp hateful tug he ripped it off and threw it as hard and as far away across the field as he could.

  “I HATE YOU!”

  A flash of lightning illuminated the black sky followed b
y a thundering boom.

  “I hate you,” Jacob whimpered falling to his knees.

  ~~~

  At the same time Jacob became a broken pile, surrendering to the tidal wave of emotions he was unable to hold back any longer that finally engulfed him, leaving him wracked with sobbing, a figure loomed unseen at the edge of the clearing. He slowly made his way a short distance across the sopping field, stopping when the edge of his boot found the spot where the discarded rosary had come to land in a fit of rage. The figure reached down and picked it up, studying briefly the broken strand of beads in his hand. Then placing the rosary in the pocket of his long overcoat, the figure turned and retreated from the clearing as quietly as he came, leaving Jacob to suffer through his grief.

  CHAPTER TWO

  An Unexpected Visit

  T

  hree days after Isabeth Parrish was laid to rest at the small, park-like St. Michael’s Cemetery, a figure wearing a dark, heavy overcoat stood at the front door of the Parrish home. Closing his eyes, he drew a deep breath and rapped the door with his knuckles, lightly at first, and then with a louder impatience.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he heard a voice call out from inside.

  Through the etched pane of glass in the center of the door, he caught the blurred movement of a figure approaching accompanied by the clicking of footsteps. And, even though the figure growing nearer looked warped and distorted in appearance as if moving inside the prism of a kaleidoscope, he knew instantly it was her. He managed to remain steadfast in his boots and gather back his stony impenetrable resolve that for a brief moment abandoned him when he heard the hand on the other side of the door take hold of the doorknob. Then, like a curtain parting, the door opened and there she stood.

  “Yes, may I hel—”

  Her greeting was bluntly snuffed by an audible gasp reserved for the rare moment when the heart stalls mid-beat and the lungs are inexplicably squeezed empty of air the moment she saw the face of the man standing on the side of the door, and the antique ivory teacup she was in the midst of drying slipped from her hand. It took a split second for the cup to fall and hit the ground. Yet, in the spheric pools that were his eyes, it seemed to float in the air, slowly rotating top over bottom in its downward descent, allowing him to capture every last detail of the delicate hand-painted green vine entwined around the cup just beneath the gold rim along with a pair of imprints on the bottom reading “Haviland, France” and “Haviland Co. Limoges,” stamped in red before shattering upon the floor.

  “Gotham.”

  It had been so long since she uttered his name, it felt almost like taking a stab at speaking in a foreign tongue.

  “Hello, Ava.”

  She appeared visibly stunned, staring in silent, yet overwhelming disbelief at the unexpected visitor standing in the doorway. How long, she wondered, had it been since she had last laid eyes on him, even as she knew it had been fifty long years that had passed since then. Now, here he suddenly was, looking exactly as he did the moment such images had long ago seared themselves into her memory.

  Ava’s hands began to nervously ring the dish towel she clutched tightly as she struggled to fight the urge she had to reach out and touch his face. To ensure he was real. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to it, fearful to discover that it was only a cruel figment of her imagination brought on by the demented pleasures of old age.

  Gotham could feel her distress in the shade of his shadow and he gave her time to grow accustomed to his presence until it seemed she couldn’t take the sight before her anymore and quickly diverted her attention to the broken remains of the cup at her feet. He followed her down onto one knee, feeling bad that his unexpected arrival would cause her to lose such a beautiful piece of China that had meant so much to her.

  “I’m sorry to have startled you.”

  “Not to worry. It’s an old cup,” she replied in as calm a manner as she could muster, averting his gaze that remained firmly on her as she hurriedly picked up the jagged pieces and placed them into the dish towel she laid haphazardly out across the floor. He reached out and gently placed his forefinger under her chin and lifted her head so he could look once more into her eyes that were now brimming with tears. Age may have made its unwelcome presence apparent in the delicate creases lining her face and the almost snow-white hair which was immaculately coiffed, but to him she remained a vision if ever there was one and yet, most certainly, one he had never come accustomed to witnessing.

  “None of that.” He was well acquainted with the overwhelming fog of emotion in which Ava had suddenly found herself swamped.

  Fighting to regain what composure she could, Ava turned her head away from his soothing touch and quickly balled up the broken pieces of China in the towel.

  “I was just making some tea,” she offered pleasantly, rising to her feet. “Please, come in and make yourself at home.”

  She turned abruptly, even before the last words left her mouth, and hurried off down the hall where she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Gotham standing alone in the doorway to question whether he had committed a serious error by venturing up the steps to the front porch and making his presence known. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. His eyes immediately shifted to the sitting room off the small foyer from where music that had captured his attention as he approached the house could be heard coming and he made his way there, shrugging off the overcoat he was wearing and draping it over the railing of the wooden bannister of the stairway he passed.

  Stepping into the sun-filled room, his eyes looked past the immaculate, yet homey furnishings, to a giant wooden bookcase that stretched the length of the far wall where, holed in the center, surrounded by rows of books, was an antiquated turntable, from which came the legato of a most beautiful soprano aria. It moved him, almost hypnotically, across the room to the phonograph until he stood watching the yellow label in the center of the record spin beneath the arm of the needle which mined, with just the faintest crackle of age, the glorious notes residing within the grooves etched into the vinyl.

  “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix.” The song had long ago ingrained itself into Gotham’s very core. Yet beautiful as it was, the song’s true power rested in the voice singing it, like the swirling euphoria residing with deceptive stealth in the sweet bouquet of a fine wine.

  Resting beside the turntable was the album’s empty cardboard sleeve emblazoned with composer Camille Saint-Saens’ name in white lettering across the top followed underneath by the title of his opera in a much larger orange banner, “Samson et Delila.” It was the striking portrait of the beautiful woman, however, that made Gotham pick up the cover. He instantly became transfixed by the image staring back at him as he continued to listen to the music. His fingers followed the direction of the woman’s upswept auburn hair that fell in ringlets around her face. The delicate features of beauty staring back were almost too much for Gotham to lay eyes upon and not feel a deep anguish well up within him: the piercing green eyes, of which the real Delilah, herself, would have gouged to possess; the scarlet mouth poised with the ability to conquer the greatest of empires and bring the most hardened of souls to their knees with a single note. Gotham found himself cursing the glossy surface beneath his touch that denied him the smoothness of the porcelain skin forever embedded in his fingertips that continued their way across the bare feminine shoulders peering out from beneath a thin, silk turquoise dress before coming to rest at the top of another name also stretched in orange across the bottom of the album cover like a marquee: Ava Delacroux.

  Gotham placed the album cover back on the shelf face down, hoping that by denying his eyes the sight of such loveliness he might manage to exorcize the ghosts inside his head that were beginning to awaken from their long sleep and unravel the tapestries in their guarded possession which held the dusty remnants of memories he had long struggled to forget. Yet what may have been easy to put out of sight, proved an impossible challenge to cast out of mind, not so long as th
e voice spilling from the turntable continued to ring in his ears.

  That voice…

  Like some ethereal embodiment, it seemed to move about Gotham, circling him, in sweeping, swirling movements of resurrected life, as if the surrounding four walls were the construct of some grand ballroom raised up for the sole purpose of accommodating its haunting waltz. It taunted Gotham, this unrelenting spirit of the past, keeping its distance with flirty flourishes before rushing him straight on, attempting to take him prisoner with nothing but a heart-binding sound that continued to soar radiantly with untrammeled longing.

  Ainsi qu’on des bles

  les epis onduler

  sous la brise legere,

  ainsi fremit mon coeur,

  pret a se consoler,

  a ta voix qui m’est chere!

  Gotham remembered when he first heard it as if it were yesterday and, in more ways than one, to him, it was. The stirring song managed to find him in the grasp of a snowy gray day and guide him down a narrow, cold German street to an ice-frosted window where the source of the lovely sound was found to be coming from a girl not a day older than ten, whose voice conspired with the flickering fire coming from the hearth to warm the small gathering of family and friends seated around her quietly listening. And then, in the dim of darkness brought by the second world war, he would hear it again. Only this time, it would call out for him in a weakened murmur, as withered, and nearly devoid of life, as the numerous corpses whose decaying stench fought to smother this last gasp of hope in a place where all hope had long been methodically incinerated. He would never forget the sight of her, unrecognizable, and yet instantly recognizable, struggling to exist as would a flower attempting to grow from the muck of an unspeakable cesspool of sewage and filth.