“Maybe.” She thought, slightly frustrated that he had no idea what she was talking about.
“Anyhow, until I see it with my own eyes, I just don’t think I buy it… But it does make you a fascinating person!” She rolled her eyes at him.
He pulled into a parking space in the lot beside the café. The dusty gravel crunched under their feet as they made their way to the sidewalk. The cool breeze softly tousled their hair as they walked holding hands. They could smell the aroma of lunch being pulled together in the café’s kitchen. Marie breathed in the crisp mountain air and relished the warmth of Allen’s hand in hers. She closed her eyes and breathed in all the goodness of life around her.
CHAPTER 2 – THE EUROPA CAFÉ
"So Ben, let's see how you're coming along. Look around and tell me what you see," said Tom. They were sitting opposite each other in the same booth as Marie and Allen. Marie and Allen could not see or hear their conversation. Ben and Tom, and all the other old souls sitting amongst the living at the Europa Café, occupied a parallel space in time. You could say they were ghosts, but really they were just people with a job to do, who happened to no longer have a physical body.
Ben looked around the Europa Cafe'. He had soft curls of brown hair that framed his face. His skin was perfect porcelain, never having endured chicken pox or acne. He'd been following Tom around until he got the hang of life as a Protector. He looked around them. There was an older couple in the booth behind Tom. He heard the woman tell her husband about a new family at church that her bridge group had been talking about. She thought that the husband may have been an ex-convict and it really concerned her that someone like that might be sitting next to them every Sunday. She wasn’t sure what he had done but it must have been violent, you could tell from his eyes. The man would just say, “Huh.” and continue spooning vegetable soup into his mouth.
"The man is calm, pure. I feel calmness from him. The woman, she's bitter. There are dark spots around her soul."
"Good," said Tom. "She isn't a lost cause, but she could be pulled, in such a way, that would be fatal for her and cause pain for him. Pain in itself is not dangerous; what matters is how they deal with it." Tom, had a short beard of brown hair that matched the hair on his head and side burns. His white linen shirt was ironed smooth with a collar that was flat rather than folded over. The buttons had an antique look, as though they were carved perfectly from bone. He held himself in a relaxed, but composed position of a leader.
A thin, short middle-aged woman in a ruffled waitress uniform bustled up to the table and started taking Marie and Allen’s order. She looked like you couldn’t get anything past her and she’d knock you out just as fast as she’d give you a pat on the back. The noise of the living talking, giving their orders, chatting amongst each other, moving chairs and walking around, mixed in with the chatter of the Protectors, was nearly deafening. The living could not hear the double conversations and went right on as if they were on a movie screen for the Protectors.
The Protectors lingered around chatting. The new souls or live ones, would often pass right through them. Sometimes they occupied the same place without any notice. The new souls were totally oblivious to this parallel world right beside them. Perhaps it was best this way. New souls, Tom explained to Ben, had a tendency to let fear overtake them if they didn't understand something, or worse, completely under-estimate it.
Marie was sitting half next to and half over-lapping Tom in the booth. She and Allen were talking about where they grew up.
“We live on the coast and our family sails a lot. We have a little 23’ sloop and sail to Catalina Island and stay the weekend. We anchor off-shore or tie up to a mooring. One time at night all the plankton glowed an iridescent blue color in the water all around us. It was magical. I’d never seen anything like it!” Marie explained.
Allen looked at her with fascination, filing away her words. He smiled unconsciously and the corners of his brown eyes crinkled up. He had never met anyone like her. She laughed with ease and seemed to enjoy everything around her, always present in the moment. She’d ordered hot tea with honey and lemon. He watched her fuss over the tea bag while she talked, wrapping the string around the spoon the little bag set upon and tugging until all the tea in the bag was squeezed out. She carefully did this ritual of measuring the honey and gently stirring until all the sweetness dissolved into the tea.
No one he knew drank hot tea. He didn't even know you could order it. Who would do that, other than British people, right? But she did. Not in a snobby way, but because it seemed to give her pleasure. It made the moment special. Marie looked back at him coyly, but the light in her eyes danced when she lingered in his gaze. Her heart raced just being near him. She reached out and laced her fingers in his and smiled.
Tom and Ben had been talking about other new souls around them when Tom stopped, his attention caught by Marie's words. "My first name is Sarah. I'm named after my great, great grandmother, Sarah Elizabeth.”
“Grandma Sarah was something else. Her family had money, tons of it! And her parents wanted her to marry well so she would be comfortable. But, she fell head over heels for a farmer. A poor farmer that worked hard in the fields. Her father disowned her because she wouldn’t listen to him. Isn’t that funny? What’s wrong with marrying a farmer? She followed her heart. What’s a life without love? I admire her." Marie paused and imagined this proper Victorian lady helping to harvest a field. She was strong and beautiful because she was known for following her heart. “You know her sisters never married. I guess they chose to be alone rather than marry someone they really had no love for, just for money.” She thought of how it must have been for them. “I want to be known for following my heart. I hope my great grandkids say that about me.”
Tom was smiling at Marie with pride. "You see, Ben," he said as he turned his head toward Ben, "Sarah Elizabeth was MY great, great, great grand-daughter. Oftentimes family units stay together on both sides of life. The familial feelings intensify our ability to influence the new souls, so it makes sense to keep the families together.”
Ben thought about what Tom said as they sat in the booth listening and watching. A big brown curl fell across his forehead. Allen and Marie ate club sandwiches and chit-chatted. New souls bustled around the cafe waiting tables or laughing with friends. It was always crowded here. As it was every Thursday night, the Café was filled with people in square dancing dresses and outfits. The short ruffled dresses looked so out of place in everyday life, but also quaint. There was a group that met at a dance hall on Main Street to dance and they'd all come here afterward, hungry from the exercise and full of bubbly conversation.
They were laughing and talking and hugging each other. Joy and friendship was everywhere. You could almost feel the warm vibration of positive energy in the air.
Ben was looking at Tom's face and comparing it to Marie's. They both had dark brown hair that lay in soft waves. They had almond-shaped eyes and porcelain skin. They were not gorgeous people per se, but they had a stately beauty. Their eyes sparkled with light. They had the same soft smile with demure, bow-shaped full lips and straight, white teeth. Their smile was genuine and warm, like coming home, but to a person rather than a house.
Even though the generations between Tom and Marie were many, they looked like cousins, maybe even brother and sister.
"Tom, how many years did you live?" Ben asked.
"Eighty-four years," said Tom. "A long time, a full life. Many children. A marriage filled with love from and for a woman who stole my heart. We had some hard times," at this his eyes looked down at his folded hands on the table, "but love got us through."
"How is it that I am a baby and I look like I'm 20 and you are 84 and we look the same age?" asked Ben.
"Because our outward appearance is merely a projection. Obviously we don't have bodies. There is an imprinted appearance all souls create. It's you in the prime of your adult life. It’s you if there had never been anything to subtract f
rom your potential. No scars, no malnutrition, no sickness, no bad habits. It's as if you had taken your DNA and grown it for 20 years and got a human, Well, sort of like you, since you technically were never born" Tom laughed at the last point.
He went on, "The one thing that often surprises new souls when they cross over is that a person who was created differently, the doctors would have called it a congenital abnormality, is the same here. That's because they were created perfectly and for their purpose in life.”
Tom stopped and looked at Ben’s facial expression. He had a faraway look of regret. “Ben, do you wish you had lived in the world, outside the womb?"
"I suppose so, in a way. But how can I really miss something I don't know anything about?" said Ben. "I wonder what food tastes like. They seem to enjoy it. But, in many ways, we are the same and I relate. They have relationships and care about each other like us. I would have liked to have gotten to know my parents. They seemed to love me and yet they had never met me. How can that be? And, I can see how the love doesn't stop when they cross over. You obviously still care for Marie and Sarah Elizabeth. Do you often see others you loved?"
Tom sighed and smiled, "Yes. I do. And you will eventually meet your parents when their time comes. My sweet Jenny and I see each other often. She is assigned to another new soul and occasions come up where the new ones get together. I also see my son Henry often. You see, Ben, I lived about over 200 years ago when this country was in the middle of the Revolutionary War. I was a Captain in that war. It was a harder life. So different from now. This place here was only occupied by natives then. The Europeans hadn’t even made it this far west. Jenny and I lived in Virginia and moved to what is now Kentucky. The natives there killed my Henry when he was just a boy. It broke our hearts. He’d just gone to get water at the stream. It was an awful attack on a boy. He was such a sweet little thing, too. We never could understand how such bad things can happen in the world, but you have to go on. Actually, three of my children died that year.” He sighed. “Henry hit me the hardest, though. He was so full of life.”
“Now, we understand about the evil all around us and how people make choices to act on impulses. Henry was just a victim of his circumstances. Of course when my time came to leave the world of the living, Henry was there and helped me. Funny how the boy you brought into the world ends up being more of a dad to you than a son. His kind heart gave him the skills to fight that evil on the other side. He is a true warrior and is often called on by Lorenzo. My son is my hero and mentor.
You'll meet him sooner or later. He is not assigned to a soul. He tracks certain old souls that would seek to destroy anything good and pure in this world. He is quite good at his job."
This thought made Ben look around the cafe'. It seemed to open his eyes more. He realized there were more souls around him than he'd seen. Of course there were the living souls eating and talking obliviously, and there were the Protectors all around like a party of ghosts in the same room, but now he sensed something else. There were shadows.
In corners. Under tables. Hiding behind backs. He couldn't make out a figure, but there were cold spots in the room trying to hide unnoticed. Ben wondered why he hadn't seen them before.
Then he noticed an odd sight that gave him shivers. A shadow slowly crept around the shoulders of the woman behind Tom, the woman who he had been observing earlier. Ben saw the woman now peering at a young girl at the register. The girl was largely pregnant and had no ring on. She looked very casual in a loose tee shirt and sweat pants pushed low to accommodate her large pregnant belly and her hair was in a messy pony tail. The woman smirked and Ben heard Tsk! Tsk!”' come from her down-turned mouth. The woman's Protector was a young woman who was leaning in to whisper in her ear. Ben could hear the Protector tell the woman that the girl needed her; she needed a friend. She was alone. She was far from her family. He heard her urge the woman to invite the girl to sit with them and talk to her. But the woman ignored the Protector. The dark shadow lay comfortably around the woman’s neck. The old woman seemed to look paler and the lines in her face darkened. It was as if the darkness was drinking the life right out of her.
"Ben,” said Tom, “I have some work with my son Henry that I need to do. I am going to assign you to Marie for a while. If you have an easy enough time guiding her, you are going to be permanently placed with her for her lifetime."
"Okay. Do you think I'm ready?" Said Ben.
"You're still a bit green, but you won’t be all alone. I have been babysitting Allen, here, for Jacob. Jacob is his protector. He should be back any minute now." Just then a tall, dark headed man with deep brown eyes that seemed to look right into your mind appeared.
"Right on cue, Jacob!" said Tom. "This is Ben that I was telling you about. I was just telling him that he would most likely be taking over Marie's handling from now on. By the looks of how snugly lovey-dovey she and Allen are, I suggest you two get along. You may be together a while."
Jacob slid into the booth and eyed Ben sizing him up.
Ben looked at Marie hanging on Allen's arm and realized the permanency of these assignments. This could take another 60-70 years. His mind was distracted by an abrupt "Harrumph" coming from the cash register. The pregnant girl's order was ready and the waitress was ringing her up. Apparently the girl didn't have enough for her order and the older couple was now standing behind her waiting to be checked out. The woman rolled her eyes and tapped her foot with her arms crossed. Then to her shock, her husband reached in his wallet and pulled out a $20 and said to the girl, "Here, honey. It’s ok. Use the change to get something for the baby."
The man's wife looked aghast. She turned on her heel and went out the door to wait for him.
Jacob held out his hand to shake Ben’s. Ben took it and gave a pleasant, unassuming smile.
“So, you are Allen’s Protector?”
“I am,” Jacob said, still staring at Ben with an expression of keen interest, now punctuated with a slight upturn of the corner of his mouth as though this answer was more like admitting he was a special agent.
Ben shivered a little under the pensive gaze. Jacob was a very intense person. “So when did you live?”
“Ah! Yes, I walked the earth in the middle ages. I was a musician. I played at court in France.”
“Oh. Wow.” Ben wasn’t sure what else to say and Jacob didn’t seem to be offering anything else.
Marie and Allen finished up and began to make their way to the cash register. Jacob followed and Ben followed him wondering how this new assignment was going to go. He still had so much to learn about life.
CHAPTER 3 – A WALK IN THE WOODS
On Saturday morning, Allen and Marie headed out to the car to find something to amuse them. “Want to hike the flume for a ways? It’s not too cold out,” Alan said looking around at the scenery around them.
“Sure! That sounds great,” Marie said. The flume was like an engineered creek that flowed around the area and carried water to lower elevations. Parts of it were constructed as a wood chute and other parts were not more than a ditch. There was a trail beside it that was good for hiking because it was maintained. The sound of running water follows you all the way, relaxing even the worst college-induced stress. A few weeks back they started early in the morning and hiked 15 miles of it together in another section farther downstream.
Allen parked the car in a residential neighborhood with cabins. Marie opened the car door and breathed in the clean mountain air. The tall pines reached up into the sky above them. Their scent adding to the freshness in the air. The sky was a steel gray that looked like at any moment would let go of mountains of snow to be sifted onto the landscape. In her long johns, wool socks and hiking boots she knew that in no time the exercise would warm her up.
Allen came around the car and held her door as she got out: always the Southern gentleman. He closed the door and put his arm around her waist, pulling her close to him. They leaned against the car as he whispered in her ear with a h
usky voice, “You’re not afraid to be in the woods with me, are you, little girl?”
She giggled and kissed his neck. The heat from inside his shirt warmed her cheeks. She could smell the clean scent of his body wash. “Maybe it’s you that should be worried!”
Obviously not worried, his lips covered hers and she felt like melted butter. If it wasn’t for the car holding her up, her knees would have buckled. Even after five months together, she still got the zingers racing through her insides when he kissed her. His kisses were pure passion, searching and hungry. Most of the time, like now, it was all she could do to breath and not pass out.
He released her from his embrace but held onto her hand as they set out on the trail. The water babbled and bounded along the little ravine. The soothing sound seemed to push away the world. All there was in the world at that moment was Marie and Allen, the water, the tall trees, and the sky that seemed to reach all the way down to the ground. The flume trail snaked away from the road and the houses into wilderness. It was well-maintained and she felt like it was a little bit of civilization that safeguarded her from real wilderness.
Allen spotted some deer back in the trees. “Look there!” he whispered to her. The deer stopped to look at them and then pranced away. Such majestic beauty. Marie was captivated by the natural world. It was a place where no one played the silly games of fashion or politics. It seemed like raw majesty. The danger was understandable and expected. Animals ate and protected their young and themselves. The weather was a force to be reckoned with. Either respect it or pay the price. It was all common sense and no parlor games.
In return for knowing your place in the natural world, you could enjoy breathtaking wonders. There was nothing out there that she could see or touch that she didn’t understand.
“So what are your plans for summer, Marie? Said Allen. “It’ll be here soon. Are you going back to your parents?”
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