quintessence.

by Buhl, Sarah

  We stopped walking and Karl took my hand from his arm and put it in his hand.

  He gave it a gentle squeeze and said, “Open them now.”

  I opened them and there it was—the almost full moon over an open field. There wasn’t snow, but its reflection on the lake was beautiful.

  I closed my eyes again and tilted my head to the sky and took in a deep breath. On my exhale I opened my eyes again. “No matter what happens, no matter where we are, no matter what we do, this right here will always be here. The silence in winter time and the reflection of the moon on the lake are healings. I’ve spent my life worrying about the wrong things.”

  He lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the back of my mitts.

  “Now what happens?” he asked with a smile.

  I stepped near him and pulled his hat down farther on his head. I liked that I didn’t have to stand on my tiptoes to do it. As soon as I had the thought, I knew it wasn’t because I couldn’t stand on my tiptoes; it was because he was the perfect height. But he would be perfect no matter what height he was.

  He looked down into my eyes and with both hands on my face he tilted my head back. He rubbed my cheekbones with his thumbs and smiled as he brought our lips together.

  I put my hands on either one of his forearms that held my face and I smiled through the gentleness of the kiss. I leaned into him more and pulled my mitt off. I needed to feel his skin against mine. Our hand placement mirrored one another, and though we hadn’t deepened the kiss, it was anything but chaste. There was passion in the kiss and it was real.

  He traced his hands down my arms and then walked me to a hammock he had tied between two trees near the lake. He laid in it first and then smiled at me with his arms open. I climbed in next to him and curled my back into his chest.

  “I need to tell you something,” Karl said after we lay for a few minutes, staring at the moon.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I meant what I said earlier about us and about you. That hasn’t changed.” He laid his head near my ear and the heat of his breath warmed my neck.

  “I know and I understand. I want nothing more than to stay here and believe that doctor’s appointments and an estranged boyfriend don’t exist at the bottom of that hill, but I can’t. But let me believe that this is my reality for now.”

  “This is your reality, Margaret, but you can’t believe that none of those things exist.”

  “Why not? You put things in a box. Why can’t my avoidance of things be the same?” Guilt taunted me for bringing up the box in such a manner. He didn’t deserve that from me. I understood what it meant to have something you couldn’t recover from.

  “Because the boxes aren’t an avoidance for me. They’re a way for me to deal with it. You need to figure out your way to deal with it and I will help you, but I can’t be what the end all focus is. Do you understand what I mean?” he asked.

  “I’m not quite sure.” It embarrassed me to admit it, but he had showed me his box and I couldn’t hold back honesty from him.

  “I will help you and be here for you, but you have to be the one taking the steps. You have to be the one to decide what you will do with the hand life dealt you. It’s all on you, girl.”

  I laughed. “Did you really just say girl like that?”

  “Yeah, sorry, it felt right. But you can’t see me as the focus of your box, so to speak. You need to visualize your future and your life and you need to make it happen. You may need to get creative, like I said before. Each of us has to be creative with life. If we don’t adapt, we aren’t human. Even the most meticulous planner must adapt.”

  “I feel ya, dude. I’m picking up what you’re throwing down,” I said, and he laughed.

  We laid there for a while, just watching the moon and enjoying the silence. My thoughts ran through the upcoming week and what I had in store.

  I had my MRI of the brain on Monday. Then on Wednesday, I had my lumbar puncture. I could do Monday on my own. I didn’t know about Wednesday though. That was another new fear.

  “Would you come to the spinal tap on Wednesday?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, pulling me closer to him. He ran his hand across my hair and kissed the back of my head. He breathed me in, and it was the most natural experience that I felt all the way to my most inner hopes. The simplicity of the motion was perfect.

  “Will you come to Blake’s wedding reception with me on Tuesday?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “But I didn’t realize they planned to marry.”

  “He hasn’t even asked her. He plans to on Tuesday.”

  “So how is it a wedding reception?” I asked.

  “I know Brecken. I know Blake. They will get married that day. He already has it set up.”

  I laughed. “What if she says no?”

  “She won’t.”

  __________

  We spent almost an hour, just lying in each other’s arms, enjoying the night air. But, I was getting cold. I curled in on myself, trying to keep warm.

  “I think we should go in now. It’s getting cold and I bet I have to start another fire,” Karl said, and kissed my cheek as he stood from the hammock.

  He helped me climb out of it, and my climb lacked in grace, but he didn’t laugh or mock me for it. He just smiled.

  “Do you know how good it feels having you here?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Because I know how good it feels being here with you.”

  The tiny house looked amazing at night with the moon. It looked like a surreal storybook house. It was about fifteen feet deep and six or seven feet wide. I saw that the siding was cedar, and the roof was tin.

  There were solar panels set up behind the house and next to them was a small liquid propane tank. A large rain barrel was at the side of the house and there was a very intricate collection set up to drain into the barrel.

  I noticed a wooden crate-like shed farther from the house. Something moved along the ground near it and I jumped. “What the hell is on the ground?”

  Karl laughed. “Chickens.”

  He walked us toward them. “They’re harmless—although my sister was out here last week and the rooster chased her. She’s been coming out and taking care of them on the days the farmer down the road or I can’t. But it was funny to see her run. So stay away from him.”

  “How would I know which one is him?” I asked.

  “He’s the bigger one,” he said, pointing at the larger bird that paraded around.

  “Shouldn’t they be sleeping?” I asked.

  “They will be. I need to open that box; one of them must have knocked it closed on accident.”

  He stepped over a small fence that wrapped around the chicken coop. “It’s okay, it will just take me a minute, and then I’ll be out of your hair. Well, feathers anyway—I’ll be out of your feathers. You don’t have hair.”

  I gave a quiet laugh as I watched him. He struggled to get the door open to the coop and once he did, he shooed the chickens in.

  “Good night, guys,” he said as he put the door back down.

  “That was sweet,” I said.

  “It was, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “I didn’t take you as a sarcastic one,” I said with a smile.

  “Who said I was being sarcastic?” he asked.

  “Not me, of course,” I said, taking his arm.

  __________

  I woke up in the middle of the night with such an intense pain in my left calf I cried out. I sat up in a rush and rubbed it, trying to relax the muscle that clenched my leg. I couldn’t get my foot to point the other way to stretch the muscle.

  “God damn it,” I said. Karl didn’t say a word, and he sat up next to me.

  “It’s tight?” he asked, and I nodded.

  “I can’t get it to work its way out. It hurts so f-ing badly.”

  He picked up my foot and rotated it around as he rubbed my calf. “Does that help?” he asked in his usual calm way.

  I nodded
and closed my eyes and lay back down. I fell back to sleep in no time.

  __________

  Sunlight streamed in from the roof. I hadn’t noticed the window above me in the roof last night. After we sat up talking for so long I wasn’t aware of much when I became tired. I didn’t even recall climbing up the ladder to the loft where the bed was.

  I had a memory of him rubbing my leg in the middle of the night. It embarrassed me to have him see that side of me. But the embarrassment was brief. This was Karl. Karl didn’t find the crap in life as something to shy away from. He saw it as part of life, and he just did what he needed to do with it.

  I heard him moving below me and I could tell he was working on making another fire. I moved from his mattress on the floor.

  “Are you awake?” he asked.

  “Sort of. I haven’t had coffee yet. I should be a fully functioning human being after that,” I said.

  “Okay, did you want to come down or do you want your coffee up there?” he asked.

  “I’ll come down.”

  I rolled my ankles a few times to stretch them. The neurologist suggested I do it every morning, but I hadn’t listened. I knew how to stretch, but this was different. It wasn’t a stretch to dance, but to move. I suppose I should take it just as serious.

  I climbed onto the ladder and began my descent.

  “Wait,” Karl said and climbed part way up the ladder until his arms encased my lower body. “Okay, now I will go down with you.”

  We took the rungs at a slow pace as we made our way down the ladder. When we reached the main level I turned around to face him. Awkwardness set in for the first time since we arrived. We were close in the moonlight and in the magic of the evening. But, closeness in the morning sun made last night feel like a dream. I was self-conscious.

  I had bed head, I hadn’t brushed my teeth, and it was the first time in weeks I cared that I hadn’t showered.

  He smiled. His morning smile and bed head reminded me of last night and the moments we shared. I smiled back. Self-consciousness left.

  He pulled his hair back and wrapped it in a band. “Man-bun,” he said and kissed the side of my mouth before turning to a hot plate he had on the small counter of the kitchen area. “I’m making eggs,” he said.

  “Okay. Coffee?” I said with a smile.

  He pointed to a percolator that sat on the wood stove.

  “That’s amazing,” I said as I picked it up and grabbed a cup from the shelf above where he was working on the eggs. I poured my cup and returned the percolator to the stove. I sat on the bench he now had a table in front of.

  “Where did this table come from?” I asked, as I sat on the bench.

  “Oh watch,” he said, and I leaned back against the wall to give him room. He snapped a button near one of the table legs and it lowered into the floor.

  “Holy crap, that’s cool,” I said as he pulled it back up.

  “Yep, there are a lot of little secrets like that.”

  “You’re like James Bond,” I said.

  “More like Inspector Gadget.” He laughed.

  I grinned as he went back to making eggs. It was pretty hot watching him cook me breakfast.

  “Are these from our friends out back?” I asked.

  He nodded with a smile.

  “They aren’t fertilized, are they?”

  He laughed, “No, they aren’t fertilized.”

  My phone broke the mood when it notified me I had a text.

  I grabbed it from the pocket of my sweater and saw it was from my dad.

  Dad: Toby just called me. You should talk to him about any changes you might go through. I didn’t say a word to him. I stopped your mother from spilling the beans. I don’t want to pressure you, but you need to decide what he means to you.

  He always sent such long texts.

  Me: Okay, thank you for letting me know.

  Dad: Where are you?

  Me: With Karl.

  Dad: Oh. OK then.

  My dad was easier to talk to about things than my mom. My mom wanted me to explain everything away with my diagnosis. My dad just let me be me, regardless of what my diagnosis would be.

  Now, my dad was telling me something, and it was cryptic, but my dad wasn’t that cryptic. Toby and my dad were friends. I knew it was difficult for both my parents not to say anything to him. They loved him. And he loved them. I loved him.

  But, looking at Karl, I knew the love was different.

  Karl was a protector—a shelter from all the bad. But he was right too. I couldn’t use him as my escape any more than I could use the change in Toby as an escape. I had to focus on myself right now and whatever the future may hold, it didn’t matter.

  But it mattered, because if Karl wasn’t a part of it, I think it might matter a whole hell of a lot.

  22

  Karl

  Summer two years ago

  “Karl,” my mom said, running toward me. “Oh, my boy.” She kissed my face all over and pulled me in for a hug.

  My sister, Faith, waited to the side. I hadn’t seen her in almost four years. She was in high school then. She was a woman now and she held a reassuring smile I hadn’t realized I missed.

  “Hi, big brother,” she said, stepping toward me. My mom let go of me as my sister pulled me in. She was about the same height as me and though we were almost five years apart in age, people still thought we were twins.

  I hugged her back, though it wasn’t easy. She felt like a stranger.

  “Who was that man you were speaking with?” my mom asked.

  “That was a man I met on the bus,” I said, looking down at the paper. “I think he just sold me some land for a dollar.”

  “What?” my mom asked. I handed her the paper and she smiled. “This looks legit.” My mom had worked as a paralegal for several years now.

  “I suppose it is. You guys ready?” I asked.

  __________

  Early Spring last year

  “I don’t want a party, Mom.”

  “Karl, you have people that want to see you. There were so many people praying for your safe return and here you are. You’ve been here for months now.”

  “Many people?” I asked, as I kept my attention on the video game I played.

  “Yes, there were so many people at my church praying for you and look, here you are. You made it back home.”

  “Mom, first, I don’t think god has a tally tracker for prayers. Second, does that mean he didn’t care about my friends that died or Jackson? If he picks and chooses that way, I don’t think I want anything to do with him.”

  “Karl, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just happy to have you home.”

  “Thanks,” I said and paused my game, setting the controller down as I turned to her. “Do you have the keys to my old car?”

  I needed to get away. The constant rejoicing at my return was pissing me off. I needed my space. I thought it would have stopped after a couple months. But there were too many people still stopping in, too many questions, too many looks, and too many thank yous. I needed space.

  I took the road out of town and found my way to the address of the land that Henley had given me. We had checked the record again and it was legitimate. It took a few minutes at the courthouse, and I was the official taxpaying owner of this land.

  I stopped at the driveway to an old farmhouse that sat on the land. The farmhouse was falling apart, windows had broken, and it looked like Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. I drove farther down and found a gate that led to a huge field. It looked like horses or livestock had used it at one point, because there weren’t any plants other than natural ones and grass.

  I opened the gate and drove through. I parked in the middle of the field, climbed a large hill and sat at the top.

  I could see the city from here. It looked less intimidating when this far away. The people were just people from here. They didn’t know me. I needed anonymity. I leaned back into the grass and stared at t
he sky. Clouds rolled by and I swear I sat there for a good two hours and thought about what I needed to do with my life.

  I needed to figure out where I fit. I didn’t want the same things I once did. I didn’t want a big house, a big life. I just wanted to be here and breathe. Out here I could breathe.

  __________

  “Are you going there again?” my mom asked.

  “Yes, I will be there all weekend. I finished that painting at the McNett’s bakery and I started the one at that art gallery I told you about. I think I will do something else though. My old way of painting isn’t as much fun as I thought it’d be. I did the ones I wanted to do, but I need to do something else.”

  “Okay. Hey, did you hear anything about a job?” she asked. She had been asking me every day. It was always about money with her, even now. I came from a home that prided itself on wearing clothes that cost a lot. But they failed to see the true cost of what they wore. I didn’t want it anymore. “Also, you look like shit. You should shower.”

  I looked down at myself and smiled. “Yeah, no job yet. I don’t give a shit about a shower, and I won’t be coming back to stay here anymore.”

  I’d rather stay in the woods anyway.

  The next two weeks I did just that. I spent the time living off the land. I found scraps of wood and several other items in the old farmhouse. I gathered all of them and brought them to the top of the hill and sorted them out.

  It was as if the more I sorted from that house, the more I sorted out my thoughts. Piles of wood became piles of thoughts. It reminded me of the boxes and lives I thought of at night.

  I sat on one pile and looked out over my land. I needed little to survive. I had all this space, and that was enough. I didn’t need a house to match it. I went into the city and found an old flatbed trailer and bought it for one hundred dollars.

  I went to the gallery to see if Pike knew anyone with a truck. He called a guy named Blake. Blake showed up a half hour later.

  He was the most laid back guy I’d ever met and he reminded me of the me of before. We were very different, but he was the first friend I had since Jackson. Plus, it showed what a great person he was if he came on short notice to help a guy he never met.