The moon was already in the sky, even though the sun had not set completely. Over the field lay that glow of half-light that artists and photographers love. Colors emerged that could not be seen during the day. An easiness lay over everything, a sort of peace.
Wolf walked into the middle of the field and sat down, propping himself up with his arms as he leaned back to look up to the moon. He heard one of the deer snort loudly indicating they had not gone far and waited for him to leave so they could finish browsing. If he sat there long enough and quietly enough, they’d come into the field anyhow.
But he wasn’t willing to wait that long. Wolf stood up to go. He strolled casually towards the edge of the woods. It would take him twice as long to climb down the hill as it had to climb up, if he took his time and was careful. Darkness had fallen more deeply in the woods. He could not afford to be in a hurry.
His mind wandered as he proceeded. He knew these woods and recalled how Gary, Joe, and he had covered every inch, sometimes together and sometimes separately. How or why Gary and he had grown so antagonistic and competitive with each other was a mystery at the moment. Whether it grew out of childhood as he once thought, or out of an internal lack that worked its way out as aggression, he didn’t much care anymore. Gary was gone. Joe might never speak to him again. He hadn’t talked with Sharon for a long while. And, he had no job. In essence, his life had ended and he had to begin again from scratch. So, he thought, where would I want to live if anywhere in the world was available? How could he decide? What would he do about Michael?
At the edge of the woods, facing the cabin, Wolf sat down. It was easy to imagine someone else inside the cabin. If he stared long enough he could create the illusion of movement inside.
It seemed that Michael was the only link to his past. He’d first have to strengthen the contact he’d lost with Julie. She was probably better off with his neglect, because he had never been a real husband to her anyhow. If he was going to re-create himself, he needed first a reference point, and what better place to start than with the innocence and unconditional love of a child? Maybe he would learn something from the example of that innocence. Maybe he would learn how to love himself through the eyes of Michael. Maybe a lot of things, but not without action, not without taking his own life seriously.
Wolf dozed about ten minutes then jerked back awake. He looked up at the moon and winked. Stretching to his feet, he decided to forgo dinner after all and head straight for bed.
There was security in the quietness of the cabin. No cars raced their engines outside his window. There would be no sirens in the night, no screaming people early in the morning, no garbage trucks banging and shrieking in the pre-dawn silence. If he heard anything, it might be an owl’s hoot, a raccoon rummaging through the trash, or perhaps another snort from a nearby deer checking to see who had visited the cabin.
Wolf turned off the final light next to the bed and stared at the ceiling. Moonlight washed over the bed, across the floor, and part way up the wall. He heard an owl hoot, then the whispering flutter of wings. In one night, an owl could kill and eat ten times the number of mice that a cat could in the same time period. And how many innocent people could a corporation devour?
Wolf thought about work. Had he done the right thing? Yes. What would he do next? He didn’t know. What were his skills? He decided to list them in the morning, maybe consider alternative occupations using what he found. He could add to the list new skills he could acquire by taking night classes. Eventually, he would have to do something, and, although physical labor wasn’t out of the question, he wanted to use his mind as well.
Finally, he closed his eyes. His body relaxed into deep, dreamy sleep until late the next morning.
When Wolf realized how high the sun had climbed, he jumped from bed as though he had to be somewhere and was late. Shaking his head, he sat back down on the edge of the mattress. He rolled his neck. Any dreams he may have been having were long forgotten.
He heard something clank in the kitchen and for an instant thought about Gary and Joe. He missed his friends. Throughout his life he had hardly ever been alone, now all he had was alone time. The clank now turned to a hum. He recognized it as the refrigerator kicking in.
Stretching his muscles, Wolf bent to the floor and then from side to side while still seated. Then he ripped off thirty quick pushups. Rolling his neck again, he went into the shower.
The windows were still open when he walked into the main room. He wondered, briefly, if the sound he’d heard had been a raccoon in the kitchen, so he proceeded cautiously. After looking around and deciding he was alone, Wolf made himself a hearty breakfast. He had forgotten to bring something to read, so he sat on the porch and gazed out and into the woods while he ate. When he finished, he took his scraps over to the tree where they rigged up the deer they shot, and scraped his leftovers onto the ground where the animals could get at them easily.
After cleaning up the dishes, Wolf set out for the woods. A circuitous route around and through the valley would be an easy, yet long walk. It would take him down near the creek in several spots too. There, he could sit and listen to the water.
He grabbed a small, spiral notebook, a bag of granola bars, a large jug that he filled with water, and his small wooden box. He put the goods inside a small backpack he had brought with him and headed out. He still hadn’t looked at the time, he realized, and he’d left his watch behind on the sink counter. Wolf looked up and decided that it must be about eight thirty or nine. The sun had been up for several hours by that time and warmed the air around the clearing where the cabin was located.
Birds, eating seasonal berries or bugs, stirred noisily in the underbrush. From the woods, a cool breeze welcomed Wolf as he approached. Clattering leaves joined the bird-songs. A pair of red squirrels rustled over dry leaves, through a hollowed log and out the other end where they chased one another up a tree, oblivious to Wolf’s presence.
Nothing engaged a more sacred feeling in him than being out of doors. The odors, the sounds, the feel of the air, all opened his senses completely. It was more difficult to leave the moment than to stay in it. Even when in deep thought, there was always an awareness of where he walked, what he heard and smelled. His eyes glanced around, as he watched subconsciously for wildlife. A wild turkey’s gobble snapped him from thoughts of Gary back to an awareness of the present moment. It startled him. He gasped and scared the bird away.
When he reached the river for the first time—he planned to zigzag across it several times that day—Wolf leaped onto a boulder that sat in the middle of an eddy current. He sat down and ate a granola bar. His open notebook teetered on his knee. Farther out in the river, a trout leaped to catch a low-flying bug and ker-plunked! back into the water.
Wolf wrote, in one column, talents he thought he possessed along with ones he had learned in college. Marketing, statistics, balance sheets, all lined up along with persuasive, organized and a good speaker. The list, when he pulled things apart, went on for over a page. In another column he wrote occupations-slash-jobs and tried to come up with the ideal job for each individual skill. He listed such things as marketing director for a corporation to salesman, to accounting assistant, to file-keeper. His plan was to join talents in twos and narrow his occupation list, then in threes, if possible, and narrow the list even further. But he didn’t do that right away. Instead he paused and stared into the woods to the opposite side of the river. He sighed, took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He removed the wooden box from his backpack and placed it in front of him. He pulled a pack of matches from his front pants pocket and lit two together and held them out over the box. He let them burn down to his finger tips before dropping them into the water. Aloud, Wolf said, “Fire.” He rubbed both hands over the rock he sat on, feeling the dirt and grit in his palms. “Earth,” he said. Leaning forward, he placed both hands into the water simultaneously. “Water.” Finally, closing his eyes and raising his face to the sun, he br
eathed deeply through his nose, held his breath, then breathed slowly out his mouth while saying, “Air.” He repeated his breathing pattern several more times before relaxing into a shallower breathing cadence.
In a low vibrational theta state, images began to come forth. He saw himself as a child, in his abusive family situation. He released the image through his mouth on his next exhalation. Without consciously planning or thinking about it, Wolf released his entire childhood, year by year, into the hands of nature where it could decompose and diffuse and eventually be recycled. He worked his way slowly into his teens, then stopped and thanked the elements. Before he opened his eyes, he chanted for a few minutes, easing his way back to the river. He felt better.
Amazed at the vividness of his surroundings after the meditation ended, Wolf looked around and listened closely to all the sounds. After a few minutes, he took a long drink of water, repacked and leaped back to the riverbank.
Further upstream, he crossed the river and entered the woods once again. Although he didn’t formally meditate again that day, he continued his walk in a meditative state, in calm contemplation that he had not experienced for some time.
CHAPTER 14
LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, Wolf found himself on the last legs of his sojourn through woods and fields, crisscrossing the river. He had eaten all but two of his granola bars and emptied the water jug. Although he felt hungry again, he didn’t want to eat the dry bars without having water to wash them down.
Making a strategic turn into the valley, Wolf came upon the familiar route he had begun that morning. Another fifteen minutes and he’d break into the clearing where the cabin stood. The closer he got to the cabin, the hungrier he felt, even to the point of imagining the odor of chicken on the grill. Mashed potatoes, corn on the cob. A glass of Chablis. Wolf smiled at his own imagination, then sniffed the air. He stopped abruptly, then sniffed again. It wasn’t his imagination; it was the real scent of grilled chicken.
Wolf picked up his pace to a slow jog and broke from the woods to see Joe at the side of the porch in front of the barbecue grill. Wolf stopped dead in his tracks. Joe had not seen nor heard him. He could easily have turned around and disappeared back into the woods. But Wolf’s heart beat with excitement. Yes, he wanted to be alone. Yes, he wanted time to regroup. Yes, he wanted to evaluate his options. But, he was so happy to see Joe’s familiar face that all those things could wait. More than anything, Wolf realized he needed—really needed—a friend. “Joe!” Wolf yelled.
Joe waved a pair of tongs in his hand.
It didn’t seem like a very enthusiastic greeting, but it was a greeting all the same. Wolf took the stairs quickly, dropped his pack and reached out his hand, remembering the last time he had done that, and how Joe had refused it. “I can’t believe you’re here,” he said.
Joe turned, glanced down at Wolf ’s outstretched palm, then reluctantly took it and shook hands briefly. “I can’t believe it either.”
Wolf lost some of his initial enthusiasm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Look,” Wolf said, “if you didn’t want to be here, why did you come?”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
Wolf turned and grabbed his backpack, sweeping it from the floor. “I don’t get it. You’re right,” he said, heading for the door.
“I’m trying to be your friend,” Joe said.
“Again?” Wolf looked at him defiantly.
Joe put down the barbecue tongs. “All right, I deserved that. But you’re not making this easy either.”
Wolf clenched his teeth, and took a deep breath through his nose. “It hasn’t been easy,” he said. “It’s been a lot of things, but it hasn’t been easy.”
Joe lowered his eyes and confessed to Wolf, “Julie called and asked that I come by. She was worried.”
“About what? That I’d commit suicide, too?” Wolf became louder. “That I’d walk into the woods and never return? Well, I’m not about to do that.” Louder. “It’s never been my idea to do that.” Wolf screamed, “I can’t!”
Joe understood. “It’s not in you, is it?”
Wolf took several more long, deep breaths before answering, “No.”
“I was glad when Julie called. I wanted to come out here. I was worried for the same reasons she was, but I was concerned for you.” Joe turned off the grill and lowered the lid. He turned back around. “I’m not any kind of spiritual counselor, but I know when someone is going through some very deep changes. It’s almost as though you aren’t even the same person any more. I’ll admit, that is a good thing in my opinion, but it must be the most confusing and frightening thing you’ve ever gone through. And I’m here to help what little bit I can.”
“Is it that easy to see?”
“No. I only just realized it. Some people think you’ve gone off the deep end. Too much stress. Julie doesn’t know what to believe. I think I figured out you’re going through something much deeper than that. Much more difficult than going insane. Much darker, too, I suppose.”
Wolf put his backpack over his shoulder. Something in Joe’s words hit the nail on the head. Something about his sincerity calmed Wolf down. “I’m hungry,” Wolf said.
“Gotcha covered.” Joe turned back to the grill while Wolf went into the cabin to clean up.
When Wolf came out of the bedroom, Joe had set the table and served dinner. “You got back just in time. I didn’t know when to expect you,” Joe said.
“You’ve always been a little more intuitive than was comfortable,” Wolf quipped.
“Well, let’s eat and get on with it.”
“It may be rough,” Wolf said, “but I’m really glad you showed up.” Breaking through his own ego, smashing aside his own stubborn will, Wolf spoke the truth. He reached over and patted Joe’s hand affectionately. They were both surprised by Wolf ’s genuine emotions.
Joe nodded. “So am I, buddy. I really am.”
For the next few minutes they ate quietly, then entered into some pleasant small talk. Wolf asked about Susan, Melanie and Stephanie; how things were going at Joe’s practice. Things seemed to be going fine in Joe’s life. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
Wolf thought about the meditation he had while sitting on the rock in the river, and wondered at how strange it would have looked had Joe come upon him. His life had become so different. How invisible he felt; how powerless in an external way, but how much more peaceful inside. Changes had already occurred, but to what end? For what reason? He didn’t recognize himself any longer. He couldn’t find anything familiar inside. He had lost so much. Had he really gone nuts? Was Joe too late? Or had Joe arrived just in time to help him restructure his life into what it should have been all along? Relaxed and full of food, Wolf felt ready to get to it, whatever it was and wherever it was about to take him. It couldn’t be any worse than what he’d already gone through.
The evening sun, having fallen behind the hill, left a magical twilight. A reddish glow permeated the cabin. They had left the front door open and, when they moved from the kitchen to the living room, a soft, cool breeze greeted them. The odor of trees and leaves, mixed with traces of water and wild flowers, relaxed the atmosphere of the entire room. Near the edge of the field, deer would be grazing. Raccoons would waddle to the river’s edge, and opossums would be waking, ready to be on the move. Wolf and Joe both knew what the night would bring in the woods, but neither quite knew what to expect inside the cabin.
Wolf began by asking if Gary had confided in Joe about the case.
“Yes he did,” Joe said. “I’ll admit that, at the time, neither of us knew whether to believe you or not. There are pieces of your story that are still difficult to assimilate.”
“For me too,” Wolf admitted.
There was silence, then, for a long while, before Joe suggested a simple plan for the evening. “Let’s say we discuss first how you feel, emotionally, then hit on your thoughts, then consider conclusions, theories
.”
“Emotionally?”
“Yes. What are you angry about, what do you love, fear, hate? What makes you peaceful and what makes you anxious?”
“I don’t know if I can answer any of those questions. Most of the time I’m just confused. I might be clear for a while, but that seems to pass and I’m back where I started.”
Joe leaned forward to speak. He sat in an over-stuffed chair perpendicular to the sofa where Wolf sat with his legs up. They faced one another. “Do you even know what you did that was wrong? Seriously, Wolf? Have you ever known?”
“Why are you attacking me?”
Joe leaned back. “I’m not attacking, I’m really confused here. Do you know how utterly childish you two acted most of the time. For Christ’s sake, look at what you did just to get one up on Gary. Look at it! Jesus. Do you think what you did was right? Was it appropriate?”
“It’s done. I’m trying to forget it.” Wolf remembered releasing everything in his meditation earlier that day, and when he did a similar meditation in the jail cell. Yet, Joe’s words brought it all back, the anxiety, the pain, the feeling of guilt rising from the pit of his stomach.
“How do you forget so easily when it has the effect it did?”
“And what’s that, Joe? What effect are you talking about exactly?”
Joe stood in a rush of emotion. “Gary’s dead, dammit! He’s dead, and I haven’t heard one thing come from your mouth that indicates any kind of concern. Aren’t you ever sorry about anything? Don’t you ever give a shit about anyone? Or do you always have so much anger in there that you can’t feel at all?”
Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection Page 42