Jim slept in his clothes, a sound, heavy sleep. He remembered dreaming, but couldn’t get a fix on what he dreamed. The first thing he did when he woke up was to reach under his arm. The lump always felt larger in the morning and Jim couldn’t decide whether it really was larger or it just seemed that way. Ed and Mel were still asleep, so Jim tiptoed into the main room.
When he got out of the shower, he noticed that the clock over the stove read three o’clock. He remembered hitting the sack early the night before. Ed and Mel wouldn’t be getting up for another two or three hours, so Jim made coffee. The fire had died out.
As he began to awaken, Jim went over his excursion step by step. He scratched his face and brushed his hair back. After drinking more coffee, he leaned his face into his hands, his elbows on the table. The three deer appeared before his tight-shut eyes. Their lips did not move, but their voices rang into him like an old church bell. “We are the gift. You are the giver.” They had said other things, but this phrase stuck in his mind. He repeated it to himself, trying to let it sink in, trying to figure it out.
He thought back. He remembered kneeling there in the woods after the conversation with the deer. He had felt stronger then than he’d felt in months. So much stronger, in fact, that he had almost rejected his own determined decision to forgo treatment.
At one time, he had decided to have the lump removed—extract the nucleus of the cancer only. He didn’t want to go through chemotherapy, or radiation treatments. Yet, there in the woods, his decision had begun to weaken. Where he had once resolved himself to death, now he wasn’t so sure.
“You all right?” Ed stood near the table. He was showered and dressed.
Jim jumped.
“Sorry if I scared you.”
“I was just thinking about . . . “
“Yesterday,” Ed said. “We looked for you for hours.”
“I was down by the old farm for a little while, but nowhere else.”
“You should have heard us yelling for you.” Ed poured himself coffee. He rubbed Jim’s shoulder with his empty hand, then sat down next to him. “We’ve been friends a long time. You can tell me.”
“It’s difficult. I’m not always sure of everything. It’s like the shifting shadows a car’s headlights make when they run across your bedroom wall. You know what I mean? You remember the pattern, but you couldn’t draw it on paper even if you had to. So, I don’t know what to say, or even if I should say anything.”
“You don’t have to, Buddy.” Ed rose, took Jim’s coffee cup, and refilled it. “Why don’t you try to tell me? Maybe it’ll help you to remember.”
Jim could hear an anxious twist escape through Ed’s calm words.
Ed sat back down and placed Jim’s cup in front of him. “Start anywhere you like. It doesn’t have to be from the beginning.”
“I met up with three deer.” Jim felt silly already. It wasn’t as though the deer were people.
“That’s good.” Ed was thinking hunting. “Did you load your rifle?”
“No, I mean . . . “
“I don’t know why you even carry that thing anymore. It’s been—“
“The deer talked,” Jim blurted through Ed’s comment.
“Well, uh, so . . . “
“I know you probably think I’m nuts. Maybe I am. Shit, I don’t know what.”
Ed tried to contain himself, but was having obvious problems. “You, uh, well . . .”
“Don’t.” Jim held up his hand to stop Ed before the conversation ended with Jim feeling completely mistrusted. “I can’t explain anything. I can only tell you what happened, what I saw and what I heard. Their lips didn’t even move.”
“Then how’d they talk?” Ed leaned back in his chair.
Jim wondered if Ed had just told himself that it was all a dream and therefore removed reality from the situation. There was such a change in his demeanor. “They spoke in words…in my head.” The statement sounded false even to Jim’s own ears.
“What’d they say?”
“That they are the gift and that I am the giver.”
“That’s what they said?”
“‘We are the gift. You are the giver.’ Yes.”
“Sounds like some Zen thing out of a book. What’s it mean?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Well, I’ll say this for those deer: they know you.”
“How so?”
“You’re a giver. Always have been.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“Becky’ll tell you too, I bet. So would your kids.”
“Kids?”
“I mean, so would Brad.”
“No, that’s okay. Connie’s only dead, not gone.”
Ed smiled. “Any other details you can remember?”
“Some. The way my heart raced, how I breathed more rapidly, but never felt the least bit tired. The path.”
“There’s a path?”
“There was.”
“I guess I thought you followed tracks when you said deer.”
“There were no tracks. Until I got to this small clearing, then, suddenly, there were a lot of tracks. Everywhere. Out of nowhere.” Jim decided against bringing up the other deer. He’d gone as far as he could, maybe too far.
“Maybe we could go there, if there’s still a path. I’d like to see this place,” Ed said.
“Maybe I’ll go. Today. Alone,” Jim said.
“I won’t be a bother.”
“No, I just think that it’s gone. If there’s any chance at all of them still being there, or the clearing being there”—Jim remembered the strangeness of the light, the complete otherworldliness of the place—“it’ll be open only to me. Even at that I doubt it’ll happen again.”
“You think?” Ed was back to doubting.
Jim could imagine Ed thinking that if it couldn’t be returned to, it couldn’t have been there in the first place.
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to believe.” Jim drank half his coffee. “I’m going to try though. Alone.”
“If that’s what you want, then fine.” Ed slapped the table with his palm. Then he patted Jim’s forearm. “Anything else you want to say?”
Jim looked up and started to cry, not much, just slow tears. “You don’t have to be nice. I don’t know if I’d believe me. It’s all right.”
“You’ve never lied to me. Not in my whole life.” Ed stood and rubbed Jim’s shoulders. “The last few years have been rough. But I’m right here for you, Buddy. So is Mel.”
Jim stood up quickly, pushing Ed away from him. “The deer talked. Don’t placate me. I’m sick, but I’m not crazy. The cancer’s not eating my brain away. It’s eating the rest of me.” Jim went to the closet and pulled out his coat and another sweatshirt. He put on his boots.
“Where you going this early in the morning? I believe you.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jim said.
“Sure it does, or you wouldn’t be mad. You wouldn’t be going out in the dark. Alone.”
“I was alone yesterday. I’ve walked alone through these woods for years. I know that hill like the back of my hand.”
Ed stepped forward while Jim readied himself for the cold. “Well, so do we, Jim, and we were all over that hill yesterday, and you weren’t there.”
There’s the horned head of doubt Jim had expected. Nonetheless, he had been there. Somehow the clearing was there and wasn’t there. “I told you, it was strange. I don’t even understand it. Maybe Connie will believe me. I’ll talk with her.”
“Good God, don’t start that again.”
“I still talk to her, even if she doesn’t talk back. I only let others off the hook, so they wouldn’t have to feel sorry for me anymore.”
“We never felt sorry for you.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is my fantasy, let me live it.”
“There, you called it a fantasy.” Ed looked satisfied.
Jim walked past him and out the door, but before closing it
, he looked straight at Ed. “It’s the truth. Can you live with that?”
He was outside again. It was still dark except for the blue glow from the snow-covered ground. Jim walked straight for the woods, which ran along the base of the hill and up its sides. With a gloved hand, he touched each tree as he passed. He was still there, still alive. The snow crunched under his feet. The slight wind tightened and froze his face so that he didn’t want to move his mouth for fear it would crack. Licking his lips, he expected ice to form over them. How quickly they dried. After a while, he turned to walk down, around the hill, near the stone fence. Opposite the old farmhouse, Jim found a tree overlooking the property. He brushed some snow off the ground with his hands and sat down. Although the ground was cold, Jim soon fell into a comfort he had not known for years. He was completely alone. The only sound was a soft wind through the trees. Nothing moved.
The farmhouse stood black against the snow and the dark sky. A slight cloud cover held back most of the starlight. The snow lay like a giant shadow over the field, darkened only by the real shadows of trees near the perimeter.
Jim leaned against the tree and felt the warmth of its life penetrate him, even in such a bitter cold. He let his mind wander along the fence and field. He remembered the farmhouse and the untouched master bedroom, and thought about his own strained marriage to Becky. Had he known he would bring such pain into her life, with the death of Connie and now his own, he never would have married her. Were the small joys she had experienced worth all this pain? Jim rubbed his temples to relieve the pressure. His gloves felt rough so he removed them. At first, his hot fingers felt good on his face, then they too cooled and he put his gloves back on.
He waited patiently for the sun to rise and bring new warmth to the day. He decided to retrace his steps the best he could, starting with the farmhouse.
When the sun first appeared, it was a glow around the treetops. Its rays penetrated the clouds like headlights in the fog. The farmhouse—he wondered if the farmer and his wife ever viewed their own home in early morning from the angle at which he sat—lit up with a soft, morning brilliance. The window at the top of the stairs stayed black except for the frame, which reflected a smooth white. The lip of the sill still held its sparkling snow buildup. From a distance, it was difficult to realize that the house was abandoned, except for the frayed curtain flapping in the wind through the kitchen window.
The barn leaned to one side. It must have been ignored for years even before the farmer and his wife died. Had they died together? In that bed? Jim hoped so, for the sake of romance. It must have broken the farmer’s heart to see his barn go unused. Jim could imagine how he would have felt, taking walks around and through it, the total frustration of being unable to do anything about it.
When the sun rose enough to light the field in front of the house, Jim rose too, and headed for the farm. This time he planned to explore the barn first.
He climbed over the stone fence and welcomed the sun’s warmth. The clouds had released their grip on the starlight. The snow glistened like diamonds and crunched like small stones under his feet. He felt invigorated, striding straight for the barn. Halfway there, he heard two shots then three more, and paused to say a silent prayer for the deer.
When he reached the barn, he squeezed through the partially open doors in the front, and stepped headlong into the psychedelic speckled light of the sun penetrating through slits in the roof. Some of the bins still held bales of old hay. An area had been set aside as pigpens, equipped with slop troughs along one side. Old tractor parts, including tires, seats, and what appeared to be the remains of an engine, lay in the back, but the rest of the tractor was gone. A manure spreader sat alone off to one side. The boards on its bottom and sides were warped and broken.
Looking around, Jim calculated what it would take to repair the barn. Most of the work would be labor-intensive cleaning and organizing. That was except for the barn’s obvious lean to the north, which would require replacing some pretty expensive structural beams. He’d spring for the cost of steel I-beams, if it were his to rebuild.
Jim ran his hand along everything that came within reach as he explored the hay bins and feeding pens. The patches of light and dark along the walls, floor, and roof stimulated his mind in strange ways. He wanted to lose himself, forget his own problems, and just feel. Lately, he had spent a lot of time with his physical sensations: looking, smelling, and touching everything. Sometimes at school, he’d just stare at the kids sitting with their heads down, working on their quizzes. Life had become more important now that there was a definite end to it. He almost looked forward to the pain of death itself as another, his last, sensual experience to explore. Becky didn’t feel the same at all when he told her how he felt, but then, she had in her mind, he was sure, an indefinite lifespan. She wasn’t dying.
The barn had kept his own death separated from him for a short while, as he got caught up in daydreams of repairs and of its possible past appearance and usefulness. Just like the time before Connie’s death still existed for him, the past of the barn was still there to explore. All he had to do was allow it to come through. There was nothing like exploring and daydreaming to forget problems, but eventually reality always turns dreams back into the ether they are. While bending to pick up an old wooden pitchfork, Jim felt his coat push into the lump under his arm.
He sat down on a dust-covered potato crate. “Good God.” Connie, help me figure all this out.
There was no reply, only the relative silence of an old barn being pushed and twisted by the wind, being exhaled and inhaled.
Occasionally Jim noticed as dust or snow, excited by the wind, brushed across the barn floor or fell from the rafters. He waited for the answer he knew would not come. If I’m the gift giver, why didn’t I give myself life? Or some kind of answer?
The situation reminded him of how his students always wanted a definitive answer, how frustrated they got having to figure things out on their own. Now he had placed himself in a similar situation. But if it was true that he only needed to figure things out on his own, then it meant that there was an answer. Perhaps the meaning of the deer’s words was as simple as what Ed had told him, that he had always been a giver. Maybe it was his turn to take? But that wasn’t him.
A loud crack pulled him out of his thoughts. Once again he had forgotten reality by concentrating on something else. He jumped from the crate and stood in the middle of the ten by ten stall he had been exploring. He thought he had seen, along with the loud crack, the barn move. It did lean to one side quite a bit. It could fall in at any moment.
Jim laughed.
How ironic to have his life snuffed out by accident when shortly, no doubt, he’d bite the dust anyway. He wondered if it would be any easier to take if he were crushed rather than eaten away? Would Becky get over it faster? Would Brad? Mel? Ed?
The barn cracked again and Jim decided not to find out how everyone would react. He left. He unzipped his jacket and pulled off his gloves. The back of his pants felt damp. The sun had really warmed up the air. He scanned the hillside. Mel and Ed, at least, had the courtesy to let him be alone. Was it courtesy or respect? Either way was fine. In class, it might have turned into a discussion.
Jim entered the farmhouse just as he had the day before, through the downstairs window. It seemed brighter inside, although it probably wasn’t. Maybe familiar was a better word.
This time he went into the kitchen and pulled the curtain inside. He took it down and put it in the sink. Now, from the hillside, there’d be nothing to display the house’s emptiness. It could easily be occupied, as indeed Jim felt it must be, if not by the ghosts of the farmer and his wife, then by the ghosts of their memories.
Jim retraced his steps through the living room and up the stairs. For the second time in two days, he touched the quilt on the master bed, this time with tears in his eyes for the loss of love through death. But was love lost, he wondered, or merely lifted to a higher level of understanding?
Would Brad have left behind the quilt that Jim and Becky used, if they both died? Did Brad see his parents’ marriage as that loving? That important?
No. Jim felt sure of the answer. Brad had seen the ups and downs in his parents’ relationship. He would have no unrealistic views of love from that perspective. But Jim still wished for romance in his death. There was love between him and Becky. He felt it. He hoped that Becky felt it as well. He lowered his head. He couldn’t be sure of anything. Not these days.
Jim explored more of the bedroom than he had the day before, but found nothing more to reveal love—no pictures, no letters, or flattened flowers—and it saddened him. It made him feel that the quilt had been left by accident. Or that no one wanted it. Not because of what it stood for—love—but because of the death it symbolized.
He walked to the window and stood overlooking the field leading into the cool woods. A white glare rose off the snow. A light flurry of snow fell from a single dark cloud, which hung halfway over the field and the forest. Light from the sun poked through the cloud in clearly defined rays, reaching down like corridors between earth and sky. On the side of the hill, Jim saw a deer—a buck—and squinted to count the points. It seemed to be looking directly at him, then took off, brown-furred and white-tailed, to higher ground.
Jim ran past the bed, bumping his hip against the bedpost on his way. He leaped down the stairs without worrying about falling, and almost dived through the window. He didn’t stop running until he reached the stone fence, where he bent down to spit and pant, his hands on his knees.
The deer was gone.
Could it be the same one? He didn’t know.
He looked back at the house. It did look occupied now that the kitchen curtain wasn’t hanging outside. He smiled and shook his head. Nowhere was the world more sensitive than in emptiness and in silence. His aloneness told him this. Tears welled up in him again. It was not the same deer, the same house, or the same day. How could he expect it to be? He wasn’t the same.
Terry Persun's Magical Realism Collection Page 47