A Knight of the Word

by Terry Brooks

  They reached the chain-link fence and, without pausing to debate the matter, scrambled over. Holding the flowers for Nest while she completed the climb, Robert gave them a cursory sniff before handing them back. Side by side, the two made their way down the paved road that wound through the rows of tombstones and markers, feeling the October sun grow warmer against their skin as it lifted into a clear autumn sky. Summer might be behind them and winter closing fast, but there was nothing wrong with this day.

  She felt her thoughts drift like clouds, returning to the past. She had acquired new friends in high school but they lacked the history she shared with the old, and she couldn’t seem to get past that.

  Of course, the Petersons still lived next door and Mildred Walker still lived down the street. Reverend Emery still conducted services at the First Congregational Church, and a few of her grandfather’s old cronies still gathered for coffee at Josie’s each morning to share gossip and memories. Once in a while, she even saw Josie, but she could sense the other’s discomfort, and understanding its source, kept her distance. In any event, these were people of a different generation, and their real friendships had been with her grandparents rather than with her.

  There was always Pick, though. And, until a year or so ago, there had been Wraith …

  Robert left the roadway to cut through the rows of markers, bearing directly for the grave sites of her grandparents. Isn’t it odd, she thought, trailing distractedly in his wake, that Hopewell should feel so alien to her? Small towns were supposed to be stable and unchanging. It was part of their charm, one of their virtues, that while larger communities would almost certainly undergo some form of upheaval, they would remain the same. But Hopewell didn’t feel like that to her. It felt altered in ways that transcended expectation, ways that did not involve population growth or economic peaks. Those were substantially the same as they had been five years earlier. It was something else, an intangible that she believed might have influenced only her.

  Perhaps it was her, she pondered. Perhaps it was she who had changed and not the town at all.

  They walked up to her grandparents’ graves and stopped below the markers, looking down at the mounds that fronted them. Gran’s was thick and smooth with autumn grass; the grass on Old Bob’s was still sparse and the earth less settled. Identical tombstones marked their resting places. Nest read her grandmother’s. Evelyn Opal Freemark. Beloved wife of Robert. Sleep with angels. Wake with God. Old Bob had chosen the wording for Gran’s marker, and Nest had simply copied it for his.

  Her mother’s gravestone stood just to the left. Caitlin Anne Freemark. Beloved daughter & MOTHER.

  A fourth plot, just a grassy space now, was reserved for her.

  She studied it thoughtfully for a moment, then set about dividing up the flowers she had brought, arranging them carefully in each of the three metal vases that stood on tripods before the headstones. Robert watched her as she worked, saying nothing.

  “Bring some water,” she said, pointing toward the spigot and watering can that sat in a small concrete well several dozen yards off.

  Robert did, then poured water into each vase, being careful not to disturb Nest’s arrangements.

  Together, they stood looking down at the plots, the sun streaming through the branches of the old shade trees that surrounded them in curtains of dappled brightness.

  “I remember all the times your grandmother baked us cookies,” Robert said after a minute. “She would sit us down at the picnic table out back and bring us a plate heaped with them and glasses of cold milk. She was always saying a child couldn’t grow up right without cookies and milk. I could never get that across to my mother. She thought you couldn’t grow up right without vegetables.”

  Nest grinned. “Gran was big on vegetables, too. You just weren’t there for that particular lecture.”

  “Every Christmas we had that cookie bake in your kitchen. Balls of dough and cookie sheets and cutters and frosting and little bottles of sprinkles and whatnot everywhere. We trashed her kitchen, and she never blinked an eye.”

  “I remember making cookies for bake sales.” Nest shook her head. “For the church, for mission aid or something. It seemed for a while that I was doing it every other weekend. Gran never objected once, even after she stopped going to church altogether.”

  Robert nodded. “Your grandmother never needed to go to church. I think God probably told her she didn’t have to go, that he would come to see her instead.”

  Nest looked at him. “That’s a very nice thing to say, Robert.”

  He pursed his lips and shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’m just trying to get back into your good graces. Anyway, I liked your grandmother. I always thought, when things got a little rough at home, that if they got real bad I could move in with you if I really wanted to. Sure, you and your grandfather might object, but your grandmother would have me in an instant. That’s what I thought.”

  Nest nodded. “She probably would have, too.”

  Robert folded his arms across his chest. “You can’t sell your house, Nest. You know why? Because your grandmother’s still there.”

  Nest was silent for a moment. “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, she is. She’s in every room and closet, in every corner, and under every carpet, down in the basement and up in the attic. That’s where she is, Nest. Where else would she be?”

  Nest didn’t answer.

  “Up in Heaven playing a harp? I wouldn’t think so. Too boring. Not floating around on a cloud either. Not your grandmother. She’s in that house, and I don’t think you should move out on her.”

  Nest wondered what Robert would say if he knew the truth of things. She wondered what he would say if he knew that Gran’s transgressions years earlier had doomed her family in ways that would horrify him, that Gran had roamed the park at night like a wild thing, that she had run with the feeders and cast her magic in dangerous ways, that her encounter with a demon had brought about both her own death and the death of Nest’s mother. Would he think that she belonged in an afterlife of peace and light or that perhaps she should be consigned to a place where penance might be better served?

  She regretted the thought immediately, a rumination both uncharitable and harsh, but she found she could not dispel it entirely.

  Still, was Robert’s truth any less valid in determining the worth of Gran’s life than her own?

  Robert cleared his throat to regain her attention. She looked at him “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  “Good. ’Cause there are a lot of memories in that house, Nest.”

  Yes, there are, she thought, looking off into the sun-streaked trees to where the river was a blue glint through the dark limbs. But not all the memories were ones she wanted to keep, and perhaps memories alone were not enough in any case. There was a lack of substance in memories and a danger in embracing them. You did not want to be tied too closely to something you could never recapture.

  “I wouldn’t sell if it was me, you know,” Robert persisted. “I wouldn’t sell unless I didn’t have a choice.”

  He was pushing his luck, irritating her with his insistence on making the decision for her, on assuming she couldn’t think it through as carefully as he could and needed his advice. It was typical Robert.

  She gave him a look and dared him to speak. To his credit, he didn’t. “Let’s go,” she said.

  They walked back through the cemetery in silence, climbed the fence a second time, and crossed the park. The crossbar was raised now, and a few cars had driven in. One or two families were playing on the swing sets, and a picnic was being spread in a sunny spot across from the Sinnissippi burial mounds. Nest thought suddenly of Two Bears, of O’olish Amaneh, the last of the Sinnissippi. She hadn’t thought of him in a long time. She hadn’t seen him in five years. Now and then she wondered what had become of him. As she wondered what had become of John Ross, the Knight of the Word.

  The memories flooded through her.

  At the hedge
row bordering her yard, she leaned over impulsively and gave Robert a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for coming by. It was sweet of you.”

  Robert looked flustered. He was being dismissed, and he wasn’t ready for that. “Uh, are you, do you have any plans for the rest of the day? Or anything?”

  “Or anything?” she repeated.

  “Well, lunch, maybe. You know what I mean.”

  She knew exactly. She knew better than he did. Robert would never change. The best thing she could do for them both was not to encourage him.

  “I’ll call you if I get some time later, okay?”

  It had to be okay, of course, so Robert shrugged and nodded. “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll see you at Thanksgiving. Or Christmas.”

  She nodded. “I’ll drop you a note at school. Study hard, Robert. I need to know you’re out there setting an example for the rest of us.”

  He grinned, regaining a bit of his lost composure. “It’s a heck of a burden, but I try.” He began to move away into the park. “See you, Nest.” He tossed back his long blond hair and gave her a jaunty wave.

  She watched him walk down the service road that ran behind her backyard, then cut across the park toward his home, which lay beyond the woods at the east end. He grew smaller and less distinct as he went, receding slowly into the distance. It was like watching her past fade before her eyes. Even when she saw him again, it would not be the same. She knew it instinctively. They would be different people leading different lives, and there would be no going back to the lives they had lived as children.

  Her throat tightened, and she took a deep breath. Oh, Robert!

  She waited a moment longer, letting the memories flood through her one final time, then turned away.

  Chapter 3

  As Nest pushed through the hedgerow into her backyard, Pick dropped from the branches onto her shoulder with a pronounced grunt.

  “That boy is sweet on you. Sweet, sweet, sweet.”

  Pick’s voice was harried and thin, and when he spoke he sounded like one of those fuzzy creatures on Sesame Street. Nest thought he wouldn’t be so smug if he could hear himself on tape sometime.

  “They’re all sweet on me,” she said, deflecting his dig, moving toward the picnic table. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No, I didn’t. But if that one were any sweeter, he could be bottled for syrup.” Pick sniffed. “Classic case of youthful hormonal imbalance.”

  She laughed. “Since when did you know anything about ‘youthful hormonal imbalance’? Didn’t you tell me once that you were born in a pod?”

  “That doesn’t mean I don’t know about humans. I suppose you don’t think I’ve learned anything in my life, is that it? Since I’m roughly ten times your age, it’s probably safe to assume I’ve learned a great deal more than you have!”

  She straddled one of the picnic bench seats, and Pick slid down her arm and jumped onto the table in front of her, hands on hips, eyes defiant. At first glance, he looked like a lot of different things. A quick glimpse suggested he was some sort of weird forest flotsam and jetsam, shed by a big fir or blown off an aging cedar. A second look suggested he was a poorly designed child’s doll made out of tree parts. A thick layer of bark encrusted him from head to foot, and tiny leaves blossomed out of various nooks and crannies where his joints were formed. He was a sylvan, in fact, six inches high and so full of himself Nest was sometimes surprised he didn’t just float away on the wind. He never stopped talking and, in the many years she had known him, had seldom stopped moving. He was full of energy and advice, and he had a tendency to overwhelm her with both.

  “Where have you been?” he demanded, clearly agitated that he had been forced to wait on her return.

  She brushed back her cinnamon-colored hair and shook her head at him. “We walked over to the cemetery and put flowers on my grandparents’ and mother’s graves. What is your problem, anyway?”

  “My problem?” Pick huffed. “Well, since you asked, my problem is that I have this entire park to look after, all two-hundred-odd acres of it, and I have to do it by myself! Now, you might say, ‘But that’s your job, Pick, so what are you complaining about?’ Well, that’s true enough, isn’t it? But time was I had a little help from a certain young lady who lived in this house. Now what was her name again? I forget, it’s been so long since I’ve seen her.”

  “Oh, please!” Nest moaned.

  “Sure, it’s easy for you to go off to your big school and your other life, but words like ‘commitment’ and ‘responsibility’ mean something to some of us.” He stamped hard on the picnic table. “I thought the least you could do was to spend some time with me this weekend, this one solitary weekend in the whole of this autumn that you’ve chosen to come home! But no, I haven’t seen you for five minutes, have I? And now, today, what do you do? Go off with that Heppler boy instead of looking for me! I could have gone to the graves with you, you know. I would have liked to go, as a matter of fact. Your grandmother was my friend, too, and I don’t forget my friends …” He trailed off meaningfully.

  “Unlike some people,” she finished for him.

  “I wasn’t going to say that.”

  “Oh, not for a minute.” She sighed. “Robert came by to apologize for his behavior last spring at the funeral.”

  “Oh, that. Criminy.” Pick knew right away. They might fight like cats and dogs, but they confided in each other anyway.

  “So I had to spend a little time with him, and I didn’t think it would hurt if we walked over to the cemetery. I was saving the rest of the day to work with you, all right? Now stop complaining.”

  He held up his twiggy hands. “Too late. Way too late.” “To stop complaining?”

  “No! To do any work!”

  She hunched down so that her face was close to his. It was a little like facing down a beetle. “What are you talking about? It isn’t even noon. I don’t have to go back until tonight. Why is it too late?”

  He folded his stick arms across his narrow chest, scrunched up his face, and looked off into the park. She always wondered how he could make his features move like that when they were made out of wood, but since he had a tendency to regard such questions as some sort of invasion of his personal life, she’d never had the courage to ask. She waited patiently as he sighed and fussed and jittered about.

  “There’s someone here to see you,” he announced finally.

  “Who?”

  “Well, I think you had better see for yourself.”

  She studied him a moment. He refused to meet her eyes, and a cold feeling seeped through her. “Someone from before?” she asked quietly. “From when my father …?”

  “No, no!” He held up his hands quickly to calm her fears. “No one you’ve met before. No one from then. But …” He stopped. “I can’t tell you who it is without getting myself in deeper than I care to go. I’ve thought about it, and it will be better if you just come with me and ask your questions there.”

  She nodded. “Ask my questions where?”

  “Down by the bayou below the deep woods. She’s waiting there.”

  She. Nest frowned. “Well, when did she get here?”

  “Early this morning.” Pick sighed. “I just wish these things wouldn’t happen so suddenly, that’s all. I just wish I’d be given a little notice beforehand. It’s hard enough doing my job without these constant interruptions.”

  “Well, maybe it won’t take long,” she offered, trying to ease his obvious distress. “If it doesn’t, we can still get some work done in the park before I have to go back.”

  He didn’t even argue the point. His anger was deflated, his fire burned to ash. He just stared off at nothing and nodded.

  Nest straightened. “Pick, it’s a beautiful October morning, filled with sunshine. The park has never looked better. I haven’t seen a single feeder, so the magic is in some sort of balance. You’ve done your job well, even without my help. Enjoy yourself for five minutes.”

  She reached over, pluc
ked him off the tabletop, and set him on her shoulder. “Come on, let’s take a walk over to the deep woods.”

  Without waiting for an answer, she rose and headed for the hedgerow, pushing through the thin branches into the park. Sunshine streamed down out of a cloudless sky, filling the morning air with the pale, washed-out light peculiar to late autumn. There was a nip in the air, a hint of winter on the rise, but there was also the scent of dried leaves and cut grass mingling with the pungent smells of cooking that wafted out of barbecue grills and kitchen vents from the houses bordering the park. Cars dotted the parking lots and turnoffs beneath the trees, and families were setting out picnic lunches and running with dogs and throwing Frisbees across the grassy play areas ahead.

  On such days, she thought to herself with a smile, she could almost imagine she would never leave.

  “Pick, if we don’t get back to it today, I’ll come home again next weekend,” she announced impulsively. “I know I haven’t been as good about working with you as I should. I’ve let other things get in the way, and I shouldn’t do that. This is more important.”

  He rode her shoulder in silence, apparently not ready to be mollified. She glanced down at him covertly. He didn’t seem angry. He just seemed distant, as if he were looking beyond her words to something else.

  She traversed the central open space to the parking lot serving the ball diamonds and play areas at the far end of the park, crossed the road, and entered the woods. The toboggan slide stood waiting for winter, the last sections of the wooden chute and the ladder that allowed access to the loading platform still in storage, removed and locked away as a safeguard against kids’ climbing on and falling off before the snows came. It never seemed to help much, of course. Kids climbed anything that had footholds whether it was intended for that purpose or not, and the absence of stairs just made the challenge that much more attractive. Nest smiled faintly. She had done it herself more times than she could count. But she supposed that one day some kid would fall off and the parents would sue and that would be the end of it; the slide would come down.