by Derek Murphy
Bram always walked with his hands in his pockets because he felt strange with his hands just dangling along beside him, swinging as though he was marching. He didn’t march, though he thought that when he grew up, he would like to be a soldier. That was forever away in the future, though. At least eight more years. Then he would be eighteen and the teasing would be in the past and he could just be himself. He could just be.
He found his steps taking him through the backyard and to the railroad tracks. The ditch was ten or so feet wide and a couple of feet deep, and his brothers had put an old creosote beam across it so they could cross it when it was full of water without getting wet. On the other side, the raised roadbed was a good ten or fifteen feet higher than the yard and though they had worn a path up its side, it was still a scramble getting to the top.
Once there, he turned north, away from town, and walked along the tracks, watching the lizards and horny-toads scurry along in front of him, darting into cracks and crevices under the ties. As he walked, the sweat rolled down his face, trickling along the skin in front of his ears and running onto his neck. Beads of it collected on his upper lip while others were momentarily dammed by his eyebrows until it all but cascaded into his eyes. Dashing it from his eyes, he paused just long enough to turn around to let the breeze from the south cool him infinitesimally. Unable to continue walking so long as it required walking backwards, he turned back around and increased his pace. There was a spot further along the tracks where he had once seen a large bit of green in a pasture. Maybe there was a pond there where he could cool his feet. He knew better than to try swimming in it without company; it was too easy to drown and he didn’t want that to happen. All he would accomplish that way would be to look stupid.
When he reached the spot he remembered, he descended the roadbed and crawled through the barbed wire fence that bordered the pasture. The grass was waist-high and he found himself high-stepping through it to avoid being tripped. From this distance, he could tell there were several small trees clustered together and knew that there had to be a source of water for them to be so green in the middle of summer. And this summer had been especially dry; he couldn’t remember the last time it rained.
As he drew near the trees, he was able to see more of the green area and noticed someone’s head bobbing up and down above the tall grass periodically. Bram was loathe to insert himself into another’s tranquil moment, but he had come so far for this little adventure that he hated to turn back around and leave when he was so close. About thirty feet from the trees, the grass was suddenly shortened and he could tell from the way it looked that cattle had been cropping it short to get at the good, green stuff. The closer he got to the trees, the greener the grass grew. Looking up, he saw that a girl in jean shorts and a sleeveless top was playing near the base of the trees.
There were three of them and they were rooted on the bank of a small stream that meandered through the pasture, leaving a smear of green through the sear, brown grass. Before he reached the stream, he raised his voice, finding it a little strained.
"Hello."
The girl stopped what she was doing and looked up at him, her dark eyes wide and he saw that her hair was wet and stringy where she had sweated through it in her play. Her lips and eyes formed a trio of perfect circles in her surprise and she seemed suddenly shy.
"Hello."
He asked, "Do you mind if I cool my feet?"
She waved a hand at the water in invitation and sat down on the bank abruptly. Her dark eyes watched him as he walked to a point some distance from her and sat down on the opposite side of the bank and some five feet downstream from her. Now that he was here, he saw that the bottom of the little stream was lined with smooth, river gravel and the water seemed clear as glass. Easing off his beat-up, old tennis shoes, which he had put on that morning without socks, he slid his feet into the water and gasped at the cold sensation. The water felt as though it had come off a glacier, which he knew wasn’t possible; they lived in the middle of the plains.
The girl wiped a grimy hand across her forehead, leaving a muddy smear and said, "The water’s nice and cold. But I wouldn’t drink it."
Bram frowned down into the water, seeing only a couple of tadpoles straining against the slight current. He asked, "Why not?"
The girl pointed upstream to where five or six cattle stood, drinking from the stream and as he looked, one of the cattle cut loose with a stream of urine not five feet from the water. He understood her reluctance to drink from it then. He chuckled.
"I guess not!"
The girl stuck out a hand, saying, "I’m Reina."
Shyly taking her hand, he gripped it gingerly. He had never shaken hands with a girl before and was afraid that her hand might be different somehow. To his mild surprise, he found that her hand felt much like that of a boy, only soft and small. Not finding himself gripping something strange and terrible, he grinned suddenly.
"I’m Bram!"
Screwing her eyes into a squint, Reina asked, "Is that short for Abraham? Like Abraham Lincoln?"
"I guess. Mom says my birth certificate just has Bram on it."
"What’s your last name?"
"Teviotdale."
One corner of her mouth quirked up in a half-smile.
"That’s a funny name. Where is it from?"
Finding himself on firm ground here, Bram said, "Dad says his Great-great-grandpa was on the run from the King’s soldiers when he came to America and used the name of the area he came from instead of his real name. He didn’t want them to catch him."
Reina suddenly knelt on the opposite side of the stream, her eyes glued to him and a look of awe on her face, as though Bram was, himself, a desperate character. She picked up a pile of flowers and greenery at her feet and held them up. As they started to fall from her fingers, Bram saw that she had been plaiting a garland from clover flowers. She stepped forward, one foot on either side of the stream and lifted it to place on his head. He was startled by how short she seemed. Almost like an elf or one of those other mythological creatures.
"You should have something to show that you’re different from the rest of us."
He recognized the illogicality of her statement, but it just felt so good to have someone think of him as ‘special’, that he didn’t object. As the vegetation settled on his sweaty hair, he felt its coolness on his scalp and knew that he would forever equate a cooling feeling on his head with this girl.
She sat back on the ground and he noticed for the first time that the ground near the stream was slightly terraced, furnishing a natural backrest for those who would sit to cool their feet in the water. Turning around, he sat beside her, facing back the way he had come and the soft, green grass was cool enough to make its presence known through his jeans and shirt. Pulling a candy bar from his shirt pocket, and finding it much melted within the wrapper, he opened it and shared half of it with Reina. Before long, both children had chocolate smeared around their lips and giggled at the funny spectacle they presented.
As he fell to whittling on a stick with his pocketknife, one blade of which had the point broken off, the girl continued plaiting garlands from the clover around them. After a long while of silence, Reina lifted her face and glanced sidelong at him.
"Where do you live?"
He pointed back down the railroad tracks, saying, "A mile or so that way. In town. Where do you live?"
Her hair, cut off just above her skinny shoulders, swirled wetly in still-damp witchlocks as she turned her head quickly and pointed toward a distant hill. Bram thought for just a second that the tip of a pointed ear peeked through the stringy hair, but decided it had just been an illusion melded of the swinging hair flashing over the whiteness of the ear. He looked where she pointed and saw that a farmhouse sat atop the hill. He thought that it looked a little rundown, even from this distance.
"Over there."
"What grade will you be in at school?"
"Fifth. You?"
Nodding, he sa
id, "The Fifth. I’ve never seen you at school. Did you just move here?"
Shaking her head, she said, "I’ve lived here all my life. I go to the CountrySchool."
This was a puzzler for Bram. He knew there were schools for the rural kids, but so far as he knew, the nearest one was way out by the county line. The school in town would be closer for her, but he said nothing about it. Still, he felt a certain disappointment at not having a new friend to pal around with at school. He only had one friend and Nate was sick a lot and so, missed a lot of school, leaving Bram alone and lonely a good part of the time. He sighed and silently returned to whittling on his stick.
After some time, a distant voice floated through the air to them and Reina quickly stood and looked toward the hill.
She said, "Mom’s calling me for supper. I’ll meet you here every day."
Her eyes were suddenly downcast and shy again as she dug at the grass with a toe of her tennis shoes.
"If you want to."
Bram smiled at her. "Okay. After school starts, I may not be here till after supper, though."
Grinning back at him, Reina said, "Then we’ll meet here on Saturdays after school starts!"
Suddenly bending to kiss his cheek, she darted away before he recovered from what she had done and his last sight of her was as she ran full-speed through the tall grass toward her home. It was only when he looked back down at the stream that he saw that she had plaited a hat from the clover and picking it up, he placed it on his head over the garland. It was large, and though she had tried to fashion a brim, it flopped down over his eyes in front and hung down over his neck in back. Folding the front back, he rose and started for home.
* * *
The years passed quickly for the two and before they hardly knew what had happened, it was the Saturday before they both were to graduate from high school. Bram had tried to arrange meetings for them at various times through the years, but Reina had always told him that there was one thing or another interfering with them. For some reason, Bram didn’t care that they were unable to meet anywhere else, though he was disappointed.
This day, he sat on the side of the stream with his pant-legs rolled up and his shoes and socks beside him as his feet rested in the cool water. He heard her hallooing at him as she ran through the tall grass, green with the mid-Spring rains. He stood and watched her run fleetly toward him. Now that they were both almost out of school and about to embark on adulthood, he felt that they could spend more time together socially. He desperately wanted people to know that he had a friend who loved him no matter how aloof he seemed to be with others.
When she reached him, she stood on tiptoe to kiss him full on the lips, something they had done only seldom, though the last few times had held something that promised a steamy closeness they had both never experienced. As they parted, she kicked off her sandals and gathered up the skirt of her sundress as she sat on the grass, dragging him down beside her by one hand.
She said, "I’ve been accepted at a college! I start classes in August! I’ve got a scholarship and Daddy says he’ll sell some cattle to buy me a car!"
Stunned at her news, Bram felt downcast and disappointed. His parents had decided for him that he would follow his father into the factory in town instead of attending college. He felt that with Reina in college, they would grow apart until they ceased to be important in each other’s lives.
Not wanting to put a damper on her news, he simply said, "That’s great! You’ll have to give me a ride in it sometime."
Noticing the look on his face, she said, "Don’t be a Gloomy-Gus! We’ll still see each other! It just won’t be as often!"
"I guess."
Suddenly quiet, he noticed that she still held his hand and he turned his head to look at her. She had grown into a beautiful, young woman. Her hair hung past her shoulders in big, loose curls dark as night and her eyes were blue as the sky on either side of a small, regular nose. Her heart-shaped face framed full lips that begged to be kissed and he did. In seconds, she pulled her fingers loose from his and grasped his hand as she pulled it to one breast that all but overflowed the low neck of her dress. Before Bram knew what was happening, they were both undressed and moving in unison on the cool, green grass. Shuddering to a climax, she cried out and held him tightly with her arms and legs wrapped around him.
Rolling from her, breathless and gasping, he looked at her with wide eyes.
"I’m sorry! I didn’t mean for that to happen!"
Smiling slyly at him, Reina said, "I did."
He shook his head. "Why?"
"I know what it means when one person goes off to college and the other stays home. We may never have another chance to do this. I wanted you to be the first. There might be others and I wanted to be able to remember my first time as being with someone that I loved."
Still out of breath, he lay on the grass and watched her rise as she began dressing.
He said, "We can still see each other, Reina! I want to show you off to everybody!"
She looked down at him and he was surprised to see tears in her eyes as she said, "I’m not a prize cow to be shown to people, Bram. I don’t belong here, anyway!"
Having dressed quickly while he still lay naked on the grass, she abruptly turned and sped off through the grass, running for her home on the hill. Over the years, Bram had noticed in an offhand manner that the trees between their meeting place and the hill had grown until he couldn’t see her house anymore. Surprised at her running away from him, he was slow to get dressed and as it was, he was still struggling back into his shirt as he ran after her through the grass. He lost sight of her when she entered the line of trees and he had trouble finding the road that led to the top of the hill. It was much grown over and didn’t look as though anyone had used it for years.
Breathless, he burst out of the line of trees and saw her house up close for the first time. He didn’t know what he had expected, but certainly not this. The house was all but falling down and it was plain that at one time or another, fire had gutted it, leaving it an empty shell. As he stepped up onto the rickety front porch, he put a hand to one of the posts and felt it move under his fingers. No one had lived here for years! He pushed open the door that hung half on its hinges and heard it scrape over the burned and water-damaged floor. Inside, the walls and floors were all but gone and the ceiling was burned through. Birds made their nests among the joists and rafters and he could see the sun shining through a great hole in the roof where the fire had burned through it.
Dejected and disillusioned, he moved back out onto the porch. How could she have lied to him for so long? He had trusted her more than anyone else he had known through his entire life. But, what did he know of her? She had never even told him her last name. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask. There were so many things he had never asked her. He didn’t know why he hadn’t. It had just seemed natural for him not to ask her anything. Suddenly suspicious, he wondered briefly if she had laid some kind of spell over him. Finally, he decided that it was just the spell of a lonely boy being suddenly and finally loved by someone who had no cause to love him. He felt duped and used and mentally berated himself for being so naïve.
Stepping off the porch, he made the long walk back to the meeting place and from there, back to his life; alone and lonely.
* * *
Many years later, Bram walked across the field and stopped under the trees. It surprised him how big they had gotten while he had been occupied with his life. The stream too, had grown. It was several feet wide now, the bank nearest him being cut away and exposing more of the brown, river gravel. The terraced area was still there, with the boles of the trees shouldering into it. The area was in deep shade now since the trees were so big, but since it was now autumn, the leaves wouldn’t last much longer. They had turned color already and were a deep, reddish-gold.
His sixty-year-old knees popped and crackled as he settled to the grass and he slipped his shoes and socks off. Rolling up his pant-legs, he
let his feet dangle in the stream. It was deeper now and the water seemed as cold as it had on that faraway day when he had first come here. Many things had changed for him.
He had been married. Twice. His children had rebelled and forced him off the board of directors at the factory. He still owned a big piece of it and would never have to worry about money again, but being forced out of the business still rankled. The divorce from his second wife was a dim, bitter memory and he reflected that through it all, he had always felt alone and lonely. His entire life had been spent in deep loneliness despite his parents, brothers, sisters, wives and children. The only time in his life that he hadn’t felt lonely had been when he was with Reina; though her lies and ultimate betrayal still burned in his heart.
His hand went to the bag he had carried with him and he removed a bottle of beer from it, twisting the cap quickly. Just as quickly, he upended the bottle and took a long, slow drink. Lowering the bottle, he sighed and took the roast beef sandwich from the bag. Unwrapping it, he began eating, unwilling to remember the many small picnics he and Reina had enjoyed here. The memories came anyway and he let them fill his mind as he remembered her gamine smile and elfin movements. Had she really been that small? The memory of their one bout of lovemaking came to him and he remembered spanning her waist with both hands, the thumbs lapping over each other. He knew he was large, with large hands, and they had gotten even larger with the work he had done in the factory before he moved up into management, but it seemed remarkable that Reina could have been so small.