One Life Well and Truly Promised

by Richard D. Parker

  Donghai smiled, for he was well acquainted with Christianity from his Hong Kong days, nevertheless he answered her truthfully. She would believe or not, it was not up to him to decide for her.

  “Your hun…your soul and mine are tightly entangled,” he explained. “We must have been very close in a past life, for we still recognize the tie in this one.”

  Shocked by the idea, Harriet remained silent as her mind grappled with the possibility. Finally she shook her head. “I don’t believe in reincarnation…if that is what you’re referring to.”

  Donghai nodded. “Belief is not required for a thing to be true. I was pulled far from my home to be with you…we are entwined. We will meet again, I assure you.”

  Harriet’s brow furrowed. She was a Christian through and through, her faith only growing stronger as her life neared its end. She would not renounce it now that salvation was at hand.

  “I think not,” Harriet finally answered, though the idea did have a certain power. It would definitely explain why she felt she knew this man. They couldn’t possibly have met before. Perhaps he just reminded her of someone she’d known in her past, but that did not explain the powerful connection that existed between them.

  Donghai inclined his head. “I thank you for the fine meal Mrs. Wilson,” he suddenly said and slid his chair noisily across the wooden floor.

  Harriet’s heart fell. ‘I’ve offended him and ruined everything!’ She thought with panic, but when she glanced up his face and eyes were smiling.

  “I will be leaving in the morning, but this has been the most gratifying trip of my life,” he confessed. “I thank you for it…until we meet again,” he added with a knowing smile.

  Abruptly Harriet laughed, suddenly inexplicably happy. “Until we meet again,” she answered and a large part of her truly hoped that his faith would be reaffirmed. She held out her hand and he gracefully bent and pressed his warm lips to her old, spotted skin. He held them against her for an embarrassingly long time before finally releasing her.

  “My Lady,” he said with all the gallantry he could muster, and then without warning, bounded down the stairs and hopped into the carriage next to Jagjit. He waved happily to Harriet as they turned to go, and all too quickly they were lost beyond the light of the gently swaying lanterns.

  Harriet remained thoughtfully still for a very long time, enjoying the night and contemplating the possibility of another life with the future Donghai. The fantasy warmed her against the growing chill. Sometime later Ajit and Dipti arrived on the porch to collect her and Harriet went with them happily, feeling such love for the pair that she hugged each very closely.

  They put her to bed where she felt warm and safe, and she played with the idea of past and future lives. She was a Christian and did not believe such things; nevertheless it was a splendid, happy dream.

  Two days later she died in her sleep, moving on without a sound or protest.

  Encounter Six

  Chapter Fourteen

  Joe and Allyson

  July 30th, 2015 A.D.

  Joe suppressed a sigh as he studied the small town of Bondurant through the dirty window of his mom’s 2009 Honda Civic. It wasn’t much, not much at all.

  They pulled in front of the Clarkson Reality office, located on the corner of Grant and First, and before the car rolled to a complete stop Aunt Karen was rushing happily out the front door.

  Joe had been to Bondurant many times in his young life, always before however, it was just to visit his grandparents. Throughout most of his childhood it was an annual trip, interrupted only after Grandpa’s car slid into the path of an oncoming snowplow. The head-on impact killed the old couple instantly on that blustery February morning, and so Joe had been introduced to death at the age of twelve. After the funeral they’d only come back to the heartland once…and then never again. The town had grown fuzzy in his memory…looking around now; he decided it was just as well.

  Joe knew his mother had grown up here before heading off to the University of Illinois, where she met his father. They’d fallen in love of course, and after graduation they’d gotten married, moved up to Chicago, and had a baby boy. It’s where Joe had lived his entire life…until this very day.

  They’d probably still be living in Chicago except that three years ago, just after St. Patrick’s Day, his father had collapsed in his law office and died of something called a brain aneurism. Joe had a hard time coping at first. One day his father was a large part of his life, and the next he was gone…forever. But while his death was hard on him, it nearly devastated his mother, coming just a few years after the unexpected tragedy that claimed her parents.

  She tried to be strong, and Joe, suddenly the man of the house, did what he could to ease her grief. He studied hard, kept mostly to himself, and stayed out of trouble. Even so, there were many times late in the night, when his mother’s muffled sobs would drift under his bedroom door, like ghosts on the haunt.

  The house was just one big painful memory to her, something Joe only came to realize within the past year. It was no picnic for him either. For a long time he’d wake in the morning, sleepily believing his father would be taking him to school. Sometimes the illusion didn’t dissipate until he reached the kitchen, only to find his mother listlessly sipping a cup of coffee. In his own pain and grief, there was little he could do to help her.

  At least not until his Aunt Karen called about an opening at the Bondurant High School. His mother had cautiously approached him about moving back to Iowa. Joe, though only seventeen, understood immediately that his mother wanted this…that she desperately needed a change. He readily agreed, happy to be able to do something for her, despite the fact that in the fall he’d be starting his senior year.

  He could have fought the change, and she probably would have relented to his wishes and remained in Chicago, but the fact was, he hardly cared. He’d grown up in the last three years…by necessity, and very few of his friends had done likewise. Most were now passionate about things he could not relate to anymore. The only person he’d be sorry to leave behind was his best friend Nate, but even if he stayed it would hardly be forever. Nate had already been accepted to Stony Brook, out east. He was excited to go; while Joe delayed and delayed, and even now wasn’t sure he wanted to attend college. He knew, as a teacher, his mother expected it, but she rarely broached the subject anymore and Joe was happy enough to let it lie.

  And so they were here…in Bondurant Iowa.

  “Debbbieeee!” His Aunt Karen yelled with glee as they stepped out of the air-conditioned car and into the oppressive heat of the Iowa summer. “I wasn’t expecting you for another couple of hours.”

  The two women hugged, holding onto one another far longer than they would have in their youth, but many things had changed since then.

  “Joe!” Aunt Karen exclaimed in greeting, and hurried around the front of the car to pull him into a similar embrace. He suffered stoically, the heat pouring off the parking lot in waves. He could hardly breath and only half because of the rib-crushing hug his Aunt was applying. The air was thick and smelled like soup gone bad.

  “You’ve grown so tall!” Karen exclaimed, and it was true, he’d sprouted several inches over the past few years, and by all accounts was still growing. Karen was by no means a small woman, standing just over five foot eight, but Joe now surpassed her by at least an inch.

  Joe smiled, not embarrassed at all by the scrutiny, as some young men might be.

  Karen held him by the shoulders for a moment longer before turning back to her sister. “Well, come inside and get out of this heat!” She insisted, clearly happy that they were in town.

  They followed Karen through the glass front door and into the tiny freestanding brick building. The inside was pleasantly cool, the air conditioning almost hiding a faint musty smell. Like most everything else built back in the seventies, three of the walls were covered in dark, cheap-looking paneling. A pair of metal and Formica desks sat in front of the back wall, whi
ch had once been white, but was now a pale yellow. The wall held a large picture showing an aerial view of a farmstead.

  An older woman sat behind the far desk sporting a poof of gray hair that exploded from her head like popcorn from a kernel. She was on the phone, so she just nodded and smiled at them as they walked in.

  “That’s Clarice,” Karen introduced and the woman nodded again before she turned her full attention back to the phone conversation.

  “I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” Karen repeated as she walked around and took a seat at the other desk. “You made good time.”

  “We didn’t stop to eat,” Debbie explained, almost sheepishly, sure her son was starving at this point.

  “There’s a pizza joint down the street a bit,” Karen explained, “pretty good too. I’ve a showing near Mitchellville…shouldn’t take more than a couple hours.”

  Debbie hesitated and looked to her son, who shrugged. He wasn’t all that hungry after the box of granola bars he’d finished off on the way, plus he had a feeling they’d wear out that pizza place over the next few months. Cooking held little appeal for his mother these days, and they ate takeout more often than not…plus Bondurant seemed a bit short on variety.

  “…or,” Karen continued, sensing her sister’s desire to get on with the process of relocating, “I could get a hold of the Webb’s and see if they could meet you up at the house?”

  Debbie nodded while Joe moved behind the desk to study the picture on the back wall more closely. It was a stunning google-map view of a typical Iowa farmhouse, complete with a pair of silos, a large wooden barn, and several metal fabricated outbuildings. There were no people in the picture, but Joe could clearly see sheets hanging on the line in the backyard, frozen in mid-billow.

  “It’s our place,” Karen explained, an old, green desktop phone to her ear. She was about to say something else when apparently someone answered.

  “Hi, Big Al…this is Karen. Is your mom around? Well shoot…yes, they’re early. Made good time and they’re kind of anxious to see their new place…Hey would you be able to meet them out at the house, and maybe show them around a little? Great! Twenty minutes? Perfect,”

  She hung up the phone and looked up. “The Webb’s daughter will meet you at the house in twenty minutes,” she repeated and Joe raised an eyebrow. He wasn’t at all sure he wanted to meet a girl nicknamed big Al.

  “Thanks Karen…thanks for everything,” Debbie said and suddenly they were hugging again. Joe was sure there’d be tears but Karen pulled away dry.

  “I gotta go,” she explained hurriedly and snatched up her purse. “You remember where it is?”

  Joe watched as his mother nodded. “I remember,” she replied confidently. The Webb’s were distant neighbors in her youth, their property backing up to her Dad’s on the northern end. They’d built a new, modern home off 80th street, leaving their old farmhouse on 94th vacant. Debbie and her son would be renting it for the time being.

  “Great!” Karen repeated. “Love you,” she added and bustled out the door.

  Joe and his mother stared at one another for a moment and then moved to the door. Clarice, still on the phone, covered the speaker with one hand and mouthed. “Please to meet you,” very quietly before returning back to the conversation.

  Joe nodded and followed his mother back out to the Civic.

  “I was hoping to be out of the car for a while longer,” she said as she slipped in behind the wheel. They made their way back through town, filled up with gas and bought a couple of bottled teas before heading north again. Once they drove through town it was a simple matter of making their way up to 94th.

  The drive stirred up a host of memories for Debbie, most of them good, but Joe watched the passing cornfields with silent amusement. He recalled his mother telling of one of her favorite pastimes from her youth and turned to her.

  “Do we have any tennis balls?” He asked and for the first time in a long time his mother genuinely laughed. As a country girl, in the seventies, there was not much offered by the way of entertainment in Bondurant. She grew up before the age of video games, computers and cell phones. The only social networking she did was at the Prom, Homecoming, or Sadie Hawkins dances. Hell, they only had three channels on the television…and two of them didn’t come in, even with a wire antenna large enough to contact mars perched on the top of their house.

  Sometimes on lazy afternoons, she and her sister would take a tennis ball, stand on the roof of the shed, and throw it out into the high corn…the object of the game was to see who could find the ball first. It was stupid really, but it passed the time. Steve, her late husband, teased her about it often when she complained of being bored.

  “We’ll definitely have to get some,” she told her son happily as she turned east on 94th and then headed for their new home.

  ♀

  As they pulled into the gravel drive of the old Webb place, the first thing they noticed was a large, saddled horse tied loosely to the post of a lone lantern that adorned the front yard.

  “Well, we’re not in the city anymore,” Joe commented wryly, though secretly he was intrigued by the large animal standing placidly in front of his new home. He’d never ridden a horse before, and had rarely been close to one.

  The horse was a splotchy gray…Joe thought that “dappled” was the official term, but he couldn’t be sure. He was about as far from an expert as you could get on the subject.

  He climbed from the passenger seat slowly, as if he expected the horse to jerk loose from the post and attack. The horse ignored him; even so, Joe closed the car door as quietly as he could.

  “It’s just as I remembered,” his mother said gazing up at the large, two-story farm house. “I was afraid it might be smaller,” she added absently.

  Joe glanced briefly at the house before turning his attention back to the horse. He slowly inched forward, hand outstretched in a universal sign of interspecies friendship…at least that’s what he hoped.

  “Easy girl,” he said softly, in a voice he’d learned off the television, and cautiously moved forward. The sheer size of the animal turned Joe’s knee pits to Jell-O, but he marshalled his courage and inched closer until his hand was almost touching the horse’s neck.

  “Careful, he bites,” a lovely singsong voice advised from the porch behind him. Joe froze in his tracks as the horse eyed him closely.

  ‘He?’ He thought and suppressed the desire to check the horse’s genitals; instead he quickly decided he’d take the voice’s word for it. Joe stood very still, arm outstretched, his hand just a few inches from the horse’s gray coat. The horse watched him with what seemed to be curious amusement. Joe was close enough now he was sure the horse could bite him if he really wanted to, but the horse didn’t make a move. Joe gulped and pushed his hand forward until he touched the short, coarse hair covering the horse’s neck.

  Much to his surprise, the horse did not attack. Joe softly patted the long, muscular neck for a moment and then turned; intent on flashing a triumphant smile back at the voice on the porch…the voice he assumed was Big Al’s. However, just as he took his eyes off the animal, the horse dipped its head and made that deep, almost Whoopee Cushion like sound, that horses sometimes make. A great gust of air exhaled through its long, thick, horse lips. Startled, Joe jerked his hand from the horse’s neck and instinctively retreated a few steps.

  The girl on the porch broke into a raucous laugh that did not jive well with the tinkling voice that had spoken earlier. Joe frowned as the horse bobbed its head up and down several times, almost a perfect imitation of mirth.

  The laughter finally died down on the porch. “I’m sorry, Grif doesn’t really bite…but it’s one of his favorite pranks,” the girl explained. Joe turned to look at her as the horse continued to bob its head.

  “Pranks?” Joe asked, wondering if the voice was putting him on, or if the horse was truly laughing. He fell silent however, when he caught sight of the face addressing him. He stood stoc
k-still and gawked up at the girl, while she stood staring openmouthed back at him.

  ‘I know her,’ he thought, and wondered if they’d met on one of his long ago trips to Iowa.

  “Big Al” was basically your classic country misnomer. The girl was far from big, at least the part of her that was not hidden by the trimmed hedges growing in front of the porch railing.

  She was wearing a yellow tank top, trimmed in white, which accentuated her narrow, almost bony shoulders. Her slender neck supported a proportionately smallish head, which was topped with dirty blonde hair that was pulled back into an “I don’t care how I look, it’s hot,” ponytail. Joe took all this extraneous information in peripherally, for his eyes never left her’s the entire time. He was trapped in her gaze, but at the moment was unaware of his plight. He was perfectly content just to stare up at the girl all afternoon.

  His mom finally coughed, breaking the spell and Joe glanced over at her sheepishly. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes bouncing back and forth between her son and the Webb girl like she was watching a tennis match.

  ‘Oh boy, this girl’s going to be trouble!’ Debbie thought, but then quickly revised her objections. An early infatuation would probably hasten her son’s acclimation to small town life. It would definitely help ease his transition, which was still one of her biggest worries.

  “Hi,” the girl said simply, not taking her eyes off the young man in the yard. “I’m Al…Allyson.”

  “Hello Allyson,” Debbie answered immediately and boldly tromped up the stairs, approaching the girl quickly. “I’m Debbie and this is my son Joe.”

  “Joe…” Allyson repeated softly, still staring down at her son, even though Debbie now stood very close with her hand extended in greeting. Debbie glanced back down toward her son, but he too was spellbound. He was staring so brazenly up at the girl that it was almost creepy…almost, but as she stood ignored, Debbie realized the situation had a completely different vibe. There was nothing creepy about the actions of the two young people; in fact it was almost angelic, and Debbie had a fleeting thought that she was witnessing a case of love at first sight.