Always October. C. E. Edmonson

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СКАЧАТЬ and my steps eventually carried me up the stairs to the second floor. Everyone referred to our county seat as “the courthouse,” but it housed the office of our board of commissioners and the sheriff’s office as well as our tiny jail. These offices ran in two wings on either side of the rotunda, and there were cots everywhere in the offices and in the halls. Folks moved about, all masked, and there were bodies here too, covered with sheets.

      I walked down the first corridor, trying my best not to look too hard at the women who struggled for life, trying to ignore the awful gurgling as they fought for air. A few reached out to me as I passed, calling me by someone else’s name. I’m ashamed to admit I shied away, not afraid of catching the flu but driven by something more primitive. Or so I’ve come to believe, though I wasn’t weighing my reactions at that moment. I knew I had to find my momma and I remembered to pray. There wasn’t room for anything else.

      I’d come almost to the end of the corridor when I finally saw my momma and rushed forward. Momma’s eyes were open and her lips were moving, but she didn’t turn her head to look at me. She was pitifully thin and her face was gray and the air bubbled in her lungs as she fought for breath. But she was clean, her sheet and blanket recently washed. Instinctively I looked at her feet, but they were covered.

      “Momma? It’s me, Lucas.” I hesitated as though searching for the magic words, an abracadabra to conjure the rabbit from the empty hat. “I’m your boy, remember?”

      Her lips continued to move, though no words came out. I told her the pig was fed and the chicken coop cleaned and school was closed but I expected go back soon. Still nothing. Her eyes seemed to look right through the back of my head.

      An immense sorrow washed through me, dark as the inside of a cave, a place of utter loneliness. I stood as though rooted, as though my feet were bolted to the courthouse floor. There had to be something I could do. There had to be. I folded my hands and began to pray. “Please help Momma, please help Momma, please help Momma.”

      “Lucas?” The voice belonged to my dad.

      “Momma doesn’t know me anymore,” I whispered.

      Dad’s arms came around me and I was hoisted from the floor and hugged to his chest. In an instant, no longer defiant, much less calculating, I became an eight-year-old boy again. I started to bawl, and once my tears began to flow there was no stopping them. I think I might have cried until the end of time if Momma hadn’t finally spoken my name.

      “Lucas.” The single word emerged from her mouth, thick and liquid, but her eyes, when I flew to her, were alert. I laid my head on her chest and felt her arm come over my back, her weakened touch light as a feather.

      “Momma, Momma, Momma.”

      Momma said nothing for a moment, and I have to suppose she was gathering her strength. I felt her hand rise from my back to stroke my hair.

      “Are you taking care…of your father?”

      “Yes ma’am. I’m trying.”

      “That’s good, Lucas. I’m proud of you son.”

      She brushed my hair a bit, just a single, slow stroke of her palm, and I closed my eyes, savoring the familiar feeling. Then, just as slowly, her hand dropped back to the bed. I watched it move in slow motion, watched as her fingers settled onto the white sheet as limp with sickness as she was. Looking back up to her face I could see she was asleep, or perhaps unconscious. All I knew was she was no longer looking at me, and no longer knew who I was. Tears again welled in my eyes.

      “Hush now,” Dad said, bending down to scoop me up, and just like that he carried me home. Like I was a baby, a lost child—and in a way I was. I knew now what was happening, now I had seen it for myself. I knew the flu was bad. It had hit Momma hard. And now I knew she wasn’t coming home.

      The next day bore my fear out. I didn’t go back to the hospital, but Dad did, and when he came home he told me Momma had passed from this earth. As I heard the words, the church bells were ringing, calling all the mourners to another funeral. Those bells continued to toll day and night for what seemed like forever, reminding me every time of what we had lost. A reminder that nothing else would ever be the same.

      CHAPTER 9

      Life goes on. That line’s been poppin’ into my aged brain this morning. I know it’s a cliché, of course, something people say to make themselves feel better. I also know it’s true. The world keeps turning whether you like it or not. The sun goes up and the sun goes down, and the grocer expects to be paid. Ditto for the bankers and the tax collector. This was true for me as it was true for the whole county, the whole nation, and the whole world. No matter if the grieving wasn’t over. No matter if the grieving would never be over. You buried your dead and continued on with the process of living.

      But living was hard. I missed my momma and my sister Annie to such an extent I can’t name the pain their passing caused me. I won’t dwell anymore on this particular subject except to say the hurting goes on, as it should. Time allows you to live with hurt, but in my opinion closure is a word dreamed up by folks who don’t know a thing about grieving.

      After Momma and Annie died, the little wilderness of Swede Lake became my retreat. Call it my escape if you want. Surely there were troubles enough to justify an occasional escape. Just as surely I never shirked my duties at my dad’s shop or at home—in fact I worked harder than ever.

      Times were getting slim. I can vividly remember dismantling the old chicken coop to salvage enough lumber to repair the house. At one point, when the window frames in the kitchen loosened up, I tightened them with homemade wedges and plugged the gaps with newspaper.

      Swede Lake was about three miles north of the town of Louristan. But every chance I had, I’d take my Raleigh two-wheeler and pedal over to Swede Lake, usually early in the morning. When I got there, I’d lean the bicycle against a tree and set off on one of the trails leading into the woods. Within a minute or so, the forest would swallow me up, old-growth trees rising high above my head, the streams crystal clear and teeming with fish.

      I came to know almost every deep pool in every stream in the forest as, over time, I marked the movements of the game. I especially followed the deer so that in the fall, during hunting season, I rarely came back without meat for the table. And that’s another point I mean to make: we ate everything I caught or killed. That’s not to say food was the primary reason for my trips to Swede Lake, at least not for me. But nothing was wasted, not in those years.

      As a boy, I wasn’t given to analyzing myself the way so many are now. I was all about doing. But looking back through the years, I think what I mainly felt, as the shadows closed around me, was relief. As if I’d just unleashed a breath I’d been holding for hours. Would the trout rise? What bait should I use? These were questions I much preferred to questions about how Dad and I could raise enough cash to hold our creditors at bay. No, whenever I watched a rainbow trout tail-dancing across the water, those practical matters were entirely forgotten.

      Of course I didn’t always succeed—I’m not pretendin’ to be a great fisherman or a mighty hunter. There were days I came home empty-handed, days when the fish wouldn’t bite no matter how I tried to tempt them. I don’t think I really minded all that much. See I’d usually arrive a little after sunrise, when the light cut through the tops of the trees and the shadows ran deep. Then I’d watch the dancing shadows as they gradually shortened, until the sun grew high enough to find the running waters of the narrow creeks, where it did a little dance of its own. Still…

      One of the problems СКАЧАТЬ