The two of them, they walked quietly away from the double doors and carefully down the stone stairway. The sun was falling toward the earth and the sideways rays cast shadows, reaching and stretching across the lawn just tickling the base of the stairway. The stones changing color in the caress of the shadows. Pinks and blues and grays rolling over upon one another becoming deeper and somehow quieter, almost as of they were showing respect.
He hesitated ever so slightly as he strode from the last step. Not wanting to allow the shadows access to his footprints. Like a child avoiding cracks in a sidewalk he lengthened and shortened his steps avoiding the tendrils of graying half light. If she noticed the offbeat rhythm of his gait she did not acknowledge it.
In fact she had noticed. Though she wouldn’t, no couldn’t, no… no wouldn’t, express her understanding of the fear that late afternoon, fear of the encroaching darkness, she silently shared his discomfort.
Three times he drew a breath during that slow walk across the church lawn. Three times his lips parted, but each time the thoughts stumbled somewhere along the path between the swirling, bubbling, pool that breeds such thoughts and the place where they take form, becoming words.
Instead he opened the car door and brushed the pale warmth of her cheek with his lips. Made apologies in regards to the quiet dinner she had proposed and shut the door gently behind her.
He resisted the urge to turn and look as the loose gravel scooted under the tires groping for traction on the warm dusty lot. For just a moment he wished he had agreed to dinner, wanted more than anything not to be alone. Those thoughts fled with the next breath though and he settled into a quiet solitary discontent.
He drove the two lane twisting road back to his hotel with the radio off and the windows down, the hum of the engine and the buzzing of the tires running over the asphalt acting as a backdrop for his scattered thoughts.
The shower was small and he had to duck in order to get his head under the water. He didn’t really need one but somehow the steaming water had managed to rinse away some of the… What was it exactly? There had been so many hugs and handshakes. It was almost as if some of that grief and discomfort had clung to him. That each touch had left him with a little of the loss and disconcertment they had been unable to express adequately with words. Either way he felt better, even if it was only ever so slightly.
The hotel, it turned out, had a decent restaurant and the steak had been more than adequate. Full of red meat and potatoes he found a bottle of bourbon at the bar. Being slow, the bartender had been gracious enough to allow him to carry it onto the sweeping front porch where he settled in a comfortable wicker chair and began working on the bottle in earnest.
She sat down gently but he could tell that she was drained. Ice danced loosely in her glass as she set it down next to the bottle and asked if he minded the company now, seeing as he had declined dinner earlier. Laughing once very softly through his nose he moved three cubes of ice from her glass to his before pouring the dull brown liquor into them both.
They sat quietly as lightning bugs bounced gently though the darkness, not speaking just pouring the bourbon from the bottle to the glasses and from the glasses into them.
When she placed her hand gently on his forearm he flinched, snatched momentarily from cloudy thoughts.
“She knew.” She said, barely more than a whisper.
“I know… it’s ok… I Love you.”
A lightning bug caught his attention across the yard and he drifted back to the cloudy thoughts…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment