44 Collected Stories of David H Fears

1 - Thornton’s Apprentice

I’d like to tell you a story about the smartest man I ever met, Thornton Oranbee, who gave me a thirst for literature. He’s the reason I’m waiting here in my cap and gown to cross the stage and shake the dean’s hand. It began when I still lived at home on Marsters Street in Roseburg, Oregon. It seems like a thousand years ago.

It was a hot spring back then, in ’75, and I flunked out of high school, changing my report card from F’s to D’s by erasing and writing over the grades. Frank, my father, who never liked me to call him Dad, and Janet, my mother, who simply said first names were more charitable, just stuck their tongues out and made jokes to each other when I brought home those grades.

Years later I worked with a bunch of guys who all had sob stories about leaving home at a young age, but I shut ‘em up when I told about my parents leaving home when I was sixteen. They just took off for Alaska to work on that pipeline, where Frank said the real money was. Janet was all fluttery when I left for school that last morning. When I came home there was an envelope with thirty-two dollars, instructions on how to water the houseplants, a peanut butter sandwich and a note saying they’d write me soon. I threw out the sandwich as they hadn’t wrapped it, and I let the plants die, except for the big potted palm by the living room window—that one I killed by pissing in it every day. The only time I heard from them was a postcard I got two months later and by then the thirty-two dollars was gone so I got a job at Bob’s Big Boy Hamburgers. When the utility bills came I forwarded them on to general delivery, Fairbanks. Trouble was, what I didn’t know put me back some—they’d stopped paying the rent on the house, and a legal document came the day after their postcard demanding three month’s rent or I’d be evicted. Thornton liked to say it’s always what you don’t know that kills you—he was one of those kind you meet who always has something pithy to say—he taught me that word, pithy—and I reckon being exposed to all that pith makes it come out of me at weird times. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, I’m Dagget, Frank and Janet’s only kid—adopted—they told me that on the postcard, which didn’t shock me seeing as how I always felt apart from them. The card showed the two of them standing next to a seven-foot stuffed bear outside of some roadhouse named Grizzly Beer Hall. They wore big flowered shirts like you’d see in Hawaii or some tropical place. Frank had this Huck Finn type of straw hat on and was holding a beer and Janet was bulging out of hot pants and a halter-top. They had their tongues out.

Living with them had been like hiding out with foreigners, the strange way they talked and acted, except I never did know where they came from, although they’d laugh and say they were born in Lower Slobovia, which I found out later isn’t a real country.

After they left I got up early every morning and headed down to the rail yards to watch the trains. That’s where I got the idea for hitching a ride on a freight. I figured I could ride for a day and then hop on a return train. School was out anyway, and I wasn’t working full time. The only class I liked in school was English, where we read books like The Scarlet Letter, which we couldn’t just enjoy but had to peel apart like an orange to check out what sorts of seeds it had. It sounds dull but it sure was enlightening—another word I picked up from Thornton. Uncovering all those secrets written in a sort of code between the lines started me reading books. That’s what school mostly gave me—an eye for what isn’t actually said by folks, just what they really mean. Once you know how to see it in a book you look for it in what a person says and does. Thornton said the unspoken was why so many people feel alone—that if you looked close at what they didn’t say, your heart could know what they’re feeling and what sort of gumption they’ve got. He was right about that, at least I know he was about Frank and Janet.

Thornton wanted me to write it all down about my adopted parents going off, and what I did to get by—to put it out plain, using any words I chose or could borrow from his books. That’s what he had more of than anything, books. Well, at first I didn’t think I could do it and I guess what I wrote was full of fancy words I never use when I talk. But Thornton beat those words into shape, squinting and shooting each one dead until only the good ones were left, but by then I was sick of them all. Thornton said I’d have to write a million words before I could crank out anything that could be put in a book or a magazine, but that I could pull it off because I was young and what was between my lines was pure and worth chasing. Well, a million words nearly made me stop altogether. But words kept building up in me like a swollen creek behind a beaver dam until one day they burst free. But first I should explain how I met Thornton.

I hitched a Union Pacific boxcar just outside of Reno, Nevada when the emptiness of my life with Frank and Janet sorta fell on me. I decided not to go back to Roseburg; I’d find a Bob’s Big Boy in Reno. I was jotting plans in the chewed up notebook I called my bible when Jenny clambered up into the empty car. Jenny was Thornton’s lost kid, she said. She had run off from her mother up in Portland and was heading for Reno where Thornton lived. Her first words to me were pretty strange:

Pardon the intrusion. Don’t tell me—you’re a notorious author bumming a freight?

I’d never heard a girl my age talk like Jenny.

I’m not famous yet. I could see she was hungry: her eyes sunk back in her head some and she eyed my bag. I’ve got a couple of bananas if you want one.

Jenny just about inhaled that banana before I could finish half of mine, so I gave her the other half. Writers get published, they don’t scribble unceremoniously on freight cars, she said, leaning over to see what was on the page. She wore green overalls, which I thought was weird, like she was a forest worker or something, and her hair hung in long pigtails, the prettiest straw color with bright streaks. I remember thinking she had a lost look about her, not exactly pretty but a face that I wanted to study, a face hinting guilt or pain. She kept looking back down the tracks like someone might be following her. For some reason I thought of Hester from that Scarlet Letter story.

Maybe I don’t want it in the newspapers, I said. I’m writing just for me—where’d you steal all those ten-dollar words? Anyway, it’s not ready to show anyone.

Okay, Mister Hemingway, you tell me when you’ve expunged your adverbs. I’m going to snag a nap before this snake slides into Reno. Been on the road all night. What’s your name? I’m Jenny.

Daggett Robson. I’m stopping in Reno too.

She looked at me in a peculiar sort of way, like a black widow spider crawled up my nose. Don’t try anything imprudent while I’m asleep. I can take care of myself. She said it with steely eyes.

I didn’t say anything but smiled and looked out at the brown hills sliding past and listened to the clacking rhythms of the tracks. It felt free to be away from Roseburg. Even the alfalfa and sage smelled free.

Before I knew it Jenny was snoring a sweet buzz against the far wall, her head tucked against her backpack. I’d never heard a girl snore before, so I wrote down what she looked like and how she’d acted at my surprise. I wrote down all of her big words too. In a couple hours she sat up and stretched, looking around like she’d just been bamboozled.

How long I sleep?

Couple hours, maybe. You snore.

Reno’s dead ahead. You got acquaintances or siblings there?

I wasn’t sure what a sibling was, but I figured if I didn’t know then I didn’t have any. Nope. Left Roseburg after my adopted parents took off for Alaska. I’m going to look around and find a job in Reno. I hear it’s fun there.

Parental mysteries of life—declined to go with them for some reason? She cocked her head and her mouth turned up like she’d swallowed something she wanted to spit out.

They didn’t ask. Just left. Say, why do you use all those big words, you an English professor or something?

No, Thornton Oranbee is, or was—my dad—he prefers to be called Thornton. He’s retired.

I know what you mean. My folks made me call them by their first names, too.

If you like you can crash at Thornton’s place for a couple of days until you get that job—he won’t mind. I owe you for the bananas. The last food I had was from a McDonald’s dumpster in Eugene.

I must have stared at that because she looked at me hard and said: When you’re on the road you have to get food where you find it. I did what I had to do to get away from my mom’s boyfriend. He tried to rape me. Mom just laughed when I told her. So I took off. She said it matter of fact but I could see her hand tremble.

***

After we hit the train yards, we hurried on about two miles, past a university to a white Victorian house with drawn blinds. Some of the houses were antique stores. Jenny led me to a back door where she took a key from underneath a flowerpot. The smell of moldy books spilled out when we entered. Boxes of old books were stacked all around a sun porch and inside the kitchen from the floor to the ceiling—so many boxes that we had to squeeze through a narrow passageway. A chrome-legged Formica table was heaped with so many books that it sagged like a swayback horse. Jenny rang a bell that hung in a frame near the littered stove. Three orange tiger cats bolted through a small flap in the door and milled angrily around our feet. The ceiling creaked above our heads and a footfall came from the front of the house.

I remember thinking that Thornton looked too ancient to be Jenny’s dad and wondered how long he’d worn the dingy gray cardigan that stuck to him. What hair he had was short and white. His face and bald head were splotchy like they’d just been scrubbed. After he hugged Jenny, his deep-set blue eyes turned on me. He had the piercing look of an eagle, a sternness that bore right to my bones and made me feel small.

I’d like you to make the acquaintance of Mister Dagget Robson. He spends a lot of time scribbling in that spiral he’s carrying—might be a new student for you.

Indeed, he said rather dryly. Do you purport to be a writer, Mister Robson?

Well, yes, but I do write, so—

And I cook a little, son, but would not dare call myself a chef, nor even a cook. Do you see?

Yes sir.

I invited Dagget to stay for a couple of days, Daddy, just until he finds a job.

The old man made an impatient movement with his hand and said: I see. If you don’t mind, and the cats don’t mind, then I don’t mind. Jenny, my fair-haired daughter, how regrettable you couldn’t have compromised with your mother—I had you too late in life to be much of a father, I know—God how I know—but what is mine is thine, and you are welcome to it, my dear.

For some reason Jenny didn’t tell him about her mom’s boy friend, but I understood where Jenny picked up her lingo from as I leaned next to a tower of books that threatened to bury me. She fixed up a cozy downstairs bedroom for me and I awoke the next morning to the smell of frying bacon. After splashing some water in my face from a rust-stained sink, I climbed back up to the kitchen to find Thornton bent over my red spiral. When he looked up he had a defiant sort of satisfaction in his eyes. I felt like he’d been rifling through my pockets and I opened my mouth to object.

Hey—

Young man, do you see all these books?

I looked around more to escape his evil eye than to count books. There seemed to be books everywhere, even more than I’d noticed the night before. Books were stacked and heaped on the drain board; books buried the table, the floor and most of the chairs. There were even books on the top of the refrigerator. Looking through to the dining room and front room, I saw books heaped everywhere, like they’d been shoveled in. One of the cats draped over a bookshelf, peering down like I was the neighborhood bulldog.

Thornton didn’t wait for my answer, but continued like he was on stage and the volumes were his audience: At first glance, they appear unremarkable, ugly even, to the uninitiated, son. But, they’re rare individuals, however crusted with age. Oh, tomes of joy! My refuge, my friends, my solace, my darkness and my light. As long as there is room for one more of you it will find its place among these, your wayward brothers—bequeathed by minds and hearts that live on in your pages. He squinted at me, probably realizing that I began to think him loony. He drew up erect and said in a deeper tone: A book is immortality. What contribution will you add to their voices, Mister Robson? Judging by what I’ve read, you can add a clear and uncluttered, if rather whimsical, voice. Or, will you merely stumble about the earth for a few years, flipping rancid beef at Bob’s Big Boy?

Jenny smirked like she was about to bust out laughing. She dished out bacon and eggs from the stove. Then she did laugh, a lilting warble of a laugh. She brought the food to the table. Oh, Thornton—I do think you’ve made the boy speechless! He doesn’t talk much as it is. Eat up, Master Dagget, you’ll need your energy if you’re to answer Thornton Oranbee’s third degree. Have a seat, I think he’s working up to something.

Jenny, my wholesome offspring, Thornton began, with a warm light flickering in his eyes, I’ll leave the details of what we discussed in your capable hands. If the lad here is willing, you may commence this very day. I’ll prepare a list of the most suitable organization. The old man rose from the table and picked up a crushed leather book, dark with age and stains. "The Sermons of Maister John Calvin on the Booke of Job, published in London, 1584, two decades after his demise—even before young Will Shakespeare penned his first plays. I trust this tome is the oldest extant in the entire state of Nevada."

I doubt if we’ll sell that one, Daddy.

Not unless a fortunate collector desires to part with fifty thousand, he said. But, never fear—we shall have a capitalistic frenzy. I’ll be down after lunch. And with that, Thornton chuckled like a first grader on recess and left the room.

Jenny sat down next to me and drank coffee while I made fast work of the breakfast. An orange tiger cat stretched up onto my knee and sniffed the air beneath my plate.

Who’s John Calvin? I asked.

He spread the Protestant Reformation to France and Switzerland—influenced English Puritans who migrated to New England. Probably the most influential prude in American prudery. I thought everyone had heard of Calvin.

"Oh, sure. Now I remember—The Scarlet Letter was about Prudery."

Jenny pulled her chair up closer to me and put her hand over mine. It was warm and smooth and I sort of held my breath. I looked into her face.

Thornton was impressed with your writing—at least he didn’t spit on it, which is encouraging. He wants you to stay, and in return for helping me, he’ll coach you with your writing. He still gives a few private lessons. I have his permission to open a bookstore in the front of the house. I want you to stay too, and help me run the store. I can pay you a percentage of the profits. It won’t be much at first, but it should beat slave wages at Bob’s—what do you say, Dagget—can we build some shelves and get all these books organized?

I looked away and then met her eyes again. No way could I refuse her. If it didn’t work out, I thought, there’d always be freights back to Roseburg. Okay, I said rather coyly. Jenny leaned over and kissed me, right on my mouth full of eggs. I pulled back embarrassed, and knocked a pile of nineteenth century art books over. We laughed. Pain left her face when she laughed, and I began to see more beauty there every minute. Jenny even smelled beautiful.

Thornton had been standing in the hallway eavesdropping. At our laughter he stuck his red face back into the kitchen and said: Just do not harbor illusions that I am your Max Perkins, Mister Robson. You’re not, after all, Thomas Wolfe, much less Ernest. If I am able to accomplish much more than sandblast your horrid grammar, it will be a miracle.

***

For the next week Jenny and I worked ten hours a day, sorting and stacking books, then at night I’d read what Thornton directed. We even had a book to tell us the value of other books. Jenny calculated there were over twenty thousand books, some too rare to sell: An 1817 volume of the Federalist Papers, a 1733 volume by Isaac Newton, a hall closet full of philosophy books and a downstairs room with just about every mystery ever written. My favorite was a 1948 edition of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, another book I’d read in high school—except this one was autographed by E.H. himself. Thornton’s bedroom was full of books on the medieval period and long out of print volumes of American short stories and novels. It seemed at first he’d organized the books, with each room or closet containing one or two subjects, but as the collection grew he just piled books willy-nilly.

Thornton came down every morning and spent an hour after breakfast going over my writing with me and then he’d go for a walk and return about lunchtime, after which he’d nap and read in his room until supper. I learned more from him in a couple of days than I had in three years of high school. I even wrote a poem about Jenny that he got printed in the university literary magazine.

I built shelves around the walls in the front three rooms while Jenny catalogued and stocked the books. She placed a large ad in the Reno newspaper, and on the morning of the grand opening she came into my basement room and slipped under the covers next to me.

You love me, Dagget, I can see it in your eyes.

My eyes are closed, I droned, pretending her cool skin didn’t feel good against me.

Don’t deny it, Mister Robson, women sense these things—go ahead, say it isn’t so.

I rolled over slowly and rose up on one elbow. Her hair was damp from the shower and smelled like peaches. Thornton wouldn’t like this," I said.

I’m eighteen. He wouldn’t moralize. She pushed me back onto my back and straddled me. You don’t seem to be fighting me off.

Her eyes held the same worship when Thornton had praised my poem and when we shared sunset from the front porch swing. My heart flip-flopped. Jenny kissed me a long one; a warm wave washed over me and I felt like I couldn’t breathe, but it was wonderful. We made love for a long time and when it was over I told her that I did love her, that I guess I’d been stuck on her from the time I’d watched her sleep on the boxcar. She looked at me with that strange questioning look and said: Don’t really love me, Dagget. You’re too good for me. I’d just ruin you. Just be here for me now.

***

Sales that first day came to over $2,400 and a collector came early the next morning and bought three first editions for twice that amount. We used the kitchen and the basement to sort more books. Jenny kept giving me warm smiles as I helped customers and found books they wanted in the reserve stacks. I’d never felt like I’d belonged anywhere until that day. Thornton called some of his contacts at the university and pretty soon there were folks lined up at dawn to buy books.

Jenny came to my bed every night, but never told me she loved me, only that she was my girl, which was enough for me. Thornton said my writing had promise, and gave me so many practice exercises that I spent the wee hours writing and revising stories, with Jenny sleeping next to me. He kept throwing anthologies at me and would quiz me about a story to make sure I’d read and understood what made it good, then he would challenge me to write a story like it.

I felt closer to Thornton than I ever had to Frank or Janet. He just coaxed my writing into shape and gave me so much confidence that all I wanted to do was write. I figured with the money I was making I could take some classes and get my GED, then go to the university part time within a year. The idea was really Thornton’s, and Jenny seemed so pleased by it that I agreed. The more I thought about doing it, the more I wanted it.

Life had come together better than I had dreamed. It was perfect until one hot September day. It was right before closing time. I’d gone to the store for some Popsicles for Jenny and me to eat on the porch swing. Thornton was at the university talking to some of his old colleagues, and had taken a couple of my short stories to an English professor he knew there. When I came up the stairs, the front door was locked and the closed sign was in the window, but it wasn’t quite time to close. I went around to the back door and rushed through the house, but no Jenny. I was about to call out for her when I heard a muffled sound coming from the basement. Creeping down the stairs into dim rooms, I saw a movement through the doorway into my bedroom: a dark figure, a muffled scream—Jenny’s scream. I looked about, picked up a short pipe and moved to the corner of the doorway. The man’s back was to me and he had his pants down to his ankles and was on top of Jenny. Her arms were tied to the bed. She was on her stomach with her head buried in a pillow. I lunged into the room and swung the pipe down hard onto the back of the man’s head. His head flew back and he stiffened and fell forward, partly off of Jenny.

I spent the night outside of Jenny’s hospital room, feeling numb all over. Thornton tried to get me to come back to the house. The man was Ray, the same boy friend of her mother who’d tried to rape Jenny before. The police hauled him off with a fractured skull. The next day they let me visit Jenny after Thornton saw her. He came out of her room and said to me:

Whatever she says, son, Jenny is not herself now. Just try not to excite her.

She had bruises and cuts on her face and lip and she looked pretty forlorn. She stared vacantly at the wall. Seeing her lying there all battered I felt like a dagger had been pushed between my ribs.

You need to forget about me. I’m damaged goods, Dagget. I want you to leave—it can never be like it was.

Jenny, no. You’ll be okay, the doctors say—

I don’t want you now, Dagget. Please go.

I’ll go, but I love you, Jenny. I’ll wait until you’re ready to be with me again.

You don’t understand, she said coldly. I can’t love you. I can’t love anyone. It was my fault Ray followed me. I only wanted him to be nice to me, but he took it too far. Mom didn’t give a shit about me. It’s my fault he came here. I tried to run from him. I tried to say no, but he was too strong, too strong. It’s my fault. I deserved what happened, I—

The nurse came in and said Jenny had to rest, so I kissed her on the forehead and left. Her skin was cold and her eyes were empty. When we got back to the house, Thornton made coffee and sat me down at the table.

I might as well tell you, Dagget. Jenny was pretty wild when she lived with her mother. She’d bring boys home and have sex with them. Because of two abortions, she may not ever be able to have children. She used to run around the house up there half dressed, and that no good slime who raped her yesterday probably did so in Portland. I’ll try to help her. God knows I haven’t done much for her. But you should go, son. You should go. It’s going to take some time before she can sort it all out. I’m afraid she won’t be herself for quite some time.

But, Thornton, I love Jenny—I really do.

I realize you do, Dagget, and you are like a son to me. But love alone isn’t enough. Sometimes you meet the right one too early, or too late, its no one’s fault. Jenny needs to find her own way now—to heal on her own. Maybe then she’ll be ready to settle down. Work hard, and if it’s meant to be, you’ll be together. If not, cherish the way you feel now, for the ambrosia of first love is fleeting. Never forget you have a gift—cultivate that tenderness you express so well on paper. Leave words to touch the hearts of others.

***

I passed my high school equivalency that fall, back in Roseburg, where I got a small apartment with the money I’d earned from helping Jenny sell books. I also got a job in a bookstore near my old house and saved money. After a year I had enough to start college and show Jenny I could make good. With Thornton’s help I was accepted for a half scholarship at the University of Nevada.

I wrote Jenny every week. Thornton answered every letter saying Jenny wasn’t ready to write me yet, but that he had conveyed my respects. He always answered the same way and sent writing exercises for me to return. He talked about emerging writers and new books he’d collected, but never said anything more about Jenny.

Then I got his last letter and a package. I learned later that Thornton died from a stroke two days after he’d written me that letter, one that I read over every time I wonder about Jenny and how things might have worked out for us. The passage that has helped me the most is:

Dagget, you were the only son I ever had. I want you to know that you are talented, but talent alone is not enough. Persistence is greater than any talent or skill. The victory goes to those who will not give up. Keep writing, learning, growing. Cherish what you felt for Jenny, even though I must tell you she was not able to return your love. Forgive her, and move on.

He added that Jenny had left town after having a surprise baby with a thirty-year-old sweet-talking man who sold jewelry wholesale. The funny thing is, she named the baby Pearl. Inside the package was an 1850 first edition of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

I didn’t realize at the time how valuable that book was, and though I felt bad when I had to sell it, I know Thornton would have wanted me to, because the sale allowed me to finish my master’s degree in fine arts.

Well, they just called my name. Thanks, Thornton and Jenny—without your love and support I’d still be hopping freight trains. And, though they probably didn’t have an inkling, Frank and Janet gave me a wealth of funny material to write about. My book of their Roseburg and Alaska adventures has just sold out of its second printing.

I dedicated it to Thornton.

2 - The Hermit’s Last Wish

An old man lived in a hilltop lean-to near a town. He had been father to four children and had outlived them all except for a daughter who had disappeared years before. The townspeople had forgotten about him, undisturbed in his primitive seclusion. From his hillside he stared over the slumbering, whitewashed town, year after year, until his memories of life there were a pale mirage.

The old man grew convinced that his life’s end was near. Gaunt and patient, neither fearful nor hopeful, he waited, unmolested for death. He spent days sitting in his doorway, whittling small wooden animals, which he propped on stumps in the woods for children who might be hiking. Yet, he never saw any children; none of his gifts were ever taken, although he sometimes imagined a boy’s laughter as he hobbled to his favorite place near the spring.

At the pond stood a copse of reeds, which afforded the old man cool escape from the summer sun. Sometimes he would lie his head down upon the mossy ground in the middle of the reed patch and gaze up through the swaying green stems into the azure canopy, mentally arranging clouds into shapes of animals. Ducks sometimes winged directly over his hiding place, circling the pond but would never land. When the clouds turned dark he would clamber back to his lean-to and tremble against his cot at lightning that often raked his hillside.

A path snaked from the lean-to, along which a few hikers passed, including hunters pressing farther into the wood. When fall thinned the trees, the old man shivered at the sight of red-clad hunters moving below. He never waved or called out to them, even when they looked up, noticed him hunkering, watching. The old man’s eyes fixed anxiously on the hunters until they became red blurs ascending over the farthest hill. Such brief glimpses disturbed him. He clung to the conviction that he’d said everything to other men that was to be said. He knew what was in their minds, and didn’t want to surrender his solitude. It was too late for him to be with other adults, yet he clung to hope that children might yet find him, sit by his side and listen to tales of his childhood before he died.

Even though he had lived a full life, was comfortable enough in his seclusion, he often felt irretrievable glory, though parts of yesterdays were impenetrable as if hidden in dark fog. He recalled little from life in the town—nothing as clear as the fresh scent of pine and lilac that grew on his hillside, or the clean chorus of bullfrogs from across the pond, or the platinum meteor showers in the summer night sky.

And so, he continued to fashion wooden animals the size of his hand and hide them in the woods. He named each carving, wandered about daily calling roll, questioning each figure about seeing any children.

He dreamed the same scene over and over: children crowding up the path, girls with sun-kissed faces, boys with tousled hair, who gleefully spied his carvings, clutching each animal and singing out joy. Boisterous childhood play swirled in his brain when he slept out under the stars.

One day while the old man peered down at the path that led from town, a rail-thin boy with a knapsack and fishing rod hiked below, then perched on a fallen log. The boy’s black eyes turned up at the old man whittling. The old man knew the boy saw him, but neither acknowledged the other; he wanted to wave, but his heart pounded with unfathomable fear. When the boy left a feeling of regret filled the old man. For the first time since he’d wintered on the hill, he wept.

Each day the boy came, sat and glared up at the old man, then continued into the hills, never returning by the same route. The boy’s manner suggested anger. After the boy had passed by for a week, the old man painstakingly made his way down to the log. He left a carved mallard that he’d stained from berries in his garden, with Sam carved on the wooden base.

Climbing back to his shack, racks of thunder in his chest brought him to his knees. Helpless he eyed with suspicion clouds that shaped themselves into cotton versions of the angry boy. After a time he was able to crawl back up to his lean-to. Exhaustion became illness. He knew he would never be able to climb the path again—that the boy would have to come to him.

The old man hoped that when the boy found the carving, he would come. But the boy did not come. The wooden mallard was bleached by the sun until a gust of wind toppled it into the dirt.

***

One night the old man dreamed. Looking up from his mossy bed in the stand of reeds, his surviving daughter’s face shone above him. She was a grown woman yet with the face of the child he knew. She has come back to help me die, he thought. Her scarred face snaked dark fear into his bones of some awful moment he could not remember.

She took his hand, her face silver from the moon’s reflection on the water. Written on her blouse in red letters, forget.

She spoke to him softly, yet with an edge to her voice, cutting into him:

Is this where you sleep?

Yes.

Are you dying?

Yes.

Then all is going naturally?

It would seem so.

They’ve forgotten you, down in the town?

I hope so.

Yet you stay?

Yes.

Mother and the boys got the fever. But I didn’t get sick.

I know.

You blamed me. Why did you blame me?

Too long ago to think about. I don’t know.

I won’t let you remember the rest now. Are you well enough to live another season?

One more.

Then, I will send Amanda. Sam is with her. I told them about you, this hidden place. They will give you the children you yearn for.

***

When the dream ended, the old man shivered from the rasping voice of his lost daughter, tedious without surprise or anger, undercurrents of impatience. It all prodded his memory.

A snake slithered through the reeds just behind his head and passed on. Snakes sometimes sunned themselves on flat rocks near the pond, fat black snakes the old man avoided. The scales of the snake’s belly rubbed the edges of the reeds with low complaints that matched the timbre of his daughter’s voice. Awfulness lurked in the sound.

The next day after sunup, a flapping of wings swished above the lean-to, a pair of ducks swooping down into the pond. The old man stood squinting against the sun. He brushed twigs from his clothes, trekked around the pond to where the ducks preened themselves. He called to them.

Welcome, Amanda. Welcome, Sam. Have your young ones here. It’s safe.

The ducks swam cautiously to him and dove in the shallows for roots. He spent the morning watching everything they did. They seemed to like his pond. Later in the day he noticed them on the far shore near willows, nestling in dry grass.

Every day the pair skimmed over the pond, swimming around a tiny island where they built a nest. The old man’s heart leaped in anticipation. He counted the days since the ducks nested. Amanda roosted unfailingly, while Sam circled the island and eyed him warily. When the nights were cold the old man worried that the eggs might not hatch; when the days were hot he feared Amanda might not survive. He spoke to Sam about his importance to Amanda, and told him what his father had told him on his wedding night: that if you find your one true mate, life sings with her and is worth living, that she must be protected at all costs.

One morning the old man awoke from inside rustling reeds and peered toward the pond. Amanda, Sam, swimming in a crowd of yellow and black ducklings, identical and exuberant. A dozen pair of black dots locked in on his vision. The little ones bobbed about hanging close to Amanda, while Sam guarded from a short distance. The mother duck kept up a steady low quacking that floated over the water like music.

When the old man came closer, the ducks veered away, back to the safety of deep water. He sprinkled some corn out on the shore, and Sam bravely waddled out of the water to peck. Amanda followed. There were twelve fuzzy ducklings, expert swimmers already, crowding to get at the corn, yet afraid to come out of the water. Each time the old man tossed a kernel into the water in front of them, one quick duckling would grab it and race away with the others in crowded pursuit. Joy throbbed in the old man’s breast with such blessings of new life, of new family. He felt as responsible godfather to the ducklings since they’d been born in his hideaway. The family was his promise of another season. He wanted to live long enough to see them grow, fly away.

Each day the ducklings lit up his spirit, bringing wonder to his heart. For the first time since he’d retreated from town he looked to the future. He saw again what it was like to be young, to have tomorrows pressing on today, to look forward instead of back, to have others to care for. He asked God to protect the ducklings. He prayed. Had never prayed before.

Some days the duck family would stay on the island and some days they skirted the opposite shore where the old man couldn’t see them. After a week only ten ducklings remained, then eight, then four. The old man grew frantic that snakes or raccoons were grabbing the ducklings, yet he heard no disturbance on the pond, only the contented calls of Amanda as she shepherded her remaining young. Though his limbs had grown stiffer with damp nights, the old man hobbled around the perimeter of the pond, adjoining woods, looking for tracks. That’s when he noticed missing carved animals. Taking roll he discovered that half of the figures were gone, yet there were no footprints, no signs that anyone had been there.

Standing by his lean-to, trying to think, he peered down to the path and spied the same boy sitting on the log. The boy’s piercing black dot-eyes flashed while his tiny axe split the wooden animals asunder. Beside him was a square cage. Inside were several fuzzy ducklings, huddled in one corner. The boy reached in the cage and pulled out a duckling. He glared defiantly at the old man. Then the boy placed the squirming yellow and black fuzz on the log and lifted the hatchet.

Panic clutched at the old man. Tears ran down his face.

There it was, surfacing ugly in his memory. Shadows of his past—making the same motion as the boy—the axe poised aloft, flying downward. A thick chord of guilt tore the old man. He cried out.

Again the terrible shudder in his chest.

Worse than before.

The old man sunk to his knees, tipped over onto his face. His breath: trapped in his lungs as in a vise; could not escape. Dark spots crowded out light before his eyes. He pried himself up on one elbow, held out his hand in a plea for the boy to stop, but the axe struck, the boy growled in the same timbre of the snake, and that of the old man’s groan over his infant daughter decades before, when he had lifted an axe over her sleeping form.

3 - Sonnet for Samantha

Walter Milner was discarding old files at his office and came across the yellowed bundle of poems. Eighteen years before he had hidden them, just after he married Agnes, a woman ten years his senior. He met Agnes on the rebound from a passionate love affair that had ended poorly.

As he lifted the packet, the ribbon tie slid away. Pages fluttered to the floor. Walter sat in the midst of the verses, staring at word fragments protruding where they fell. The sentiments impacted Walter strangely; his focus seemed peeled back, exposing an aspect of his nature long forsaken.

Since laying off the last employee of his wholesale tool business, Walter had spent long days alone in his office. He had become increasingly withdrawn. A new direction was elusive, a year remaining on his lease. Agnes would not hear of him subletting.

The poem fluttered on the top of the pile: The Meaning, which painted a vision of his pain before he’d met Agnes. The words seemed as though a stranger had written them, yet they found a powerful nerve within him:

And I came upon a darkened form

From which came all the rhymes of my past.

And I stood as I had before

Single again, straining to listen at last

And I began to pick up each phrase

Of verse illuminating

And with each, I anointed a vision

I saw my face in an eternal mirror

And with each, I let go of you.

***

Tears welled up in Walter’s eyes as he recalled the girl who inspired the verse—Samantha, young and wild, penetrating dark eyes, straight, ebony hair. Samantha adored him in college. She wanted to marry before he was ready. The verses spread in front of him spoke of joy and grief in that old bond. Like every painful experience in his life, Walter had buried the memories, though he could never bring himself to discard his poems, even after Agnes, an energetic goal-driven woman, courted him.

Sifting through the aging papers, he uncovered a short verse he wrote to Agnes to accept her marriage proposal. The acceptance was concise, almost businesslike, a promise to support her career ambitions. Now the words read surrender.

Laying aside the tender verses about Samantha, he placed the others in his briefcase to take home. That night he excitedly spread the selected poems out on the kitchen table. Agnes was going over legal notes for her law firm.

Look at these, Agnes—my old poetry. Here’s one I wrote you when we first met.

Agnes looked up over her bifocals and said: Yes, you were silly then. Such flowery words.

Agnes’ scowl stung. But, he said you loved my poems.

Agnes scratched pen across legal pad, flipped pages in a case law book, and cleared her throat. Glaring over her glasses, she said in a steely voice: I was humoring you then, Walter. You must have known.

Walter stared at the poem he’d written to Agnes eighteen years before. A raw heat filled his eyes. Trapped, heartsick, Walter wanted to flee.

No. That was a good time in my life. I meant those sentiments.

Oh, yes, Walter. I’m sure you did. But you outgrew them. Anyway, scribbling poetry, too feminine a thing for a man to do.

Feminine? he shot back, feeling his neck tighten, his mouth tremble. This old nature of his couldn’t be outgrown, dead. It was part of him, couldn’t she see?

I have trial tomorrow, Walter, I can’t discuss your wasted youth. My law practice floats our boat, you know. Look around. I make the payments on this mansion. If you want my advice, you’ll burn those scribbles and put your efforts into keeping your business afloat. Do more cold calling.

***

The next day at the office Walter bent over the poems, transcribing each line to a fresh page, changing and rearranging words, playing with the rhythms in his mind. The bright June sun lit up his desk, light breezes tickled through the window, ruffling onionskins bearing his forgotten hopes. The air was redolent of Lilac bushes clinging beneath his window. Soft buzzing too, honeybees working the blossoms transpired to free his daydream. Walter rolled his pen around on the page, snagging words as they surfaced from his reverie—singly, then pairs, then phrases and lines. He was neither hopeful nor bored, his mind neither concentrating nor drifting. Somewhere a chord of light struck a well in his mind, an oasis of glory that he’d known as a poet years before. This was that old sensuous, playful electricity lifting him again. From the pinnacle of his imagination he reflected upon his past. He held onto the moment.

Soon a poem emerged with symbols of his youth, yet cloaked with the pain of his present loneliness. At first halting and opaque, then bursting into brilliant light, Walter’s verse took form. How many minutes or hours went by he did not know. His hand wasn’t his own. The bees sang a sweeter pitch than before. He tasted the lilac scent, gloried in the sunlight energizing his fingers on the pen.

This simple act of rearranging words had reawakened that aspect of his spirit closest to his core, and he vaguely suspected that his long avoidance of poetry had been brought about by his duty to Agnes, corrosion now scaling away.

Then a woman passed beneath his window, sunlight framing her.

She looked up into Walter’s face, stopped, smiled slightly in a self-conscious way only the innocent have, then continued on.

No other moment in Walter’s life could have yielded what her passing did in that moment. His pen had halted in front of a missing phrase, one describing the last caress of his lost love. His fingers pressed the diamond-like point poised above the next space.

Out came the words: dreams of ——— and listened, looking back at the form gliding away. Gliding, yes. Her ethereal grace spellbinding; her buoyant blouse, silk turquoise skirt  luffed in the breeze. She was a sail of hope on a light blue ocean. Her name, listen to her name. Had he heard it once? Lights in his long neglected instinct flickered her name, a name that fit the verse. He struggled to lift it into conscious thought.

If the sunlight, the magic of