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    Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead
    Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead
    Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead
    Ebook260 pages2 hours

    Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead

    By Nolan L. Dole

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    About this ebook

    Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead takes readers back and forth in time on a scene-by-scene journey that can be compared to both a Tarantino movie and a beautiful, lyrical poem. Death itself, or evidence of death, follows the lives of Elijah and Sarah, the two main characters, as they are shadowed by Death’s ready servant, the child, aka Mr. Stockenbridge. Abigail, an able investigator, uncovers the truth, but she leaves their deeds hidden for reasons of her own.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMar 24, 2017
    ISBN9780991164080
    Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead

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      Book preview

      Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead - Nolan L. Dole

      Of Fallen Leaves and Other Things Dead

      by Nolan L. Dole

      Copyright © 2017 by Nolan L. Dole

      eISBN 978-0-9911640-8-0

      First Edition

      All rights reserved

      This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without written permission of the publisher, Pelican Press Pensacola, a subsidiary of The Pelican Enterprise, LLC, in Pensacola, FL.

      Pelican Press Pensacola

      PO Box 15131

      Pensacola, FL 32514-0131

      www.pelicanpresspensacola.com

      To my wife; my son, Christian; and my daughter, Dominique

      Table of Contents

      Middlesex County, Westford, Massachusetts, April of 1860

      Where the story begins and where it ends

      Longing for Westford

      Elijah shunned

      God Always Gives You Second Chances

      Elijah meets Sarah

      The Stories Continue

      Elijah and Sarah reminisce

      The Cold Walk Home

      Coffee to go

      The Journals

      Nothing to hide

      Sarah’s Secret Emerald Pool

      Elijah’s journal

      Parting

      Elijah leaves for the mission

      Elijah’s Analogy

      Magdala’s sinful traditions

      Elijah, Virgil, and the Oak

      A mentor and friend

      The Soldiers Arrive

      Spring of 1861

      Elijah, Virgil, and the Colonel

      A contentious encounter

      Dreams of Westford

      Elijah’s haunting

      The Catacombs

      Elijah finds his way to Sarah

      Sarah’s Room

      Together

      Sarah’s Journal

      The following morning

      Bitter Blue Embrace

      The storm takes its toll

      After the Storm

      Abigail checks on Elijah and Sarah

      Elijah’s Confession

      The killing of the soldier

      Sarah’s Warning

      Elijah intercedes

      On Three Borrowed Horses

      The trio leaves Magdala

      The Crazy Old Woman

      A basket of spoils

      Bundled into the Night

      The evening comes to an end

      The Hudson Highlands

      By steam and by rail

      Mohonk

      Draped in snow

      Several Days’ Journey

      The old woman and the book

      A Cold Hanging

      Wandering eyes

      Jonathan’s Burden

      A troubled past

      The Child Turns Back

      At the trail’s end

      The Burkle Manor

      A night’s rest

      Boarding the River Rose

      Among thieves and gamblers

      The Note

      Sarah’s confession

      In the Cold and the Rain

      Mount Sinai Number 12

      The Man in the Park

      Uneasy encounter

      The Mysterious Mr. Stockenbridge

      And the dear Mr. Fitch

      The Mississippi River

      A narrow escape

      Fulton County

      The hamlet of Hickman

      The Photograph

      Back at the Stockenbridge apartment

      Magdala Ablaze

      The child returns to the roar of flames

      Finding a Reason to Kill

      And so it begins

      Elijah, Sarah, and the Child Reunite

      The killings resume

      Solace in the Park

      The girl in the blue-and-white dress

      The Demise of Stockenbridge

      Broderick’s reprisal

      Hoffman’s

      Coffee, cake, and confession

      1941

      At home in Westford

      In the Spring of 1963

      Abigail lies dying

      The Scent of Apple Wood

      A kiss goodbye

      Jonathan Arrives

      An invitation is answered

      Jonathan’s Denouement

      Parable of the sower

      The Westford Journal

      The story begins…

      * * * * *

      I’ve been told her delicate skin remains lodged beneath his fingertips. That she lies lifeless so that Sarah may live…and that he—whose hands bathed in her blood, sweet, rich and warm—is bedeviled in his dark chamber.

      She who has sinned is forgiven, and like that of the broken cloud, wastes away. Her lips are as cool as the cold night’s air, and as blue as the sky that hangs above the grove. They whisper, in final judgment, his name.

      * * * * *

      Middlesex County

      Westford, Massachusetts

      April of 1860

      Where the story begins and where it ends

      Elijah had to watch in horror as both of his parents passed away. He was fifteen at the time.

      Looking back, he said it was of their own making. He was quite content at Westford. But his father’s hard-to-please spirit prevailed, and the family who had made well for themselves left the paper mill and its operations in the trusted hands of his Uncle Jack. They’d always said it would be Elijah’s one day. That he’d have a fine standing in the community for such a young man.

      He faintly recalled them admitting they’d miss the help, especially Ophelia, the maid. They discussed it the day they left—on the way down the long drive toward the Manor’s gate. His eyes drifted as if he could still hear them.

      His parents died within weeks of each other… He looked at me and asked, Have I already told you that? Typhoid was such a relentless and unforgiving disease.

      The family’s decision to travel West with a group of settlers had obviously not considered the risk of such a possibility, nor the consequences that could follow.

      Elijah’s father was the first to die, his mother just eighteen days later. I see the shame in his eyes as he tells the story, how she held on in pain, and how she begged the other women to look after him.

      She wished to keep her promise to me, he says. She’d promised that leaving Westford would bring me no harm. That we were setting out as a family to achieve a dream together: to mend what was broken and build a new life. We would achieve it ‘by cheek or jowl,’ as Father always insisted. That dream became, instead, my nightmare.

      It wasn’t long before Elijah fully understood the additional burdens his parents’ deaths had placed upon the others, and the fact that such strains carried with them a price. He wrote in his journal that the women who had vowed to take care of him, in kindness to his mother, had quite a handful of responsibility looking after their own.

      He constantly received his meals last, ate alone, and all too often found himself at the receiving end of harsh verbal criticisms. Not to mention the chores and assignments they gave him—chores that befit a mule.

      Throughout most of the journey, he chose to walk, or so he convinced himself. Space in the wagons was limited. Others his age got to rest as the trail burned beneath his feet, and the dust of wagon wheels choked, with each breath he took, what little hope he had left. To make matters worse, the group seemed to gain little ground, and each day and each month that passed grew longer and harder than the one before.

      Elijah eventually found himself cut off from the others, shut out from even the simplest conversation. As they pushed their way across the grim landscape, distress seated itself at his core. The despair he felt was beyond what most men could bear, but Elijah, still a child, tried to tailor it to fit and walked alone—crowned in self-pity.

      If only I had died as well.

      Longing for Westford

      Elijah shunned

      One day, Elijah looked from his swollen feet to the sky and yelled with resignation into the wind. The desperation and anger in his voice echoed through the air only to wane in the breeze where it met the faint calling of a church bell.

      Again it rang, and again several times more, each peal louder than the last until the final echo faded into the air.

      After a few more steps, he saw a mission in the distance. Its bell tower, entrenched on a hill, cast a shadow across the fields and toward the west. He could make out a village just beyond a grove of trees.

      Rest awaited them, less than a mile away.

      When they arrived at the village, Elijah and the others, disheveled and worn, fell to their knees in its streets. Notwithstanding such a spectacle, the inhabitants of Fairpoint offered neither welcome nor acknowledgement.

      It was rather alarming, he says. The villagers were quite obvious about their dismissiveness, and it caused me to become physically ill. I cringed from the stark realization that it was here in this desperate place that I’d be left on my own.

      The men had brought their horses to a halt near the center of the village. Then the women gathered up their young and divided into small groups. The shame of standing beside any of those groups, only to be left alone, held Elijah fast to where he had hidden—deep in a paulin burrow of the wagon that had once belonged to his family.

      But curiosity about what was going on beyond his wagon soon caught hold of his mind. He searched until he found his mother’s hand mirror and tottered to an opening in the canvas near the top of their pile of belongings. He propped the mirror so that he could set it at various angles and began to spy on his fellow travelers.

      A group of women stood about ten feet from his family’s wagon. One woman, the one in particular his mother had made swear to take care of him, said, We’ve done what we promised. The boy will have to find his own way from here.

      The youngest, and prettiest, replied, Find his way? The poor thing can’t even find his ass with both hands.

      As their laughter subsided, another woman spoke up. God as my witness, she said and crossed her heart. I’m sure that ass finding, as with everything else, has been taken care of for the little shit.

      Elijah coiled back in self-disgust from their crude humor. He pushed his way deeper into and among the personal belongings he and his mother had packed together. Above all things, he didn’t want to be seen right then. He needed, instead, to sink into the cavities of empty space, the space that lies between the dream and what’s to be.

      He listened until their voices began to fade and watched until their reflections fell, one by one, from the mirror’s edge. Finally, he mustered the courage to jump from the wagon, peering from behind its cover to watch his fellow travelers spread out in search of supplies and a place to hitch the wagons for the night. He took note that neither they, nor the residents of the village, made a single effort to engage the other.

      Elijah began to long for Westford and her rolling hills. The town and the pleasure it had given him, and the security he had found in the Manor’s wooded seclusion, seemed a lifetime away.

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