Upon reaching the top, she saw a new land. An open space with a garden, an ancient cabin, a chimney billowing smoke, signaling life inside the home’s walls. A relief washed over Jennifer and quickly tickled her vagus nerve, which caused her to crash into a heap where she would remain unconscious for several hours.
A dark, gangly silhouette stood over Jennifer. She was groggy but awake, dismayed, curious and equally afraid of the dark spectacle towering over her frail body. The silhouette also revealed the outline of a rifle, bolt action and most likely impressively loaded. She didn’t have the energy to muster up a response. She just acknowledged his presence and collapsed again, buried deep within a fog of misery, exhaustion, and peaceful resignation.
“Well, what am I gonna do with you?” a voice said, frail and crackled but directly spoken from the dark silhouette towering above Jennifer.
“Let me get the cart.”
The man walked away and immediately wasn’t nearly as foreboding; his frail frame escaped the backlit sun-exposed treatment that hovered over Jennifer’s near lifeless body.
He wore coveralls. They were a size too big on him, but kept the breeze from cutting through. He was slow moving, and often grunted and prayed simple prayers as he performed certain physical tasks.
He’d bring in firewood. “Help me, Lord.”
He’d stand on the porch and gaze out, looking for rabbits, squirrels or deer. “Please feed me, Lord.”
The man returned with a flat cart, homemade, evidently, the axil rehashed from old bicycle parts, the wood hewn unapologetically from the local forest. It had a strong axle and was a decent size cart with two handles as well as an extension with a brace and a welded fixture that could accommodate a hitch onto either a livestock animal or a mobile piece of machinery, which was extremely rare, especially in these dark times.
The old man grabbed the cart and assumed the position of a jackass or some other working animal. He grunted and began to work toward the near lifeless body of Jennifer, his prayers whirling like a smoke cloud into the heavens. It suddenly dawned on him the state she was in.
“She’s freezing, stupid.” He turned around and walked up the steps of the old home and disappeared, the spring-loaded screen door smacking behind him, echoing clear across the other side of the river. He re-emerged from the home, carrying two strong, well-made quilts. He sat the quilts in the cart and walked it her way. Upon arriving at her location, which hadn’t changed in more than 12 hours, he reached down to grab her arm and pull her into the cart so as to carefully transport her a little closer to the house.
As he reached toward her, her hand quickly spasmed. He immediately pulled away in horror. He thought the rigor mortis was beginning to rear its ugly head.
For fear of disposing of a body too soon, he leaned in slowly to observe. He sniffed.
Would the chest ebb and flow? And if so, could he get close enough to her mouth to hear the unmistakable work of breathing?
He took his chances. Tentatively, he moved close to Jennifer’s chest. As a lonely and old man he felt a little ashamed to invade her personal space. But as he did, he noticed she was, in fact, breathing. He grabbed one of the quilts and gingerly placed it over, like a mother covering a small child who fell asleep on a couch and looked too peaceful to disturb.
“Joe, you can check her over without violating her,” he told himself.
“I know. I know. Stop being such an ass! I know what I’m doing.”
Joe was talking to himself again, which wasn’t unusual. He had been living in the woods so long he wouldn’t have known about the nuclear war if one recent trip to town proved unsuccessful and downright dangerous.
Joe secretly felt hopeful as he watched her breathing deepen, like a cribbed baby content in a dreamland. He wanted to load her in the cart but was hindered by two things. Firstly, he didn’t want to disturb her. She must have gone through something horrible to be in such straits. Secondly, he no longer had the strength to carry out the task.
He had no choice. He must awaken her. The irony of the flailing rescuer. Her help was required for him to help her. He thought about that for a moment and cursed the cancer that ate away at the marrow in his bones, that sent alarm bells of pain shooting through his abdomen, that made him breathless and dizzy. He cursed his tired, old, dying body.
“Ma’am.”
“Ma’am, I want to help you but I need you to wake up.”
Jennifer barely stirred, even as he gently placed his hand on her shoulder which was now wrapped in the cocoon of the big, burly quilt. It was a gift of old from his grandmother’s homestead deep in the woods of Alabama. The quilt was a little like a tree that would outlast its maker, and every recipient that would follow.
When nudging her didn’t work, Joe came up with another idea. He called for Silver.
“Silver, come here girl. I need your help.”
His ghostly white German shepherd emerged from the old home’s crawl space. She was getting old, too. In an earlier time, she would have alerted Joe to Jennifer’s near lifeless body. At 13, she was almost indifferent to life itself.
Achingly, she lumbered toward Joe and Jennifer.
“Can you help, girl? I don’t know what to do. Maybe lick her face.”
Silver whimpered a little and lay down close to Jennifer’s head, and in doing so began to perform what looked like an army crawl toward her, each front leg extending ever so shortly toward her until Silver was close enough. She got within sniffing distance and smelled Jennifer’s hair. She gently pawed at her and licked Jennifer’s forehead. Nothing. Silver whimpered again before laying her head on the ground, nuzzling close to Jennifer’s unkempt blonde hair.
Joe thought for a moment. He grabbed the cart and headed back toward the home. Silver looked toward him briefly, her ears dialing in his direction, before she lay her head back down close to Jennifer’s. Completely resolved to stay at her post, Silver let out a sigh and rolled comfortably onto her side.
Joe parked the cart next to a wood pile and began stacking piles of split oak one at a time into the cart. He removed a crinkled, split piece of plywood from the top of an old 5-gallon bucket and pulled out some lighter kindling as well as some pine straw and a wad of disheveled, hairy bark from a cypress tree. With flint and stone, he began construction of a small fire close to Jennifer. Starting small, the spark ignited the hairy bark. Small sticks and pine straw followed. He took a small hatchet and split the lighter into tiny strips. He stacked them neatly and blew into the heart of the fire. His bellowing action was abruptly interrupted by a crackling cough that sent him on all fours. The cough was deep, hoarse and clunky, like an old truck struggling to idle. The coughing was exhausting. The fire took care of itself and Joe collapsed next to the cart, trying to regain his breath while wiping the moisture from his eyes. His chest heaved as he lay on his back, the world spinning above him. It wasn’t long before he drifted off to sleep, too.
Joe awoke, stiff, his head languid with a drunkenness that was brought on by his brain deprived of oxygen. The second quilt covered him clear above his shoulders. The fire smoldered, and like all good, seasoned fires, it was now low and evenly full of glowing bright red coals that warmed everything in its light. The small flames flickered a few inches above the coals, yet the warmth seemed to have arms that reached beyond the glow and into the shadows beyond Joe and Jennifer. Jennifer sat next to the fire with her quilt still wrapped over her shoulders. Silver had her head in Jennifer’s lap.
Jennifer sipped from a mug. Evening was approaching. The cold was barely noticeable beneath the quilts and near the fire.
“Well, hello. Are you OK?” Jennifer asked.
Joe pulled his aching body to an upright position and readjusted the quilt over his shoulders. Despite being old and decrepit, he could still sit with his legs crossed. Perhaps the sinewy bands of dehydrated muscle that remained beneath the skin aided in this process.
“Name’s Joe. I found you out here this morning. I was worried you were dead. I tried to keep you warm and build that fire. It got the best of me. I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK.”
“My husband’s name was Joe. He’s dead now.”
Jennifer held the mug and looked toward the bleak, darkening forest.
“I’m sorry for your loss. I’ve been Joe a long time. This is my place. I’ve lived alone since my wife died of cancer back in ‘87. We used to live in town, but after she died, I decided this old river camp was the best place for me. I came here to die myself. Damn if I don’t just keep living.”
The corner of Jennifer’s mouth lilted and she regained her focus, peering across the amber glow at the leathery, wilted face of Joe’s.
“I see you must’ve found my kitchen. I’m worried about you being so close to naked. I have clothes you can wear. I have an old chest at the end of my bed. It’s full of my wife’s things. I never had the heart to get rid of them. Please take what you want. Y’all were about the same size.”
Beneath the heavy quilt Jennifer was still wearing the stained shirt and panties, the clothing that reeked of the past 48 hours, the clothing that betrayed the comfort of the fire and the solace of her present company. Everything she wore reminded her of a severed, broken life that ended less than two days earlier.
Earlier that day, Jennifer did find the kitchen. After waking to find the fire and the old stranger snoring next to a dodgy old cart, she arose and inspected her surroundings. Her memories were dusty. Like her eyes now lacking the contact lenses she depended on to see clearly, her memories of the previous two days were blurry. She stood to her feet and tentatively examined Joe. He slept peacefully but his skin was cold. She saw the second quilt in the back of the cart and draped it over him clear up to his neck. She tucked it nicely around his shoulders and gave a brief massage to them to ensure the quilt made contact. She felt the bones that were once enveloped by muscle. Before limping drowsily toward the house, she did shake Joe a few times, hoping to rouse him. He just snored. She let him sleep.
She limped on her bruised feet up the porch and into the old home. She stood in the quietness of the old place and marveled at the feeling of timelessness that existed within the cabin’s walls. Old sepia-toned and black and white photos adorned the dark, wood-paneled walls. A few plaques hung unceremoniously in drab, dusty corners. She read them. Joe was a genius. There was a picture of Joe next to Albert Einstein. The date was 1950. Joe was a little boy who had won a prize for his daring exploits in the field of science. There were other plaques from NASA and MIT. Jennifer felt a little surprised. She would never have admitted it, but that old wiry, redneck looking zombie of a creature was once a genius?
A brick pad along the floor protected the space from a wood burning stove’s sparks. The kitchen was tidy. Jennifer began to wonder where the woman of the house was. On a window sill, she found a row of Mason jars, each filled with different herbs, many labeled, but some mysterious. She found four jars, all labeled medicinal herbs. She opened the lid and the wafting fragrance of marijuana took over. She shut the jar and let the buds fall back to sleep. She came across one jar filled with dried lemongrass; a small jar of honey sat next in line; The top read, “Leland’s honey.”
On the counter there was a jar of what appeared to be a home-brewed alcoholic concoction. She popped off the cork and sniffed. The smell was a little rough and noxious, but there was also a sweetness lurking just above the neck of the bottle. It couldn’t hurt, she thought.
The wood burning stove between the living room and the kitchen had its own coals burning. To her surprise, she found the kitchen faucet worked fine and she filled a kettle for the tea. When the water warmed, she steeped the dried lemongrass with a dollop of honey and a noisy gluck of that brown beverage. The three magical ingredients, along with the warm water, renewed her soul. She didn’t want to linger in the house. After all, she was still a little mystified at waking up next to a fire, a quilt wrapped around her and a near lifeless old man laying close by.
After making her tea she returned to tend to the fire. She would have worried about her mysterious neighbor but his snoring assured her he was at least breathing.
Jennifer tended to the fire and Joe slowly came around. He sat up and crackled madly for a brief few moments before sighing heavily and heaving his chest upward and outward, hoping to catch his breath. He whistled through his teeth.
“Boy, dying sure does make living inconvenient. But I guess the whole world is dying at this point, so we’re all in the same gutter.”
“Dying?” Jennifer said, the single word more as a question.
“I’m eat up with it. I have cancer and it’s crawling like a parasite all through me. I was getting treatment and was doing OK until those damned bombs started falling. Even though none of them hit here, the offices closed. The whole world panicked and everything shut down. About two months ago I went into town for a routine appointment, but was faced with a mob of high school kids who were ready to take off my head. Two years ago I tutored a couple of them. I even said that. I said, ‘Lewis, it’s Mr. Joe. I was your tutor.’ He just rehashed an explicative that has grown tiresome. I narrowly escaped, only because a girl in the group was pregnant, her water broke and I commenced to help those bastards with labor and delivery. Talk about the grace of God. There wasn’t so much as a thank you when we were done. The boyfriend or whatever he was told me to get lost because we were ‘even.’ Pardon my French, but if that little fucker ever shows up here we won’t be ‘even.’ ”
Jennifer laughed, her tea still warming her gullet and inspiring her to remove herself, if ever so briefly, from her own trauma.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. How do you feel?”
“Most days I have my moments. I awake early because I basically don’t sleep. I tend to my little garden. I feed my chickens and I pet my dog Silver. I get the fires going. I take my axe and my old cart out to the edges of the river and try to gather up some wood for the stove. I’m so tired.”
At his last statement, Jennifer teared up, nearly evading the entire conversation by fleeing the fire. She felt broken for Joe, but also had the tainted mingling of her own brokenness disturbing her equilibrium. Her vision was slightly blurred from disposing her contacts. While her body ached, her bruised feet were finally comforted by an old pair of plush hospital socks she dug out of the chest at the end of Joe’s bed.
“Girl, are you hurting? I can see the tears in your eyes.”
The question opened up a floodgate. She began to weep. She couldn’t control the tears that she held hostage over that last few days.
Joe got up, and like all old men do, he made quite a spectacle of himself. Aching and noisy, clamoring around, he came in close; he sat next to Jennifer and with hesitation, wrapped his quilt around her shoulders and pulled her close. Her head rested on his tired old shoulders. He felt alive for the first time in several years.
Joe was old and adjusted. He wasn’t thinking about Jennifer in any way that would be a violation of her humanity. He was thinking of her as his first daughter. To his eternal shame, he and his wife, Carla, never had kids. He was thinking of her as the one person in the world who understood him and provided a breath of life into his dying soul. He thought of her in the most wholesome sense as home. Holding Jennifer that night made him miss his sweet Carla in ways he hadn’t thought of in years.
To be continued.