Short Story - The Day After

by Christina Carson

       An unexpected kindness eases two broken hearts

The day started like any other except no alarm awakened Jan Thompson. Instead, she was jolted into consciousness rather than eased there by the marimba rift that played through her I-phone each weekday morning. The unusual arousal left her groggy and confused. Uneasy, she groped for what day it was. Not a weekday; no alarm. A Saturday then. Or a holiday? She drew a blank. She patted the spot next to her in the bed. It was empty. Her husband was already up. He was the early riser. Pulling the covers up higher, she settled back onto her pillow to clear the mental fog that was keeping her from a timeworn habit of organizing her day before planting her feet on the floor. But she couldn’t focus on that either. Some bit of cerebral flotsam, vexing as it hovered just out of reach, caught enough of her attention to intervene. Even a drubbing pain behind her eyes had to wait on her acknowledgement. She noticed it only when she felt herself squint and clench her teeth in response to its sharp throb. Her tidy, predictable existence proved unable to provide a ready clue for such an odd morning. Her only guess was that she was hung over. Her mouth was dry, but there was no empty wine glass on the night stand, only a pile of used Kleenex sat clustered within reach. Thwarted, her accustomed list-making started back up, but the effort required concentration beyond her capability this morning. Too much of her focus was captured by an unremitting sense of forgetting something. “What is it?” she whispered. Her head throbbed more intensely with her effort to recall. She shivered as she felt the hair on her scalp and the back of her neck prickle, but with no time to ready herself, a wave of shock which swept violently through her, heaved her stomach and clogged her breath in her throat. Whatever instinct had been protecting her, holding the truth at bay, lost its grip in that moment. The sound, that horrifying sound, blasted into every corner of her mind. She screamed and sat upright, stiff with fear. The impact pushed her past tears, holding her inert, as her mind assembled bits and pieces of awareness that held the image that sound conjured. It wasn’t the weekend. It wasn’t a holiday. It was the day after, and it would be the day after for the rest of her life.

As if the bed had suddenly become a place of great danger, she jumped out of it and stood steadying herself as she grabbed the bedstead. There was a perceptible sway to her stance as she gulped air in small, frantic gasps. That was the only sound she made. She didn’t hear the squeak of the floorboards behind her. She didn’t see her husband standing in the doorway, his fingers whitened by the force of his grip on the doorjamb. Her eyes were open, but they weren’t looking at anything.

He stared at her, watched her inch her way toward the dresser. When she got close to it, she dropped her nightie to the floor and stepped out of it. She opened her lingerie drawer and stared into it as if she were making the most profound decision of her life. Two seconds, five seconds, ten seconds passed as she stood naked, looking. Finally, with a shake of her head, she pushed the drawer shut and turned toward the closet. Only then did she notice her husband. The two looked at each other with the semi-conscious focus of old drunks, only they were both more sober than they’d been in years. They instinctively sensed even alcohol couldn’t kill the agony that lived in them now. Jan turned back to the closet and pulled at a pair of jeans until they gave way from whatever was holding them. She acquired a denim shirt in the same manner only it took an extra tug. Without bothering with underwear, she put them on. Her attention felt like it was on a 5 second loop which caused her to walk then pause as if she kept forgetting what she meant to do next.

As she passed through the bedroom doorway, her husband reached for her arm. They were both unsteady, but the small amount of balance they each had acted additively, and they moved down the hall just above a shuffle and then began the descent down the stairs. Talking was out of the question. It took too much energy. At the bottom of the stairs, she exerted a slight pressure to turn toward the kitchen. It wasn’t the best of choices. They both saw at the same moment all the left-over cakes and casseroles neighbors, friends and relatives had brought throughout the day as the tragic news worked its way through their personal grapevine. Jan walked across the kitchen to the percolator. Sensing her focus could abandon her at any moment, she loaded the water and coffee slowly with great deliberation. The only constant they had in a life where everything else now appeared different, was the aroma of the strong, dark French Roast as it started to perk. She leaned against the counter and stared out the window. Sam sat at the table. They waited.

When the pot finished its enthusiastic churning, Jan brought it and two cups to the table, filled one for each of them and sat down. She wanted to stop thinking. She wanted oblivion. She was terrified that yesterday would begin playing out like an old rerun she’d be helpless to stop, and with good cause. For no sooner had she seated herself, yesterday paraded across her mind with arrogant license.

…..

“Morning, Sam.” Her eyebrows arched as she recalled how she’d chirped that toward the basement door, slightly ajar. She was so happy to have Billie home. Then she added, “Billie down there with you?” When no one answered, she remembered thinking; I bet they’re making me a surprise, just like times past. Memories of those years returned effortlessly. A smile flushed across her face as she recalled how Billie and Sam named the basement shop Middle Earth, “Lord of the Rings” being Billie’s favorite childhood story. It was then she called aloud, “How come no one is answering me?” She stopped making breakfast and walked to the head of the stairs. She figured Sam had gotten up earlier, made a cup of coffee while waiting for Billie to rise and then they headed to the basement to finish up. Nothing in her imagination could have constructed the scene as it, in fact, was. Nothing.

She pulled the partly closed basement door open and stepped down onto the first stair. Almost before she could adjust to the darkened stairwell, she felt the arms of her husband clasp her vice-like. She instinctively struggled, misunderstanding what was happening. “Sam,” she shrilled, “Sam, what are you doing?” He didn’t speak but angled her around and pulled her up the step into the kitchen. He used one foot to close the door and then more gently half-walked, half pushed her toward the table where he sat her down tenderly. She stared at him, not knowing what to make of his behavior. Just as she was about to ask, her mind cleared like fog off a windshield and she recoiled. She clapped her hands over her ears as if that would stop what she now recalled from those few seconds she’d been on the basement stairs. The rhythmic squeak of a rope on a spike. She closed her eyes and bit down hard on her tongue so that she wouldn’t scream. Instead, a moan guttered out of her, then a wail, howling and tremulous until she had no more breath to sustain it. Empty, she sank hunched over and shook rhythmically to a soundless, wrenching sob. Helpless, Sam stood by her side. Then desperate to do something, he moved off from her a bit, grabbed his cell phone and called for an ambulance. He didn’t want to say the words since she sat close by, but the dispatcher must have insisted on knowing. After several attempts to dodge the dispatcher’s only question, with Jan but a half-room away, he capitulated just above a whisper when he said, “There’s been a death in the family.” With those words, she lifted her head, her eyes, deep brown and pleading, searching Sam’s like a child’s, helpless, lost. He knew what she was asking. He just couldn’t answer. The darkest of his war years couldn’t compete with the horror of this moment.

…..

When they finished their first cup of coffee, Jan filled their cups again. They didn’t know what to do. Sam stared at the tabletop; Jan at the wall.

As if talking more to herself than her husband, Jan began haltingly, “When I woke up this morning, it was as if it had never happened. I just did what I usually do each morning; make my plan for the day. “How?” Her voice quavered. “How… could…I…have…forgotten?” In those five words, her voice crescendoed to a high-pitched squeak. She started to tremble. Sam jumped up, ran to her chair and wrapped his arms around her.

He didn’t know if he could stay strong if she collapsed. He was so scared. He held her tight and whispered, “Oh baby, oh baby, we’ll get through this. We’ll survive.” His soothing brought her back to quiet sobbing against his belly as he stood there, holding her head tight to him.

They did not dare speak to what happened. Likely they never would. It seemed beyond human reckoning. Billie had always been a quiet child. That seemed his nature. They hadn’t seen it as a shortcoming. In fact, Jan interpreted he son’s seeming sensitivity as creative, artful. But suddenly in the crush of this monstrous outcome, doubt cornered her, taunting, undermining ground she’d trusted, only now it didn’t feel so firm beneath her feet. The primal need to survive was the only reflex sustaining them, whether they welcomed it or not.

Sam wasn’t sure how long they stayed that way, but when the phone rang, it jolted them both. Still holding her hard against him, he reached one hand into his pocket to get his phone. Jan heard Sam say, “Yes, yes that…that would be good. Now? Yes.” His voice switched from stammering almost to entreating. He wanted to say, “Help us. Please help us.” But instead he stayed as calm as possible and silently blessed this stranger for calling.

Jan tilted her head upwards and looked at Sam. “That was the paramedic,” he said to her questioning stare. “Said he’d like to stop by; he’d like to talk with us. We need someone to help, Baby. We …need…help.”

She had dropped her head as she listened, but now raised it again and looked up at his face. With the tiniest nod, she agreed. “Why him?” she whispered, confused. “Why a stranger?”

“I think he’s been here… where we are.”

Galvanized by something familiar, a guest arriving, Jan got up and took the cups and pot to the sink to wash them and make a fresh brew. As she leaned across the expanse of counter to push the plug back into the wall socket, she felt the unaccustomed weight of her breasts against her shirt. She pressed her hand to her chest, confirming she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her mind jumped back to earlier that morning, but before the recollection could steal the marginal balance she had regained, she forced her thoughts onto acquiring underwear and shoes, just that. It actually felt purposeful, safe. Sam quickly shaved and found a clean shirt, grateful that these simple, routine acts of everyday-life rescued them in trifling yet significant ways. When the doorbell rang, they felt more grounded then they imagined possible under the circumstances.

Jan ushered Mike into the kitchen. She preferred talking over coffee in the kitchen. It was homier. She had set some slices from the various cakes as well as cookies and squares on the table along with the coffeepot and cups. Sam came in just as Mike was sitting down. Mike rose to shake hands, and as their eyes met, it was clear they shared the memory of that moment in the basement like a war story; a silent acknowledgement of life at a most terrible moment. Together, they had lowered Billie’s body; a brotherhood of two. Sam sighed, and in that induced camaraderie, he relaxed for the first time in 24 hours.

A tangled mix of emotions, too knotted to sort out, kept them all silent. Mike finally broke through the shared apprehension. “Mind if I smoke?” Jan, staring at him like she wasn’t sure he was real, quickly nodded her head. She popped up and brought him a saucer to use as an ashtray. She hated any smoking in her house. But in this moment, she wasn’t even sure who she was let alone what mattered. What the rules were now. Nor was she about to interfere with whatever might make it possible to believe they could survive.

“How long you been a paramedic?” Sam asked, wanting to reduce the tension.

Mike, a man somewhat younger than they, looked at Sam and smiled. “Fifteen years now.”

“Do you have a family?” It seemed a safe, simple question.

Mike appeared momentarily jarred, then shook his head. He leaned on the training that years in his trade had given him to withstand most any impact.

Sam noticing, regrouped. “Bet you’ve seen a lot in that length of time.” All Sam’s years of corporate committees and projects came into play as he altered the tone of the conversation and schmoozed the meeting into something easier and more comfortable.

Mike picked up Sam’s lead and related some of the funny situations in which he’d found himself. “You know, I went after this treed cat one time. Guess the firemen were eating lunch. It was one, big cat, I’ll tell you. And you know what else? It really liked being up in that tree. Well, we had a bit of an argument, and that old sucker bit me clean through my hand. Right here.” He held out his right hand to show the scar between his thumb and his index finger. “When I jerked back, the lady’s rickety ladder snapped, and I headed back to mother earth, rapidly. Fortunately for me, my buddy and I had driven the ambulance to the call. He got to take me and my broken arm back to the hospital. When the lady started to yell at me for leaving the cat in the tree, I told her to call a fireman. They might be done eating now.”

They heard themselves laugh. Not robustly or even loudly, but like those still able to catch a funny edge and appreciate its power to relieve.

The reminiscences and stories of all their lives eased the morning into mid-afternoon. The long shadows of a lowering sun shot fingers of soft light through the kitchen windows. They had stopped a while back for some lunch, to settle all those desserts. They had gotten up multiple times to pee. Pete went out to make a call. Jan made pot after pot of coffee. They had shared this awkward, difficult time like old friends.

As the kitchen grew soothingly dusky, Jan found nerve enough to ask the question she was desperate to have answered. Her voice was hesitant, barely audible. “What about the tough calls? What about those?”

Mike sat quietly, sucking deeply on this, his sixth cigarette. All the while, he looked directly at Jan, his gaze so fixed, it looked as if he were reading her mind. He broke his focus by inhaling deeply and letting his breath slide out slowly, calmly, his top lip covering his bottom one, directing the smoke down and to the side. His eyes followed the smoke downward and fixated on the tabletop. He stole a quick glance first in her direction, then Sam’s. He shrugged as he dropped his eyes once again. Almost inaudibly he said, “There was this one day.” His head nodded as if he were agreeing with himself. “I was called to this scene. Car wreck. Hit a power pole. Two fatalities. It wasn’t our car, yet I was pulling my wife out of it. Then I pulled him out. On that day, everything changed. The world became unrecognizable. I think I just stumbled on for a while. Don’t remember exactly. Can’t even say how much later it was before I could navigate it. But there came this moment. Maybe I was drunk, maybe just so hurting, I quit trying to…to hang on; just quit. It wasn’t a voice. It wasn’t some grand philosophical truth that exploded in my brain. I just forgave them; I forgave myself; turned it loose. What followed was the strangest sensation. It felt like I was melting, melting into kindness.” He looked up and continued to shift his gaze from Jan to Sam. “I really needed some kindness. It felt so good.” He was almost whispering, his eyes teary. He nodded his head again as he lifted his eyes toward the ceiling, inhaling deeply, his chin quivering.

He had to stop. Jan grabbed for the coffee pot she had pushed out of the way. She snatched it and filled his cup.

Mike drank a sip and then pulled himself up in his chair, gathering himself to finish all he’d come to share. “The other half of that yin-yang equation was resolve. Was I going to get on with it or not? I found that kindness was stronger than bravery, and more honest. The truth, setting you free, you know that one. Resolve befriended me; helped me remember that on the endless days after.”

The room was now deep in the dusk of early evening. Crumbs littered a table top blotched with coffee stains. Cups holding splashes of cold coffee shared its surface with crumpled napkins and used plates. It momentarily felt like a home again. The flux of Life, unhindered by the constraints on human vision, had already begun to birth family anew. These three souls would in time learn to notice such artful conjuring, the breath of renewal already drifting their way.

  

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Short Story - Just Max

“He could have come to Jesus but instead he come to me.” 

Those were the words that Maddie June Stanley said that day offhandedly as I rose to leave. I had been visiting with Maddie June all morning. We’d been talking about old times, her bringing me up to date, since it had been years since our last visit. But now it was time for me to go. We hugged, and I began walking toward the hall when she said what she just said. The words stopped me, and I turned in the doorway of her huge pre-modern kitchen and stared at her. As she spoke, she began sliding a fresh cup of hot, black coffee across the rough-topped, old maple table that served as her version of a work island. She was never one to ask, but it was clear she was asking now. I dropped my purse off my shoulder and sat back down. This woman who had mothered me so graciously years earlier now needed me to give her the attention a good daughter would.

“He was 10 or so, street-weary but road-wise,” she continued. “I cain’t even imagine how that baby boy was out there all by hisself with so many of them government agencies hunting down kids and pickin' ‘em up. When I asked his name, he said Just Max. He meant it just like that–Just Max. And that day started looping me off in a new direction and ain’t never looped me back.”

Maddie June just came to life as she talked about this boy. Her eyes twinkled like I’d never seen. She’d always been warm-hearted, but it was like something was missing from her life. She mothered so many people that it never occurred to me she still wanted a kid of her own. You see, she ran a boarding house in an era when boarding houses were remnants of western movies or what pre-dated hotels in the east ends of most towns and cities. But Maddie June wasn't someone to be dictated to by anyone’s conventions except her own. When her husband got crushed to death at the steel foundry in Bessemer, just outside of Birmingham, she used the one thing she had in this world, a rambling three-story house, and turned it into a place where strangers entered and left as family. That’s the only frame of reference Maddie June has—family. She was a beacon in the dark nights of many a soul, and I suspect that’s how Just Max found her.

I never knew how old Maddie June was. Sometimes it seemed like she just came into the world straight grown up and settled into the slot prepared for her. Aside from a few wrinkles and a bit thinner hair than when we first met, she looked just like she did that day I climbed up her front stairs praying for a new beginning. She was always forthcoming with me and everyone else, for that matter. So when she started telling me her tale about Just Max I had no reason to disbelieve, for I too had found this old house one drippy, cold January morning years ago, and she took me in that day and raised me until I could go it on my own. When I moved away finally, we kept in touch with yearly phone calls until this day when I finally got to visit her after all these years.

She got back to her story. “He was sandy-haired, skinny as a pole, with a face that was mostly eyes – big, wary-looking brown eyes, the color of blackstrap molasses. They looked too old for such a young’un. I spect he’d seen more than his share. The first meal I made ‘em disappeared like he was a hoover; it got vacuumed up so fast. He weren't given to talking like some kids his age who don’t give a body a moment’s peace. If he wasn't eatin’, he just stared straight ahead like he was looking into something I couldn't see. Occasionally he’d sigh.

“I have this little room off the backside of the kitchen here. That one there.” She pointed to a renovation she’d made since I’d lived here. “It was warm in there and caught the east light each morning making it easier to decide to give the day a chance. I coulda used that after Joshua got killed, when deciding whether to git up or not was still an issue. Just Max looked like he too might need some help from Mother Sun to make that choice each day, so I stuck him in there, sorta like a hen tucking her chicks under her wings since I spend most my time in this here kitchen. You know.

“Early on he got useful like he knowed if he started helping me out, I’d be less likely to turf him. I think, as I look back, being turned out was something he knew all too well. Yet, like a young colt, being too fenced in didn't work for him neither. So I just let him make his place in amongst mine, and Just Max and I got real comfortable.”

Maddie June stopped talking as she lit up a cigarette, perched it on the edge of her lips and began making too much noise with her big cleaver de-boning chickens for the stew she was preparing, to be able to talk. I shifted around on that stone-hard chair, trying to get my behind in a place it could stand for the rest of her story. Once she didn't need her focus on the cleaver, she blew a long stream of smoke off her last drag, stubbed the cigarette so she’d be able to re-light it and nodded her head as if she had been seeking agreement with herself and finally got it.

“I don’t sleep far from this back room. You know, just across the hall in what used to be, when Joshua was alive, a workroom of sorts where he built his model ships. That foundry cast ship parts after the war, and Joshua caught the bug. He fell in love with them big boats even though all he ever seen was pictures of ‘em. Some of his models is still out there in the living room. He did real good work. But as I was saying, I was close enough to Just Max’s room to hear all the yelling, then crying then yelling some more that first night he was here. It didn't surprise me. A child that young in his position must a see’d more than he cared to about the world’s mean side. But that first time, I only listened, nothing else, not wanting to butt into his life juss yet. But it was scary, whatever was going on. The next couple of nights it happened again, like he was having a discussion with someone, him yelling, then crying and whimpering like a dog that just been whipped. But after that first week, it all but stopped.

“The days turned into weeks and then into months. Just Max came and went as it suited him. He always checked with me first thing each morning, however, to see what he could help me with. When he took on a bigger job, I’d give him a bit of money so he’d have something in his pocket other than lint. I also found some decent clothes for him at Salvation Army and a warm coat. Winter wasn't too far off.”

Maddie June stopped to refill my coffee cup and hers and set a plate of fresh baked biscuits in front of me. I was thinking of all I’d planned to do on this short holiday I was taking, seeing a few other old friends and eating at my favorite place in Birmingham, but I knew I was needed here. So I relaxed into what felt like was gonna be a long story.

Maddie June took a big swallow of coffee and started again. “Can you believe it, he stayed for four years and everthing went smooth. That boy got under my skin and into my heart like no one I ever knowned.

“Then one day, some man, a Mr. Jackson come to my house, flashed his credentials. He said he was looking for a boy named Peter Stanley. The man was one of them Dick Tracy types, you know. I thought he was going be the truant officer for I never did get that boy to go to school. He seemed to learn what all he needed on his own. So I asked this Mr. Jackson why he was bothering me ‘cause I didn't have no kids of my own and no relatives ‘cepting my dead husband.

 “‘Would that husband have been Joshua Stanley?’

“‘Why yes sir, it would. Why you asking? He’s been dead for years.’

“He didn't say no more that day, that Mr. Jackson. Juss nodded his head and said something about checking his records and that maybe he’d be back. When Just Max came in that night I mentioned that a Mr. Jackson had been round to see me. Just Max stopped surveying the fridge like it was the display at the automat and turned slowly to face me. Just Max was fourteen by then but always seemed older than his years. He pulled the chair back from the table and set down on it like he was even older."

Finish the story here.

Living on the Street

How close to the edge will you come, to know something you really want to know…? a short story by Christina Carson

It was one of those gorgeous fall days. Leaves were beginning to mottle the grass still green from fall rains. The ones still attached to the park trees rattled in the now cool breeze sounding like old bones clacking together. Sadie lifted her face toward the sun as she walked idly along the cement path that mimicked the lake’s curves. The sun’s heat was no longer scorching and now felt soft on her skin.  Her hands, clasped behind her back, hung onto a small brown paper bag, her lunch. She had brought it to the park to eat away from all the noise and endless drama in the corporate scene where she worked. She often ate in this park and was fond of a particular bench under a clump of crepe myrtle trees just up from the lapping water. The spot felt like a natural shelter and at this point in her life, shelter was something Sadie sought in many forms.

As she rounded the last curve at the far end of the lake, she stopped, dismayed. Someone was sitting on her bench. She stood still for a moment fretting. She wanted to be alone, but she also wanted the comfort of her special spot. She studied the man who now occupied one end of the bench. He was sitting almost statue-like. A few pigeons had come up to see if he had any bread for them. He stared down at them and appeared to say something she was too far away to hear. His hands were folded in his lap, his long legs stretched out in front of him. The pigeons seemed to enjoy his presence for even without food, they pecked around his boots and stopped to rest in his shade. That helped Sadie with her decision. If the pigeons thought he was safe, perhaps he was, and she could share the bench with him.

As she got closer, she could see he looked a tad tattered. Street person, she thought. Hope he’s not schizophrenic or drugged up. She grimaced a moment as she noticed how much she’d changed. Years back she’d never have thought about that and it wasn't just changing times that brought up those concerns. She could feel how hard her heart had become, how pinched off from life she was. For christsake, she thought, I’m not the only 45 year-old whose husband ran off with a younger woman. But no matter how rational she tried to be, whenever her mind began to rummage through that heart-rending year, the pain of betrayal owned her before her next breath.

Still eyeing the man on the bench, she wondered, who was he? She huffed her breath out her nose as she realized what she had just thought, Was; who was he? Who was she for that matter, for she certainly felt more was than is.

She had been approaching slowly, but something about that last thought brought a resolute pace to her walk. Not wanting to scatter the pigeons, she walked behind the bench to the other end and looked at the man as she asked, “Mind if I share the bench with you?  I like this end of the lake best.”

He said nothing, nor did he look at her. She began to feel uncomfortable. About to excuse herself, she said, “I’m sorry…”  Still staring straight ahead, he raised his hand slightly. Then he patted the bench seat. She lowered herself onto the far end of the bench, offered him a quick little bob of her head and said softly, “Thank you.”

She followed his lead, stretched her trousered legs out in front of her and leaned back. She laid her lunch bag in her lap and began to quiet herself, since that tiny hint of rejection that had gone through her when he didn't reply had already started her heart thumping. The pigeons didn't come under her legs. She guessed she didn't feel very sheltering to them. What a basket case I am. If I think this behavior is so stupid, why can’t I stop it?

She scanned the lake, near tears, and attempted to get her attention on the mallards that were slightly off shore. “It will pass,” he said. The kindness in his voice made it almost impossible for her not to begin sobbing. “Don’t hold your tears in. Let them wash you clean.”

Her emotions were so conflicted now; she hardly knew what to do next. She studied him out of the corner of her eye. He had several days’ growth of beard reminiscent of the young lions’ in her corporate scene in their attempts to create an image they never quite achieved with their smooth skin and unweathered lives. Underneath the ashy pallor of the man, there sat, nonetheless, someone who felt solid. His fingernails were dirty, his clothing worn and a bit dingy, his hair wild from too few cuts and too many mornings uncombed, but still he appeared unapologetic. No, that wasn't quite it. He appeared to feel comfortable with himself. She wondered how that could be? How did he get to that place from where he was?

She began to open her lunch bag to the cheese sandwich, baby carrots and apple she’d thrown together this morning when she decided to eat at the lake. Absorbed in unrolling the bag’s open edge, he startled her when he said, “Are you comfortable now?” The bag fell out of her lap. She made three quick grabs to reclaim it before it hit the ground but with no luck. She scooped it off the grass imagining how silly she must have looked. “Apparently not,” she replied.

He smiled deeply, the way people often react to the easy comfort honesty brings to any moment. By then she had the bag open, the wax paper off the sandwich and was offering half to him. He took it not like a man who was hungry but a man who was touched.

He bit into the sandwich and asked, “Did you run out of imagination this morning?”

This time she laughed, “It is pretty dull isn't. I decided at the last moment to eat here, and this, she held the remainder of her half sandwich up before her eyes, was the product of that lack of planning.”

“Are you sure it was a problem of planning?”

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A Night of Confessions

by Christina Carson

Death, the word that usually clears the room, only it didn't clear the room this night…

“Heh, Buddy thanks for inviting us to your place tonight”.  Chip clapped Buddy on the shoulder as he and his wife Liz squeezed past him in the narrow entry way of Buddy’s apartment. “I've had it with the noise in that pub where we usually get together.”

“Can’t stand the noise, eh. You getting old, Chip?” Andy yelled from across the room.

“Well as a matter of fact, yes, and so are you.”

Andy chuckled. “Only in years, Chip. My inner me is as insane as ever.”

Chip rolled his eyes. Liz, ignoring them both, spotted Andy’s wife, Judy, in the kitchen. She was putting together some cheese plates with crackers as well as warming some finger food. They hugged like sisters. They were roommates their first year in university and unlike many of the girls forced into sharing a room with a stranger, Judy and Liz became fast friends.

That left only the other singles in the group to arrive, and for unknown reasons, they were always last. The group had suggested many theories as to why that was, most not at all flattering, but it hadn't daunted Susan or Zach and the next door bell was Susan standing in the hall, leaving Zach to arrive a good twenty minutes later.

 It was an unusual group, seven people who deemed one another important enough to nurture this friendship over thirty years. Now in their mid-50s, children raised, jobs less riveting, ex’s banished, and futures less programmed, a new phase of life was upon them, the end game, and though they had shared their problems of smart-mouthed kids, financial worries, job losses and marriage break-ups through the years, they were loath to explore this stage of life in any way other than jokes.

As each grabbed a LeBatts Blue and scattered themselves over the chairs, chesterfield and floor, it was Zach who would speak the words that always started their evenings together. There had been occasional attempts in the past to drop this tradition, labeling it corny or childish. But, now that they were getting older, the ritual had strangely become infused with new meaning. Wherever they chose to meet, the convener stood, which quieted this talkative crowd, an often caught the attention of nearby tables. Then he or she would speak these same words they started with so long ago. Zach, who’d been a Fine Arts/Drama major and had gone on to stage and screen, was the convener this evening and everyone liked his delivery best. Zach stood and said in piglet’s high squeaky voice:

“We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?' asked Piglet.

Even longer,' Pooh answered.”

Pooh & Company was what they called themselves back in the day, and Pooh & Company they still were. Yet, little did they know the further poignancy the quote would acquire before this evening ended. 

With the gathering convened, small talk popped up in various groupings of the seven. They kept a serious line of chatter going until Chip said above the din, “Did you all hear about Richard?”

Richard had started with the group when they graduated from university. He brought his new wife Drew to it and stayed until his marriage broke apart. Everyone tried to get him back, but he plunged into his engineering career and began to travel internationally on oil and gas seismic crews. Chip had seen him a couple of times, but each time Richard was evasive and distant. Chip told the group he thought Richard was in trouble, maybe depressed, but it was impossible to follow up as he’d ship out and be gone again without warning.

“I ran into Toby who told me Richard had a heart attack last week and died on the spot in Kuala Lampur or some place in Malaysia.”

The group stopped talking, then intermittently murmured then sat quiet, then murmured again. They were at that time in their lives when death was a new frontier, one that was increasingly in their purview, and tonight, thanks to Richard, these friends crept a little closer to its edge.

“Is there anyone among us who believes they’re not afraid of death, their own that is? Just curious.” Susan, a professor of literature, asked the question and quieted the room better than an old schoolmarm wielding a ruler.

To finish the story, click here.

Finding Time

What do you think time really is? This short story may give you an idea.

by Christina Carson

Jesse Martin sat in an old rocking chair he’d made years back, as he waited on a new day to emerge from the darkness. The curve of the rockers wasn't quite right. It made the chair’s action too quick, the rock too short, but since Jesse was more into sitting than rocking, it worked fine for him. The porch on his small cabin faced east. Early morning was Jesse’s favorite time of day. The sun hadn't broken the horizon yet. There was just a hint of pink following the arc of the distant mounds that sat in his lower meadow. His family had managed to hang on to this 20 acre parcel of land when most of his Creek brethren were being marched out of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi on their way to imprisonment in Oklahoma. His grandfather got the deed. It was up to his father and then him to pay the taxes each year so the land stayed in the family. He never wanted much: the land, the rocker, the cabin and the mounds were more than enough.

Off across the meadow, he noticed a small figure walking his way. The dusk of early morning smudged her into the scattered mounds as she passed by them making her trek look like a ghost story as she’d appear than disappear than appear again. A smile crossed Jesse’s face as he watched young Clara making her way to his cabin. She was a funny kid to him, funny as in peculiar. Every morning she’d come check on him and then make him breakfast, sometimes with eggs from her mom’s hens she’d steal and hide in her knapsack, sometimes with bannock dotted with fresh berries she’d find on the way. She was small for her twelve years, elfish in stature, eyes as big and amber as marble shooters and thin, wispy red hair that she’d slap back into place with her own spit. For all her prickliness, her heart was still a child’s, forgiving and with the wisdom of her primal instincts still intact. He didn't mind her around. She was quiet by nature and self-sustaining and at times even made him laugh when she’d take on a project too big for her and end up in a heap beneath it, and he’d have to dig her out. He understood her stubbornness. It matched his own.

“Well looks like you’re alive for one more day. How long do they give old coots like you?”

“Long enough to get kids like you to respect their elders.”

“I don’t know if Methuselah lived long enough for that.”

“My kin knew how.”

“I ain't your kin.”

He was lighting his pipe, an old corncob deal, stuffing it with a bit of home-grown from his patch beyond the mounds. It grew big and tangy there and sometimes he’d even let Clara have a puff or two when life at her place rattled her so bad she’d still be fussing after walking the three miles to his.

“Well what’s for breakfast, cooky?”

She had just reached the porch steps and climbed up them dog-style barking at him as she went past.

He shook his head never sure what to make of her but thankful she was more wild than cultivated. The few kids he did see on the rare occasions he’d go to town frightened him, their eyes empty and flat, their needs rampant. He’d not known a race of people like that. He knew arrogant. He knew racist. He knew hateful. But vacant, that felt dead to him, like he lived among the walking dead. Nothing in his culture spoke to that except in prophesy, and he hoped that surely that wasn't about to come true yet.

Clara banged around in the living room cum kitchen, clanging the stove lids down on the wood stove like they had lipped her off. Finally, he smelled fresh coffee, toast and eggs and sat back like the man of the manor, laced his hands behind his head and waited to be served. She dropped the plate in his lap because it was burning her fingers, and it now got to burn his thighs through the hole in his jeans.

“Yike,” he yelped as he sat up and then burnt his fingers pulling his shirt tail under it to stop roasting his legs. “When you bring the coffee mug, just set it on the floor. I don’t need third degree burns on half of my body. A quarter is plenty.”

Since there wasn't another chair on the porch, Clara sat on the top step after she’d brought the coffee, keeping a safe distance from Jesse in case she’d strained his sense of humor to the breaking point.

“Okay, what’s the problem?”

She looked at him and suddenly the face of a frightened child was all he saw. Then she went steely again, reset her jaw and remained silent.

He knew when the door was open and when it slammed back shut, so he ate his breakfast and watched the sun begin to pour over the top of the mounds like they were small mountains. At this time of morning, he could see the flow of the light, see it like it was water, watch it stream toward him, engulfing everything, until a wave of it passed over them, and he knew, as he always did then, that he and his departed relatives were all here. He was never alone except when this child was around. Hers was a sad case, however, and he extended this bit of shelter to her as if she was a stray dog.

Finished with his breakfast, he shut his eyes and listened to the world. It was waking, and he could still recognize the voices—the birds, the trees, the wind and the mounds. Just as he was relaxing into the friendliness of this time of day, Clara blurted out the answer to his earlier question at the top of her lungs.

“Mom says I can’t come over here any longer. She says old men are trouble and I’m old enough now to get into it.”

Jesse, still reeling from the sudden explosion of sound, held his forehead and squinted away the jarring return to this world he experienced.

“Timing is not your strong point, gal. God.” He shook his head, then looked at her.

She was staring straight ahead, stiff as a post. He felt almost as lost as she did in conversations like this. He wasn't going to talk with her mom. That was a waste of time. She was too many bricks short of a load. If she wasn't drunk, she was high with a mean streak running through her.

Jesse pulled himself out of his chair and went back into the cabin to fill his coffee mug. When he came out, he sat at the other end of the same step as Clara. He put his back against the newel post and stared at her. He lit his pipe again and hoped its smoke would clear his mind.

“You live in tough times, kid.” Jesse began. “Something’s happening to people, like they’re in a fog. Something is really wrong when family members don’t take care of each other. I saw a bit of that happening in my people toward the end of our great time, the time we roamed free and knew all our brothers and sisters. We respected the earth. We sang songs to remind us how we depended on one another. We sang songs of thanks to the Great Spirit to keep harmony among us.” He stopped as he got caught up in the images his words were bringing to him.

“I don’t have any Great Spirit, and I’d say you’re life doesn't look a whole lot better than mine. She glanced at the cabin bare of power and phone and no vehicle. “I don’t see any family here, any money or people you can count on. You might have freedom but you don’t have any way to get anywhere.”

Quiet filled the gap between them. Jesse puffed on his pipe. Clara sat stone-faced staring at him.

“What do I tell my mom? She beats me when I talk back to her. And she knows I won’t report her, because I don’t want to be taken away. I want to be able to be here. This is the only place I’m safe.”

“You can tell your mom, I’d slap you silly if you ever tried to seduce me.”

Try as she might she couldn't stop the little laugh that scenario drew from her as she processed the words. She looked him in the eye, the hitch of a curve in her mouth still there. Then her shoulders even shook a little as she obviously played that scene through her mind again and giggled inwardly.

Her door was open. He thought he’d chance it. “There are good times, ya know. They’re always here. You just have to know where to look.”

She responded to his words with a smirk.

“How brave are you? Huh? I want to show you something, but I don’t want you to go all goofy on me. What do ya think?”

To finish the story, click here.

Human Frailties

Another short story, this one about how disasters are rarely a result of what they seem to be.

by Christina Carson

Her hand reached through the blackness of the bedroom, hit the buzzer button after just one buzz and wearily slid back off the clock to hang limply over the edge of the bed. Lucy forced her eyes open to see the only thing visible in the room, the clock face indicating 3:00 AM. She dragged her weary body out from under the covers and was reminded of the temperature they suffered every winter in this wreck of an old house as she pulled the jeans on she’d left lying on the floor when she went to bed only hours earlier. They dragged the cold up her legs and over her butt as she gritted her teeth and shivered. She stuffed her long underwear shirt down in them to get something warm against her stomach again. Her wool socks were already on her feet which was a blessing, and she loaded a cotton turtleneck and then heavy wool sweater on top of it all. Her mate slept through her dressing, since his shifts were midnight and 6:00 AM. She always did the 3:00 AM shift, just that one, but the one the ewes were most fond of employing when it came time to birth their lambs.

The kitchen was a smidgen lighter, as the yard light entered the uncurtained windows but was checked by the coating of ice that encased them from the outside. Lucy next pulled on her quilted coveralls, laced up her snow boots, put a wool toque on her head and finally pulled on her parka. Her last act of dressing was sliding her hands into two sets of mittens – wool inners, leather outers. She took a breath, opened the porch door, and stepped into the porch the way astronauts step into their airlocks, only air was not her problem, cold was.

Sometimes at that hour of the morning she would be treated to the aurora, a waving curtain of brilliant colors in the deep darkness of a subarctic night. This night, however, was just dark and cold. She walked up the driveway, the dry snow squeaking loudly with each step. She went up around the log barn full of month-old lambs as yet unweaned and down a path worn in the grass and dirt from years of taking this same course. 

As she entered the lambing barn, her hand crept up the wall to the light switch overhead. It was utter pitch in that barn, and she didn't take one more step until the light was on. You never knew where a ewe would pick to lamb. As the room brightened, the ewes in their lambing pens, which were against the walls and ringed the room in orderly succession, blinked and squinted until they too adjusted to the light.

Lucy stood scanning the center section where they ewes awaiting birthing had free run in the thick, clean straw. She always left the radio on CBC, the only station available to them other than the local one which had been off for hours, as she felt the voices and music kept the ewes company. Their sheep were used to human contact and appeared to find it a calming and protective influence in their lives, so she thought the radio was good for them. 

As she looked to see if any ewe had lambed or was in the process, she heard the DJ, as part of his late night chatter, talking about the upcoming Challenger shuttle flight later in the morning. He was recounting the number of setbacks this particular launch had experienced so far. She paid it little mind as she heard a ewe in the far corner talking to her as yet unborn lamb, maa-ing out her foreknowledge as to what was about to happen. What it meant to Lucy was she wouldn't be getting back to bed for a while.

She checked to make sure the new born lambs and their mums  in the pens around the wall were fine. She picked up the occasional newborn to snuggle  against her cheek, smelling its fresh soapy scent, and tickled by its tiny lips that keep searching every inch of her face for something that might yield milk. She laughed softly at their determination dear and gentle as it was.

The ewe was now pawing the straw, bunching up a nest that she would soon lie in. Lucy slide down the wall into the soft straw herself and waited.

Once again the music stopped as the DJ offered some further difficulties with the shuttle. He was talking about how cold it was in Florida that morning.

She snorted. “Cold, she said, “What could they possible understand about cold?” She was accustomed to talking out loud as hers was a quiet world with few human interactions across the course of any day. Sometimes she’d treat the sheep as listeners and tell them about what was troubling her, or the jobs she had to get finished that day or ask them about their day, with her filling in possible answers. She loved sheep, their benign, joyful natures, and enjoyed their company. A ewe not ready to lamb, wandered around the room looking for tidbits of scattered alfalfa leaves, and then approached Lucy, moving up close enough to touch nose to nose. Lucy scratched her ears until the ewe decided to trundle on.

The DJ, obviously wanting someone to share this compelling interest he had in space flight, broke through the music again like an earnest newsman. His likely only audience at that hour was possibly six or so truckers on the lonely northern McKenzie Highway and a few shepherds perhaps. He alerted them to recent developments where the Thiokol engineers had informed the shuttle powers-to-be there could be potential problems with the O-rings that sealed the joints of the shuttle’s rocket boosters. They were vulnerable to failure at low temperatures.

Lucy listened a little more carefully for she knew about cold, its insidious nature and its power to ground human beings utterly. The station had picked up a broadcast coming from California. It offered snatches of conversation from various constituencies responsible for this amazing flight machine. She listened not just to their words, but was struck more by what they weren't saying. She lived in a world of frankness, after all the local farmers were in the same business, knew the same problems and didn't miss anything that happened in the community. To people whose fate rests in the hands of seeing things for what they are, she thought her neighbors could do a lot better job getting to the truth than these engineers, managers and NASA.

The ewe had lain down in her bed and was now breaking water. Lucy left the radio program to attend to her. Already two pointed hooves were pushing out. Aah, she thought, looks straightforward. Maybe I’ll get back to bed. But when the lamb didn't make any progress after ten minutes, Lucy washed up, and proceeded to enter the ewe and see what was wrong. 

To finish this story, click here.

In the Time of Love

A short story about life’s most complex arrangement – loving another human being.

by Christina Carson

It was the dog days of summer, the heat and humidity of July causing even the most motivated to sink into lethargy, sulky and brooding. Jill was a fine example. She lay stretched out on the sofa of her grandmother’s back porch shaded by two huge old maple trees. She was trying to finish one of the ten books she needed to read before her junior year in Literature began in September, but she was distracted. The heat had stuck her T-shirt to her like a second skin and her naturally curly hair now looked like Orphan Annie’s, but today she hardly noticed. She doodled on her legal pad where she had been taking notes on Ulysses. She drew a big “M” thickening the lines with each pass and thinning out to curlicues on the ends. She spoke her thoughts to the steamy air, “What has happened with him?” The him referred to her boyfriend of two years. Matt and she had seemed such a great fit she thought. They had the same sense of humor, the same dreams and seemed so compatible. Then he got a grant to work on a science project this summer and rather than encourage her to stay and seek work in the adjacent town, he suggested they take the summer off.

“Off from what,” she asked confused.

“You know.”

“No I don’t know.” She could feel her stomach knotting up.

“Sometimes it’s good for two people to have a break from each other.”

“Explain to me why? I’m not seeking a break from you. So that seems to leave you who need a break, I guess, from me. What’s going on?”

“I’m just feeling corralled.”

“I thought we were enjoying each other, that we both liked being together. How did I get that wrong?”

“I just need some space that’s all…” each word accented by his frustration. His face twisted in annoyance as he shoved himself away from the table with a force that pushed the table toward her. Somewhere between apologizing or being miffed, he chose to walk out with no reply. 

That night, Jill packed up her belongings, loaded them in her friend, Judy’s car and left school for the summer holiday. She asked Judy to drop her off in another small college town where her grandmother lived. Jill, a child of divorce, found living with her grandmother the best of her options. So late that same evening, she unloaded her belongings into her attic bedroom at her Granny Bette's and prepared to live there for the summer, alone.

***

Jill got up from the sofa, picked up James Joyce’s heavy tome and walked back into the house to find Granny Bette in the kitchen. She stood in the doorway staring at Bette. She hadn't noticed before just how young-looking this 62 year-old semi-retired English Lit professor was, but she had noticed how enigmatic. Usually old people walked about embarrassingly unmasked for Jill, like they didn't care anymore what you noticed about them.  But Bette, she displayed an air of dignity that made Jill comfortable in her presence.

Bette turned from the stove where she was making curry and stared back at Jill. “Is it Ulysses that’s proving in tolerable or just life in general?" 

Jill smiled, the kindness in Bette’s eyes softening her frustration.

“Life is beginning to make Ulysses look like child’s play.”

“Ooh. Sounds like heart disease to me.”

Jill chuckled this time, then asked, “Granny Bette, what do you know about men?”

“The worst and the best, my darling child, yes, the worst and the best.” Her gaze drifted off for a second as if she was recalling it all.

Jill didn't know where to start with that reply so she stuck to her present problem. “Matt says he needs space. I don’t understand that statement. Why would someone need space?”

Without a pause, Bette starting reeling off the reasons. “Possibility one, the most obvious, he’s flirting with another relationship. Possibility two, he’s getting nervous about the seriousness of his relationship with you. Responsibility scares him. Possibility three, he’s a cad and a liar. Let’s hope that isn't the case. Possibility four, he’s a dolt who truly can’t separate uncut gems from beach pebbles.”

“How many possibilities are there, for god sakes?”

“You don’t really want an answer to the question, do you?”

“What scares me most is that I never saw any of this coming. Am I that obtuse that I actually thought we were in love with each other, only one of us wasn't? What are the rules here? What about fair play?”

Bette considered her, studying the face of this sensitive, dark-eyed young woman. She reminded Bette of herself at that age, a believer in goodness rewarded, but she knew Jill’s understanding of men and women in love, however, was a fool’s tale at best.

“Dear girl, there is no greater treachery than the affairs of love. Anytime humans are attempting to complete the cosmic equation of one plus one equals one, stresses and strains abide. It’s then that each participant’s true character is revealed, often as surprising to oneself as to the other. Which way do they lean under pressure – toward kindness and tolerance, inflexibility and control, blame and judgment or do they just jump ship?  It’s the ultimate gamble.”

“Is it worth it? I mean what’s the point if it’s so difficult and the odds seem against you from the start? You’re single and your life looks full and satisfying.”

 “Does it?”

Jill stopped dead when Bette said that. She suddenly realized she didn't know the first thing about Granny Bette’s life other than the obvious.

To finish this story, click here

The Man Who Rolled Rocks

 Another short story...

by Christina Carson

“Do you ever feel like your life is empty, without meaning?”

Jen smirked as she pushed her coat off her shoulders and onto the back of her chair. Freed from it, she waved a waiter toward us. “Well that’s a hellavu start to the end-of-the-week happy hour. What’s got in your craw?

The noise of the Downtown Bar and Grill was still low as people were only beginning to arrive for the Friday night unwinding ritual. Jen and I often spent Friday evening here as the food was excellent and the crowd friendly. With a beer in front of her, Jen settled in her chair and stared at me like Mother Superior waiting for my confession.

“I was sitting in my cubicle today. Even that word, think about – cubicle. Like a cell or stall or pigeonhole. Well I was sitting in my cubicle at the bank keeping the numbers in the correct columns, receivables, payables, all of us trying to stay awake more than anything else, and a wailing siren screams past the building making the next moment just a fraction different from the last. I swear every head in that room lifted and stared in the direction of that sound as if paying silent tribute to it for its momentary reprieve. That’s my life. That’s why I asked that question. Do you ever feel like that?”

“Well, Abby, the harbor’s a bit different scene from a bank. There’s a certain mystique to international shipping. Besides, secretarial work there isn't so bad and there are some damned fine looking men that traipse through that office.”

“I guess you just answered my question, Jen. A little flirting, a lot of typing, that’s all you expect from life?”

“It’s not all that bad…”

“Let me stop you right there. Is ‘not all that bad’ all you expected from life? That’s my question, I guess. What did you expect? What were you hoping for when we graduated and went out into the world?”

“I think I was hoping that I’d never have to spend another night studying. I wasn't the greatest student. Not bright like you, Abby. So I think I was hoping for something that didn't tax me, something I could walk out of each night and have the rest of the time to myself.”

“To do what?”

“I watch TV. I go out to the pub. Occasionally I have a date, and I keep hoping to find Mr. Right. I don’t know, maybe I don’t have any big dreams or need much in the way of meaning.”

“Could you do thirty more years of that? What then?”

Jen sighed and let the carnival-like atmosphere of the bar and grill grab her attention. A burst of laughter came from one corner. At the center of the room, a table of ladies, who had arrived early and were now finished their meal, watched as a huge birthday cake with burning candles headed their way. It caught the eye of most of the patrons. Two waiters sang an operatic version of Happy Birthday that stopped the entire room for a moment. Everyone cheered the singers and the birthday girl after which the crowd quieted back into talk and eating.

Then Jen said quietly, “What’s the matter with this? It’s fun here. The energy is pleasant, though it might be better if I had a happier date.” She eyed me dolefully.

“But, Jen, this is called vicarious living, sort of like leeches which live off of someone else’s blood or parasites like mistletoe that live off other plants’ resources? They are the ones whose lives are making them laugh. We’re just jetsam on their sunny beaches.”

“Abby, I think your drink isn't quite stiff enough tonight. You need help.”

The food we ordered had arrived and made the silence that had settled between us feel less onerous. I noticed that Jen had started eyeing a guy two tables over, flirting in between forkfuls of Fettuccine Alfredo. By the time Jen had finished her plate; the fellow stopped by and invited us over to his table already hosting a few of his friends. I had barely eaten my supper and decided I’d do the world a favor and spend the rest of the evening at home.

The fellow made a point to ask me as well, which I found very thoughtful, but Jen butted in and said, “Leave her be. She’s in one of her philosophical moods. Trust me she could dampen the joie de vie of Mardi Gras when she gets like this.”

I raised my eyebrows and my hands as if to say, guilty. I pushed my chair back, folded my napkin, left it on the table and told her I get the check in penance. I winked at the fellow who, as he was directing Jen toward his table, looked back at me. He mouthed to me, “Maybe another time.” I shrugged and smiled laughingly and left.

I walked out into a perfect spring evening and decided to walk home. There was certainly something bothering me, and I wasn't sure it was as simple as finding a new job. The fullness of the apple blossoms made the trees look like low lying clouds. And the great silent forests that surrounded downtown Vancouver were scenting the night with cedar. It was a beautiful place to live, but my life didn't feel like it was doing it justice.

I lived in the attic suite of an old historic house. Four flights of outside stairs kept me in good shape. The top floor landing gave me a view west toward the ocean and included the tail end of a flaming orange sunset. I sat on the landing and let the night close down around me. What was it that was missing? I had a nice place to live, some good friends, fine health and a beautiful city, so I almost capitulated to Jen’s sentiment for it seemed I should be nothing but grateful. But even gratitude didn't fill in the emptiness I felt.

The very early light of the next morning found me on Third Beach. I wanted quiet. I wanted solitude. I sat on a wet log, one that had escaped from a logger’s boom somewhere up the coast and had found its way here. I was enjoying the unpeopled landscape when a stocky man carrying a length of six inch diameter iron pipe and a seven foot long iron bar walked onto the beach. I heard myself say, “Damn it.” I so wanted to be alone.

He walked purposefully and stopped at a shady spot, pushed his suspenders aside and removed his outer shirt leaving him in a long underwear type top. He pulled his suspenders back up and pushed his sleeves up to his elbows. He tucked his thermos and lunch bucket behind some driftwood, covered them with his shirt and stretched himself, first side to side, then tall. With that, like a man starting a day’s work, he picked up his pipe and bar and walked over to the closest large rock. I wasn't sure where these large rocks came from—off the jetty or in with the tide—but they were always showing up on that beach and were much too big to pick up. Between the pipe and the lever, he began to roll that rock back to a place in the jetty. I watched amazed. The rock was almost three feet in diameter and yet he moved it. The work was so strenuous that he was soon soaked with sweat.

The first couple of the day walked onto the beach around 9:00, and he gave them no notice. He was busy with his third rock. They too watched for a bit, curious, but soon lost interest and lay down in the sun. I hadn't moved. He intrigued me. Nothing I could come up with could explain why he was there involved in that activity. When he broke for lunch, I walked over to where he sat eating a sandwich and drinking his coffee.

“May I talk with you while you eat?” He nodded and I went on. “This is incredibly tough work. What possesses you to do this?

He smiled patiently as if he had answered this same question many times before. “Hit a bad patch some time back and ended up on the dole. I've never felt right ‘bout taking something for nothing, and I decided to tidy up the beach and shore up the jetty in return.”

“Every day?”

“Yep”

“Is it interesting to you. I mean do you get tired of doing it sometimes?”

He looked at me as one might look at a child who had just asked a question beyond their scope to understand. “Do you mean do I like it? Does it satisfy me?

“Yeah, I guess that’s what I meant?”

“Why wouldn't it?”

His question stopped me in my tracks. “Well I just thought it might get boring, doing this every day.”

“Something so mundane and without much value to the world? Is that the rest of your thought?”

I felt my certainties slipping away. Me, the great philosopher, had suddenly met a graduate of the school of life. “That’s how I've been feeling about my work. So I guess I just assumed most people feel like I do.”

He didn't reply so I trudged on, my thoughts tumbling out with no regard to how they were embarrassing me. “I told my friend yesterday I felt so empty, and yet couldn't imagine life was meant to feel that way. The answer feels bigger than just changing jobs. And now watching you, I get a sense that job may have little to do with it.” I stopped, feeling like I had just stripped down naked in front of someone I not only didn't know but also would never have imagined baring my soul to.

The stranger poured another cup of coffee, secured the top back into his thermos and stared at the sand in front of his boots. I was almost in tears by then. Hearing what I’d been stuffing down for so long come blurting out, left a frightening sense of desolation behind.

“You are right. It isn't work that gives meaning. In fact, interesting work can often hide the fact that your life is yet empty. Touching your soul is what brings peace. We mistake peace for meaning. We don’t need meaning. We need peace. I can be very peaceful when I roll rocks. What stops you from being peaceful at your work?”

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