Standing on the top of the ridge, Tom Willow saw the sun rise in the same way it set. His breath rose up in a cloud towards the autumn sky marked with red and orange. Miles and miles of the top of the world stretched out before him, trees standing upright like the old man himself, daring the wind to make them sway. It was this same swirling wind that carried the scent of pine. He tried to grasp at the scent, searching through his fading memories. He had always had a knack for sniffing out the breeze, which brushed against his bearded face – it felt like his father standing over him, jeans soaked in pine sap.
Tom’s father was “not a man with a place to get to,” his mother had always said. This was because he was entirely slow to get started doing almost anything. Almost anything but get out into the hills. Tom took after him in that sense. His feet were slow but deliberate while he walked the woods and kept the paths clear. He did this alone, but in good company. He always felt that the sun was his companion, and the crunch of dirt underneath his feet was his friend. His children had not lived near him for at least fifteen years, and his wife – well, his wife was part of the land now, with a beautiful spot in the cemetery round the hill. He could see it in the distance now.
This was his daily walk, which followed the ridge and allowed him to see the many lives circling around him. There was his daughter, Ginger, and his granddaughter Sarah. He had other family, but these were his closest. Sarah was no doubt still sniffing from homesickness. She cried like this often, and it worried Ginger. Tom understood; understanding was the gift that age had given him. He could hear Ginger’s voice rising up from the house in the valley, telling Sarah that it was time to wake. She would be pulling the covers off her feet and opening the curtains as she protested. He remembered those days, not only as a parent, but as a child. He had lived both roles, and still felt them in his soul.
He continued on, passing his orchard that he had begun growing many lives ago, an outcropping of shade that provided the familiar taste of freshly picked apples. There was the old cemetery plot in the distance. There was the rusting barbed wire fence marking off the edge of the property, and the electric fence run over top of it. Gently, he shook a tree until three apples fell to the ground. Each one was picked up, wiped against his shirt, and placed in his coat pockets. He made a point to brush his hands across every tree, feeling the unique pattern of each bark. His hand rested on the knots that rippled across the surface, on the lichens that sprouted from the wood. Everything still in its place. He continued on the trail, stopping every now and then to deliberately dig up a pervasive briar. Tomorrow, Sarah might join him, but today he was following the wind.
He reached his sappy hand in his pocket to retrieve an apple and felt the acorn that Sarah had given him yesterday upon her arrival. She had picked it up in their driveway before they left, her mom said, and carried it the whole hour-and-20-minute drive. The acorn had lost its cap sometime between then and now, rendering it completely smooth. When she presented it to him, he asked if she knew what it was.
“An acorn,” she had replied.
He suspected she did not really know. “You know if we planted that, it would grow into big old tree. Even taller than me.”
She had scrunched her face up in disbelief.
Last night, she had jumped up on his lap and started asking more questions about trees. Who makes the trees? Do all trees grow from acorns? Instead of explaining everything, for he did not know everything, he picked up his ancient Bible, falling apart at the seams. He softly rocked the chair and read from the beginning.
“The man said, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh –”
“What does that mean?” She pointed at the words on the yellowed pages.
“It means they belonged together, and to each other,” he had answered kindly.
She had nodded in understanding, although he knew she did not yet know what it means to belong to someone, to something. Looking down at the house, he smiled to himself and wondered if Sarah was thinking about planting trees too.
He continued around the mountain, walking sideways on the steep inclines when the land obscured a straight path with patches of rock or fallen trees. These twisting paths were worn from years of walking. It was narrow, but familiar. How many times had he walked this path? And how many more times would it be walked after him? His daughter always preferred the housework – needlepoint, sewing, cooking – although he realized now it may have been more of her mother’s influence than of her own volition. Still, she would never move back here to be with the mountains.
But he saw himself in Sarah’s curiosity, and he knew Sarah loved the land. He could see it in her face when she lay in the grass and felt the breeze on her face. He could see her sniffing out the wind and placing the scents. It was this that caused him to contemplate his own childhood. He could see his father ambling along the trail behind him and wondered if his father had seen in him the joy of Creation, as he did now in Sarah. Not much troubled him, but he was most fearful of change. The forest changed predictably; he knew every tree that might fall. He could not know if his house would stay up after he was gone, if his family would ever set foot in these woods again.
The wind pushed him – not a suggestion, but an order. It was not cold, as it should have been in the autumn morning. He felt as warm as July. After several paces around the hillside, the old cemetery plot came into view. He paused at an oak tree just before the gate and inspected the deep ridges on its bark for some time. The tree drooped from the weight of loss that many had carried to it. It was here that he shed more tears than he’d like to remember. A sudden concern for Sarah preceded his next action. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a knife, with which he proceeded to carve a phrase on the bark. He closed his eyes, leaning against the massive trunk, and even though he tried not to, he began to cry.
Suddenly, he was out of breath, doubling over like he’d been punched. His heart burned, and his vision became blurry. He began to pass out of the pain, although he didn’t know if it was for the better or if it was only his body becoming numb. He thought of his wife, of Sarah, of her parents, of his family. He saw his father walking in front of him into the cemetery gate. He was aware of the rustling of the trees, of the soft squirrel footsteps, a whippoorwill call, the sun bursting through the foliage in small patterns like needlepoint. And finally, a deep knowledge of his belongingness to it all. With a deep sigh, he stood up straight, daring the wind to make him sway one last time before finally falling into its arms, like a child returning home.
—
Sarah’s car swerved along the one-lane road; all of her windows rolled down. No music played – she was listening to the sounds of the woods around her, bird calls and wind rushing past her face. Around every corner she pumped the brakes and looked both ways. This is the advice she had gotten from her mom: Drive slow and watch for crazy deer. She had been worried about the condition of road; no one had been out to her grandpa’s house since the last reunion two years ago. After he died, the family let it sit empty for a while. Then, when Sarah was sixteen, they decided to start using his old house as a site for reunions. She hadn’t been to one. Her mom never wanted to go; Sarah didn’t ask why. They understood each other. Plus, the drive to the property was long, and it wasn’t nearly worth it to see relatives she hardly knew. But it’d been so long, and she’d been so young. At least the food will be good, Sarah thought. She remembered driving to his house from the funeral like she was seeing it through a haze. Even so, the closer she got to the house, the closer she came to her grandpa’s memory. Although she recognized some parts of the road, the turns felt strange to her. Each landmark that passed by was another weight on her chest. She finally pulled into the driveway, tires crunching on gravel.
When she opened the car door, the dizziness was snapped out of her, and she was six years old again. For a moment she saw the house as it used to be. A warm sun shining down on the freshly cut grass, the slide on the swing set reflecting the light. But she soon noticed the effects of time. Shoots of weeds pushed their way to the surface of the off-white gravel, and the grass was about five inches taller than it should have been. As she ran her finger down the rusted metal on the old swing set, her mother Ginger popped her head out the front door.
“My baby girl! You made it safe,” she called as she ran towards Sarah, looking up and down at her dirtied jeans, flannel shirt, and muddy boots. “You look a sight.”
“No crazy deer at all! Good to see you, mom,” Sarah smiled a half-smile, ignoring her mom’s not-so-subtle remark on her outfit and eyeing the swing set.
“It’s really does not look great, does it?” Ginger said as they walked up to the front porch. “No one’s been up here for a long time. I wish we could just have this somewhere else and finally sell the old place.”
Sarah wasn’t listening. She stepped up to the screen door on the front porch, took a deep breath, and opened it.
As they both walked inside, Sarah was hit by the smell of the family reunion first. Cheesy scalloped potatoes, a smoked turkey, fried green tomatoes, fresh rolls. The smells brought life to the kitchen, which was undoubtedly too small for the amount of people in it. Relatives she hadn’t seen since the funeral passed her by, squeezing her shoulders, scooping her up in hugs, saying “Glad you could make it!” She made her way through the sea of people to the threshold of the living room, where her chest immediately tightened up. His rocking chair sat in the same corner that she remembered it. She had eaten the funeral sandwiches on that chair. The chicken salad was the only thing she remembered clearly, it hurt to recall the rest.
She was lost in the memory and ignored the wave of family that pushed past her, circling up around the living room. The line formed on either side of her as she stood there unaware. Her mother’s voice cut through the noise, and she suddenly realized that all eyes were on her.
“Sarah, honey, would you pray for us?”
Sarah coughed to clear her throat before answering, “You can take this one, mom.”
Ginger reluctantly bowed her head.
“I haven’t done this for a while, but we’ll see how it goes,” she laughed. As the words lifted up from her mouth, it seemed as though the whole place shone with the light from the Beginning:
“Lord, thank you for family. Thank you for the love that you’ve placed in all of us. And Lord, those tomatoes sure smell good. Thank you for the tomatoes, and thank you for the hands that prepared ‘em. Amen.”
After lunch, they were all standing on the front porch, admiring the changing leaves from a distance. Ginger proposed a walk, perhaps to get away from the awkward conversation. Although Sarah did not know the reason, she had not planned for this, and needed to get on the road before dark. She promptly let her mother know this and picked up her jacket to leave.
“I think it would be nice to see his gravestone,” Ginger caught Sarah’s gaze.
“Sure,” Sarah said, “I guess we’ve got some time before dark.”
Sarah climbed up the trail, fast-footed and ready to get this over with, her mother trailing behind. Her breath was getting shorter as the trail crept higher. This must have been what it was like when her mom climbed the trail looking for grandpa that day. Out of breath, searching for something, scared of what she might find. Briars covered the pathway, grabbing onto her jeans like they were clinging to life. They stopped at the top of the hill to catch a breath.
Sarah sat on a rock, leaning back on her hands and gazing towards the sky, hard blinking her eyes, on the brink of tears. She told herself it was the wind. With no trees to block its way, it careened around her head, blowing her hair in every direction. She leaned forward and caught the scent: pine. Her grandpa had asked her what she smelled in the breeze. Her hands against the rock made her feel grounded as her breathing slowed. Closing her eyes, she saw his face smiling down on her. She was lying in the grass. Apples on the ground around her. He opened his mouth to speak. She opened her eyes before he could. She jumped up and looked to her mother, who was still recuperating from the climb. “Come on, let’s keep moving,” she said before she sped away.
She paced around the ridge, closer to the cemetery with every step. She passed the old apple trees and followed the barbed wire fence from there. She wanted to run, but the overgrown trail kept her feet tangled in weeds, nearly falling, her hands grasping onto trees. She didn’t stop to recuperate, charging forward, afraid to stop again for fear of thinking too much. The small outcropping came into view, fenced in by red brick. The quicker her pace grew, the more the wind fought against her, causing her to squint her eyes in the face of nature. She stopped and looked behind her to see how far away her mother might be. Not too far. She turned around and kept walking. Slower this time. The wind was with her now. Maybe it approved of the pace, she thought. The surroundings were clearer. Still, her stomach twisted up. Cemeteries were her least favorite place to be.
The ground just in front of the wall was carpeted in moss and littered with acorns. She leaned down to pick one up and, taking the cap off, she pocketed it. As she approached the red brick wall, she put her hand against the tree near the gate. It was strong from years of steady growth, and its ridges were deep. She ran her finger down them, stuck looking forward at the cemetery gate. His gravestone was next to her grandmother’s, right in the center. It was worn, and vines were beginning to crawl up the bottom. She walked towards it. The grass around it was too high for her to see the snake holes and she tripped, landing on her hands and knees in front of the grave. She immediately began to tear the vines away from the gravestone and wipe the dirt away from the face.
As she uncovered his name, her memories rushed forward like a river. She saw his smile as he woke her up in the morning, heard his even-keeled voice as he read to her, and felt his strong embrace. She cried softly, sitting cross-legged in front of the stone. She was startled when she felt a warm hand on her back. It was her mother.
“It’s me. It’s okay. I wish I could have been here sooner too.” She knelt down and pressed her forehead against Sarah’s.
“Why hasn’t anybody been here?” Sarah asked with a mixture of sadness and anger as she looked at the overgrown cemetery.
“It’s hard work to keep up this land. No one loved it like your grandpa.”
Sarah sat with her eyes closed, mourning for the memories she had let go.
“It doesn’t feel right.” She spoke to the wind.
“You’re right,” her mom spoke assuredly as she placed her arm around Sarah’s shoulder, “it never will.”
Sarah couldn’t sit in the grass any longer. She stood slowly and walked out of the cemetery.
As she passed the oak tree, her shoes crunching acorn caps, she saw some scratches that she hadn’t noticed before. As she approached the tree, it became clear that these were precise marks. Carved with intention. She carefully stepped backwards, her eyebrows furrowing as she attempted to read the phrase. Her breath became even, the first true breaths she had taken that day. She felt the sun warm her feet and the wind whip her hair.
“Mom – come look at this,” she yelled shakily. She stepped closer to the tree, with hope, and traced the words of her grandpa, which seemed old and familiar:
“Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”
Sarah turned to look her mother in the eyes. “I’ll make it right.”
And, as she cleared the briars on the path down, the wind on her neck was like his last breath.
Andrew Chapman 