Stories

The Grove

Last year I took to walking along a nearby bicycle path.  At one point the path skirts a large stand of trees.  One day, in no particular hurry, I walked into the grove.  As I picked my way through the underbrush, I saw someone ahead.  Fortunately, I hadn’t been making much noise, and the person, a woman, had not noticed me.

I hadn’t planned to observe her, but in spite of myself I was intrigued.  She was standing with her face to the sun as it shone through an opening in the foliage. She stood absolutely still, as if in deep meditation. She was facing away from me, but I could tell she wasn’t an old woman, or a very young one. She was dressed almost as you would imagine a gypsy to be dressed, in vivid reds and purples draped over her slight form.

The grove was a curious place, not much bigger than a large bungalow, isolated and self-contained.  I suppose most of the time the light would have been dim, but at that particular time of day the sun shone through a break in the foliage in a beam right out of a painting.

Then she knelt, and I realized I was intruding on her private moment.  She bowed her head, and I could hear, more than see, her crying.  I heard her gasps, and saw her shoulders heave in little sobs. The whole time the sun was pouring down on her. The scene became personal to me somehow.

As much out of a desire to hide myself as anything, I knelt down myself.  I couldn’t leave, because she would likely hear me, and I shouldn’t stay, but I did.

I had an impulse to console this stranger. At the same time a great sadness came over me.  My father had passed away not more than a year before and I still felt the loss within me, raw, and never far away. I began to cry myself, small fits of tears such as a little boy’s, and suddenly I was sobbing, cleansing myself of a grief I was incapable of washing away before.  At length I realized that she had to have heard me.  I looked up, and as if swallowed by the sun beam that had vacated the grove the woman was no longer there.  I never saw her face, and now she was gone.  I stayed a while; it was peaceful there.

As I was leaving the grove, I nearly ran into an old man who was standing outside on the edge of the trees close to the trail.

“Pardon me,” I said, as I brushed past him.

“Did you see her?”

“Did I see who?” I still felt rather dazed, having just shed every tear I had kept inside all my life, and I realized I must have looked it.

“The lady of the grove,” the old man said, as if my question hardly should require an answer.

“I did see a lady,” I said, feeling a little sheepish.

“She’s an angel you see,” said the old man, and he started off for the path, his cane accenting his steps.

“An angel?” I said, “wait a minute, what are you talking about?”

“My wife comes here when the sun shines through the trees.  She’s the lady of the grove.” 

The old man started to mumble at this point, and I thought I detected perhaps a hint of dementia or senility.  I had volunteered a while at a seniors’ home and had some experience with such signs.

I was just about to tell him that I would like to thank the woman for helping me, more out of embarrassment at having been caught in the situation, than anything.

 “Where …” I began, but was interrupted by a middle-aged woman coming around a bend in the trail.  She stopped beside the old man, and was obviously a little flustered.

“Dad, did you have to come down here again?  You know it scares me when you come all this way alone.”  She seemed exasperated.

“Ah, it doesn’t matter anyway,” the old man said, and waved impatiently in my direction, “this one got there ahead of me.  She’s gone now for the day. “

“The lady of the grove,” the woman said, more exasperated than before.  Then she turned her whole attention on me for a moment, I supposed to be respectful, “Don’t pay too much attention to my father, he’s a little senile,” she’d brought her voice down to a whisper.

“My hearing’s as good as the day I was born,” the old man hollered, from up ahead.

“He thinks my mother shows up out of nowhere twice every summer over there in those trees and cries, I think for other people, or something.  It upsets me some I guess, so I try not to pay attention to it.”

“He seems like an interesting man.  Where’s your mother now?”  I asked.

“Oh she’s been gone twenty years this summer.”  And with that the woman dashed off after her father, leaving me with my thoughts.

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Previouisly Published in Lamplight Tales Anthology of Short Stories

Canadian Poetry Institute 

Sassy's Hope

One June day I sat by the spilling earnest rush of the fountain in my favorite park.  The sun was shining like it never had and never would again, powering down upon the full green trees, making the life all around, felt, and known.  Visiting the peace of the trees and crashing water has become imperative.  Life bombards there by ‘my’ fountain, the occasional birdsong not entirely drowned out, and the smell of nature quietly proving stronger than the surrounding cluttered concrete of the city.

         Sunglasses and an open book, my essential people watching tools, rendered me invisible and uninterested. 

         The breeze made its fickle way through the leaves behind me, and I saw an old man, and a little girl, hand in hand, making for the bench next to mine.

They sat, and said nothing for a few minutes.  The old man just another statue in the park, bent, and slow, but not done.  His age still had strength; his shrewd blue gaze taking everything in.  The little girl wore a plain pink and white dress, and her small face and intent eyes gave the appearance of genuine curiosity.  The hair on both their heads was virtually the same color in the baking sun.  The little girl’s was longer and it kept getting in her eyes thanks to the breeze.

“Grandpa,” the little girl said, “I wonder about things sometimes.  Do you ever wonder about things?”

         I couldn’t see them very well, but I felt like the old man smiled.

         “Sassy,” he said, “Of course I wonder about things.  But I’m careful these days to leave the mystery where it is.”

What do you mean Grandpa?” the little girl said.

 “Just what I said Sass,” he said.

The old man returned his eyes to the little girl.  “Why Sassy, what are you wondering?”

The little girl shifted a little, her legs not nearly long enough to send her feet to the ground.  I thought she was about six, maybe seven.

         “Well I wonder about where people go when they die Grandpa.”

         “Ah Sassy, you shouldn’t worry about things like that, you’re a little girl.  Why are you thinking about that stuff?”

         “Well, mommy said that we wouldn’t see Gran again.  Daddy didn’t want her to say that, but she did.  She said it was important to tell me.  That I might not understand now, but she had to tell me.”

         This little girl was going to be something else someday, because she already was.  I felt like I should give them space, but I couldn’t.  I was rooted – part of the bench now.

“Sassy, I, don’t know what you want me to say,” the old man said.

         “Is it true Grandpa?  Are we never ever, ever going to see Gran again?”

         Silence dropped, even over the peaceful racket of the water splashing and flowing.

         I did not envy the old man.  The need to leave them to their conversation was stronger, but now I was as interested in the old man’s reply as the little girl was.

         “Do you have a question for Grandpa?” he finally said.  He was wise.  Old men didn’t always come in that variety, but this one did.  I envied the little girl.

         It didn’t take her long to say, “What happens after we die?  Where do we go?  Can we see Gran again?”

. “That’s three questions young lady, and they are all impossible to answer,” he drew a ragged breath, “for I have never died.  Nobody knows the answers to those questions Sassy, it’s just the way it is.”

         “So does that mean that mommy might be wrong about us not seeing Gran again?”

         “I hope so.”  The old man said with a gusty sigh, “she might be Sassy, but it might be better if you didn’t tell her I said so.” 

         Pigeons invaded the space in front of my bench.  The sun pounded down on them and us. 

The old man leaned forward, his forearms on his thighs, his head turned level with Sassy’s eyes.  “Sassy, I think I’m just going to tell you the way I see things, and I think you’re smart enough to figure out how you see things after.  But, for the record, I really do hope that it’s possible to see Gran again.”

“So do I!” said Sassy.

         “Do you remember that time you put a caterpillar in a jar in the cupboard?”

         She looked up at him, “Yes, and it turned into a butterfly!”  She almost squealed, kind of dancing there, sitting on the bench.

         “Right.  Well I think something like that happens.  I think when we die, we turn into something else.  And it might be something totally different like the butterfly is different from the caterpillar.”

         She was quiet, and looking up at him again.  “So you think Gran is a butterfly, Grandpa?”  She stopped squirming, becoming serious, and faced the fountain.  “For the record?”

         The old man snorted a little, shook his head slowly, and said, “No Sassy, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she has wings.”

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Previously Publsidhed in From Across theRiver Anthology of Short Stories

Canadian Canadian Poetry Institute