Hens and Chickens (21 page)

Did I say ‘blonde’? I meant ‘redhead,’ of course,” he corrected himself. But he must still have been mistaken, because he metamorphosed into a prince immediately after the deliberate kiss of a hazel-eyed brunette.

“There,” she said, reviewing her handiwork. “My Prince!”

“Come back here,” he said, cupping her neck with his hands, and silencing her lips once again.

Dusk fell like dew. On the porch was the sound of soft sighs and murmurs. In the dining room, Rebecca clicked on a light over the table where she had left her sewing sprawled out before dinner. The bright light spilled out onto the farmer’s porch like a square yellow patch on a quilt, narrowly missing the two pair of entangled legs.

Startled, they broke apart. “Phew, that was close,” said Hobart, chuckling. “A little more to the right and Rebecca
would
have seen!”

“And I couldn’t care less,” Lila said, giggling again.

They lay back against the double rocker holding hands. Lila closed her eyes, reveling in her happiness. A surreal feeling of weightlessness filled her spirit. She was setting sail; they were setting sail, together, with an ocean of possibilities in front of them. She could be no place without him because he was the blue water beneath her and the blue sky above her. Now, she was skimming over the water effortlessly, as though her sailing ship had sprouted wings.

“Have you ever had the flying dream?” she asked, curiously, eyes still closed.

“I think I’m having one now,” he said.

“No, really?”

He was quiet a moment, toying with the fingers of her left hand abstractedly. “When I was a kid, I did,” he said. “Once or twice.”

“Tell me about it,” she demanded.

“When I was six or seven, I dreamed I was flying across the big potato field next to our house in Maple Grove. It was so real I could feel the wind on my face. I looked down to see where I was, and I saw a white, star-shaped potato blossom directly beneath me – I was looking at it from an aerial point of view, much like a bee or a butterfly – and the blossom had this enormous yellow stamen, I remember. It felt perfectly normal to fly. Then I woke up and discovered it was a dream. What a disappointment!”

“I can imagine!”

“How about you? Since you asked.”

“When I was little, I DID fly,” she said, firmly. “I know it. I could fly, at least until I was 10. It was a very powerful experience; I needed to fly away.”

“Think you can still fly away, my darling chickadee? There
was
a time when you wanted to fly away from me!”

“That was instinct; self-preservation on my part,” she replied, honestly. “But now … now you’ve got me eating out of your hand!”

“More birdseed, my Matilda?” said Hobart, leaning over to nuzzle her neck.

“Mmmm,” she replied. “That 50 pounds of bird seed was a neat trick!”

“Worked, didn’t it?” he said, with some satisfaction.

“Oh, it worked alright!”

Rebecca suddenly switched off the dining room light, and the porch descended once again into darkness. Hobart shifted his 6-foot frame to a more comfortable position on the wooden rocker. As his eyes adjusted to the change in light, he automatically scanned the 10-acre eastern field, where green grass was being transformed into fluid patches of black water by the slow-moving, cloud-induced shadows of the evening.  “This is about the time last year when we first saw Tinkerbell in the field,” he remarked.

“TinkerBEAU,” she corrected, following his gaze. “I’m starting to think your fabled white deer doesn’t exist. Rebecca and I look for him every evening.”

“You doubt me?” he asked, in mock disappointment.

“No, no, I don’t doubt you,” she assured him. “But Tinkerbell is keeping a pretty low profile these days. We’ve seen plenty of other deer in the field, but no white deer.”

“Patience,” he said. “If Tinkerbell has survived the winter, you’ll see him here, first.”

They rested in peaceful silence for a few blessed minutes. Hobart spoke first. “Say, did you ever have the
kissing
dream?”

“The kissing dream! How silly! I never heard of it.”

“It goes something like this …” he said, bending his head toward hers.

When their lips met, Lila experienced a translocation of the order of the universe, as though time turned like the tide and began to churn backward. She felt as though she was gaining life by the second, by the month, by the year – as though the antique clock on the mantel in the living room had slipped a cog and was running counter-clockwise. She lost herself in the timeless eternity of his kiss. When he breathed in deeply, she entered his spirit upon that breath and once inside became unable to tell where her Self began and his ended. There was no boundary between them, no bones or skin or sinew like a rock wall separating them. There was no mistrust, only perfect confidence in one another. He loved her; he respected her; he cherished her. What more did she need? Was not this the very embodiment of life?

When temporarily sated with kisses, they lay back against the wooden rocker, his arm tucked protectively around her shoulders. “I could sit like this forever, looking at the stars,” she said. “I love how they twinkle!”

“There’s Venus,” said Hobart. With his free hand he pointed out the radiating white planet. “And Mars … Wow! You can really see why it’s called the Red Planet, tonight.”

Lila followed his direction, and saw Mars throbbing with a reddish orange color. The sight of the Red Planet intensified her senses, as though Mars was mirroring her own throbbing emotions and desires. “I’ve never seen a planet so red before!”

“Strange, isn’t it,” he said; “to think how many billions of people over the years have looked up at these same stars and planets?”

“Makes me feel small in a way, but also somehow connected to a much greater whole.”

He kissed her fingertips one at a time; soft, sensuous caresses. “You are my whole,” he whispered in her ear.

Her heart imploded with exquisite pain.  “Oh, oooh!” she cried, raising her lips to seek his once again. “I so need you!”

“Shhhh, I’m here, darling,” he said, confidently claiming her breath as his own.

Time continued to roll backward. This provident fluke of nature forestalled Tomorrow, creating for our lovers that sense of unending present bliss.

Cynics, who feel the pain of tomorrow much like the arthritic feels a coming change in the weather, know that this rapturous moment won’t last; for nothing lasts, they say, not even true love. Tomorrow will come – sooner or later – bringing with it heartbreaks of unexpected pain, grief and loss.

But this moment of unending bliss is not lost; never lost! For we keep these sacred moments in our hearts and souls; do we not, my pips? We carry memories of former rapture with us into our daily lives to ward off despair, hopelessness and grief much like soldiers carry religious tokens into war or pilgrims tote relics along the dusty road searching for hope.

We cannot always live in glory or ecstasy, no more than we can dwell forever in suffering and discontent. Everything in moderation, the sages say.

But let us give Lila and Mike Tonight! At the very least, this one bliss-filled moment! Let us allow
them
a sacred relic to remember all the days of their lives.

This,
this
is the moment when these two souls surrender their secrets to one another. The anima and animus rise up like supplicants, hands raised above their heads, beseeching the heavens to have mercy upon them, conjoin them, hook them to the same yoke and bid them go forward and pull together in the harness.

Let us publish the eternal wedding banns Tonight for Lila and Mike!

Some people believe that it is the Holy Church which joins two souls together via the sacrament of marriage. But let us never forget that Jesus is the greatest fisher of men; and it is God who first casts a wide net upon two honest hearts and hauls them into the same boat to go forward together as one.

But—wait!

Lila, our poor Lila! falters as she climbs up from the ocean into the fishing boat where Mike Hobart’s perfect love awaits her. She senses a malevolent shadow from her past rising up from its watery grave – and glances down at Yesterday
,
which, alas! like Tomorrow, has the awful power to intrude upon the Tonight.   

Lila shivered. Eternity slipped from her grasp like a wet fish.

“Cold?” Hobart asked, tucking her more securely into the shelter of his shoulder.

But his embrace was not enough. Unholy ghosts not yet completely laid to rest latched onto the fabric of her consciousness and yanked Lila back to a grim reality. The past had a hold on her that she had not yet left completely behind!

She hid her face against his chest, and tried not to cry out.
Omigod, he deserves so much better than me!

And thus ended Mike and Lila’s moment of perfect bliss. No doubt the inky demon perched on my right shoulder – and my cynics – are now satisfied.

Chapter 20

Martha’s Lot

Poor Rebecca has gotten short shrift in our story lately; much like poor Martha in the New Testament stories of Martha and Mary (see Luke 10.38-42). While it’s too late to redeem Martha from her lowly place in history, we can restore Rebecca to her deserved place of prominence in our little tale.

After her arrival in Sovereign, Rebecca worked tirelessly to restore comfortable living to the old Russell homestead. The old place responded gratefully to her loving touch, awakening like a superannuated pair of leather boots in the hands of a master cobbler. The wainscoting began to glow like embers in a fire and the windows sparkled with new light, which wasn’t all emanating from the rays of the sun.

Old houses react to love bestowed upon them just like old humans do; their creaking joints stretch and strain to meet the affection halfway and they discover that there is a lot more life left in them than they had imagined. A state of nervous excitement is created when one first begins to cherish and restore an old place like the Russell homestead. Noises unheard for 40 or 50 or even 60 years are sounded once again; hopeful footfalls, curious doors opening and closing, latches on cupboards clicking with renewed confidence. Even the mice scurry about knowing that – as in this case – their days are numbered, for the traps are baited and the Mouse Motel is ready to go (and has, in fact, made several trips with Wendell and Rebecca over the Sebasticook and Kennebec rivers to relocate the rodents).

In addition to general cleaning and de-cluttering, Rebecca sewed new curtains for the great room, and made up various other comfortable cloth necessities, such as the new dining room place mats, the new cushions for the couch, and the new upholstery for the porch’s double rocker. She was a whirling dervish about the place, at once destroying and creating or re-creating “the Goode Life” that most old farmhouses in rural Maine have offered those brave enough to take on the initial challenge.

Old timers knew how to live, and took care of their comforts. They knew just where to place windows to catch the sun in winter so that they could sit in their rocker and read the Bible. They knew where NOT to place windows, so that the cold northwest blast wouldn’t find a way in around the sashes in the wooden frames. They knew where to build the fireplaces and the chimneys, so that they and their large families would be warm and cozy and could cook and yet the smoke wouldn’t bother anyone. They calculated in advance where their tired old hand would come to rest on the upper level of the staircase so that when they hitched themselves up that top stair at night there’d be a solid wooden grip at just the right spot. They knew that what they were building was not just for themselves, but for those who came after them – and the ones who came after
them.
The old timers who built the Russell place might not have expected Rebecca Johnson and Lila Woodsum to come along to occupy the place, but they knew that the place would still be standing if
someone
came along. 

Rebecca had also made a cursory review of the gardens, now long overgrown yet yielding fruits, herbs and flowers, not all of which were planted by the Russells. Some original plantings set good roots or reproduced and “took,” as the local slang goes. But other plantings were done by a much more indiscriminate hand, the hand of Mother Nature which sowed seeds promiscuously and carelessly via the bills of birds and the defecation of wild animals. Thus the lemon balm grew up with the bull thistle and the red bee balm multiplied with the milkweed.

One major discovery was the presence of rhubarb – both green-stemmed and strawberry – behind the hen pen. This “find” offered immediate gratification to Rebecca because now she could serve strawberry-rhubarb pie (as well as custard) for dessert at
The Egg Ladies’
first dinner party, which was scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

Most of the week prior to the dinner party was necessarily focused on preparations for the big event. Rebecca’s silverware, which had once belonged to her mother, was counted and polished. For china, she liberated Addie Russell’s “good” dishes from the cupboard over the refrigerator, first examining the plates, bowls and cups for chips and cracks. Satisfied with their condition, Rebecca lovingly bathed each piece of the Johnson Brothers “Woodland Turkey” china set like a precious newborn baby, and calculated how she would set the dining table so that the colorful china with the rotund turkey in the center of the plate would have the most charming effect.

Rebecca enlisted Wendell’s aid in examining and re-gluing the oak dining room chairs so that their guests need not worry about falling to the floor in the event of overeating. She scrubbed down the tables and the chairs with large doses of Murphy® Oil Soap (purchased from Gilpin’s where Ralph kept a healthy supply on hand) and polished the set with lavender-scented beeswax (discovered in the cleaning cupboard under the slate sink). Floors were washed and waxed; rugs were beaten within an inch of their lives; windows squeaked clean; curtains and tablecloths rendered from whole cloth; and each dangling teardrop and glass
bobeche
on the chandelier was removed, hand washed and lovingly replaced.