In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

I can hardly breathe for the wonder. “I love. I love.”

  Seagulls screech around us.

  “It never stops,” I say.

  “Never.”

  “Billions of years. Waves on the shore. Tides coming in and out. Delaney says all life came from the ocean.”

  “It definitely makes me feel alive to be near it.”

  We edge closer, and the cool water rushes up and around my feet, dissolving the sand away beneath them, effervescing into white foam before receding.

  “You need to write a poem about the ocean,” Vi says. “And let me read it.”

  I look at her and smile. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” she scoffs. “Always maybe.”

  Like the waves lapping at my ankles, a swell of grief suddenly rises and breaks over me. “I feel saudade for my papaw right now,” I say. “Did I say that right?”

  “Perfect.”

  “I wish he could see me here.”

  “Maybe he can.”

  I think about how we laid Papaw to rest in a river, and all rivers eventually funnel to the sea, and all the seas are connected, so maybe he is here with me.

  We spread out our towels and sit next to each other on the sand, basking in the warm May sunshine, talking, and listening to the surf. Our silences are easy and so is our laughter. We’ve arrived at a good place in our friendship.

  Then I tell her about my mama. About my broken life. Because this sacred and memoryless place seems a worthy location for unburdening.

  She listens without judgment. When I’m finished, she’s not angry with me for letting her believe for so long that I came from more than I did. She hugs me hard and deep—the kind of hug when you’re trying to get past muscle and bone to hug someone’s soul.

  I’m glad she’s part of my life.

  Dr. Adkins and I stand facing each other after our final class.

  “It’s been quite a year,” she says. “Did you think when you started Intro to Poetry that on the last day of Intermediate Poetry class, you’d be reading a poem you wrote?”

  “Never.” I try to come up with the perfect words, but as they have so often, they elude me. “Poetry’s made my life better. Thank you.”

  “It’ll do that. And you’re so very welcome.”

  “I can’t wait to take your classes next year.”

  Dr. Adkins’s face clouds and she looks down.

  “You okay?” I ask. Something seems off with her.

  The air slows. “Cash? Would you—” She motions for me to sit.

  I sit.

  She draws a deep breath, exhales with a sigh, and fidgets with one of her rings, crossing and recrossing her legs. “I have bad news and maybe good news, and I’ve been trying to think of the best way to tell you, but I’m running out of time, so I’ll just say it. I won’t be here next year. I’ve accepted another position.”

  I feel how a shot bird must as it beats its wings for the last times and plummets to earth. I knew my life’s upward trajectory couldn’t last unbroken.

  “Oh,” I say quietly, staring at the floor. “Man.”

  “But,” she says, making sure she has my eyes before continuing, “the good news is, the University of Tennessee just got a funding line for a poetry MFA program, and one of my old poetry professors is heading it up. She’s asked me to join the faculty.”

  Realization dawns. “So you’ll be in—”

  “Knoxville.”

  “That’s forty-five minutes from where I live.” A surge of elation passes through me.

  “I know.” She smiles.

  “So I’ll still get to see you.”

  “You and your mamaw are invited to Thanksgiving at our house. You going back home this summer?”

  “Someone has to mow Sawyer’s lawns.”

  “Once a month, this summer, we’re meeting for coffee, and I plan on reading new work. You’re not off the hook just because I don’t control your grade anymore.”

  “Deal.” We look at each other and laugh spontaneously for a few moments. “I’ll follow you wherever you go,” I say softly after our laughter subsides. “I was planning on ETSU, but UT works just as well. I’m going to keep studying with you.”

  “I hope you do.”

  We stand.

  I still don’t know what else to say. “Anyway. I’ll miss you next year. Like, a lot.”

  Her gray eyes—now I know them to be the color of the ocean on the cusp of summer—see me. “I’ll tell you the truest thing I know: You are not a creature of grief. You are not a congregation of wounds. You are not the sum of your losses. Your skin is not your scars. Your life is yours, and it can be new and wondrous. Remember that.”

  “Always.”

  “Goodbye for now, Cash.”

  “Goodbye for now, Dr. Adkins.”

  “My friends call me Bree.”

  “Bree?”

  She looks at me.

  “You said something at Thanksgiving I keep thinking about: that you didn’t inherit your mamaw’s gift for healing. But you did,” I say.

  Her eyes well with tears. “Thank you. That means everything.”

  “I have something for you.” I pull a piece of paper from my bag, unfold it, make a quick correction, and hand it to her. Then something else occurs to me. “Also, I need to ask a huge favor. Actually, it’s for Delaney and me both.”

  Genesis (for Dr. Adkins) (for Bree)

  In the beginning I thought

  my favorite poetry

  was the story of God moving

  across the void and formless world,

  calling breath from stone.

  But now I know it was not

  the story that was the poetry,

  but the calling forth

  of breath from stone.

  New York City is much warmer than the last time I was here—both emotionally and temperature-wise. The mild spring night breeze smells like new asphalt, gasoline, and the herbal tang of the greenery surrounding us on the High Line. The sky swirls with stars and the moon. Delaney and I stroll slowly, hand in hand, our legs exhausted from all our walking.

  I point up at the moon and the brightest star beneath it. “That’s actually Venus.”

  “I’m literally the one who told you that.”

  “Um, I’m pretty sure you just learned that right now from me.”

  “I—” Delaney starts to respond, but I cut her off with a kiss.

  “Sorry, what?” I say, cupping my hand to my ear.

  She starts to talk again, but I stop her with another kiss. “No response? Guess it’s true you learned it from me.”

  Delaney just smiles. She takes a deep breath as if to say something. And then she says, “Blah blah blah,” and I take my cue and kiss her again.

  “What time were we meeting back up with Bree and Desiree?” Delaney asks when I finally let her finish a sentence.

  “Eight-thirty. But they said if we were a couple minutes late it was okay.”

  “Confession time.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t get modern art at all.”

  “Me neither.” We both laugh.

  “Good thing we spent two hours at a modern art museum today,” Delaney says.

  “It was your idea,” I say.

  “Wasn’t blaming you. Hang on—I wanna sit for a sec. My legs ache.”

  We sit on a bench. I do a quick memory check to make sure it’s not the exact bench that Vi and I sat on. Bad luck.

  Delaney pulls her feet up on the bench and rests her head on my shoulder. We gaze at the city as it hums and pulses, alive with lights. I like it so much better this time around.

  “Reminds me of our overlook,” Delaney murmurs, nestling into my side.

  I’d let myself forget that
Delaney and I are about to be apart for longer than we ever have before. I put my arm around her and rest my cheek on top of her head. “Gonna miss you this summer, Red. Real bad,” I say softly.

  “Confession time again,” Delaney murmurs.

  “Don’t say you won’t miss me back.”

  “Nope. I have to admit to keeping a secret.”

  “Okay,” I say hesitantly, my pulse accelerating and a sick feeling spreading from my stomach. After my last experience on the High Line, I’m very apprehensive about where this is headed.

  “You’ll only be missing me for part of the summer.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Means you’ll miss me for part. The other part I’ll be around.”

  I take my arm from around her shoulder and face her. “Hang on, hang on. What?” My heartbeat is still picking up speed, but for a different reason now.

  “I’m doing the CDC internship first half of summer. Second half I’m working at Sawyer Hospital. I’ll technically be a nurse’s assistant, but I’ll be shadowing Dr. Goins and helping out in the lab.”

  “Wait…what?”

  “Remember when I told you how I called and apologized for being rude? We got to talking for a while. We have a lot in common. We’ve stayed in touch. She said she could get me a job.”

  I jump up, whooping and laughing, and grab Delaney in a huge hug, lifting her off the bench and spinning her around, giving no heed to passersby. “Looks like I’m sleeping outside in a tent. No way is Mamaw letting us sleep in the same house with our current…situation.”

  “Naw. Dr. Goins has a guest room. I’m staying there for free. Keep your bed.”

  Delaney sits back on the bench, and I do the same.

  “I don’t get why you’re bailing on half of your CDC internship. Isn’t that, like, the best thing you can do as a future epidemiologist?”

  Delaney stares for a long time at the twinkling skyline with distant eyes. “Don’t know if I want to be an epidemiologist anymore.”

  “For real?”

  “Thinking about going into addiction medicine. Maybe find the switch that tells us to destroy ourselves and switch it off. My mama. Your mama. Even Pep, in a way.” She doesn’t need to finish the thought.

  We’re quiet for a few seconds, and she smiles to herself. “This’ll make you laugh.”

  “Tell me.”

  “After everything—after college, med school—I think I might head back to Sawyer.”

  But I don’t laugh.

  She continues. “Seeing Pep in that sad hospital. People like him deserve better.” She gestures toward the skyline. “Plus, all this is great, but I think best where it’s quiet. I get overloaded here.”

  “Know what?” I murmur. “I think I’m going back to Sawyer after college too. I want to teach poetry like Bree.”

  “Where?”

  “Sawyer High.”

  “Sawyer High doesn’t have poetry classes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You telling me twenty years from now, we might be sitting on the tailgate of your pickup, overlooking Sawyer, and talking about your students and my patients?” Delaney asks.

  “I think that’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

  We look at each other and start laughing. When our laughter subsides, we kiss and kiss again.

  Delaney says, “Remember how I told you about the time Pep and I went to McDonald’s together? I told him then that I loved you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He told me to be patient. He said you loved me too and you just needed to figure it out. He said that again in the letter he wrote me before he died.”

  “He was right.”

  A veil of silver moonlight covers Delaney’s face in the gentle breath of the late spring night. I remember first seeing her across the room at that Narateen meeting. Now we’re gazing at the lights of New York City together.

  I wonder where I’d be at this moment, the smaller life I would have led if we’d never spoken.

  You can feel when your mind’s building a palace for a memory. A place it lives, glowing and dancing in marble halls. A place you can visit when you need to feel less of the world’s gravity.

  I feel my mind building such a palace for Delaney and me.

  Sometimes I imagine the two of us at an all-night diner, drawing faces on pancakes with ketchup, drunk on each other, and laughing like nothing beautiful ever dies.

  I’ll always love her.

  Every wound, every hurt that brought us together—I regret none of it.

  The Poem I Promised You

  You should write a poem

  about how awesome I am,

  you said once.

  I promised I would. So here it is.

  The poem about how

  awesome you are.

  How every mile between us feels

  like a parched desert.

  How my lips remember you

  like water holds the sun’s heat.

  How my heartbeat measures out

  the seconds until we’re together again.

  How I lie in my bed,

  seeking the memory of you

  on the mattress.

  How I love you.

  How I love you.

  How I love you.

  Speak mysteries to me.

  Tell me the names of winds.

  How birds navigate.

  Why storms move

  from west to east.

  Tell me that the death of stars

  is not the death of light.

  Tell me the wonders of this world and others.

  When it’s my turn,

  I’ll say your name back to you.

  It’s only been a few weeks since Vi, Delaney, Alex, and I went our separate ways for the summer, but I miss them. I’ve been texting Delaney off and on all day. I’ll videochat with her later, after Mamaw goes to sleep. I’ve been texting Alex and Vi too. I’m meeting Bree for coffee in Knoxville next week and helping her and Desiree move into their new house.

  I’m working a lot to save for next year at Middleford. I’ve been mowing lawns a few days a week. The rest of my time I spend working as a seasonal ranger at Panther Creek State Park. I guide hikes and canoe tours. They even let me lead a special program I invented called Read S’more Poetry, which started with a moonlit night hike and ended with a bonfire, s’mores, and everyone reading a favorite poem they brought.

  I got home from the park a while ago. I step out on the porch, my hair still damp from the shower. Without Papaw to take me to get haircuts, I’ve let it grow shaggier than usual. Insects buzz in the sultry June dusk. Fireflies have begun their torchlit conversation. The air is rich with clover and honeysuckle, the smell of earth and grass remembering the sun’s heat, the smoke of a cookout.

  Mamaw sits in one of the rockers, knitting. She smiles. “Pull up a chair.”

  I sit beside her. Punkin lazes between us. “What you working on?”

  “A baby cap.”

  “For who?”

  “Mitzi’s started volunteering at a home for mothers in substance abuse recovery called Gilead House. It’s for the babies there.”

  “Gilead?”

  “I imagine it’s named after balm of Gilead. It’s a salve for healing cuts and bruises and aches, made out of poplar buds. My mama and mamaw used to make it. You remember the old hymn? ‘There Is a Balm in Gilead’?”

  “No.”

  Mamaw sets her knitting in her lap. Her eyes become dreamy and distant. “Oh, let me see if I can recall it. It’s been a while.” She thinks for a moment and begins singing. “There is a balm in Gilead…To make the wounded whole…”

  “Been a long time since I heard you sing,” I say when she finishes.

  “That w
as Pep’s favorite hymn,” Mamaw says. “He used to say he wanted me to sing it at his funeral before he changed his mind about wanting one.”

  “He told me how much he loved your singing voice.”

  “Maybe we can set your poems to music and I’ll sing them. Get ourselves hired at Dollywood.”

  We laugh.

  “Did your mama teach you how to make balm of Gilead?” I ask.

  Mamaw picks up her knitting again. “She did.”

  “Can we make it together sometime? Sounds like it’d be good for muscle aches after crew practices. Also want to take some to Bree. I think she’d appreciate it.”

  Mamaw smiles at me. “Now, I’ve slept since I learnt how, so I’d have to think on it, but I’ll do my best.”

  “When it gets dark, you wanna go in and work on that new puzzle I got you?”

  “Sure. I have to make a cake for Betsy’s birthday first.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  We quietly listen to the day depart, the creak of our chairs, the clack of Mamaw’s knitting needles, and the soft chirring of insects singing down the sun.

  The rocker on the other side of me—Papaw’s favorite—sits still and silent. A vast and lonesome emptiness. One that will ache as long as I can feel.

  But I’m healing.

  I once thought of memory as a tether. I still do, in a way. But now I also see memory as the roots from which you grow toward the sun.

  The dreams of closed doors still come, but less now.

  I sit with my notebook and pen in the wild light of the day’s end.

  In the place where I learned the names of trees and wind, I write.

  In the Wild Light (Elegy for Phillip Earl Pruitt)

  You were there when

  my life felt like I was trying to stop

  a falling axe with my hands,

  every time I dreamed

  of rows of doors

  like teeth in a death-clenched jaw

  You spoke “tree” and “wind”

  to me for the first time,

  as if whispering God’s secret