“I know it’s upsetting, Gar, but he lived a good life. Father W’s right, it’s a blessing. Why don’t you stay home and we could work in the garden together.” Father Troy had a nagging feeling that Gar had been avoiding him the last few days. “On the other hand maybe a bike around town would get your mind off things.” Father Troy made himself smile at Gar. He didn’t want to seem clinging like some girl. He was a priest, he reminded himself, and Gar was free to do as he pleased - within reason, he amended the statement mentally. The rectory wasn’t a boarding house; still, fresh air did everyone good. He felt torn as the conflicting mental arguments started to fire in his brain. He wasn’t about to the let the parish house be used. Take it easy, why do you care so much, thought after thought piled up like kindling. Let him go, he finally counseled himself, he’ll be back soon enough.
Gar wasn’t listening or even looking at Father Troy. It was better that way for both of them, he thought, as he settled onto the seat of the bike. It was a beautiful day, the afternoon stretched lush and long before him and he peddled away without even a look back or wave goodbye.
Marilyn was waiting for him on the steps of her front porch just as he knew she’d be. She wasn’t wearing her uniform today and he wasn’t sure if he liked that. The street clothes made her look more like other people when he knew that wasn’t true. Her dog was tucked under her legs but he bounded up with a friendly air. Good, thought Gar, he liked animals as long as they liked him.
“You should get a bike. We could ride all over that way,” Gar said without even a hello but he leaned down and gave her a swift shy kiss on the cheek and just as quickly backed away. He shuddered with pleasure as he heard Marilyn’s intake breath of surprise and saw her hand flutter up to the place where he had kissed her. He locked Father Troy’s bike up to the weeping birch in the front yard, wrapping the chain around its slim papery bark trunk and leaning it against the tree. The weeping birch had been in the front yard since Marilyn was a girl and it was her most favorite tree, especially in spring when the leaves had a green that was so tender it broke your heart. Now as the bike chain was wrapped around its’ trunk, the weeping birch felt in the cruel metal links the danger for the woman who had always loved it and moved its fairy whips of branches in subtle warning. Marilyn shivered as the branches waved, brushing her, and making her want to warn Gar to be careful and not scratch the delicate white paper bark with fine black streaks like ink but restrained herself. He moved with so much grace and assurance that she felt torn not wanting to seem anxious and insecure even as her anxiety mounted.
“So, where are you taking me?” Gar asked with a grin when the bike was secure. The branches stopped moving, and his smile filled the silence. Marilyn shook her head impatient with her own nervousness, she was really out of practice.
“To Fairview Cemetery, Rowley and I go there every Sunday that we can. It’s kind of overgrown now but at one time, I guess from some of the monuments, it was the place to go,” Marilyn said with a wry little smile, smoothing her jeans and looking away from the tree.
“I love a good graveyard,” Gar said as she got to her feet and leashed Rowley who couldn’t wait to get to the jumbled paths strewn with crabapple tree petals and upright stones in row after row. The cemetery smelled of flowers, sun-bleached old carved rocks, and deep rich earth where things were rotting and worms were digging. It was a heady place.
Marilyn couldn’t stop feeling anxious even though it was a perfectly normal thing for two grown humans to go on a walk together with a dog, even if they were walking in a graveyard.
Fairview Cemetery was the oldest cemetery in Decatur and considered haunted. A band of Iroquois had been killed there and in the early 1900’s the Sangamon River had flooded the place, washing hundreds of graves away. Locals occasionally swore that they saw green lights, supposedly the souls of the murdered Iroquois and those washed away, winking when there was fog or, for those brave enough to come in after dark.
Marilyn took Rowley off the leash as soon as they were inside the Victorian iron gates that had been leaned on by the prairie winds for nearly a century. White headstones with sun-sanded writing dissolving over the years snaked through the overgrown grass and dandelions. Granite statues of angels popped up every so often in family plots named Wilson, Miller, Taylor, and Mason. Little stubby stones marked the graves of infants and children, lovingly decorated with stone lilies and cherubs. The paths were full of pink and white crabapple petals that snowed down from gnarled trees just starting to green over their blooms. There was a small natural lake ringed with weeping willows that was the favorite lazing spot of Marilyn and Rowley.
“Let’s go this way,” Marilyn said, pointing down to the lake. They were standing on a crumbling terrace of graves while Rowley pawed the ground and stuck his nose in the dirt.
Gar leaned against a big oak and felt the grooved bark digging into his skin, the tree’s life force was there flowing up the trunk and it gave him the slightest rush. “Let’s not hurry today, okay? I feel like I’ve come such a long way to be with you.”
“Okay,” Marilyn said as an eerie feeling came over her. She looked up at the sky, noticing how the clouds were moving; the whole earth was moving all the time, moving through time and space and in concert with other planets and stars. Gar wasn’t like other people and being with him had an intensity that made Marilyn both nervous and excited so that even the most normal things like taking a walk or looking up into the sky took on deeper meanings.
“Let’s not do what you usually do, let’s do what only we can do,” Gar said, as if he was reading her mind, his voice husky and rich. “We are in this time together for a reason, Marilyn. Let’s find our reason.” He smiled at her then and pushed himself off from the tree, pivoting with athletic grace, his arm arcing up and pointing away from the lake. “There,” he said.
Up on a hill with a dark tunnel of overgrown hedge leading to it stood a grand mausoleum in a medieval style with its arched windows broken and stone steps crumbling. Two ruined angels stood guard outside, their wings broken off. “Now that’s something,” Gar said, considering the tomb with a knowing look. He began to head up the path towards the hill and the ghostly crypt. Rowley stopped and cocked his head, looking up at Marilyn, because they never went there. The hedge tunnel to reach it was creepy and full of mud and they were wary of the graffiti and beer cans that always littered the tomb.
Marilyn hesitated, looking down at her red sandals. “It’s muddy,” she said.
“I’ll carry you, milady,” Gar replied smiling, “It would be an honor.” His heart was thudding so hard he was afraid she’d hear it. The setting was filling him with such overwhelming longing to touch her, to take her there in the mausoleum, reminiscent of when it all began. The source was leading him there, he felt sure of it. She wanted it too, that’s why she came here to a graveyard. She knew what she owed him.
“Oh, no,” Marilyn said, feeling embarrassed and flustered.
Rowley looked the man over more carefully now. Something was off, he was smiling but he didn’t smell like he was happy, there was some other smell coming off him, faint and foul. Rowley backed up against Marilyn’s legs suddenly.
“Oh, yes,” countered Gar and swept her up in his arms like she was light as a feather. He carried her like a child in his arms, running now up the path towards the hill, feeling the wonder of her essence through her clothes. This is what he was made for. Marilyn was stunned by how quickly he could run holding her, and she felt a rush of sexual desire that made her want to stop him and pull him down on the grass and have him take her right there.
The hedge tunnel was thickly overgrown, a dark entrance with a muddy path that led up the hill to the ruin. Rowley didn’t like the looks of it, didn’t want Marilyn in this man’s arms, so he rushed ahead and began barking a warning at her. He threw his head back and really let go, a snarly staccato of canine intensity.
“What’s wrong? Rowley! Put me down. Something’s wrong.” Marily
n pushed away from Gar and felt no give in his arms for a split second as she realized she was completely in his power alone here in the graveyard. “I said, put me down, Gar.” Marilyn repeated, her black eyes suddenly impenetrable and hard. She inhaled sharply, instinctively gathering her inner forces, a powerful cone of energy forming instantly, even though rarely tapped in her core when Gar laughed easily and set her down next to the dog. Okay. He got the message. She knelt and held Rowley’s head in her hands, looking into his tawny eyes, rubbing the diamond on his chest. “What’s the matter? Did you see something? A fox, maybe? He must have seen something,” Marilyn said even while she wondered, was Rowley warning her of something? “I don’t think he likes it, Gar. Let’s go to the lake.”
Marilyn looked up at Gar in her white peasant blouse with a white petal that had fallen resting on her left breast and he clenched his insides together like they were writhing snakes that he had to control. He wanted her so badly, every inch of her and more, but he had to do it right. He had felt the energy that had come off her pores just then and it reminded him of the other times when she had used her powers of sight and the ability to conjure protection to escape.
The Shaker sisters came out the women’s entrance of the dwelling building one after the other in the frosty afternoon light, their grey skirts and white bonnets blending into the monochromatic New England winter landscape. They opened their mouths, their lips ever so slightly pink and they were singing, in a round, one after another coming through the wide hickory door.
When we assemble here to worship God,
To sing his praises and to hear his word
We will walk softly.
With purity of heart; and with clean hands,
Our souls are free, we're free from Satan's bands
We will walk softly.
He had been watching for her carefully at the barn, his axe in the cart, waiting for her to appear, she would be the next one to come and then he would have her. No more waiting. But all the Shaker sisters’ faces were pale, their hair grey, brown, salt and pepper all swept back under the bonnets, the skirts wide, with simple white collars, they all looked alike. Their voices overlapping the lyrics and notes were like bells chiming. Spirit singing it was called and now he knew why as their voices rang out in the cold air. He felt himself falling into a trance with the music. She had to be the next, or had he missed her because the sisters then went back in the house in a march and cycled out again, still singing in a round. He felt a powerful force from them, holding him by the barn, his arms dangling uselessly by his side as the snow began to fall. Their voices kept on singing, she must be there. He strained his eyes, the gloom oncoming, and couldn’t tell, where was his Sister Ellen, where was his source?
While we are passing thro’ the sacred door,
Into the fold where Christ has gone before,
We will walk softly.
We'll worship and bow down we will rejoice
And when we hear the shepherd's gentle voice
We will walk softly.
When the last notes died out and the Shaker sisters all retired into the dwelling house, the ox snorting in the cold, stamping its legs reminding him that all it wanted was the barn, now that night had come on and the snow was falling thickly. He came back into himself from the spell the women had woven. Had she been there? While he unharnessed the beasts, their breath silvery moist clouds over the straw in the barn it slowly dawned on him that Sister Ellen had vanished, escaped while her sisters spirit sang, the snow now covering any tracks. He felt the aria of his long life rising to the beamed rafters where the swallows nested, his own wrenching song, he loved and he lost again and again as the harsh journey continued until he would take her at last. And he would take her at last.
Gar shook his head, throwing off the memory. “Okay, you lead,” he said, turning around, closing his eyes for a moment so she couldn’t see the anger and loss sparking out from the gold flecks in his irises.
Marilyn felt a rush of relief suddenly not to be going up the hill in Gar’s arms. She turned her head for one last look at the tomb with the ruined angels now visible through the lens of the hedge tunnel. Their eyes seemed blind to her, like they had been put out by someone, perhaps the person who had broken their wings. Their blank stone gazes saw nothing good in the living and liked it better that way. As she turned her head back she saw a rush of white bursts of lights in her field of vision and the hedge turned into a rambling fieldstone wall with creek rushing next to it tinged with ice on its sharp narrow banks. She would have to cross it, and she felt a guardian-like force urging her on. It was only for a second. She shook her head and looked again. Mud and hedge, she almost muttered aloud. “It’s pretty at the lake,” she said softly instead.
Gar noticed the pulse in her neck throbbing then and wondered how much she had picked up. That gift of sight was her natural defense and while faulty, it had so far helped her elude him. “To the lake.” He smiled his widest at her and gave a sweeping bow. He’d have to slow down, he realized, or risk making the same damned mistakes he had made twice before and if he did, he wouldn’t like the other times have the chance again. Three hundred and thirty three years - he had reached the place where either he was renewed or he vanished into the same maw that he had taken so many to, and he knew from the looks in their eyes and their screams that was a place he wasn’t going to. Only the source now could renew him so he could climb deeper into the rings of the all mighty and reach for immortality.
White moths fluttered in the afternoon sun and they turned their noses towards the sweet-smelling lake where frogs sang and lily pads bloomed. Rowley led the way, but he was only pretending to be a good dog, his animal guile was on, he didn’t trust a thing about the man called Gar now. But for Marilyn, the afternoon righted itself and they ran down towards the water like children. When they got to the weeping willows Gar threw himself down on the moss with a large sigh. “Now this is nice,” he said as if he had never wanted to go to the ruined mausoleum. Marilyn decided she must have been imagining things and sat herself down beside him while ducks circled and quacked in the lake. Rowley charged them, and they flew up and back down in an explosion of white.
“So tell me about yourself, Gar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around here,” Marilyn said shyly.
“We don’t have to talk like this, ‘tell me about yourself,’ do we Marilyn? I think our conversations are meant to happen on a whole other plane. We’re not like other people. I saw that in you right away. Your essence, Marilyn, your essence is so much clearer and close to the surface, it’s like a miracle,” Gar said huskily, not even looking at her but fingering a leaf from the willow. “It gets lonely out there, don’t you think?” Then he turned to look at her and willed her to feel his loneliness. This was the way into her, to share what they had held in common over her life times. If he could make her love him again, she would surrender and that would make the experience complete. He felt the urgency, the beauty, the perfect moment shimmering just out of reach.
Marilyn’s desire for Gar swept back into every curve and hollow of her body. His hair had fallen over his face and he reached a big hand up and pushed it away, looking at her with those gold flecked eyes now liquid and wide with his long lashes trembling. “Yes,” she breathed. “I don’t like being lonely. That’s why I have a dog,” she said trying to make light of the way her heart was pounding. She felt like she was swimming in deep water and didn’t know where bottom was when she looked at him. It was disconcerting; she hadn’t felt this way for a very long time. A long whip of willow that had been torn by the recent storm from the tree began to vibrate on the ground. Marilyn saw it and willed it to stop but it rose slowly up between them five or six inches off the ground and began to slowly rotate over the moss. She closed her eyes as she burned with anxiety and shame. What would he think of her? Suddenly she felt his hand taking hers.
“Put your palm against mine. I want to see how we measure against each other,” Gar said,
as if the willow whip wasn’t doing anything unusual at all. “Marilyn? I want to see.”
She held her breath and put her hand up against his and forced herself to concentrate only on the sizes of their hands palm-to-palm as the stick turned slowly in front them. His hand was so much bigger than hers, she thought with a jolt of recognition somewhere deep inside herself. It was like she had thought this before, but she couldn’t have. The willow whip turned again and then fell back to the moss without a sound. It was like nothing had happened but Marilyn wanted to get up and run. She held herself in her seated position. “Let’s get ice cream, Gar,” was all she could manage to say.
Adele Mason was glad to see the big stranger come back to the Front Porch. He came in the screen door with a big grin on his face like he was a kid.
“I’m baaack.” Gar said.
Adele smoothed her hair and giggled. She would stop at the drugstore before she went home tonight and get Miss Clairol hair dye to cover the grey streaks in her hair. This man made her remember what it was like to feel like a girl again. “So you gonna get a cone this afternoon? Tell you what, I’m running a new customer special and it’s on me,” Adele said, feeling very daring.
“Hey, that’s really cool,” Gar said, giving her a wink and flexing his shoulders to show off his chest underneath his tee-shirt.
“So what’s it’s gonna be?” Adele leaned over the marble topped counter wishing her blouse was lower cut.
“Well – say, what’s your name?” Gar was enjoying this, with Marilyn waiting for him at the little wrought iron table on the porch. Keeping the source waiting for just a minute was like not coming right away, stretch it out, make it last, besides it served her right to wait for him, he had been waiting for so long now.
“Adele,” she said feeling a flush of pleasure creep up into her hips, “And I got more than ice-cream.” She couldn’t believe that she had said it aloud but it seemed she did because the man licked his lips in a slightly wicked way at that.
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