Mountain Top

by Robert Whitlow

  “I’ll be right back,” he said to Peg. “I’m going to let someone in the store know we’re here.”

  Mike walked past a Mercedes and opened the screen door. The store was dark and the layout chaotic. A well-dressed woman placed a head of lettuce, several tomatoes, a cucumber, and a jar of salad dressing on the counter.

  “Good morning, Mike!” called out Buzz Carrier, the thirty-five-year-old owner of the store.

  “Good morning. I have Peg and Judge with me. We’ll be gone till early afternoon.”

  “Have a good time.”

  Mike held the door open for the woman as she left with her purchases. He turned back to the man at the cash register.

  “Do you have a set of small Allen wrenches?” he asked. “I need to work on my bike.”

  Buzz motioned toward the rear of the store, a close-packed array of shelves and boxes. “I’ll find them before you get back.”

  Mike walked past a large propane tank to the parking lot. Peg was holding the end of Judge’s leash as the dog sniffed the woods at the edge of the lot. When he saw Mike, Judge barked and strained in his direction.

  “Ready?” he called out to Peg.

  “Or not,” Peg replied. “Judge is about to jerk my arm off. I need to let him go or start running myself.”

  “Turn him loose.”

  Peg pulled the dog in and unhooked the leash. Judge took off toward the opening in the woods that served as the entryway to the old roadbed and disappeared from sight. Mike didn’t worry. He’d trained the dog to come on a whistle. He and Peg passed into the splattered shade cast by the young leaves on the trees beside the trail. He took Peg’s hand in his.

  “That feels much better than a pitching wedge,” Mike said, squeezing her hand.

  Peg squeezed back. “You’re so romantic, comparing my hand to a golf grip. Did you read that in one of your marriage counseling books?”

  Mike laughed. “No.”

  He whistled, and in a few seconds, Judge tumbled down the bank to their right. Mike scratched the dog’s neck and released him to continue exploring.

  They climbed gradually yet steadily. The woods had encroached on the old roadbed, but it remained a gently sloping, broad trail. Mike marveled at the ingenuity of the men who had determined the path up a mountain. Contours that could be seen from the air were much more difficult to gauge on the ground. The loggers who constructed the roadway didn’t punish those who climbed but rather wooed them. The switchbacks were interspersed with flat runs across the face of the hill to places where the climb resumed at the best gradient available. After his initial burst of explosive energy, Judge returned and stayed closer to them.

  “Don’t try to race your pregnant wife to the top of a mountain,” Peg said, catching her breath.

  “Sorry.”

  Peg sat on a large rock to the side of the trail. Mike opened his backpack and handed her a water bottle. Before drinking from his own, he poured water in a plastic dish he’d brought for Judge. Mike held the dish steady so the dog wouldn’t tip it over with his vigorous lapping.

  “How do you keep Judge from going too fast on your runs?” Mike asked.

  “After we get started, he understands the leash a lot better than most men do. A quick jerk and he heels.”

  “Is that what you want from me?”

  Peg stood up and patted Mike’s cheek. “No. That would be boring.”

  They continued up the trail and turned a corner onto a flatter section.

  “You surprised me the other day when you told me you had no regrets about my leaving the law firm.”

  “I’m not sure that’s what I said, but I’m full of surprises. My nesting urge is getting stronger, and for the past few days, I’ve been studying the home furnishing catalogs we get in the mail. Don’t you think it’s time to make some major changes in the house?”

  “How much is this going to cost?”

  “I don’t have a clue, but don’t worry.” Peg paused. “Yet.”

  As they trudged onward, Mike thought about the hit to their savings a major overhaul of the house would cause.

  “I told you not to worry,” Peg said, cutting into his reverie, “but there is something I want to tell you when we reach the top of the hill.”

  “Why wait until the top?”

  “Because I can’t climb, breathe, talk, and grow our baby at the same time.”

  They could see clear sky above the trees that marched up the hillside, but several switchbacks remained before they broke into the open. Mike enjoyed watching Judge. Vizslas could be trained as both trackers and pointers. The dog moved from side to side as his sensitive nose appreciated the entire palate of scents on display in the wild.

  The top of the hill was crowned with a canopy of trees. The trail ran beneath the trees along the ridgeline for a hundred yards before ending at the edge of a small mountain meadow. It was still early spring at this altitude, and only a few green strands of grass were beginning to sprout from the brown stalks of the previous year. Mike dropped the backpack on the ground and served water all around. Peg rubbed her forehead with a red kerchief she took from a hip pocket of her jeans. A slight breeze stirred the warm air.

  “Didn’t need my jacket,” she said.

  “I know, but I brought it anyway.”

  “And I felt cherished and cared for.”

  “Are you going to tell me now?”

  Peg smiled. “Show me your holy spot.”

  “What holy spot?”

  “The place where God spoke to you from the burning bush and ordered you to ignore your wife’s advice, leave the successful practice of law, and lead His people out of bondage.”

  Mike pointed to the west side of the meadow.

  “Over there.”

  Judge was rolling back and forth on his back in the grass. He jumped up when Mike and Peg moved away. The meadow was small, about three hundred feet across and five hundred feet long, but from its exposed position on top of the hill it seemed larger. The dead grass crunched beneath their feet as they walked. Judge joined them. On the west edge of the meadow, a row of exposed rocks had broken free into the sunlight. One jutted from the ground about three feet.

  Mike pointed. “There. That’s where I was sitting when I read the verses in Galatians.”

  Peg took Mike by the hand and led him over to the rock.

  “Sit,” she said.

  A puzzled look on his face, Mike sat on the rock. Peg knelt down in the grass at his feet and stared away in the distance for several seconds before looking up at him.

  “I need to ask your forgiveness,” she said.

  “Why?” Mike shifted his weight on the rock. “I’m the one who forgot our anniversary two years ago.”

  “No, I’m serious. Please listen.”

  Mike grew still.

  “I’ve put you through a lot the past six years,” she said. “A few times I kicked and screamed out loud and did it a lot more than that on the inside. I wasn’t with you in the transition to the ministry, and when you continued in that direction, I decided you didn’t care about me. Our marriage wasn’t as important as your lofty notions of saving the world. Last November, I came close to leaving you.”

  Mike’s eyes widened in shock. He’d known there was tension, but chalked it up to the stress of major changes, not a potential end to the marriage.

  “I never—,” he began.

  “Let me finish,” Peg interrupted. “I paid a deposit on an apartment in Asheville and talked with a divorce lawyer.” She looked down at the ground. “I even signed the verification page on a divorce petition.”

  Mike felt as if he’d been punched in the stomach. A spark of hurt and anger flared up inside him. Peg looked at his face.

  “You have a right to be upset,” she continued. “I was wrong, and not telling you about this has eaten at me. I thought it would go away, but after listening to your sermon last week, I knew I had to be honest and ask you to forgive me.”

  “Was there anyone
else?”

  “No, just selfish me.”

  Mike’s mind was spinning.

  “Why did you stay?”

  Peg reached into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a well-creased sheet of notebook paper and held it up in her hand.

  “In part because of this. The day after I met with the lawyer, I received a letter in the mail that described exactly how I felt. It got behind my defenses then warned me that a decision I was considering would not bring the joy and happiness I wanted. I threw the letter in the trash but couldn’t get it out of my mind. I pulled it out, and, during the next few days, read it over and over. It was just enough to make me reconsider. I called the lawyer, stopped the divorce, and forfeited the deposit on the apartment.”

  “Who sent the letter?”

  “It wasn’t signed, so I never knew.” Peg paused. “Until you met Sam Miller.”

  Mike’s jaw dropped. “Sam Miller wrote you a letter?”

  “Yes. After you told me about the letter he sent Jack Hatcher, I remembered what happened with me. I called Muriel and went over to their house. Sam looked at the letter and said, ‘Yep. I wrote it. But only Papa knew our paths would cross someday.’”

  Mike smiled slightly. “That sounds like Sam.”

  “He’d forgotten about it. Muriel says he writes lots of letters, but doesn’t keep any copies.”

  “So I’ve learned.”

  Peg touched Mike’s knee. “But this isn’t about Sam Miller. It’s about us. I’m the one who walled off my heart, who abandoned you, who forgot something a lot more important than our anniversary—the vows we made on our wedding day. I put out the fire of my love, and I’ve been wrong, terribly wrong.”

  Mike saw tears in Peg’s eyes as she continued, “We agreed to walk together through life no matter what. Now, I want to remove everything that would be a wedge between us and build the right kind of marriage for us and our child. Will you forgive me?”

  “Of course.”

  “No.” Peg shook her head. “That’s too quick. I want you to know how deeply, terribly sorry I am for being so selfish. I haven’t supported you in the way I promised when we married or the way God wanted me to. I said I loved you, but I’ve been rotten.”

  Mike slid off the rock onto the grass beside her. He took her in his arms, brought her close, and kissed the top of her head.

  “I don’t feel worthy to say I forgive you,” he said.

  “But do you?”

  Mike took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  “Think about it. Are you sure?”

  Mike held her tightly and spoke softly into her ear.

  “With all my heart.”

  Fifteen

  STARING AT THE BLUE SKY, MIKE LAY STILL SO HE WOULDN’T wake Peg. Her secret burden lifted, she’d rested her head on Mike’s chest and dozed. The old quilt cushioned them from the scratchy grass. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Mike could hear Judge crashing through the grass off to the left.

  Reeling from Peg’s revelation, Mike couldn’t take a nap. He couldn’t believe he’d been so oblivious to the mortal danger threatening his marriage. He’d always considered himself an astute judge of people but failed miserably at discerning what his own wife was considering.

  God, using Sam Miller, intervened.

  Before falling asleep, Peg let him read the letter from Sam. It was a simple message of warning and encouragement but had done the job. Peg could be tough to convince, and the power of a few words scrawled on a sheet of notebook paper was stunning. That the lawncare man took the time to write a letter to a total stranger was unfathomable. Mike cared about people, but Sam Miller took the concept of loving your neighbor to another stratosphere.

  Peg’s nose twitched. Mike kept his breathing regular so his chest rose and fell in rhythm. Peg moved her head slightly and snuggled closer to his chin.

  “I love you,” she said.

  Mike stroked her hair. “I love you, too,” he managed.

  “How long have I been dozing?”

  “Not long.”

  Judge suddenly appeared over Mike’s face and licked his nose.

  “That’s a wet alarm clock,” Mike said, pushing the dog away.

  Peg looked up. “Remind me not to kiss that spot until you wash your face.”

  They sat up. The breeze across the top of the mountain had picked up while they rested. It felt clean and fresh. Peg stretched her hands in the air then threw her arms around Mike’s neck and gave him a long kiss on the lips.

  “You were holding back,” she said when their lips parted. “Do I need to ask you to forgive me again? I’ll do it five times a day until you’re convinced I mean it.”

  “I know you meant it. It’s just going to take time for me to adjust to how close I came to losing you.”

  Peg took his hand and placed it on her abdomen. “Any time doubts come to your mind, think about the child inside me, and remember that I’m committed to you—completely.”

  Mike looked into her eyes. There was an honest clarity present that gave no room for deceit.

  “Even if I’m not perfect?” he asked.

  “You’re perfect for me.”

  Peg stood and brushed a few pieces of dried grass from her shirt.

  “I’m ready to go,” she announced. “We have lots to talk about on the way down.”

  “What else?” Mike asked apprehensively.

  “Redecorating the house. We need to get a nursery ready and make the whole house safe for a baby. Now, I can really put my heart into it.”

  They held opposite ends of the blanket and shook it before folding it up. Judge came running over, and Mike poured water into the plastic dish for the dog to drink.

  “That’s amazing about Sam Miller,” he said to Peg as Judge lapped up the water. “Every town doesn’t have a yardman who writes letters to save marriages.” “It should.”

  Peg was filled with carefree chatter on the return trip down the mountain.

  Mike tried to match her mood but couldn’t. Peg carried the knowledge about how close they’d come to divorce to the top of the mountain. He bore it down. Several times, he started to say something, but Peg’s reminder of the child growing within her stopped him. Never had such a tiny person exerted such great influence over him.

  “How did you manage to keep your secret?” he asked finally. “Except for confidential information in my cases, I’ve never been able to keep anything important from you for more than a few days.”

  Peg slowed her steps. “After I changed my mind, I was ashamed but still angry with you. If I’d said anything, it might have caused a huge fight that would have driven us farther apart.”

  “What’s different now?”

  “Sam and Muriel told me what I needed to do.”

  Mike stopped. “That’s amazing.”

  “Am I that hardheaded? Can’t you tell that I’m changing?”

  “Yes,” Mike replied and started walking again.

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes. But it’s—”

  Peg glanced sideways as they rounded a bend in the trail.

  “A challenge relating to the new me?”

  “Just different. I’m a minister who is supposed to believe God transforms people for the better, but when my own wife tells me it’s happening to her, I wonder if I can handle it.”

  “At least you won’t be bored.”

  Peg took a few quick steps ahead down the trail. Judge ran along beside her. Mike plodded along in the rear.

  They reached the parking lot. Mike went into the store. The Allen wrenches were waiting for him on the counter.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” the store owner said as he rang up the purchase. “How was your hike?”

  “Not what I expected. You can always see farther from the top of the ridge.” Mike paused. “Today, I saw the past.”

  Buzz tilted his head to the side. “Don’t mess with me, Mike. I have enough strange people from other parts of the country coming in her
e. I don’t need any of the local folks getting squirrelly.”

  THAT NIGHT AFTER PEG WENT TO SLEEP, MIKE LAY IN BED WITH his eyes open. During the drive home, he’d decided his ignorance had been a disguised blessing. He’d not known his marriage was stalled on the train tracks until it moved out of danger. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he turned on his side so he could see Peg. A pale sliver of moonlight crept into the room and faintly illuminated her golden hair. He hadn’t admitted it to Peg, but his pride was deeply wounded by her secret rejection. He tossed and turned for a long time. He hoped the hurt would soon find healing in the hospital of his soul. Instead, he revisited the dream of the old woman who passed into darkness. She looked familiar, like Muriel, but distinctly different. He woke up wishing Peg hadn’t brought out the painting.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, HE SPENT SEVERAL HOURS WORKING OUTSIDE. Late morning, Peg joined him and together they planted flowers. Peg had a knack for landscape design, and their yard moved with grace from one season of the year to the next. Daffodils and tulips in later winter, day lilies in the spring, and mums in the fall. Kneeling beside each other, their hands frequently touched as they worked the soil. Once, Mike glanced up and saw Peg wipe her sleeve across her eyes.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked.

  “I’m happy. I know we’re dirty, but I’ve never felt so clean on the inside. Is this what it means to be forgiven?”

  “Yes.”

  Peg sat sideways on the grass. “And doing this with you is special. Do I need to ask you to forgive me today?”

  Mike smoothed the soil around the flower he’d deposited into the ground and sat with his legs stretched out in front of him.

  “No. I’m not going to be petty, but it may take a while for me to be healed.