Resurrection in May

by Lisa Samson

  Scout looked agreeable, as always. Claudius treated the dog to a couple of burgers while he sat at the picnic table outside the restaurant eating a chili-cheese dog and a side of onion rings. He still enjoyed drinking a cold Coca-Cola from a straw, the cold of the soda, and that slurping sound when he reached the ice.

  The lights in the parking lot flickered on, and he realized it was later than he’d thought. Almost nine o’clock.

  “Wanna hike to the Bridge and see the world in the dark?”

  Then he remembered the park closed at dark. He scratched Scout behind his ears. “I guess we’ll leave the fast living to May-May and the young people, right, boy?”

  Scout stayed by his side as Claudius tossed the empty containers into the red trash can and walked slowly over the cooling blacktop to the Galaxy, his hands deep in his pockets. “And my knees don’t need another one of them climbs today, I suppose.”

  Scout looked baleful and sympathetic, as if he knew that Claudius was telling the truth of the matter. But he would be too kind a sort to tell his master he was slowing down.

  Borne’s Last Chance sat silent in the moonlight, the animals at peace, the fields at peace, the trees at peace. Claudius climbed the stairs and looked around the guest room. A shard of moonlight bathed the nightstand next to the bed. It was May-May’s room now. He didn’t know how he knew that. He just did. He remembered that prayer he’d prayed earlier in the day. He’d said he’d take whatever God wanted to give him. Well, the Lord knew best. Claudius had known that for a good long time.

  • 2 •

  Claudius decided he’d go ahead and get the broccoli planted, since he’d prepared the bed a couple of days before. The seeds had sprouted well under his grow light in the corner of the barn; the young plants looked strong enough to make it out in the wide world. He wondered about May, if she needed more time under the grow light. Though a week had passed since they parted, there wasn’t a day went by he didn’t think of her and hope she was all right.

  “Here we go now, little greens.”

  He loaded up his old Radio Flyer wagon with the tender sprouts and was just passing by the coop when he heard a car pull up and the driver cut the engine.

  Claudius dropped the handle at the sight of May extracting herself from one of those little convertibles that would crush like a ripe plum if it ever got in an accident. “Hey, there!” he hollered, hurrying over.

  “Claudius!” She reached into the back of the bright blue car and pulled out a box about the size of two shoeboxes put together. The top was striped with white and gold, the bottom a girly pink. It said Victoria’s Secret on top. Claudius had no idea who Victoria was or how she expected to keep her secret by advertising it on the lid of a bright cardboard box like that one.

  “What kinda car is that? Spiffy little thing.”

  “A Miata.”

  Must be one of them Japanese models.

  “You must have yourself a good time in that.”

  “I do.”

  “How did you find your way back here?”

  “I’m one of those people who remembers how to get back to wherever she’s been.”

  “Like a cat.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Was never one for cats, but I won’t hold that against you.” He reached her and took the box from her hands and tucked it beneath his left arm.

  “Me either. Dogs all the way.”

  He pointed to Girlfriend, sitting in the passenger seat. “Bet she enjoyed the ride.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Cute little thing.”

  May let the dog out, and it immediately ran up to Claudius, rearing up and placing its paws on his knee.

  “Hello there, Miss Girlfriend.” He leaned down slightly to scratch the wrinkles over her eyes.

  “Isn’t she sweet?” May patted the box under Claudius’s arm. “I wanted to say thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “Being my knight in shining armor.”

  He had to laugh at that. “You do have man problems, May-May. Why, I’d think honorable men would be lined up at your door.”

  —Not like that blond caveman in your apartment, but that’s none of my—nevermind.

  “Remember what I said about the math brains?”

  “Yes, I do. Care for a glass of sweet tea?”

  “I’d love it. Then you can open the box inside.”

  She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and he thought she looked so much nicer in just those simple dungarees and the light yellow UK Wildcats T-shirt. Younger, too, without that makeup running down her face.

  He showed her in through the back kitchen door, set the box on the oak hoosier to his right, then got out the pitcher of tea he had chilling in the icebox.

  He handed her a glass ringed in shades of red, orange, yellow, and green. The pitcher matched, only it included citrus slices on its surface. His mother had loved that iced tea set, and he recalled the way his father’s Adam’s apple would bob up and down when he chugged down the tea after an afternoon in the field. He’d hand the glass back to his wife with a sigh and say, “I thank you, Violet, honey.”

  May took a sip. “This is wonderful. As sweet as can be, and just the way I like it.”

  “You’re such an agreeable sort. If you’ll pardon me for saying so, your sensible manners don’t seem to add up to the clothes the other day, the fine little car, and the trek up Route 11.”

  —Or that fellow in your apartment, but that’ll slide.

  She sighed. “I’d like to think this is the real me. But I don’t know for sure. And I got the car secondhand, cheap, with the money I saved up from photography jobs of professors’ kids and families and all. It’s easy enough to look like you have more than you do if you buy just a few good things and put your nose up high in the air.”

  He chuckled.

  “Anyway, open your box!” Her white teeth flashed in her tanned face.

  He lifted up on the white-and-gold lid. Well, goodness. The box was filled with framed photographs. “Did you take these?” He lifted a picture of a park somewhere in the spring, bulb flowers in curved beds striping the view with reds and yellows mostly, some whites as well. “Tulips and white daffodils?”

  “Uh-huh. I love spring flowers.”

  “These are pretty, May-May. You have a real eye.”

  “I just thought you’d like them, for some reason.”

  He nodded. “Nothing like the art of nature, even when people help it along a little bit.”

  About ten frames held photographs of flowers, leaves, close-ups of blooms and their striped veins. “Don’t you just appreciate the way a plant works?” he asked.

  She laughed. Really laughed. Musical and quite loud. “I do! Stamens and petals. And ovaries. I mean, ovaries? How crazy is that? So, I thought you might like to have these,” she continued, and he was glad for it. “A lot of people in the journalism department don’t appreciate a picture of a nice flower, not edgy enough, but I thought you’d like them. I’m clearing out my apartment before Rwanda.”

  “Let’s sit out on the porch and you can tell me more about your trip.”

  He led her to a door to their right and into the bungalow’s living room, painted a dark gold and furnished with his mother’s old walnut coffee table and side table and an old leather couch.

  “My mother loved her pretty things, but before she died there wasn’t a butt-worthy seat in this room. A man needs to rest himself after a day’s work. I found that couch alongside the road in Lexington one day and strapped it right to the top of my car!”

  “I don’t have any trouble believing that.”

  “My mother had the room seafoam green. I just never took a shine to seafoam green.”

  “Me either. It’s a sickly color, like grass green caught a virus somewhere.”

  He pointed to the wall opposite the kitchen door. “There’d be a fire going over there in that fireplace if it was winter. I heat this place with that, and the woodstove in the k
itchen.”

  “No central heat?”

  “Nope. Or air-conditioning. Somehow we survive.”

  “It must be nice.”

  He opened the front door, painted a brick red, contrasting with the whitish gray of the stone. Two pine rockers sat side by side, tan wicker seats soaking up the sunshine.

  “So tell me about this trip you’re going on.” He eased himself down. “You said you’re not going to be a missionary to the people, so why are you going?”

  She began to rock, a quick jiggle of a rock. “I was waiting to hear from a magazine in New York about an internship. I was a journalism major, photography minor. There’s still no word, and I can’t just sit around doing nothing. The priest at our parish, Father Stan, has a good friend who’s a priest in Rwanda. So I’m heading to his mission because, to be honest, I’ve been all the way through college and I don’t know what I want to do anymore. It’s like I got it all out of me in school! Like school ruined me!” She laughed nervously.

  —Hmmm, sounds incomplete.

  “Did that crawl down Route 11 have something to do with that?”

  “Big time.” She tapped the wide arm of her chair. “But my father told me not to worry; Africa would probably change all that anyway. He says Africa is always a good place to begin a journey.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “The beginning of August. But I’ve got to get out of Lexington. That boy you saw—”

  He wondered if they were living together.

  “—and then my parents are going away for the summer. I don’t do well by myself. I just don’t like it. My mom said I followed her around all the time when I was little. I still do! When I’m home.”

  “I could use a hand here on the farm until then. How about staying on? Would your parents mind?” He couldn’t believe he said it so easily. What was wrong with him? You’d think after seventy-one years— “They pretty much let me do what I need to do, so long as I don’t do anything totally stupid or get arrested or something.”

  “When can you come?”

  She set her drink on the porch boards. “Are you serious, Claudius?”

  This was his chance to make a joke of it. But, “I don’t know why not,” he said.

  —So much for that!

  “You seem to love flowers, so it stands to reason vegetables won’t be much of a stretch. They start out as flowers. And I won’t work you too hard. You can walk all over the place and take your pictures. Read a little F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “Wow.” She fell back against the back of her chair, sending it into a deep rock. “Wow.”

  “Aww. I’m sorry, May-May. I mean, why would you want to stay here with some old coot? I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “No! It’s not that. I mean, like, what would really keep me from doing it?”

  “The fact that you don’t know me much?”

  “Maybe.” She grinned, raising one foot to rest upon the seat of the chair. “But I’m a journalist, sort of. I know how to find out if you’re who you say you are. And let’s face it, it sure beats my job hostessing at Buffalo Wild Wings.”

  He liked her spunk.

  “Tell you what, then. You go on home and find out if it’s all right to come. Then when you do, how long do you think it’ll take you to get back out here?”

  “Three days to get everything packed up and stored at my parents’. Will that be okay?”

  “Fine by me. I got nowhere to go.”

  Claudius waved her and Girlfriend off half an hour later, mumbling “My goodness” to himself over and over.

  Scout ran up, a dead rabbit in his mouth, dropped it at Claudius’s feet, and wagged his tail.

  “Good boy. Good boy. Let’s go hang up those pictures.”

  Scout plonked himself by the cold stone fireplace as Claudius carefully measured the frames, then the wall, marking just the right spots for the nail holes, right there above the mantle.

  “Just seems right,” he said out loud.

  • 3 •

  When she showed up three days later she only had two suitcases, her dog, and a box of books. “I picked these up for you.”

  Costain, Dumas, and an assortment of other writers of the adventure ilk.

  “You don’t miss a thing, do you, May-May? You noticed my bookcase, I’ll warrant.”

  “I wish to goodness I did miss things sometimes.”

  He picked up a book from the bottom. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. One of the authors with which he departed from his norm. The other one? Evelyn Waugh.

  “Well, you just leave your worries right at the door. We got all we need right here.” He swept an arm across the barn, the fields, the coop, and finally the house.

  She laid a hand on his arm.

  He looked down. Her once-perfect, bright pink nail polish was already chipping away. His mother was never much for nail polish. Now, Sister Ruth was another story. Somehow that woman even made yellow look okay on her fingertips. Little sparkly chips too.

  May’s hand seemed almost childlike, it was so small and soft. Not that she was a small woman. Claudius figured she probably stood a few inches shorter than his mother, maybe five foot six, but no more than that. She sure was thinner! But not angular. Violet Borne never was one to watch her weight, not with all the good food they grew on their farm. And she could cook it too. He’d have to show May his mother’s “receipt book” as she had called it, a speckled composition notebook where Violet wrote down her own recipes over the years.

  “Thank you for letting me come, Claudius.”

  “Don’t even mention it. Now you just settle in upstairs, and I’ll have dinner ready in a couple of hours. Tomorrow you can start helping, but today, just settle in.”

  He hadn’t felt this zingy in a long time. A long time! He figured he’d fry up a chicken, and the arugula was ready to pick—nothing like baby arugula with its buttery-tasting, pale green leaves. There were some potatoes left in the cellar too. Mashed potatoes. Every young person liked mashed potatoes, didn’t they? And old people did too. He still could sit down with just a bowlful, butter melting on top, and call it a meal. Salt and pepper. A nice glass of tea.

  It was going to be a fair summer. He wouldn’t work her too hard. Maybe just hoeing under the weeds and taking care of the chickens. Yes, he’d let her take care of the ladies. He had a feeling she’d like those sweet little gals. Maybe they’d help her forget that caveman in Lexington. He didn’t usually take such an immediate dislike to people, but that fellow … well, he didn’t even say so much as a hello to May when she entered that apartment!

  Tomorrow night, maybe they’d have cheese omelets and some of the sausage he’d bartered some eggs for. Oatmeal for breakfast though. He’d been starting off with that for years. It got you through the morning better than anything else.

  After he’d slaughtered the chicken, cleaned it, and had it soaking in buttermilk in the fridge, he called up the steps. “May-May? How about letting Girlfriend outside? You think she’d be okay to run around?”

  “Let’s give it a shot!” she called down.

  Soon they were standing in the backyard, both of them with hands jammed deep in the front pockets of their pants, watching Girlfriend, her stocky little sausage body running from bush to bush. Peeing, pooping, having the time of her life.

  “Now that one knows how to live!” he said.

  “She’s like a little kid.”

  Claudius squeezed his lip. “Well, we’ll just hope and pray nothing happens to change that for her.”

  May sighed and hugged herself, looking at the sky. “If only humans could have a life like that.”

  Scout watched Girlfriend from a shade tree, and when she found him, he didn’t mind.

  “Will she go far if I just leave her?”

  “I doubt it,” Claudius said. “She seems to already think of this as home. What are you going to do with her for the trip?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t afford a kennel fo
r that long. I was hoping one of my friends would volunteer, but so far no go.”

  “Well, you could just leave her here with us old guys.”

  “Oh, Claudius, really? That would be wonderful. She’d have a lot more fun here than in somebody’s apartment. Thank you.”

  “Okay, back to the kitchen for me. You settling in all right?”

  “Yes, I am. And I love what you did with my photographs. You’re so sweet!”

  He held open the door for her, feeling his face flush. “Oh, and I’ll drive you to the airport if you’d like. Since your parents will be out of the country. The dogs and I would enjoy the trip.”

  “Thank you. It sure beats having Aiden drive me.”

  —Aiden? What kind of a name is that?

  “That your beau I saw?”

  “Yes. That’s Aiden. Only he’s not my beau. Not even close.”

  Claudius scratched a circle in the grass with the toe of his shoe.

  “You want to ask me what he was doing there, but you’re reticent.”

  “Well, now. You got me there.”

  “He was a date. That’s all. Just a date.”

  Seemed to him May had a lot of dates. Lucky for her, he guessed. Maybe it beat ending up alone on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Now there were a lot of folks whose shoes he could imagine himself stepping into, but May might as well have been from a foreign land. Then again, the farm had begun feeling a little foreign to him too.

  That night, when the chickens had long since settled into piles of feathers at the back of the coop and all sat as still as the rocking chairs on the front porch, he whistled to Scout and headed the Galaxy down the road to the great stone bridge.

  The park had closed long before. He shouldn’t be there, but he didn’t really care. What was the park ranger going to do to an old man like him? Tell him to leave? Well, then, fine. That’s what he would do.

  Standing in the wind, the trees in darkness, the still pond of the sky above him brimming with lights, he felt his mortality. It was why he stood here, he guessed.

  “Why, we live so close to Natural Bridge,” Violet Borne used to say, “and we never go up there.”