Moving Forward in Reverse

by Scott Martin

  Only three days had passed since I’d left Spokane and Gonzaga behind. As Ellen had predicted, I threw myself into searching out potential new home sites. It may have been a sign of the pent-up energy I tried to ignore that I’d already found a handful of properties to investigate.

  This particular real estate was actually a collection of several properties: A subdivision of five acre lots that were once part of a large farm but which had never been cleared for planting and were now being partitioned off and sold. The lots were a towering aggregation of evergreen pines and formidable ferns, dampened and glistening from the morning’s rain. Only three miles from the house we now lived in, it was located on the southern outskirts of Tumwater, near enough to give Ellen an easy commute to work, but far enough that we had space to stretch our legs and grow.

  Outside the car, everything was insulatingly quiet. All that was living seemed to be holding its communal breath, patiently waiting for winter to come to an end. I closed my eyes, listening to the silence reverberate deafeningly as only silence could until a frantic yelp cut through the peace.

  ‘All right,’ I muttered, opening the back door of my Honda CRV to release Stuart in a jumble of limbs and excitement; barely managing to catch the end of his leash before he was lost for good among the tree trunks and sagging ferns.

  ‘Easy there, buddy,’ I said and leaned back against the leash to root him down. Tail wagging and tongue lolling, he hefted his nose into the air then plunged it to the ground only to raise it up once more before repeating the gesture in a semi-circle around me as if blessing the ground we stood on. Chuckling, I slammed the door and turned to gaze down the road. My strategy was to start with properties which bordered the small, kidney-bean-shaped lake which burrowed amidst the woods and then work our way north and back to the car.

  ‘Well,’ I said as Stuart yanked the leash against my left leg, trying to sniff around the back of the car, ‘come on, then.’

  After backtracking out of the cul-de-sac, Stuart and I made our way to the south side of the lake, where we walked through three properties, each with the same species of trees and the same smells in the air. All three had a clearly defined building site, but never more than fifty feet from the road. What was the point of five acres if you lived on only the front quarter acre? Even with a property line that butted against the lake, none of the lots could inspire me to build the home Ellen and I had begun to dream up.

  I looked dispiritedly at the monotony of tree trunks around me. Surrendering to my intuition and determination not to settle, I began to pick my way back to the road with Stuart darting freely in and out of the brush behind me. (We had abandoned the notion of a leash after our first ten steps off the road.)

  The area was quiet, isolated, and fresh; preserved in the dead of winter. The air held a sharp and refreshing tinge, biting your windpipe with its chill like a gulp of ice water on a hot day. But most of all, it had mystery. A child could get lost for hours in a forest like this; playing, exploring, growing. And yet, each lot was still small enough that they’d never be too far from help. As far as places to raise a family went, this one fit the bill.

  But so did the last lot we’d traversed. And the one before that; and the one before that. They were mere continuations of each other; indistinguishable except for the length of the driveway. It was like the woodland version of Stepford. We were not a Stepford people.

  Back at the car, I reached for the handle on the backdoor, Stuart’s name on the tip of my tongue. The hiss of the s dissipated on my lips prematurely, though, as my eyes roamed over the trees. Where I had parked, a mass of impregnable pines butted against the road as if daring civilization to try encroaching any farther. Ferns taller than Stuart’s back filled in the gaps at the bases of their branch-less trunks. Everywhere I looked was populated by wild growth, untouched and pristine: just as Mother Nature had intended it.

  Where was the building site?

  On each of the other properties I had been able to see at least the boundary of the clearing where a house would go with my feet still planted on the street. But as I spun in a slow circle from this corner of the property, all I could see was a continuous wall of nature. Even squinting through the gaps between tree branches and above the ferns, I couldn’t get a sense for where the house was meant to stand. I thought back: Did we pass the building site for this lot without my noticing it? All I could remember was this woodland scenery in an uninterrupted bulwark.

  Slowly, I withdrew the fingers of the left myo from the door handle. This barricade of forbidding wilderness had piqued my curiosity with its building site concealed like the prize at the end of a treasure hunt.

  ‘One more,’ I told Stuart as I approached the pines on the right side of the road. ‘One more lot.’

  We waded into the shadowy depths of the trees, darting after squirrels if we were on four legs and sniffing out better home sites if we were on two. After a bit of foraging and hopping a small creek that seemed to weave through the property like a seam stitching the two halves together, Stuart and I emerged onto a flat patch of earth populated by a slew of leafless, white aspens. I frowned, considering. By my estimation, the space was large enough for a generously sized home and the aspens with their frail, lanky trunks could easily be cleared.

  Stuart and I circled the area like a couple of wolves closing in on unwitting prey. At the back of the aspen grove was another stream, this one larger and more determined than the one we’d hopped earlier. More of a creek, really. I inched up to its bank, stopping when my feet began to sink into the sponge-like earth at its edge. This one would take a bit more ambition to cross. It cut a winding, burbling path through the tree trunks and foliage, likely flowing into the lake farther south. When my view of its route hit a snag, I thought at first I had reached the point where the waters were absorbed by the land. They disappeared beneath a pile of leafless grey twigs I determined to be the probable remnants of a tree which had breathed its last breath in a winter storm. It didn’t occur to me that a fallen tree could hardly create this jumble of sticks until a motion caught my eye.

  There, on top of the heap of sticks, something small and brown stared at me. I could sense its gaze – feel its consciousness like a spider crawling across my skin – before I located its source. And by then it had gone still so my eyes almost didn’t recognize any life in it at all. But as I inched nearer, elongating my neck in its direction, the round bulge of a head took shape and below it a pudgy, rotund body with two tiny hands and a wide flat tail.

  A beaver, I exclaimed silently, holding my breath as if that small action alone would prevent it from scampering off. And that must be its dam, I realized, looking at the pile of twigs which now had clear intent behind them. I watched the little creature watch me, feeling a childlike excitement welling inside me. Time seemed to pause and resume playing in reverse, years slipping away from me breath by breath. I felt like a boy again, foraging for adventures and new discoveries as if there were nothing more to life than that.

  Before I knew it, though, the sensation had vanished. One instant I was making eye contact with a woodland beaver and the next with Stuart’s spotted behind as he tore into the stream in hot pursuit. I opened my mouth to yell but before the scolds could take shape, I was an adult once more.

  I smiled and straightened – hadn’t even realize I’d crouched – and watched Stuart sniff frantically and inconclusively about the dam.

  ~~~

  We purchased the lot in January and just after Thanksgiving of the same year everything in the old house was boxed up and hauled into the woods in backcountry Tumwater.

  Just over eleven months from purchase to completion, I thought as we pulled onto the winding gravel driveway and crawled the last quarter mile to our front door. Even having visited the property on a near daily basis for the duration of the building process, I felt the telltale jolt beneath my ribcage and constriction across my chest engendered by genuine excitement.

  As we emerged from the f
inal curve of the driveway, the parapet of pines gave way to a gable-roofed home with green trim and large exposed timbers. Light grey walls with a touch of an earthy green caught the sunlight and sent it bouncing back into the woods beyond. The trees had been meticulously cleared just far enough for a house to fit nestled within their protective depths.

  As I slid from the passenger seat of the van, I smiled welcomingly at our home, exactly the way we had designed it to be. I felt Ellen’s arm slide around my back. In my arms, I cradled the most essential item of the unpacking process: the stereo.

  We strolled up the S-curved exposed aggregate walkway together, then toward the forest green front door. Glass framed the door like a reverse picture frame. Fifteen feet above the ground a huge, exposed Douglas Fir timber ran horizontally the full width of the entrance, linking both sides of the sloped roof together. From the beam, like the skeleton of a fan, sprouted three hand-sawn golden timbers.

  ‘After you,’ I said with as gentlemanly a flourish as I could muster using only my head. Ellen looked up at me, capturing youthful glee with womanly poise in one elegant gesture that took my breath away. She ceremoniously slid the key into the lock and, with an easy turn of the wrist I couldn’t help but covet, opened the large front door to the rooms within.

  From the open foyer it was a straight shot to the wall of windows that backed our living room and framed a view of the woods beyond. For a brief moment, everything was silent inside the house as we stepped delicately onto the smooth golden brown concrete floor. I was taken back to my first visit to these woods and the silent reverie that seemed to encompass everything in winter. All we had stepped into was our new home, but from beneath the seventeen-foot-high ceilings, it felt closer to a historical museum. An ambiance of things untouched in perpetuation permeated the atmosphere.

  Much of the design was based on the dainty, woodland creek that now trickled through the center of our backyard. The interior was primarily framed in the same exposed, wide post fir as the entrance. Large, square beams of the natural wood accented the corners of the white walls and served as open dividers between the kitchen and dining and living room areas. In turn, separating the living room and dining room was a large two-sided fireplace faced in grey river rock. Stereo in hand, I trailed after Ellen as she silently made her way into the central hub of the house.

  ‘Oh, you didn’t!’ she enthused, her voice little more than a stage whisper.

  ‘I did.’ I realized I too had whispered and added in a louder voice, ‘Had it delivered yesterday so it’d be all set up when we moved in today.’

  She turned from the two new walnut brown and deep burgundy cloth sofas, the leather Craftsman-style recliner, and matching squat, polished wood coffee table that adorned the living room. My welcome home gift to my wife. She would find the new set of furniture that we had ordered together already laid out in our master bedroom and lofted office as well.

  With a smile so full of promises I couldn’t begin to count its meanings, she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed my right cheek. The verbal thank you she added afterwards felt unnecessary in comparison.

  ‘Now go put that thing down and turn up the music,’ she instructed.

  She spun back around to the room and the two-story windows that stretched high overhead, curving in a bright arch beneath the peak of the ceiling. I stayed where I was, watching her slowly glide into the blurred, sunlit reflections cast on the glossy floor. She stopped far enough from the windows that the whole view could still be captured in a single gaze and let her head loll back slightly to take it all in. Outside, the rows of pines and clusters of ferns remained unmarred by human hands. Snow-dusted branches billowed outward and upward, perforating the blue skyline above.

  I carried the stereo into the kitchen, setting it gently on the grey granite counter beneath a row of white cabinets and tuned the dial to KMTT FM radio. We spent the rest of the day unpacking and dismantling cardboard boxes to the tunes of Seattle’s #1 Hit Music Station. When the sun sank below the tree line and our new home fell into shadow, I lit an inaugural fire in our new fireplace. Twelve of the grey stones that framed the fireplace were engraved with the words: Honesty, Knowledge, Family, Integrity, Faith, Respect, Love, Friendship, Humor, Confidence, Patience, and Responsibility. This was our home and these were words that represented us.

  27

  Wecandothat!

  Ellen and I were lying together on the living room sofa, my back propped against a pile of pillows and her head on my chest while the local evening news on KIRO, the CBS affiliate out of Seattle, aired on TV. From around the room, the fluttering snores of our Dalmatian, Stuart, and mini Dachshund, Fritz along with Bogart’s gently wheezing purr accompanied the broadcast. Outside, the world was in quiet reverie.

  Yesterday’s four inches of snow had turned into today’s slush, leaving the world damp and matted like a wet dog. The last few weeks of the fall semester had rushed by in a downhill flood, each moment since I told Mike of my decision disappearing before I could fully comprehend it. The soccer season ended uneventfully. My semester coursework had come and gone, culminating in a series of final papers which would mean nothing now that I had left the master’s program. Everything was shifting; the spotlight on my life slowly panning left, searching for the next focal point.

  I sighed, unintentionally ruffling Ellen’s curls with my breath. She shifted in my arms. The “bad” news segment (crime coverage) was dragging on longer than I felt necessary. How important were all these robberies and shootings, jail riots and protests in the grand scheme of things? I wasn’t sure I cared about any of it. If it didn’t breach my front door it might be better not to know. In fact, I didn’t want to know. Not tonight at least. This was our night for peace and quiet. What were we doing disrupting it with all this negativity?

  I opened my mouth to suggest turning the television off in favor of whipping up a nice meal, when the anchor, white teeth flashing, cheered, ‘This concludes the evening crime report.’ Of course it does, I thought with a snort that was more of a sniff.

  Just as I was thinking to reach for the remote so I could cut her off before she tried to draw us in with another primer ad, she continued, ‘Up next: An area family adopts three siblings from Haiti. Stay tuned.’

  I paused. Adopts three siblings from Haiti? my mind repeated, already beginning to imagine what it would be like to raise three Haitian children in Washington State. With a mental shrug, I acquiesced.

  One up-beat broadcast, then dinner, I consoled my empty stomach.

  Ellen and I sat quietly through the commercials like hypnotized children, eyes never straying from the advertisements propagated across the screen. I gave each ad unwarranted focus, listening intently to the woman proclaiming her new laundry detergent to be the best one yet (It even removes those pesky grass stains!) and to the slew of Brits extolling Wendy’s new Cheddar Lovers’ Bacon Cheeseburger (Fit for royalty! The Queen will love it!) and the mellow voice of a deep-chested man singing to the Apple iBook (You turned my whole world aa-rrround…). I read the words ‘Think differently,’ emblazoned on the screen in simple black typeface beneath an orange iBook three times. I even followed the gazes of a family of cartoon polar bears as they watched fireworks while sipping on bottles of Coca Cola. Anything to keep my mind occupied.

  Since leaving Gonzaga I had felt oddly left behind. It felt backwards, to be the one doing the leaving and yet also feeling left. Life seemed to be running away without me, as if everyone else were zooming past in the left lane while I rode the potholes on the right. Without a clear purpose, I was stranded in their wake, floundering amidst car fumes and a void of uncertainty – a dankness in my lungs I didn’t want to associate with the cold density of The Fog – doing my best to look anywhere but down.

  When the perfectly coiffed, smiling news anchor resumed her place in the center of our television screen, a backdrop image of a vibrant blue sky overlaying the Seattle skyline behind her, I blinked a few times and loosened the musc
les in my shoulders. Staying focused on this segment would hopefully require less force of will.

  After a brief intro – a recap of the primer ad, really – the image blinked to a female reporter securely wrapped in a long winter coat, hat, and scarf with a thickly-mittened hand dwarfing the microphone she held. She smiled perkily at the camera, but her voice gave away the congestion lurking behind her bright, Rudolf nose.

  At her back, a gently sloping pasture mottled with brown growth rolled modestly upwards, curving into a mound like the back of a turtle. Snow blotted the ground in patches, spotting the fallow foliage with white in a pattern not unlike that of the animals grazing off of it. They had elongated backs and necks supported by four legs, stocky in comparison to the body they supported. The result was a bone structure not unlike a six-foot tall wiener dog with the neck of a giraffe and the face of a sheep.

  Thick, fleecy fur grew across their lanky bodies and up their necks like moss wrapping around a tree trunk. For the most part, they seemed content to graze in peace. Only occasionally, one would turn disinterestedly in the camera’s direction, peering at the goings-on like an ornery old man squinting from beneath furry brows.

  The family of five clustered just to the right of the numbed reporter in two jumbled lines, however, appeared incapable of looking at anything but the camera aimed at their wide-eyed, grinning faces. The husband and wife I gauged to be in their early forties – he silver-haired and congenial-looking with smiling, grey eyes only a few shades darker than his hair; she a rosy-cheeked redhead with laugh lines around her green eyes and a sharply pointed chin. Stationed in a line at their feet, from tallest to smallest, stood three dark-skinned, brown-eyed children. Two boys with bulbous, round heads still too big for their spindly frames, and a sister between them in age. I had the distinct notion that were you to separate these two lines of people, putting the man and woman in one place and the children in another, you’d never know that they belonged together. But posed as they were in Christmas-card fashion, there was no question that they were related. They were a family solely because they had come together.