Brad got out of the car and opened the trunk. The day was mild. Snow covered the ground even though no new snow had fallen for a few weeks. Sunrise had already overcome the trees to the east, and placed golden strips of light, like spotlights leading the way up to the cabin door. Brad removed things from the trunk and walked up to the cabin. Turning to make sure his father was behind him, Brad squinted his eyes. “You have the keys, don’t you?”
“I thought you had them!”
“Really, Dad.”
“Always on my key ring,” Jim said. He opened the door and they both stepped into the dampness of the uninhabited room.
“It’s really cold in here.”
Jim laughed. “Make a fire.”
“Are we staying in?”
“We’ll be gone a few hours at best,” Jim said. “The place will be warm when we get back.”
Jim unpacked the groceries and put their extra clothes in the small closet in the bedroom. He threw sheets on the beds, too. By the time he finished, Brad had a strong fire going in the fireplace. “We could have used those heaters,” he said, pointing to two space heaters in the corner of the room.
“I like the fire better,” Jim told him. “Let’s say we grab something light and take a walk. I want to show you something.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ll show you.”
After a quick breakfast, the two of them dressed appropriately for the mild temperatures outside and left the cabin.
“You think the fire’ll be okay?” Brad said, running to catch up with Jim.
“Yes, I’m sure.” Jim had already crossed the small clearing and entered the woods.
“The snow’s hard to walk in with this top crust. You break though a second after your weight is on your foot. It’s weird.”
“Surprises you, doesn’t it?” Jim said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to take you around the hill to the valley. It opens up into some old fields. There’s a deserted farm there.” Jim’s pace remained steady and his eyes focused on his objective.
Brad had a rough time with the terrain. Years of sidewalks and shopping malls made him not want to raise his feet enough. He tripped every few steps until he learned to lift his feet higher than he was accustomed to.
Jim smiled to himself as he walked ahead, leading the way.
“Is this place abandoned?” Brad asked.
“More or less.”
“There’re people living there?”
“Ghosts maybe.”
“Dad.”
While growing up, Brad had been primarily influenced by Becky. Possibly they had developed the same connection Jim and his daughter experienced. Jim knew Brad didn’t believe in him talking to Connie any more than Becky did.
“Okay, it’s abandoned,” Jim said, “for all practical purposes.”
The fields and the farm came into view as Jim and Brad made the turn along the hill. The sun did a fine job lighting the area. Anyone would have to fall in love with a place like this, Jim thought. Jim stopped to let Brad catch up.
Brad stood beside his father on the hillside. “It’s beautiful.”
“Now do you know why I hunt here?”
“Hike, Dad. Now I know why you come here. I would too.” He put his hand on Jim’s shoulder. “I will from now on.”
Jim patted Brad’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Brad kept up with Jim on the trip down toward the house and barn. They helped one another over the stone fence while the sun warmed them.
“So,” Jim said while crossing through the field with his son, “do you and Susan talk about sex and love? The differences?”
“You must be murder on the kids in school.”
“Hey, I just don’t forget unanswered questions that easily.”
Brad had been loosening up since the trip began and was able to joke with his father almost like he would his own friends. Only a slight weight of parental respect kept Brad from pushing the conversation into cruder territory, but it was better not to go there anyway. It was less honest, less serious, than where his father headed the conversation. “To answer the question directly: yes, we do.”
“You do or you have?”
“Semantics.”
“Not really.” Jim stopped to look at his son. “It’s an important question. I’m learning that you have to continue talking. I believe that’s something Becky and I have failed to do. You wouldn’t say something simple like, ‘I love you,’ just once and expect it to be over.” He looked into Brad’s face. His son listened closely, watched his father’s lips move as he spoke.
“You’re right, Dad. And we do talk about it.” Brad swallowed. “Regularly. Ever since we learned about your . . . incident.”
“My affair.”
“It made me wonder about our relationship, so Susan and I talk about it. At first she got annoyed with me. It’s difficult to talk about. It brings out a lot of feelings, makes you vulnerable. You’re right. Saying ‘I love you’ is simple. It’s too simple. Each person decides what it means and forgets that the other person might not think the same way. When you talk about love, really talk about it, you start to explore more deeply. And love and sex aren’t always that close. But if there’s love, real love, then there’s no sex without including that love. If the love’s not real, I’m convinced that there is only sex. The important element is missing.”
“It’s the difference between cutting down a field of wheat to clear land for a ball field and clearing it to feed yourself and your family for the winter,” Jim said.
“Maybe.” Brad began to walk toward the house again.
“You don’t like my analogy?”
“I don’t know. I see your point though. One act has so much more behind it, a purpose, so to speak, at least in reference to the wheat. The kids who would use the baseball field have a purpose too. You know what, though?” Brad said.
“What’s that?”
“I would never want to have sex without love. I don’t mean the words or the feelings. I mean the understanding. Susan can say, ‘I love you’ all she wants, and she can actually love me so much, and in just the right ways for me, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”
“Then what is enough?” Jim asked.
“You have to talk about it, explain it from every angle. Actually sit on the floor together, or the bed, the couch, but together, not across the kitchen table for God’s sake.” He was excited about the conversation now. “You have to talk so that you begin to understand. That’s what does it. It’s the weight of understanding that makes the difference. When Susan comes to me I know that she brings the words of poems and the colors of her favorite painting with her. She brings the cat she loved when she was a little girl and the children we’ll have one day. With all that present, there couldn’t be more love. There’s better sex because of the love, because of the understanding.”
“Wow.”
“Sorry, Dad, for going on so much.”
“That’s all right. I processed what you said as quickly as I could. You seem to have thought about this, explored it more than I have.”
“You think? You and Mom have been together a long time. You’ve made it.”
“And I think we grew out of what you’re talking about before we could grow into it. We’ve talked — don’t get me wrong. You learn a lot about a person in all those years. But I may have missed in my own life the point I was trying to make with you. It seems I’m learning more from our time together than I thought. I thought I’d be able to teach a little too. Now I’m not so sure.”
“You listen. So many people don’t. I learned that from you. It’s always been your greatest gift.”
Jim lowered his head. For him, the trip had already been a success. Anything more would be a bonus, extra credit.
Once they got to the porch, their conversation switched to the old house. Brad was really taken by it, its look and its feel. Much more taken than Jim had expected him to be. In fact, Brad approac
hed the place with an interest and enthusiasm mirroring Jim’s when he first discovered it.
“Wow, check it out inside, Dad. There’s still some furniture in there.” Brad looked in the window, one hand on either side of the sill, holding his body back from falling inside. “Have you been inside?”
“Yes, through that window, actually.”
“Doesn’t the door work?” Brad asked.
“You know, I never tried it.”
“Let’s.” Brad went to the door and pulled on the handle. It was locked or nailed shut, but wiggled on its hinges. Brad ran his hand around it, looking for the place it was secured. It wouldn’t matter. It would still be closed to them, but Brad’s curiosity made him explore it. “It’s nailed shut at the top. That’s why it wiggles so much, but won’t open.” He seemed completely satisfied just to know. “Your instincts were right, Dad. We’ll take the window.”
Brad climbed through as Jim watched. They had a similar build. Jim always thought of it as average. Not intimidating, nor wimpy. Brad’s youth, though, was clearly expressed in his speed and agility, even through he wasted movements in turning this way or that—all expressions of excitement escaping through the energy of the body. Jim watched Brad explore the house in almost the exact sequence he’d followed the first time.
“From the hill,” Brad said while creeping up the stairs, “this place looks inhabited.”
Jim remembered the curtain he had pulled down in the kitchen and was glad he did.
“I can see why you’d say the house isn’t quite deserted. It looks occupied, there’s furniture, and,” he stopped suddenly, “even the bed’s made. That’s really odd. Who’d do that?”
“Maybe it was just left that way,” Jim suggested. “After all, the furniture and everything. . . “
Brad touched the quilt and walked up the side of the bed sliding his hand along it. “It’s kind of romantic, isn’t it, Dad? Is that what you thought?”
“I did. Either that, or morbid.”
“No, romantic. I bet the old couple died together in this bed.”
Jim watched his son’s facial expressions as they changed from interest, to excitement, to seriousness. Brad thought deeply about things Jim hadn’t imagined he would. About such things he himself thought deeply, things he paid attention to.
“Dad, did you look out this window?” Brad motioned for Jim to come closer.
Jim could feel he son’s energy as they stood together, side by side, looking out the second story window of the old farmhouse.
“It’s beautiful,” Brad said. “What a view they had of their land when they were lying in bed.”
Making love, Jim thought, and knew that Brad was thinking the same thing.
CHAPTER 7
THEY DIDN’T EXPLORE THE BARN that Saturday, but they did go through the house more thoroughly than Jim had done by himself. He followed Brad into the attic and the basement, through each bedroom. They talked for hours about Brad’s job, and Jim’s, about their life together while Brad was growing up. About Connie.
Brad had loved his sister, and the closeness between Brad and his father took on a new closeness. Jim felt comfortable sharing Connie’s and his secrets with Brad. In fact, he felt such relief telling Brad about her that it brought her back into reality for a brief time. Jim explained about her difficulties making and keeping friends. How the other girls’ boyfriends would say how pretty she was and how her friends would then blame her. He even told Brad how she came to him the first time she made love to a boy. Jim almost cried, remembering her hurt and confusion.
Jim and Brad kept talking during the walk back to the cabin and throughout their late lunch. Brad told Jim that he was amazed at how well Jim handled Connie’s small disasters—that’s what Brad called them, small disasters—and that he was proud of Jim for not scolding her for decisions already made. Jim glowed in his son’s praise.
After lunch, Jim cleaned and arranged one of the beds for a short nap. He felt more tired than he thought he would from the morning’s excursion. Brad cleaned up the dishes from lunch and dusted the cabin quickly before settling down to read a book. When Jim appeared again, Brad was asleep on the raggedy couch that protruded from the wall near the fireplace, which still blazed warmly, pushing yellow-orange light into the room. Jim quietly put on some warm clothes, then went outside, shutting the door behind him. The weather had turned cold, but felt good on his face. He decided to take a short walk into the woods. Five or ten minutes. Jim knew that if Brad woke up, he’d be worried, so the walk would have to be close by.
The sun angled down from the far west over the tree line, which cast shadows, long and deep, into the woods. Shivers ran up his spine and his hands shook as he entered the woods. He shrugged off his reactions. He glanced at his watch and calculated that it’d get completely dark in an hour, an hour and a half, maybe earlier in the woods. But he’d be ten minutes at most.
These woods had always been familiar to him. Why he had waited so long to explore the old house, he didn’t know. One reason, of course, was that it had been occupied until only a few years previous. Now, he wished he’d taken the time to visit the people who’d lived there. But why?
He let his thoughts wander, reviewing his day with Brad. Contrary to how he told Brad he paid much more attention to the now, Jim skirmished in that recent past like a child playing along the beach. When he looked at his watch once again, almost forty minutes had gone by. He had to turn back.
As he rested for a moment against a bare maple tree, he heard walking. Expecting it to be Brad, he waited. A few more steps and Jim saw it. A doe. It looked directly at him. Familiar? When he moved, it stepped away, but it didn’t run. He moved again, this time toward it a few steps. It stepped away also, matching him for distance. He spoke, “Are you the deer who . . .?” The deer’s ears lifted in curiosity, its head turned away. “Don’t!” Jim followed it into the woods, watching closely as its white tail bobbed deeper into the darkness. He ran as fast as he could, but the doe disappeared ahead of him.
His head lowered, he walked back to where he had been, then got the idea to look for a path. Magically, as he scanned the area, the path appeared one place, then appeared somewhere else. First it led between two pines, then near a pile of old leaves, around a gully, then past some bushes. Everywhere Jim looked he saw the possibility of a path. But the deer had gone on behind him. He turned around and again found the possibility of one path after another. This time he decided to go deeper into the woods, follow where he last remembered seeing the doe. Maybe the path would become more visible.
At several places Jim was sure he had come across the right path, but each time it fizzled out into thickets or groves of trees, which left no indication of a place well traveled by anything. Overhead, the sky, patched with areas of clouds and blue like a quilt, still held onto the last luminescent flicker of the setting sun. Jim shook his head and began to cry. He wanted the deer back! If he were, in fact, the giver, why couldn’t he give himself this one small thing? One last time, he thought. One last time. He shivered and pulled his jacket close to his neck. This had become a familiar activity of his, trying to keep warm in the cold world. He shook his head at his own tendency toward melodrama, then turned towards the cabin.
For a short while he was lost, disoriented really, for he knew the woods well. Once he got his bearings any nervousness due to his confusion in the darkness subsided and he plodded on back to the cabin. He tired more quickly now than when he searched the deer’s whereabouts, and rested regularly. When he rounded a small grove of trees, he heard Brad yelling.
“Dad!”
Jim looked at his watch, but it was too dark to read the dial. He yelled back, “Brad.”
“Dad?”
“Where are you?” Jim yelled.
“I’ll keep talking.”
Jim followed Brad’s half-yells until he saw, in a short distance, a flashlight beam. It is easy to misinterpret the direction of voices while in the woods, but not thei
r volume. Jim edged closer by concentrating on the loudness of Brad’s voice. “Brad, over here.”
Brad turned around several times until, moving more slowly, Jim could say, “This way.” Brad followed his flashlight beam, and soon the two men were side by side.
“I was worried sick. Where the hell were you?” Brad said.
“Walking. I guess I misjudged the time it would take to get dark. I’m surprised you didn’t get lost. I know these woods,” Jim said.
“What if you collapsed or something?”
“I get tired sometimes. I don’t collapse.” Jim held back telling Brad just how tired he got, or how easy it would have been to just settle in comfortably next to a tree and sleep, which was what he wanted most at the time.
“We’d better get back,” Brad said. He looked around. “Which way?”
They both laughed. “This way,” Jim said, taking the lead. “It’s a good thing you found me.”
It was only a ten-minute walk back to the cabin, the same distance Jim had expected to go as he began his short walk. That was before he saw the deer. And now, halfway back, he wanted to return to the woods. The feeling grew inside him like a tidal wave. The silence, broken only by their footfalls, made the feeling grow and grow, and as the impulse to turn and run back into the woods increased, Jim’s pace slowed.
Brad finally broke the silence, shattering Jim’s growing need to go back like a fallen glass on a stone patio. “You getting tired, Dad?”
“No. No, I’m not.” Jim picked up the pace.
“Were you looking for them?” Brad blurted out, his voice violating the dark woods. He held the flashlight to the side, shining it beyond Jim, but in front of him. Jim had never reached for it, not requiring its security.
What had Becky told him? Had the two of them discussed his encounter with the deer, as he and Connie would have done had it been Becky who had the experience? But Brad had asked the question. Was it innocent or an accusation? Was it judgmental? Jim wanted to know what Brad’s tone of voice indicated, but just as quickly didn’t care. The experience had been a miracle. If he wanted to chase it, who could say he was wrong in doing so? “Yes,” he admitted.
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