by Randy Mixter
They were always kind enough to let him stay for as long as he wished, but he never stayed more than a night. His stories of the army, particularly his stint in Vietnam, fascinated the hippies, young and old alike, but he talked little of the war. When they asked him why he chose to fight, and many did, he told them he did it for his honor. They never judged him or held him accountable for his established conventional ways. Nor did they try to change his views. They were no longer activists, no longer defiant. They had become listeners, chroniclers of an age that would soon be lost forever.
His search for Sarah continued through the many villages and towns scattered about the state. There were a few who spoke of a young woman fitting her description, but, at some point, the trail would dry up and he would be back to square one.
From Washington he went to Canada. He worked temporary jobs in the Ottawa area while he searched. Then he went to Oregon and scoured that state without any luck.
Lastly, he worked his way through California, traveling down the coastline from Shasta County through the Napa valley. He followed the Pacific to Monterey and the Big Sur, and eventually found his way back into San Francisco.
He took up a friend’s invitation to spend the night if he was in the area. They had kept up with things through letters and the occasional phone call.
He rang the doorbell of the house in the South Bay section of San Francisco. Inside, he heard a girl’s voice calling her mom. When she came to the door, Celeste was as pretty as he remembered her. Her husband Matt was close behind.
That day and night, they talked about the summer of love as if it were yesterday. He told them his quest for Sarah had been an exercise in futility. Neither seemed surprised by this news.
Before he left the following day, his close friend Matt showed him his scars from a war of many years before. They had almost completely healed. Yours will too, he told him.
He waved goodbye to them as he stood by his car. Matt, Celeste, and the daughter they named Sarah waved back. On the side of the house, in front of some bushes, he noticed a small hand carved wooden sign. It read The Hollow.
He arrived in Haight-Ashbury a short time later. The change he saw there astonished him. That section of San Francisco, once home to a generation of flower children, had become a haven for the poor and homeless. The living-breathing organism that was this part of the city was now a dying shell.
He parked his car on Stanyan Street and walked up the hill at the Golden Gate Park. Near the top, he sat and rested. At the base of the hill, a girl played with her dog. A few walked and jogged, some bicycled, but the hill itself was nearly barren of life.
He closed his eyes and urged away the years, thinking he may yet see her, but when he turned and opened his eyes, the crest of the hill was bleak and desolate, save for one solitary tree.
He climbed up to that sacred ground, where Sarah danced for her parents beneath the moon, and they, in turn, told her of her future and of Heaven.
He bent down and ran his hand across the grass. He noticed several wildflowers growing around him in colors of blue, red, purple, orange, and white. They reminded him of the flowers Sarah often wore in her hair and how, on occasion, she would give him one, out of pity mostly, because he could never catch her and now he feared he never would.
He left the hill and walked the streets to the house on Ashbury Street. The old place had never looked better. The house was freshly painted; new sturdier wood replaced the sagging porch roof. The glass on all the windows was intact and a level sidewalk and steps cleaved a lawn of freshly cut grass.
Its soul is gone, Alex thought as he stood outside the house where he once fell in love. The life force of the house had been washed, painted, and hammered away. The house now looked like all the others on the street, and the secrets, that only this place knew, would remain forever hidden away in the dust of summers past.
An older couple sat outside. They were rocking back and forth on the same swing that he and Sarah had sometimes shared. The swing Chick could not bear to part with. He could have walked past, but he wanted to be up there one last time, looking down on Ashbury Street.
When he approached the man and wife, and told them of the time he had spent there, they were more than happy to hear the history of the place.
He did ask about a first floor storage closet. Strange that he should mention that, they said. When they first looked at the house, considering purchase, they remembered a mattress in there. What an odd place for a bedroom they both thought. After they bought the house, they saw the mattress was gone, and the storage room was empty.
He sat on the porch with them for a while. They were courteous and friendly, and even asked him if he wanted to spend the night before his long journey home. He politely declined. If he thought for one minute that the ghost of Sarah was still there, he would have gladly accepted the invitation. But he knew Sarah. She was a wanderer. Even her spirit was too restless to call one place home.
It was on the porch, drinking iced tea with strangers, that he knew he would never find her. On the place where he once wrote while she read a book of poetry, he gave up hope of ever holding her again, making her laugh, or wiping a tear from her eye.
Before he left, he went to the railing. There, beneath a coat of fresh paint, he saw two hearts pierced by an arrow. He felt the grooves he made with a kitchen knife so long ago.
“You?” the elderly woman behind him asked.
“Yes,” Alex said.
“And you lost her?” She stood beside him now, looking down at the carving.
“No. I didn’t lose her.” He looked out on to Ashbury Street, at the sidewalk where he said goodbye to Sarah seven years before. “I see her each night in my dreams.”
The hard rain battering the window brought him back to the present and, for the briefest of moments, he saw the face of the young man he once was, so many years before, reflected in the glass. Thunder rumbled in the distance and the window’s surface trembled beneath his hand.
You may have to seek her out, or maybe she will come to you.
He pushed away from the window. For the longest time he stood in silence. When he finally started to walk, he knew where he was going. He had promised himself he would not go there for a while. However, it had been over a month, had it not? That was a long time.
The book was where it had always been, on a shelf above the fireplace next to an open locket, worn and rusted.
He first looked at the locket. The years had washed her face of color, but Sarah remained as beautiful as always.
He picked up the locket and gently turned it in his hand. They kept their promise Sarah, he said, before he returned it to its resting place.
He took the book down slowly, with reverence, and stared at the worn cover. After a while, he opened it. He knew exactly which page to turn to. He could find that page blindfolded.
It was there, as he knew it would be. It was old and brown, and he knew that the slightest breeze would turn it to dust. He no longer touched it. He feared it crumbling apart. He contented himself with looking at it.
It happened as it always did when he stared at the rose that Sarah gave him those many years ago. The flower reshaped itself before his eyes until it was in bloom, its petals full and red, and its stem a bright green.
Then he was back again, back to the hill where he first saw her. The summer air was warm and playful. Young people, in colorful attire, milled about talking and laughing, and the song that he had heard in a dream so many years ago was there still, teasing him once more.
Sarah was at the top of the hill, by the solitary tree, as he thought she would be. He knew better than to try to call out to her. Instead, he contented himself to watch her as she danced in the moonlit sky.
And then she slowly turned toward him and smiled.
Sarah.
I may have lost the music, but the song will be mine forever.
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