Old Border Road

by Susan Froderberg

  But you find only silence.

  God speaks not, nor does He show you His wisdom. And if He did, you could likely not understand the subtlety of the words or the magnitude of the thought. For God’s wisdom is double to that which exists, and His utterance the nuance and grandeur of all that is.

  No, you do not find the Eternal One by searching. For in searching you have positioned yourself as already lost. And your lot will be to wander in this world without end.

  All you need do is believe.

  It is this easy: believe the spirit to be within you, and you are of the spirit. For each and every one of you is of the spirit, each is of the divine unity, the Eternal One, you are of God. I tell you, you are God.

  Then behave as God, I say. Straighten your backs and lift your heads and gird up your loins. For when was this world ever without suffering? And who would not believe that our world is necessarily a world of opposites? For one half of a thing cannot exist without the other half. Pain exists only in relation to pleasure, just as happiness is but the other half of sorrow. There is no sound without the silence, no up without a down, no order without chaos, no subject without object. There is no man without woman, no birth without death, no entity without the void. No light exists apart from the darkness, for surely the day is forever one with the night.

  He maketh sore, and He bindeth up.

  He woundeth, and His hands make whole.

  And so you will see misery pass away, just as the waters pass away. Just as the wind blows through the grasslands so the seeds may be set adrift. You will forget your pain, I promise, and be again as the morning.

  Now, good souls, I tell you, stop the search. Only want and look outward. Put yourselves into attitudes of reception, and then you will see. Be in perfect knowledge of the goodness and spirit of the earth, the universal beauty to which every particle is related, those persons near and dear to you, those persons, as well, far off or despised. See these trying times, not as a curse, but rather as a test of your abiding faith and delicate intelligence, and at destruction and famine you cannot but laugh. You need not wait for your God to speak out of the whirlwind. Hold the infant in your arms and see how perpetual is the Messiah. Every day a Christ is born. Be assured that the divine kingdom is yet here upon the earth, and that you who so make the effort will without effort enter into this kingdom.

  The Padre drinks from a glass of water. He begins again.

  I tell you: prophecy is innate in you. Be a prophet. Be a helpmate and a teacher. To him who has lost a suit, give him one of your two. To him who has lost the warmth of child or the breath of wife, listen to tears and regrets and reach to place a hand to a hand. All sincere conversation is worship, every loving touch a benediction, your hands a light, your eyes, grace. Yet do not expect to know the greatness of your gesture, as it is of no mind. Simply give and you will receive. Life depends not upon your having more than others. For what profit can there be in the material life? When all your accumulations shall go to others, and even your name will be worn from the stone and forgotten. Soul circumscribes everything, abolishing time, abolishing space. So I say, give now while you are able. It is the only way, your only salvation.

  For the word good is to God, as the word evil is to devil.

  We walk in the valley of the shadow. Our days upon earth are but shadow. Yet we who live in the shadow of death are able to see the very light of life.

  From the unreal, lead me to the real.

  From darkness, lead me to the light.

  From death, lead me to immortality.

  And now let me bless you and keep you.

  Amen.

  WE MOVED THROUGH days gauzed with worthless dirt, numbed and dazed within layers of but more dust, with everything about us in a stage of drying up and decay. We kept our faces muffled over with bandannas, our sleeves, our hats, with whatever we might use to breathe into for relief. We rode perched high up over the road in the watertruck, aiming toward some sparkling cradle of water ahead, every time arriving to find our visions gone to vapor, the water before us but shimmering blacktop and crawling sand.

  We sought to providence a resting spot. We turned off the road and drove along the canalbank, with the old dog powdering a trail alongside us. When we got to the zanja madre, we stopped and got out of the watertruck, stepping out into paled clumps of scorpionweed and buffalo bur and making our way to the jetty. Son found a place to put the container down, and he opened it and reached in for a handful of ashes. He released his grip to toss a handful out over the water, and as he did, the wind kicked up and ash flew right back and into our faces.

  As if the old man had one last thing to say at the end, after all.

  It seemed then the only message passed on to us. For Rose’s Daddy had otherwise left without a single word. There were no last words at all, no farewell he had to bid, no thoughts for us to keep and carry on with. We added betray to betray. We searched and we searched. We searched for hours, days. We reached into the pockets of shirts and pants and jackets for his whys of leaving. We looked for his ink left on paper, a poem maybe pinned to a pillow or weighted beneath a vase, a saying that might have been clipped into place or dropped to the floor. We needed to find his script writ out on a mirror, or a note of his left tacked to a door, maybe a letter somewhere cubbied into adobe. We walked through all the cool dark rooms of the house, needing a way of knowing. We went out and sought for what we hoped for in the corral, moving about the stalls, peering into the grooves of the walls and the corners of the floor of the tackroom. We picked over shelves of bolts and nails and studs but found no plans or wishes that might be intended for us. We rummaged throughout the toolhouse, eyeballing every post and beam for what words there might be posted. We stood at the edge of the cement gully, staring down into the musty trough of it. We stood out in the middle of the melon shed, surveying the concrete floor for something scrawled. We ran our palms across the dashboard of the watertruck, finding nothing but grime and the forever cover of dust. We looked into the clouds of the old dog’s old eyes. Finally we quit seeking, finding nothing anywhere otherwise.

  On an afternoon soon after, Ham drove out to the old adobe house to show me something that had come to him in the mail. The envelope bore Ham’s name, but the letter inside was addressed to no one, though it was clearly written in Rose’s Daddy’s hand. Nor was the letter signed, making it seem as if the old man hadn’t finished all of what he had to say, as if he might have been waiting for answers to his questions so that more words could come from him. We would never know why the old man hadn’t put his name on the paper. We knew only to keep the message from Son.

  EVENING COMES AND the sun anoints the old adobe house in a splendor of golden color again. Remnants of the day spill inside, settling in rods of light that fall upon walls and floor and tabletops. Toward the east, looking out the kitchen window, the sky begins to deepen and cool. I watch as another little eternity rolls by, one day blown in and away, and after, the same, and so time gathers again, and we begin another beginning.

  There’s a scent that holds the memory of the start of things, an old-spicey smell of cologne that ignites a wanting. The scent drifts into the kitchen to find me, and as if there were hands to it, it reaches and touches, coming in from as far off as the other side of the house. It fills the room, covering over the smells of domesticity—the sizzle of meat in the pan, the lemon suds brimming in the sink, the bitter coffee dregs left in the bottom of the pot. I untie the cloth that’s wrapped around my waist, letting the sweet old-spiceyness spark a where and a what there once was, reminding me of a time ago. But there’s something that’s off—the scent of change, what it carries is wrong, a seeming not for the better that tightens the knot in my gut.

  We meet up at the front door, Son gussied and reeking.

  What? he says. Did I go and blow a stirrup again?

  You could at least look at me, I say.

  He doesn’t.

  Dinner is just about done.

&n
bsp; Who asked you to cook any dinner?

  How come you’re all duded up?

  I’m tired of mopin’ around the place.

  Me too.

  You ought to get out some, then.

  If you go out—Son—no! If you do.

  Do what you got to do for yourself.

  Don’t go.

  Don’t tell me what to do and don’t.

  He goes out the door and shuts it hard behind him, setting the windows to shuttering in the panes, putting the old dog’s tail to dangling between her haunches.

  It’s like someone coming up out of me when I cry out, like a hot ball of something bursting inside and rising out from a place deeper than any place I knew there was. It’s a scream that burns at my throat and widens my eyes to a sting, a cry that makes my skin curn-up and my scalp feel aflame. It takes the breath away. Sparks shoot out and spiral about, as from something afire in me, now out and out of control and surging ever higher. Then there’s no more breath, no sound at all, no answer to my call, only a terrible silence, an emptiness too absolute. A kind of tingling feeling around my mouth. My legs wobbly. Walking as if the house were in a lean, or the planet were gone off its axis. I put a hand to a wall and try to right myself. I will myself not to tumble and fall. There’s a slow, rising volume of the cricket shrill. Then that suck of air comes that shuts the ear closed and makes the queer ringing louder again, makes the shallow pant of my breath harder and coarser, as if breathing from a tube underwater. The panting turns to gasping, as if there were not air enough in the room to breathe, not air enough in the whole house to breathe. As if there were not air enough anywhere in the world left to breathe. And I’m running in a sudden to the bathroom, fumbling with the toilet lid, plunging forward, giving over, vomiting into the bowl. The retching done. I lift my head, towel my mouth, wipe my eyes, hold the towel to my nose, smelling his cologne for a moment. No. Don’t. Don’t. Then spit what’s left in my mouth into the towel and go out. I move about the house, room to room, like a dumbstruck animal. I stand in the cool dark parlor, in the lost time of the old clock, checking the hands the way they are set on the face and so to check myself, noting the time in order to put some order back, to know where I am, to steady the teeter and sway all about me. The smell of the cologne becomes the smell of vomiting, the sour sweetness everywhere and sickening. I rush back to the bathroom, wait for another wave to carry the stuff up and away. All of it out, all of him out, until again the heaving stops. I splash the water over my face, then see the face in the mirror, a face hot and red, the alien look in the eyes, not mine, afraid, and I turn from what I’ve seen and don’t recognize. I hardly feel my legs taking me back into the kitchen, standing me up in front of the window. I leave out the light, allowing the ending of the day to dim all the things about—the pots, the dishes, my hand on the teacloth, the diamond ring on my finger, letting the dusk swallow all of everything up.

  I make my way back to the parlor and on down the hallway, passing the closed door of the master bedroom, master and mistress forever gone to us.

  There is no one to call.

  There is the Padre to call.

  But I don’t call. I just look at the telephone, affixed and silent on the wall, and I go and get the stepladder and take it into the bedroom. I climb up and reach for the brass handle and pull the cupboard door open and blow the dust and brush the cobwebs away before dragging Rose’s old suitcase out, the one Son and I had used during our honeymoon. There’s an ache in that vague somewhere inside, just having to see the thing and the time and the places attached to it, being snagged for a moment by the happiness that had once been.

  Hold it while ye may.

  I sweep the rest of the dust off the empty suitcase with a sleeve. Take clothes from drawers and put them into the suitcase. Reach for the satchel and put things in it too.

  I heft the suitcase onto the benchseat of the watertruck, toss in the satchel, climb in and start up, clutch and shift, and let the clutch out. I holler out the window for the old dog to go on back. She fades out the side mirror along with the old adobe house, fades away with the lemon trees, the surrounding fields, the pasture, the stalls, the melon shed, with all of everything lessening as it gets taken up by the evening.

  The empty drum of the tank rattles like a wanting. That’s all I remember of the drive. I’m here in what seems but an instant, turning into the church lot, the wheels of the watertruck climbing over the curb, making the entire bulk of it tremble and lilt. Through the settle of dust is the building lit up before me, the tan stucco, the low-pitched roof, the broad facade, the arched windows adding some ornament. A young Mexican man, holding a long pole with a duster head at the end of it, stands in a swath of electric light. He looks my way, then goes back to dry-mopping the film from the glass.

  The church has been dimly lit for evening. The altar is covered over with a ruby-colored runner, and large candles on brass stands are aflame at each end. There ahead, where I first saw the Padre, is the pulpit rising upward by but a single wooden step. Across from it, a chancel for the choir. There’s a scorchy smell in the air, like hot paper maybe, or more like ironing, the smell of the heat of the day as it’s settled about the place. I make my way down the aisle, the lights from the pillars halo’ing the floating layer upon layer of dust above. I walk slowly past the rows of empty pews, the dutiful hymnals propped upright in their slots, my bootheels tapping out a metered wooden beat much slower than my fluttering heart would be. I walk the way alone today, as I walked the aisle as the bride I was. What a short time ago, that matrimonial occasion, and yet how far back in the past it seems. Time and its oddities. Look how I have traveled.

  The Mexican man comes in through a side door near the chancel.

  Señorita? he says. He holds his duster upright like a shepherd’s stick.

  I came to talk to the Padre.

  Sí, sí, this way.

  He takes me out the back way of the church, and I follow him along a pebbly, lit-up walkway to the entrance of the add-on part of the church house. He takes me inside and shows me to a door where a light creeps out from beneath. I knock on the wood, my heart knocking about inside my chest. Then the light comes pouring out all over and around me.

  The Padre doesn’t say anything, but his smile does.

  It’s an awkward kind of talking in its intimacy and formality, with the Padre sitting at his desk and with me seated across from him on the other side. I spend most of my effort holding back what would surely be an angry wailing, choking on the words Rose, Rose’s Daddy, crying about Son, crying for myself. After a short while we fall into a spell of silence that I’m helpless to break. The Padre says nothing, just sits and is quiet too. I shift about in my seat. He asks if I have had supper and I nod my head yes, though it wouldn’t be true. He offers me a stick of chewing gum. I take it, not wanting it, just holding it in my hand, soft and misshaped in the heat, turning and kneading it, pressing it straight. He says I might want to get a good night’s sleep and then we can talk about what we need to talk about at the fresh start of the next day.

  I follow the Padre out of his office and down a hallway, past a meeting room and past a classroom and past a kitchen and past a supply closet, all of the rooms lit-up as if there should be people in them, and we go on into a narrow room with walls lined with books on both sides and what was a time ago a modern sofa that he says yet pulls out to make a bed. There’s a shuttered-over window that I wouldn’t think to open, though who knows why. It smells like church inside here, with its kind of musty and bookish odor, and mixed with the air of what you know you should and shouldn’t do, somehow anyway, but really don’t know, as such rules could only be somebody else’s rules. I settle my satchel on the single chair and go out the door and down the hallway to the bathroom, feeling myself wandering and lost. The hallway smells of cleaning and rigor. The bathroom door sticks with fresh paint. The walls and woodwork and ceiling gleam white, and an outside light from the porch colanders in through the ironwor
k latticed over the window. I pass a glance at myself in the mirror and see again that startled look in my eyes, see a face changed in a single day, and this time I don’t flinch but instead have a long, good look before turning away.

  The foldout sofa is already pulled out and a blanket and a pillow and fresh sheets are left for me. I make the bed up, tucking the corners of the bottom sheet under and in, the way Rose showed me how to do it. I crease the top covers back into a neat geometry and I case the pillow and set it at an angle and turn the bed into an inviting place. I put the lamp on and turn the overhead off to home the light, take the book out of my satchel, and place it next to the lamp. Now I’ve made my place.

  I take my dusty daytime clothes off and fold them in a pile and put them on a shelf, thinking to climb into the bed naked, as is my habit, but feel it something like a sin here, and so I take my shirt and shake the dust from it and put it back on before I climb under the sheet. I blink, my eyelids swollen, a bitter taste lingering on the back of my tongue.

  What of the laws that gate our promises?

  I scan the comfort of books on the shelves and will to read them all. There’s time. I take comfort in this and close my eyes to the night. I try to sleep. I turn on the light to read for a while.

  In the morning there’s a kind knock on the door.

  The Padre comes in and sits at the edge of the bed. He smells like mint chewing gum, even this early in the day. I wonder about my own breath. He asks me about my night’s sleep. I sit up with the sheet tucked against me and I comb my hair back with my fingers.

  No sleep really, I say.

  My heartbeat beats so hard I know it shows in my throat and through my shirt. It beats so loud as to call regard to itself—don’t go, don’t go, don’t go—if it be heard.

  Why be embarrassed? he says. You look perfect. You are perfect. Don’t you know this?

  I scoot up in the bed and wipe the night from my eyes.