Dandelions in Paradise

by Kit Duncan

The back door slammed again, and I heard water running in the kitchen sink. A moment later Silas was standing at the front door, wiping his hands on his overalls.

  "I got the yard mowed," he said. He waited for a response, didn't get one, and he disappeared back into the house.

  Sallie opened her eyes and smiled at me. "Well, if I don't tell him what a fine job he did he'll be pouting all afternoon," she said, getting up out of the rocker. I followed her past Silas, who was sulking in the living room. Sallie and I stood side by side looking out the back door into the yard.

  She turned away from the door. "Dear," Sallie said.

  "Yes, Dear." He had picked up his copy of Catcher in the Rye and pretended to be reading.

  "Did you mean to mow around the weeds?"

  "Yes."

  Sallie looked back outside. The grass, most of it anyway, was cut. Little yellow dandelions speckled the yard, intact, safe from the blade. Sallie looked at me and winked.

  "Nice job, Dear," she said as she went into the kitchen.

  "Thank you, Dear," Silas said. After she left the room, Silas put his book down and winked at me. I smiled back at him.

  "Well, I can't get my work done sitting on my bottom parts," he said, closing the book. He grunted a bit as he stood up from his chair. "You coming?"

  "Okay, sure," I said. I wasn't sure I had a choice.

  Silas stopped at the kitchen doorway. "The newbie and I are going to go walk the bluebonnets. When's dinner?"

  "Be a couple hours or so," Sallie said. I heard the clanking of a pan. "Don't work too hard out there!" she called as Silas and I stepped out onto the porch.

  Silas broke the silence when we were halfway to the locust trees. "I expect you've got a mess of questions piled up for me. May as well get to 'em."

  "You don't mind?" I asked.

  "Mind?" Silas said. "Of course, I mind. But we all have our little crosses to bear, don't we?"

  "Until we get tired enough of hauling 'em around to set 'em aside," I quoted Sallie.

  "Hmmm," Silas looked at me, his eyes twinkling. "I see you and Miss Sallie have been talking behind my back."

  I grinned, and we kept walking.

  We reached the trees, and Silas sat down in the rocking chair. There was a second chair, a yellow folding lawn chair with a little fray on one of the strips. It hadn't been there the day before.

  "Brought it out here this morning, before you got up," Silas explained. "Thought you'd rather sit on it than the ground. Either way, take your pick. Don't matter one way or the other to me."

  I sat in the lawn chair.

  "Well, let's get started. Ain't got all day, you know." But he was still grinning at me.

  "Well, Sallie said something about a pond."

  "The one in town?"

  "No,…" but Silas interrupted me before I could finish my sentence.

  "It's on the other side of Wilsonville, not far from the softball field. Every town has one. And Heaven's got plenty of them. Even the Basement has one, but it's in a special room. In the Basement you don't get to jump in the pond until it's approved. It's the only sphere where you don't get to decide when to reincarnate. Heaven and Paradise, you can jump in anytime you like."

  Too intimidated to tell him that wasn't the pond I was talking about, I simply nodded.

  "So, what about the pond do you want to know?" Silas asked.

  "Well," I spoke the word slowly, conjuring up a question as quickly as I could. "Any good fishing there?" Lame. I knew it the minute I asked, but a question, once asked, doesn't go away. It just flops around until it's answered or dies a tedious death.

  "Fishing? I should say not!"

  "You don't fish in the pond?"

  "Certainly not. There's no fish there anyway. You want to go fishing, talk with Jake Kaufman. He's got a little lake he keeps stocked in catfish."

  "Swimming, then?" I asked.

  Silas laughed. "Swimming," he repeated, a giggle still catching in his voice. "In the pond?"

  I nodded.

  "No. No swimming."

  "Then what?" I asked.

  "Why," Silas said, "It's for jumping in."

  "Right," I said. "For swimming."

  "No. Not for swimming. You jump in, you reincarnate."

  I blinked.

  "Oh, not always right away," he said. "You might splash around a little, just for fun. Especially on a hot day. Maybe even float on your back a few seconds. But it doesn't take long, life just sucks you down and before you know it, you're pouring back into the Land of the Living."

  "So, the pond is a portal from eternity to living?"

  "Well," Silas scratched his beard. "Yes, yes, I suppose you could put it that way. Folks want to get born again, they jump into the pond. It's that simple."

  "And nine months later they're born?"

  "Thereabouts, yes."

  "Just like that?"

  Silas snapped his fingers. "Just like that, Newbie."

  "And you say every town has a pond?"

  "Oh, absolutely," he said. "The choice to be alive is never too far from any of us. Unless we're in the Basement, of course," Silas added quickly. "That's the whole problem with the Basement, you know. Limitations. Confinement. Separation."

  "So the pond," I asked, "is like a…"

  "Listen, Newbie, it's just this simple," Silas interrupted, "and no more complicated than this. You want to be alive, you jump into the pond. You don't wade in, you don't tip your toe in, you jump. 'Make yourself a big humdinger of splash,' I always say. Gives you a nice head start. You gonna be timid about being alive you may as well stay put."

  "I see."

  "Of course, be careful walking around the pond unless you're sure you want to reincarnate," Silas warned.

  "Why would I go there if I didn't want to be born again?"

  "Oh, most people don't. I mean, there's nothing down there but a little puddle. Ponds, most of 'em, ain't but maybe twenty foot across. And a park bench. Most our ponds have a park bench or two close by.

  "But a few years back, around this time of year, we got a cold snap," Silas continued. "Real peculiar. Put just a thin little sheet of ice across the pond. Couple boys from town decided they were going to skate across it. Not with skates, but with their feet, you know?"

  I nodded as if I knew, but I really was a little confused.

  "Well, naturally, they went right through the ice. God knows where they wound up." He chuckled a little, then said, "Kids!"

  We both grinned.

  "And whatever you do, never go near the pond when Cory Larson is around."

  "No?" I asked.

  "Never. He's a rascal. He likes to shove people in. One of these days I'd like to shove him in!" Silas frowned, then smiled again. "Oh, not that it does all that much harm, really. People slip in from time to time, accidents happen, not much comes of it usually. They just get born before they're ready."

  "I'd think it would be pretty upsetting being born again if you're not prepared for it?" I said.

  "Oh, who's ever really prepared for living?" Silas said. "I mean, it's probably better if you make a good, conscious, well thought out plan about when to go back. But life, and death, well, sometimes plans are over-rated. Sometimes falling might actually be better, I don't know. Why, once, a couple hundred years ago, Sallie and I were taking a little stroll one evening, came upon a pond, and whoosh, just like that, she smiles at me, waves so long, and hops right in."

  "You go in after her?"

  "Heck, no! I went home, waited a couple years, caught up with her later. That was when she was on the whaler and I was helping my pa with his research." He giggled at his memory. "I was stunning in that life!" he beamed. "Hated the corsets, and the hat pins, and those heels pinched the living tar out of my feet. But my, I was a looker!"

  "Now, here's a little tidbit I bet you didn't know," Silas said after he had thoroughly enjoyed the memory of his great beauty. "About the water in the pond."

  "What's wrong with the water?"

/>   "Nothing," he frowned at me. "The water's fine. The thing is, in life, you know how water evaporates?"

  "The water cycle."

  "Exactly. Clouds, rain, ground water, lakes rivers and oceans, more clouds. That sort of thing."

  "Uh huh," I said.

  "Well, the thing is," Silas said, "It's just like that up here. Only, and this is the part most living folks don't know, the same water up here is the same water down there. Bet you didn't know that, did you?"

  "I didn't" I agreed. "How's that happen?"

  "Why," Silas said, "the water cycle. Only the cycle is much broader than most people alive realize. You see, when it rains, say, in Kentucky, that's where you're from, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Okay, when it rains in Kentucky that water comes from clouds that were formed, at least in part, by the ground water up here. And when it rains up here, why, that water comes from clouds that were partly formed by droplets from down there. It's a huge cycle. It's no accident, you know," Silas said, "that water is a very popular metaphor for life. Most people, at least those living ones, just don't take the metaphor quite far enough."

  "That's amazing," I said.

  "Bet your ashes!" Silas said. "And more than amazing, think about this. Every time you take a shower, or drink a glass of lemonade, or swim in the ocean, or get caught in the rain, or someone squirts you with a water pistol, you're getting touched by something that connects directly between life and eternity. Why, the water you wash the dishes with in Kentucky, just a few days later, might be water that saints are using to do their laundry with. See what I mean? Just a great big cycle! That's all eternity is. A great big, damp cycle!"

  CHAPTER ELEVEN