Between Times-
Chapter Nine - Part One...
As Chapter Nine opens, Benjamin Drum lands hard on a western shore…
BETWEEN TIMES
CHAPTER NINE - TADAHITO
Drum woke tangled in a maze of golden arms and legs and scented hair. The face inches from his own looked familiar. It took a second to drag his mind to wakefulness and recognize Paulette. He had never seen a woman’s face so close and unguarded. Her immediacy frightened him. Then he saw the strands of silver gray among the raven, the lines of a life lived deep inscribed around eyes and mouth, now softened by sleep. The face no longer young, not yet old, ageless and, Drum realized at this instant, beloved.
They had fallen asleep together atop the sheets. When Drum gained his feet, he paused a moment to look upon this body that had embraced him like a revelation. A loveliness that broke his heart and healed his life to behold. His photographer’s mind snapped a picture and he drew the cover up over Polly’s sleeping form, bent and kissed her brow. She murmured in her sleep but did not stir. Drum collected his clothes and went off barefoot to the kitchen to make their breakfast if he could find it.
When Polly woke and followed, she found Drum stirring a bowl of eggs with a fork. She took his face between her hands and kissed him. He set the bowl on the counter and kissed her back. They stepped arm’s length apart and held hands and circled, laughing like children. Love was not what they had imagined it might be. Love had not driven them together with hunger or desire. They had not found love; they had been found. Love had waited for them here. They had seen the heart’s door open and stepped inside and now it held them, stirring their souls together like the eggs in the bowl.
The new risen sun flooded the kitchen with golden light. There was no loneliness in the house at all. They made their breakfast, sat outside on the steps and ate it in the bright morning. Polly said, “If you don’t have to rush away, walk up the creek with me and we’ll check on James.”
Drum could not think of anything requiring him to rush away. As the sun topped the trees, lifting the fog above the water, they slowly traversed the boulder field through which the creek descended. The water, high from the night’s rain, created a tumult that didn’t allow conversation, so they made their way in silence, as two familiar souls on a familiar path, now apart, now touching hands to stay one another on slippery stones.
When Drum saw the crested iris, on childish impulse, he bent to pick it for her, then, before he reached, he thought better of it; he’d never seen a vase in Polly’s house. She would not approve of murdering a flower for momentary pleasure. Drum straightened, glanced sheepishly in her direction. Polly laughed. She knew.
The path along Sorrow Creek, kept clear by occasional hunters and more frequent trout fishers, ascended the cove toward the Shining Rocks more directly than the winding county road, lessening the distance between the Coggins households considerably. Along the way, Polly and Drum had to scramble up a couple of steeps to circumvent small waterfalls, but in the main, passage was relatively easy.
At one point, they came to a rickety bridge where the older road had once crossed the creek.
“This is where Horace and your uncle fished me out of the flood,” Drum said. “It still makes me cold just to think about it.”
Polly laughed, “Last night was all their fault, then.”
Drum kept a serious face, though there was mischief in his eyes, “I give them more credit than blame for that.”
At the place where Drum had rescued Emmalou, there was no log bridging the stream, but an overgrown path still led off from the far bank in the direction of Maude Truelight’s place. When they turned to their right through the woods toward where Judy had kept her garden, they heard the sound of an engine ahead. When they came clear of the trees, James bounced along atop his little gray Ferguson tractor, plowing. When he looked up, Polly waved. James cut his engine, climbed down, and shambled toward them.
He was sober, though he looked to have had a long night. For the first time in months, he rewarded his sister with a smile, “I’m getting a late start here, but there’s still time to make enough to keep us out of the grocery store this winter. I’ll have to learn how to can things, unless you want to come help me.”
“Oh, I’ll help, James,” Polly promised, “and Lizbet’s a good hand in the kitchen. You grow it, and between us, we’ll put it by.”
James shook Drum’s hand, “You keeping company with my little sister now? I’ll have to keep an eye on you.”
Drum grinned, a little self-consciously, “I’m harmless, James. I just do as she tells me.”
James actually laughed, “Then I’d better keep close watch on both of you. Come up to the house. I need to tell youns about something.”
James turned and they followed. Polly looked at Drum, formed the question with her lips, What?
Drum shrugged, and took her hand as they walked.
In the kitchen, James gestured toward the table, and without asking, poured them all coffee, still almost hot on the stove. Polly and Drum sat obediently, looked at James expectantly as he sipped from his cup. Then he set it down and stared at them in wonderment, as if what he was about to tell was beyond even his own believing.
James took a deep breath, and spoke as matter-of-factly as if discussing the weather, “Judy was here last night.”
Polly looked incredulous, “You mean you dreamed about her?”
“No, Polly, she was here, well and whole. I could have reached out and touched her, but I was afraid to.” James looked at Drum, “You’re thinking I was drunk, and I was drunk enough, but I sobered up quick after that. I know what I saw.”
“James...” Polly began.
“She was here, Sister,” James did not raise his voice, but there was iron in it, “She said she had always stayed close, even though I couldn’t see her, but that if I kill myself, I’ll do it alone. She said if I ever know any nearness of her, it will be by living out her love for all of us.”
James gazed intently at the silent couple across the table from him, “That’s what she said. I know it sounds crazy, but I believe it happened.”
Drum nodded, glanced at Polly, then looked back at James, “Life seems craziest when it gets most real, James. I believe you.”
After his confessional, James walked with his sister and Drum as far as his tractor. When they reached the creek, they heard it start again and drone away on another tack.
Polly seemed troubled, “Something’s happened to James. He isn’t a man to believe in spirits and ghosts.”
Drum tried to ease her concern, “Well, Polly, he’s certainly had some sort of psychological experience, maybe a psychic one. I’ve had stranger encounters. You shouldn’t worry. When you’ve had his sort of trauma, sometimes things just shift suddenly.”
“You don’t think he’s delusional or anything, then?”
“Polly, if his delusion keeps him away from his bottle, I don’t think we’d do him a favor to try and cure him of it. He has to make his own sense of what has happened to him. He has to find his own reason to go on. He seems to be coming round. I think we need to give him some time and a little space.”
Polly threw Drum a strange forlorn little smile, “I hope you’re right. For his sake, and for Lizbet’s. She needs her dad right now, and James hasn’t been up to the job.”
“How is Lizbet handling all this, Polly?”
“It’s hard to know. She doesn’t talk about Judy’s dying, or James. She doesn’t ever mention her brother. She is polite and friendly and helpful around the house. She reads a lot, spends a lot of time wandering the woods, but that isn’t new. Somehow, though, she just seems detached. She reminds me of you when you were a boy.”
“It’s her way of coping with her losses, Polly. She’ll reach out again when it is time.”
“You sound so sure of that.”
Drum smiled, “The voice of experience.”
“Well, what made you reach out to the living, Drum?”
“You don’t need to ask that, Polly. You did.”
Polly stopped, and turned to face him, “I didn’t make you quit your job.”
Drum felt vaguely like he’d been accused of something, “No, but you made me glad I did.”
They walked on in silence until they reached the bridge at Polly’s drive.
“You coming back up?” Polly asked.
It seemed to Drum like a rhetorical question. “I need to go home and check my mail.”
“What do we do now, Drum? Is this what they call a relationship?”
“Well, Polly, I certainly feel related. What do we do now? I reckon we’ll work on your book. If we are still speaking by the time we finish, we might just have a future.”
Polly thought it didn’t sound like a joke. She waved up toward her car, “You want me to give you a lift home.?”
“I need to walk in the sun, Polly. Come down tonight and I’ll fix your supper.”
Polly hesitated just an instant, “How about tomorrow?”
Drum leaned to her and kissed her on the cheek, “Tomorrow, then. Bring Lizbet if she’s back, and invite James.” He turned then and walked away toward the road. Polly watched with arms folded until he was out of sight beyond the trees.
#
The next night, Drum served the best beef stew he’d ever made, with potatoes and squash and green beans from his garden. Polly brought wine, but drank it alone as Drum declined due to his touchy stomach. James shook his head and held his hand over his glass when Polly reached the bottle toward him.
Lizbet looked surprised, “You quit drinking of a sudden, Dad?”
Unperturbed, James just laughed, “I’m taking a vacation from spiritual drink until I can enjoy it again.”
He and Lizbet drank tea with mint and lots of lemon. When he tasted, James nodded his approval, “I see my sister must have taught you how to make proper sweet tea, Drum. It ain’t fit to consume unless it makes your teeth hurt.”
They ate. Everyone had seconds. They talked about things vital and trivial, and although none there were oblivious to Judy’s absence, her memory did not haunt them, but brought her love back to their company. She seemed a tiny bit less gone from them with every mention of her name.
Hours later, when James stood to go, they all stood with him. Drum shook his hand and Polly and Lizbet walked with him to the door. Lizbet and Polly bent heads together in whispered conference, and when Polly closed the door behind her brother, Lizbet went with him.
Polly came back to where Drum stood at the table, and was about to say something when the phone rang, one long and two short, Drum’s ring. He picked it up, aware that Maude Truelight was probably listening on the line.
Polly could only hear Drum’s side of the conversation, “Benjamin Drum...Yes... I’m definitely interested; this is just my sort of thing, but I have another project coming up right now. I’m not sure how we might schedule this... Let me see what I can work out at my end, and I’ll call you back...Yes, Ron, I would like to do this, if I can. Can I get back to you? Goodbye, and thanks.”
“Sounds like big doings.” Polly said it like a question.
“Some guy named Ron Seward from the Sierra Club. They want to do a picture book on the Los Padres national forest and the Big Sur coast, and Eric, of all people, told them I’d be the man to make their photographs. Spectacular country, from the pictures I’ve seen. They’ll pay travel and per diem plus my fee, but I don’t want to put off our book any longer.”
Polly launched a broad smile, “I think you should go.”
“You do?” Drum looked like a child who had just been told he could keep the puppy who followed him home from school.
“And I think you should take me with you,” Polly added.
“Sit,” Drum pointed to her chair.
He picked up the phone, dialed, recited some numbers to an operator several times, finally, “Ron? Good, I’m glad you’re still there. I’d be elated to do your project, and I have someone here who should do the text. We’ve worked together before. We see with the same eye. Her writing would be my images put to words... Paulette Coggins, The Warwoman and Sorrow Creek... Yes, I’m sure. I’ve just been speaking with her. She’s my neighbor down here... Same as me, I’d think... Alright then, I’ll have her call you in the morning and you can work out terms... Me too, Ron. Goodbye now.” Drum hung up the phone, drank down his last swallow of tea, poured a little wine in the glass and lifted it toward Polly, “That was too easy. We’re in, it seems.”
Polly shook a finger at him, “You made up the part about us having worked together.”
Drum grinned, “It’s a lie right now, but it won’t be soon.”
#
It wasn’t exactly easy, as things turned out. There were numerous phone calls and negotiations. Seward’s people seemed on the verge of picking another writer, male, but Drum held firm, insisted he couldn’t do the project without Polly, and three weeks later, Drum and Polly were walking barefoot along a sloping stony beach among boulders sculpted by the ocean into bizarre monuments, riddled with holes and small caves. They reminded Drum of the figures in Moore’s sketch pad that appeared to have been shaped by time and weather more than any human hand.
Riotous surf thundered down on the beach. Through the sand underneath their feet, they could feel the interminable pounding, like the earth’s beating heart. Past the beach the mountains reared straight up from the ocean. Three miles away, a cone shaped peak stood as tall as any of the ridges in the High Balsam. The sun came up over the mountain and ruby light flooded across the wet sand through a cavity in one of the great boulders. Polly ran and stood in the opening, her arms stretched out to reach the stone on either side as she gazed up at the mountain beyond. Her shadow spilled like dark water down the sand behind her toward the sea.
Instinctively, Drum raised his camera and removed the lens cap. He clicked off frame after frame as the sun climbed out of the mountain and the light shifted and flared while Polly stood transfixed, as if bound to the rock. Drum was reaching into his bag for a lens filter when he heard a voice behind him, “She looks like a crucifixion.”
Startled, Drum whirled about. A small dark man, also burdened with camera and gear, also barefoot, with his shoes interlaced and hanging around his neck, bowed solemnly, then smiled apologetically, “Sumi masen. So sorry. I intrude.” He started to turn away.
“Not at all,” Drum waved his arm to take in the scene, “Help yourself.”
The man bowed again, but held out his hand rather than reaching for his camera, “Doomo. Tadahito is grateful to meet you. You are also a photographer?”
Drum shook the offered hand, “Drum. I’m here on an assignment from the Sierra Club, but this morning, I’m making pictures just for myself.”
“So,” Tadahito’s eyes twinkled, “The best one’s are always made for ourselves, so desu?”
Polly had been watching them from her perch, and came back across the beach to join them, “Are you two comparing notes, or just admiring the scenery?”
Tadahito, whom Drum had thought quaintly reserved, even shy, turned to Polly with a frankly admiring stare, “The most admirable aspect of the scenery has drawn near to us now.”
Without waiting for an introduction, Polly thrust out her hand toward the new arrival, “Paulette Coggins, I’m writing words to explain Drum’s pictures.”
Another bow from the dark man, and another smile, “Tadahito.”
Polly returned both, “I’m surrounded by photographers, it seems. Are you here on assignment, Tadahito, or is this a vacation?”
Tadahito shrugged, “Hai; work is the same as play for a photographer perhaps. Photographs for a magazine in Tokyo.” Tadahito raised both hands over his head and turned in a circle, “All this. Mountain and sea. Very Japanese, but Japan is more green, perhaps.” His r’s came out more like d’s.
Polly laughed, “So is Carolina, where we’re from, but our mountains are not so robust as these, I think. Are you staying nearby, Mister Tadahito?”
Tadahito pointed to a cluster of low buildings visible among a crowd of huge boulders down the beach, “Just there, at Bixbe Landing, my home far from home.”
Polly clapped her hands in delight, which seemed to startle Tadahito. He recovered quickly as Polly proclaimed, “So are we. You should join us for dinner tonight.”
Tadahito bowed again. Drum wondered if he ever got tired of doing it. He looked at Drum. When Drum nodded and smiled, Tadahito turned back to Polly, “Your kindness honors this stranger on your shore. Dinner will be much anticipated.”
Tadahito turned then and walked back the way he had come. As they stood watching him go, Drum punched Polly’s shoulder playfully, “Why, Polly Coggins, I think you are taken with the little guy.”
Polly leaned into an enthusiastic kiss, “Don’t be silly, Drum. I’m taken with you. Tadahito is just interesting.”
They continued up the beach where Drum had spied a relic in the distance, the half-buried skeleton of a craft run aground in some past season’s storm, waiting for another storm to carry it back home to the sea. The sun rose higher. Gulls wheeled and cried. Away out on the water, Drum could see the spouting of whales, their huge dark bodies rising and falling away northward through the chop. Waves reared with menacing swiftness and crashed like accusations on the rocks. Drum felt the impacts through the soles of his feet, and a formless unnamable fear lay in his heart as cold as the ocean.
He trembled suddenly in the chill wind, saw Polly looking at him strangely. “Let’s go back now,” he said. “It’s going to be a long day. I need a nap.”
To be continued…
Next week, Drum loses his footing as Tadahito steps in…
Walk in hope-
-henry