A Quality of Light (3 page)

“There’s no question of your going. But I’m worried about Johnny. How stable is he? How willing to compromise? Can you reach him? I share your concern about the strength of your friendship in this. It’s been what, twelve years?” She reached out to take my hand.

“Yes. The year Jonathan was born,” I said. “But Johnny’s never tried to completely disengage himself from me. I’ve got that box of letters, after all. Even though it’s been one-way contact all these years, he’s always reappeared now and then in the mail. There’s something still alive for him.”

“And for you?” she asked quietly.

“There’s something still alive for me too.” I squeezed her hand lightly.

It had been one of the first stories I’d told her about my life, those nights when we’d disappear from campus and sit in Zak’s Diner talking about our lives. She knew how much I loved him and how much I’d hurt when he’d walked away from me at the end of high school. And then twelve years ago I’d appeared in court for him. She had shared my jubilation over his reappearance, the fact that he needed me and trusted me enough to call upon me in a crisis. She also shared my agony over the result of that brief reunion.

“Then go, Joshua. Get in touch with that something that’s still
alive for you and use it, like Inspector Nettles said. Ask for the right words, for the strength and courage. Go and help those people. And help Johnny too,” she said.

“And myself?”

“And yourself.”

We packed quickly. I chose only enough to last me a few days since I couldn’t see this lasting much longer. We would either settle it or it would end. There would be no extended negotiations. I knew Johnny well enough to know that he would want a resolution quickly. One way or the other. I decided against packing a Bible but I did include an old framed picture of the two of us taken the spring we met. Holding it and looking back across all those years raised a well of tears in my eyes and I brushed one hand slowly across the glass as though by that action I could touch the people we used to be one more time. Shirley beckoned from the bedroom doorway and I closed my valise and followed her into the hallway. Wordlessly, we crept to Jonathan’s room. My son lay sprawled in a tangle of sheets and blankets, one arm thrown around his pillow, the other strewn along his side. My son. Named after my friend he’d never met, one who didn’t know the honor he’d been given or how very much this sleeping boy reminded me of his namesake. Maybe now he would. I crept over and kissed Jonathan’s forehead very gently and brushed my hand across his face before creeping out as silently as we’d entered.

Shirley disappeared into the study and returned carrying the old cigar box I kept Johnny’s letters in. She smiled and handed it to me.

“You might want to go through these on the plane,” she said and kissed me quickly.

“Yes. Thank you. Tell Jonathan not to worry, I’ll be home soon. We’ve got that fishing trip with his grampa next weekend.”

“I’ll tell him. Joshua?”

“Yes?”

“I love you. Carry that with you too.”

We walked slowly out to the garage, taking time to look around us at the yard and the neighborhood. It had been an agreement we’d made on one of our first trips to Zak’s Diner. We would never
allow ourselves to be anywhere without looking around and recognizing where we were. Window-dressing our memories was the way Shirley put it then, and it was something we did by second nature after all these years. We stood together looking up at a sky that was skimmed with frail, wispy clouds.

“Did I ever tell you about Johnny’s magic trick?” I asked, still gazing upwards.

“No, I don’t think you ever did. What was it?”

“The sky was filled with wispy little clouds like these. It was summer. August, I think, that first summer when they moved to Mildmay. We were floating down Otter Creek on inner tubes towards the dam behind the ruins of the old mill. Johnny pointed up at those clouds and said, ‘I’m magic.’ He picked out the smallest, wispiest cloud in the sky and told me to watch it carefully. Then he held both wrists up in front of his face and blew one quick breath against them. Whoosh! Then he closed his eyes, bent his head up towards that cloud and began rubbing his wrists together in small circles. I watched that little cloud as hard as I could and sure enough, it vanished in front of my eyes. We laughed like crazy. Said he’d been able to do that forever. He said he did it whenever he felt lonely, sad or afraid. I wonder if he still does that now.”

“I’m sure he does,” she said, softly.

“Yes. I hope so.”

“Go with God, Joshua,” she said.

I kissed her, stepped into the car and backed slowly out the driveway. As my home and family retreated behind me I realized how far I had traveled in this lifetime. We lived in Paisley, an hour’s drive from the farm where I’d grown up, but it was far more than geographical distance I’d traveled. It was an emotional and spiritual journey that culminated right now in unquestioning obedience to unexpected callings. We knew, my wife and I, that these beckonings were divine in origin and our choice was never to answer or not to answer, but rather to decide how quickly we responded. We lived by the principles of faith, and as I turned that car towards the
highway to Walkerton, my faith told me that this was a necessary step in the direction God had chosen for our lives. I could live with that. And as I settled into the seat for the start of this long journey, I began to think about Johnny Gebhardt making clouds disappear.

“Reminds me of the magic,” he’d said.

“Magic?” I’d responded.

“Yeah. Magic. It comes in on the light,” he explained. “It’s everywhere. Only we can’t see it because, well, because it’s magic. Like the trees around us are growin’ because of the light, but we can’t see it happening. It’s just there. Sometimes I just need to remember.”

“How do you know it’s magic?” I asked.

“Because it makes me feel better,” he said quietly. “And only magic can do that. Sometimes, well, somtimes nothing can make me feel better. Except this. While I’m making those clouds disappear, I’m makin’ other wishes too. You know, like wishin’ my dad didn’t drink so much, that we had more money and stuff. Watchin’ those clouds disappear makes me believe that all my other wishes are comin’ true too. Magic, you know. Try it!”

And so I had. We floated down that creek making clouds disappear and casting magic wishes against that high blue sky. Johnny and me. Oh, we knew it wasn’t really magic, that it was just the wind. But something in us understood the need, the hunger, to believe that there’s magic riding in on every particle of light. So we made those clouds disappear anyway and we surrendered ourselves to our friendship as easily as we surrendered to the current, drifting and bobbing, willing to travel wherever it would take us. Adrift forever in eddies of light.

I swept through that undulating farmland immersed in tranquil pools of memory. I remembered the boys we had been. Farmland such as this had been the backdrop for the friendship we’d forged. By the time I climbed aboard the OPP plane, I was ready for that long journey back inside the memories themselves, the box of letters beckoning me backwards and forwards at the same time.

I
t had begun with the news that Ben Gebhardt was coming home after twenty years. He’d joined the army in 1945. After a hitch in Korea he’d disappeared entirely, except for occasional reappearances, the details of which his father, Harold, dispensed over the counter to everyone at his hardware store. Ben’s life had become a random series of jobs and addresses in Toronto. By the time I was old enough to understand, Ben had been a tavern waiter, school custodian, used-car salesman and truck driver. When he failed to make even courtesy visits at Christmases and Thanksgivings, he achieved that status of all agricultural refugees who scrape the land from their heels and heart and hitch their wagons to the neon stars of the city. No one expected him to ever return.

We heard the news while my dad and I were on our bi-weekly trip to Harold’s store. Actually, it was our bi-weekly trip for groceries, but Dad and I, along with the other men at loose ends while their wives shopped, gathered at Harold’s for chatter, coffee and a peek at the farm equipment catalogues.

“It’s the ticker, you know,” Harold said, tapping his chest for emphasis. “Doc Niedermayer says all this gas I been having these last few years is some angina something something. Retire, he says.”

“Retire?” Chester Shaus, our rabbit-farming neighbor, asked. “Retire to what? And what about the store?”

“Well,” Harold said proudly, “retire to what I’m not sure. But the store’s going to Ben.”

“Ben? What does he know about hardware?” Karl Schumacher asked through the smoke of his meerschaum.

“Well, I don’t rightly know, but he’s my son, Karl, and I’d rather have it going to my own instead of some stranger or some big corporation that’s only in it for the profits and not the community. Besides, Ben was raised around this store. It won’t have washed completely off.”

“When’s he coming?” my dad inquired.

“Well, I spoke to him last week just after my talk with Doc and he seemed right anxious about it all. Said he had some things to settle in Toronto and he’d be here directly. They arrive next Friday.”

“He’s got family?” Lester Deiter asked.

“Wife and a son,” Harold said quietly. “A wife and a son.”

There are silences that run as straight and deep as fresh-plowed furrows. They alter our horizon and the landscape of our lives is tilted, askew and unfamiliar. This was one of them. Even I was old enough to understand that all of this was akin to catastrophe. Farmers know intuitively when the pitch and rhythm of things moves beyond the predictable and the usual. The security that comes from a familiarity raised and nurtured through the years was being removed with the retirement of a trusted friend and neighbor, and the idea that a man would not bring his family home to meet their own weighed as strangely in their hands as a stillborn calf. Everyone, now, had a stock in the success or failure of Ben Gebhardt, and his arrival was awaited with an expectancy tinged with caution.

“So we’re all invited to Harold’s place next Saturday for a welcoming,” my dad explained to my mother on the drive back home.

“You know, Ezra, when Estelle died, Harold lost the biggest piece of his life. He seemed smaller after that. Now, he’s getting some of that life back. He’ll be a grandfather, a father and a father-in-law. Maybe Benjamin’s return isn’t so negative a thing as everyone’s thinking right now. After all, the Lord gives us roles in our lives to fill our insides out, to make us more. To teach us how to live His way. This is a big gift for Harold right now and we
should
celebrate. I’ll bake a cake,” my mother said.

“You’re right, of course,” my father agreed. “I just find it a little tough to trust a man with my business when his family life’s a little less than appropriate. Still, I should wait and see. No one really knows Ben Gebhardt. He may be a fine man.”

“And be happy for Harold, Ezra. He hasn’t had a family around him for six years. Be happy for him,” she said and lay her hand on his shoulder. He gave her that wistful half smile he always used in tender moments and then winked at me in the rearview mirror.

The return of Ben Gebhardt became the chief topic of conversations that week. By the time the evening of the welcoming arrived, speculation around and about Ben and his family was rampant. We seldom got new folks in Mildmay. After a while the community begins to appear in your mind as whole and predictable as the shell of an egg. It has a feel and weight that’s pleasing and familiar always, so that any hint of disruption or change becomes cause for concern. The imminent arrival of an expatriate towner like Ben was strange and generated more caution than low spring wheat quotations.

“Probably have to teach him tools and screws from A to Z,” Mel Hohnstein said to my dad as they leaned against the railing of Harold’s verandah that night. “The way I hear it, Ben’s been pretty lucky to hold any kind of job for six months through the years.”

“Well, it could be that Harold’s right about the business being in his blood and all. He did grow up here and he was helping out in the store by the time he was ten,” my dad said. “Family things are like that. From farming to selling cars — you pack it around with you when you’ve been raised in it. Coming back into it’s a natural enough thing, I imagine.”

“Easy for you to say,” Helmut Hossfeld cut in, setting his tea cup down on the top step. “All you’ve ever known is that farm, Ezra. There’s never been a returning for you. In your wife’s way of saying, and bless her heart, you’re no prodigal, Ezra.”

“Well, that’s true, Helmut, that’s true. But you know, there were
two
sons in that prodigal story,” my dad explained, leaning back and crossing his arms across his chest. “The one we hear about all the time is the one that went away. He left, he came back. That’s the story as far as most of us know it. But there was the
other
son too.”

A small crowd of men and women tied themselves in a loose knot around us and I wedged in closer to my dad and leaned my back against his legs to listen and watch our neighbors. People liked my dad. They liked to hear him think out loud like he was doing right then. Something in the easy way he had with his deepest thoughts drew people to him, and to me he’s always been the epitome of the homespun philosopher, albeit without the straw between the teeth.