Hearts Left Behind (7 page)

I’m on my way to moving on, but the moving on comes
slow

And I can’t get past the
gettin
'
past
cause
the
gettin
' past
won’t go

I’m just walking down this old dirt path that keeps
on
circlin
’ round

And when I take two steps forward
only one foot hits the ground.

One foot walks with Satan and one walks with the Son

And I’m right there in between holding hands with
either one

One may walk on fire and flame or one may walk on
cloud

But wherever I may be
walkin
’
it’s with one foot on the ground.

I’ve got a heart that flies with angels and a soul
that bears the load

Of a mind that keeps me human, keeps me reaping
what I have sowed

I’ve got an angel-scar on my left leg and he steps
in silent sound

But wherever he may take me, I keep that right foot
on the ground.

One foot walks with sinners and one foot walks with
saints

And while one foot walks the skies above, one’s
tied down with chains

My angel-scar he guides me, keeps me moving
Heaven-bound

But his wings will never lift me while this right
foot’s on the ground.
 

Over the first five years of my life, we lived in
Willow Grove, West Plainfield, New Jersey, Piqua, Ohio, and then Willow Grove
again.  It was always my dad’s job that led us to move.  I’m just
glad that it ultimately led us back to Willow Grove. 

When we came back to Willow Grove in ‘74, we moved
into the home that Grandpa and Grandma Gaines had lived in for years, the house
in which they had raised their own children.  But Grandpa and Grandma had
no
need
for a house this size anymore.  So they
sold it to Mom and Dad and moved into a small two-bedroom ranch just a few
blocks away. 

Memories of those early days when we first moved back
to Willow Grove are spotty.  The house was always smoky and crowded with
family. 
Hairy-faced men drinking Budweiser or Old Style
and laughing too hard at themselves.
  Women who - whether cooking
or not - were usually in the kitchen.  And whether it was
Winstons
, Marlboros, or Camels, everyone smoked.

When I was eight
,
Mom and Dad divorced.  Mom remarried several years later and we all moved
into Larry’s house.  She and Larry used the Willow Grove house as rental
property for a couple years, until a bad tenant soured them on the landlord and
lady life and they decided to sell the house outright.  If the notion of
strangers renting and living in the House of Gaines had been an unsettling
feeling for my grandparents, the thought of actually selling this place and
forfeiting all rights of ownership was simply unthinkable.  So they ended
up buying it back. 

At one point in history, the village of Willow Grove
was the largest town in all of Glidden County.  It boasted two hardware
stores, two saloons, an apothecary, a lumberyard, and a half-mile horse track
on the southern outskirts of town.  Then “The Great Willow Grove Fire”
burned the town back to size.  Every major business was destroyed and only
a couple ever reopened.  Maybe there was no insurance for the others or
maybe there was and the business owners just took the money and ran.  Or
maybe the collective conscious of the town made a silent decision not to
rebuild.  Willow Grove didn’t have the heart of Chicago.  Willow
Grove had the heart of Willow Grove. 

In the years that I had lived here, nothing new had
gone up and nothing old had come down.  It was a place and time frozen in
state, perfectly preserved like some ice-age victim woolly mammoth.  There
wasn’t a stone I hadn’t kicked or a tree I hadn’t climbed.  I knew every
house on every street and every person in every house.

And then Katie Cooper came along and I – like some
overbearing island tour guide - took it upon myself to show Katie the ins and
outs of the town.  I walked her downtown to the United Methodist Church
and let her know that the Sunday service started at nine a.m.  I told her
how the Corwin’s was the place to go when you were hungry and your mom wouldn’t
give you a snack because Mrs. Corwin always offered visitors apple pie or
almond cookies or buns fresh from the oven and still warm.  I showed her
every hidden path and every shortcut and warned her about the
unfriendlies
like Lyle Weber and Abigail Simpson who would
holler at you if they caught you cutting across their yard. 

On the last day of our tour, I took her to the train
tracks where I made a big production out of digging around in my pockets for
change.  Truth was
,
I had exactly two coins in my
pocket – each a shiny new copper penny.

“Here you go,” I said holding it out. 
“A brand new penny.
  See, it says 1980 right on
it.  Mine does, too.”

“Neat,” she said. “What are we going to do with them?”

“You’ll see.”

I bent down and pressed my ear against the cold rail
and Katie did the same.

“Hear that?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“A train.”

We hopped up, laid our pennies on the tracks, and
waited for the big yellow dragon to thunder through with its fire of roars and
whistles.  When it did, it left two squashed and warm keepsakes in its wake. 
I handed one to her.

“Here, don’t lose it.”

“What do we do with them?” she asked.

“Do? 
Nothing.
  You
just keep them.”

“Oh, you mean like a souvenir?

“Yeah, like a souvenir. 
Or a
friendship thing.”

“Cool!” she said. “I’ll keep it forever.”

“Put it somewhere safe.”

“Come on,” she said.  “We should get home.”

We put our pennies in our pockets and walked
home.  The tour had ended.  There was nothing else that I could offer
Katie Cooper.  I’d shown her everything I knew. 
Very soon it would be Katie who was revealing secrets
of this town to me.

When I got home that evening, I put that penny in my
Treasure Box (an old shoebox I kept hidden under my bed) along with some of my
most other prized possessions: a
wristwatch
with my name inscribed on the face of it, postcards from traveling friends and
family, a Buffalo Nickel, and few other odds and ends.  I found out later
that Katie ended up losing her penny.  I had always meant to get her
another one, but never got the chance.

“Come on, I want to show you something.”

Katie turned and tugged me along, though I was
anything but reluctant.  She led me to the train tracks and we walked them
west out of town.  I asked where we were going but she wouldn’t
tell.  I knew that she wouldn’t before I even asked but it would have
disappointed her for me not to show that I was curious and I didn’t want to
disappoint Katie.

She wore a large, wide-brimmed garden hat that I had
not seen before and it made her seem older.  The hat should have looked
ridiculous on her and it probably did to any other beholder, but not to
me.  To me, it glimpsed the future and I imagined how nice it would be to
someday walk by her side with my own silly hat.  The only hat I could
picture that was as big and silly was a sombrero and I imagined a mustachioed
future-me wearing a sombrero and a serape walking hand-in-hand with Katie on my
right and my donkey on my left.  I giggled.

“What’s so funny?”
she
asked.

I glanced at her hat and quickly looked away.

“Are you laughing at my hat?” she said aghast, pulling
the sides down over her ears.  The only way she could have looked cuter in
that moment is if she were holding a wet puppy.

“What?  No!  I was just…I was just
remembering something funny, that’s all.”

“Don’t you lie to me, Tucker Gaines, you were laughing
at my hat and I know it.  You think I look silly.”

I felt my face flush and I knew that with Katie there
would never be a secret I could keep or a lie I could tell.  “No, Katie,
you don’t look silly.  It’s just one more kind of way you look pretty.”

It was very aw-shucks and I surprised myself by saying
it.  She stopped in her tracks and turned to me.  Her eyes were wider
and greener than I had ever seen them and she had a look of all smiles and all
tears.  She had something to tell me, but decided not to.  She kissed
me on the cheek and suddenly I felt all smiles and all tears
myself
,
which confused me. 

“Katie, I’m going to marry you some day.”

I said it because I didn’t know what else to say in
that moment.  I also said it because I meant it.  More earnest words
I’ll never speak.

She did not respond, but there was something like
bliss to the look she gave me.  After a moment, she sniffed, lowered her
head,
wiped
her nose on a rolled-up sleeve. 
Grabbed my hand.

“Come on,” she said.  “We’re almost there.”

She led me back through a dense thicket of bushes and
shrubs that didn’t scratch or scrape as we passed through.  Like
background music, summer made its sounds for us.  Tweets and chirps from
above, whistles and croaks from around.

Once through the undergrowth, we stopped and she
handed me her hat.  I followed her through waist-high grass and then she
stopped, turned and faced me. 

“Close your eyes.”  Katie grabbed my hand and a
tingle shivered through the whole of me and I decided that I could probably
give up sight forever if this was the trade-off. 

“Almost there,” she said, still holding my hand. 
“No peeking”.

We stepped forward and dewy leaves brushed my
face.  I had the sensation of passing from light to shade, from hot to
temperate.

“Ta-
da
!” she said with a
wave of her wrist.  “Open your eyes.”

And when I did, what I saw was so beautiful that
something like fear came over me.  Because what I saw was so unfamiliar to
me and so improbable to Willow Grove that the thought occurred to me that I
might have literally died and gone to heaven.  I thought back on my day,
but couldn’t remember dying.

What was this place and how could I not know of
it?  This was my town.  It was so beautiful here that if I had seen
an apple and a serpent you could have convinced me we had stepped into the
Garden of Eden.  There was a small pond with dark waters that reflected
the beauty that surrounded it.  Plants and flowers I had not seen
before.  Colors I did not
recognize. 
Sounds that must have been music.
  Music that
danced through my skin and was soaked up by my insides.

“Where are we?  How did you find this
place?  When – I mean, when did you even have time?”

We had been together almost every day since Katie had
moved to town two weeks prior and already I had fallen deep within the spell of
her charm.  I was spending more and more time with Katie, less and less
with Charlie  Instead of
wiffle
ball with my
buddies, I was dressing up for tea parties with Katie.  We took long walks
and had longer conversations where we told each other all of our most favorite
things and then all of our least.  I told her what pests my brother and
sister were and she told me how she wished she had brothers and sisters. 
That it was better to be pestered than lonely.  Sometimes we would
entertain each other with lies and stories, spoken in foreign accents,
whispered with drama.  They were conversations that took place under
tented-blankets, high in trees, lying in the grass amongst a field of
dandelions.  We shared secrets, made promises, and laughed at the
silliness of boys and girls. 
And now this.
 
This Garden of Willow Grove.
 

We stole away to this secret place every chance we
could. 
To splash in the pond.
 
To be still in the grasses.
 
To be
together.
  Katie was sweet and kind and good.  Good like the
fishes of the seas and the birds of the sky.  Good like Eve before the
apple.  Katie Cooper was the greatest good I ever knew. 

God has put some magic inside of me, I think. 
When I was a kid, I used to sometimes see people in colors.  Not see, so
much, as associate colors with certain people I guess.  I would meet
somebody and have this sort of feeling of a color inside me.  It’s like
closing your eyes and trying to force yourself to remember the color
green. 
The memory of a color.
  I’m not sure
how else to describe it.  When you close your eyes and turn your face
toward something bright, is what you see brightness or darkness?  Over
time, I learned how to interpret those feelings of color.  But the first
time it happened, I didn’t understand.  Not until afterward anyway.