quintessence. (11 page)

“Just a minute,” I said, taking a notepad from the cupboard that also functioned as a desk if I laid it out right.

I needed to write down my idea before I lost it. If I didn’t write them down or sketch them out, I’d lose them and I didn’t want to lose this one. I sketched out my idea and set the notepad back where I grabbed it from.

“There goes that idea face again,” Margaret said.

“Idea face?” I asked.

“Yes, I saw it on you at Gabe’s the other night too. You see the world, then there’s a point where I can see when you see past the world and you think of something bigger.”

I smiled and turned my head. “It isn’t so much something bigger as it is capturing in my mind the scene going on around me. I enjoy seeing life and people experiencing life. Most of my boxes are of happier things. But some aren’t as happy. I try not to put those out there as much for people to see,” I said.

I looked up at the shelf that contained some of those boxes. The boxes on the shelf were
my
boxes. My life. They weren’t ones I shared at the exhibit. I wanted to show them to her, but memories of how I had been with her rushed me. I didn’t want her to judge me in the same way I had judged her last year. I deserved it though; I understood that.

But those boxes were more.

“What did you write down?” Margaret asked.

Margaret. That name captured the beauty of her.

“I remembered a scene with my grandmother. It’s a moment in my life. Something from when I was younger. I want to make a box of it, so when I get a memory I write it down and sketch it out, so I won’t forget it again.”

“Can you tell me about it?” she asked, as she leaned against the doorframe.

I had a memory of my grandma I wanted to make a box for, but that wasn’t the entire bit I wrote down. I had made note of the color I saw in Margaret’s hair when the light hit it. The black of it looked almost blue in parts from the moonlight as we walked up the hill. The skin of her hand that wrapped around my arm had a pale milky glow. But her eyes, her eyes had been a deep iridescent blaze as the moon reflected in them. That memory couldn’t be in a box and it was the first time in a long while I felt the need to paint on canvas, not lock it away in a box.

“Okay. My grandma was Cajun,” I began. “She moved up here from Louisiana when she was a teenager and it was hard at first, being away from what she’d always known. She would still sing these songs and cook some of the best foods while she sang. I was thinking about a time when I was little and she stood behind her table and was kneading bread. It was a simple scene, but it made me happy.”

She watched me with intensity, and it made the pieces of a box idea pull tighter together. The picture still evaded me though. It lived just on the horizon because it contained my fear and I couldn’t bring myself to focus on it just yet.

The words her father said haunted me all night. As much as I wanted to hold her and show her how much I wanted to be with her—I couldn’t be the reason she left Toby. She had to do that on her own.

I looked at my boxes once more. I didn’t know how she would feel after seeing them. Every part of me didn’t want her to know what lay inside them, but I knew she needed to.

It would be a healing for both of us.

“This is so freaking amazing,” I said as I stepped farther into the little house. I needed to look away from him. His gaze and the smile he wore along with it made me want to hold him.

I wanted to explore silence together.

Being with him quieted everything. The world rushed around me, and the stillness with him calmed it all.

“Thank you. It’s cold in here though. I’ll make a fire,” Karl said as he walked to a small wood stove. He hit a couple pieces of wood together and they made a sound like drumsticks tapping. “You can sit on that,” he said, waving a piece of wood at a bench.

I studied it as it had to be handmade. “Did you make this?” I asked.

He turned to look at what I referred to and he smiled. “I helped, but Blake did most of it. He did the carving on it.”

I ran my fingers across the woodwork. “He did this? I didn’t know he had it in him.”

“Oh yeah, Blake’s a carpenter or a whittler, though I’m not sure which would be the best description of him.”

I smiled at the sound of Karl saying the word whittler. The depth of his voice with the word contrasted one another. I sat on the bench that had blankets on top of it as a cushion. “You have used every piece of space in here,” I said, noticing the cupboards under the bench and the loft above me.

“Yeah, I wanted to live with just what I needed. I didn’t want to go overboard with anything.”

“Why don’t you talk about this? I mean, I know you stay with people in town all the time. Why don’t you just drive your car out here every night after work?” I asked.

“I’ve started to sometimes. But then other times, I want to walk around town to get ideas for my boxes. I also go to Sid’s house to work on them. He has a shed I use, and it sounds weird, but I don’t like to work on them here.” He squatted down in front of the stove and lined up small pieces of wood like a teepee inside of it.

He took one piece of wood, pulled his knife from its sheath, and ran it down the side to cut curly cues of shredding from it. Once he had a pile, he set them under the teepee of wood. He reached into his jacket and pulled out what looked like the lint he flicked earlier. He placed that near the twirled pieces of wood. He lit a match and touched the lint with it. He blew on it until the fire spread to the small pieces of wood.

He continued to place wood that was just a size larger than the previous ones on the fire before he set a log on it.

The whole process took about five to ten minutes, and I watched in complete silence.

He stood up and ran his hands across the front of his jeans. “Okay, it will get warmer in here soon.”

I smiled, and it felt like the most genuine one I had smiled in a while.

“What?” he asked with a grin. It was the first time I saw him grin that way. This was his place, and the walls sang of him.

“Nothing. That was just mesmerizing.” I knew the expression I wore was
awe
.

“Making a fire? I think man has been doing that for millennia,” he said laughing.

“Yes, they have been. But most men these days like to just flick on the gas in the fireplace and watch the fake logs heat up,” I said as I ran my hands over my arms.

He shook his head as he took his coat off and pulled the sleeves of his Henley down. He took his flannel off from over it and it made me feel as if I were going to explode from the anticipation my hormones were creating. I wanted to touch him.

He hung both his jacket and his flannel on a hook and turned back to face me. He folded his hands together before massaging his thumb on the palm of his hand.
I would touch him.

“So, this is it. This is my home. I sit here, draw, think, read, and work on the house.” He ran his hand over his head, adjusting his hat, and then putting it back on. “But I wanted you to see it and I wanted to show you something.”

“Okay,” I said, wrapping my sweater around me and bouncing my heels up and down to get warm.

“I want to show you some of my boxes,” he said, toying with his beard in nervousness.

“You mean the ones you said you don’t show to people?” I asked and pride filled me. He trusted me to see inside one of his boxes.

He reached above me and shifted several boxes and opened some, trying to find the one he wanted. I kept my eyes focused on my hands that rested in my lap. The loose piece of yarn on my mitt held all my interest and as if I needed another reminder not to reach out and touch him, my phone rang.

“Oh I didn’t think I’d even have reception out here,” I said as I saw the call was from Toby.

I didn’t want to answer it, but I knew I should.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Hey Magistrate, how are you?” he asked with an obvious smile in his voice. I had spoken to him a couple times since Gabe’s party and I noticed his smile became more pronounced in his words.

“I’m doing well—just hanging out. What are you up to?” I asked.

“Well, if you notice, I’m calling from my cell now. I’m starting my way back toward you. It will still be a few weeks, but I will be home soon.”
He’s coming back
. I tried to rationalize the feelings I should have at his statement. My boyfriend was coming back. I love him. I should be happy. But, instead I had a fist fight going on inside me.

My body had been fighting itself.

Now my mind and emotions joined in the battle.

Karl shuffled along the shelf above and he was now almost right in front of me. His shirt lifted as he adjusted the boxes, looking for the one he wanted to show me.

“I’m sorry, I’ll need to call you back,” I said.

“Okay, that’s fine; I need to get on the bus now, anyway. Love ya,” he said as he ended the call.

Toby once wanted to leave me.

Toby was coming back.

But, I didn’t know if I still wanted Toby.

My body and my mind were in a chaotic dance with one another. My brain told my legs what to do, but in morbid animosity they denied the request. I didn’t know if MS was what was happening. I didn’t know where my life would be in a month. But I knew without a doubt what I needed to do if I wanted to keep my sanity.

I reached my hand out to Karl. I let my fingers trace along his exposed skin from the motion of his raised arms. He tensed at first as if he too were fighting himself. I heard the intake of a breath and he kept his hands stilled on the shelf. I hesitated, not knowing what this would mean, but I traced my hands above his hips and around to his back. I hugged him around the waist and let my forehead rest on his abdomen.

The room was still other than the sound of our breaths and the crackle of the fire in the wood stove.

I turned my cheek to him as he lowered his hands from the shelf and rested them on my shoulders. He massaged his fingers across the back of my head before he removed the band from around my hair.

He lowered himself in front of me and sat on his knees. Resting his elbows on my knees, he pushed my hair behind my ears before kissing my forehead.

“Can I hold you tonight, Maggie? It’s another one of those strange comments, I know. But, I would kick myself if I didn’t ask the question. I know you’re with Toby and he is a close friend of mine. You don’t even know the half of it. But I want you to be near me tonight. More than anything, that is what I want. I understand he will come back and you love him. I understand that you feel like you have decisions to make on top of everything else you have going on. But I don’t want this to be part of your decision.”

“There’s no way around it, Karl. You’re my friend—more than a friend. But, it’s as if I’ve known you forever. I know how cliché that statement sounds. But it’s the truth. There’s no way for you not to be a part of it. I know they tell me I could have issues going on personality wise or even with my moods and thoughts. But damn it if I don’t know that where I need to be is right here with you.”

“That’s the reason I need you to think about it. I don’t want to be your means of escape from it. I want to be with you, but I don’t want to be your out.” His eyes held fast to mine and my heart felt like it would explode. My body that fought me also made me more aware of everything around me. The closeness to him felt amazing. I wanted even closer.

He lowered his lips to mine and kissed me in his gentle way. It hurt. It hurt to kiss him because it wasn’t just our lips that touched—he touched me on a level that scared me. Being that close with another human being was painful because I stood on the edge of losing myself to him. I never felt that way before and it hurt to realize I had missed something I never knew existed.

I put my hands to his cheek and scooted to the edge of the bench so I could get closer to him. I tilted my head to deepen the kiss, and he pulled away from me.

His eyes broke me. He wanted to kiss me too, I could see it, but with Karl, as always, things were a step heavier and farther than what I had become accustomed to in life. He brought more with him.

On the outside, he was simple in his lifestyle, but inside, there was no simplicity with him. He had a wounded heart and a strong mind. Two things that together formed the most complex individual I’d ever met.

I fought my hands and let them fall to my lap. I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to deepen everything with her, but I couldn’t.

“Can I show you something?” I asked instead. Her face fell, and I saw the threads being pulled. I couldn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t. But she needed to know what she was getting herself into.

I knew right where the box was that I hid from the others. I had put it in the farthest corner of the shelf. Which wasn’t that far, considering how small the shelf was, but I hid it behind the others. I faked my search because I wanted to prolong showing it to her. The phone call she received was welcome as it also prolonged the wait.

These boxes were smaller than the ones at the exhibit. I needed to make them smaller so I could concentrate on every detail of my stories. I couldn’t let my life be forgotten.

I stood and pulled the dark cedar box from the shelf. I sat next to her on the bench and held the box in my lap. She put her hand on my leg and gave a gentle squeeze of comfort.

“This is a memory that haunts me. I look at it sometimes, trying to sort out the why of it. I wanted to understand what I did and why I did it. I still do. I want to understand the purpose of it. Why was it happening? What happens now that it did happen? The moment is played, then rewound, and then played again. I try to figure out what we could have done different. Why am I considered in the right? Why do I still live? How did the universe determine that someone like me should live and they couldn’t?”

She rested her head on my shoulder and we both watched my hands that clung tight to the box. She removed her hand from my thigh and traced up my forearm and lifted my hand from the box, taking it in hers.

“I’m listening,” she said.

Such simple words, but they are the words every human wants to hear.

“In boot camp, you shoot at targets. I don’t go target shooting anymore. I used to. I’m not bothered by guns, but I can’t use the targets, because targets are stuck in my mind. I now associate them with my life over there. It’s one thing to shoot at targets, but when your sight is on an enemy, or a person that your superior has told you is an enemy, things change. There’s a person there. But I forced myself to see them as targets, I could do that.

“One day, I didn’t see the targets anymore. I saw
them
. I spoke with a chaplain about it. I told him their faces haunted me. It became a fact of life for me—the faces, the sound of the bullets firing, the fear and adrenaline. I was no longer afraid or cautious anymore. I saw their deaths as just a day at the office. I had to kill and that was it. I wondered if that meant I was a bad person. The chaplain had told me, “
It’d be wrong if you enjoyed it. That was the difference. You can kill because you have to, but you don’t enjoy it.
” His words were of no help. I didn’t enjoy it, but I kept doing it. I started to see boxes. Because, when I saw them as people, their boxes formed. I saw their lives. I saw my life and my friends’ lives. I thought of how separate we were from them, but they were still people, living their lives too. So, I mentally tucked them into boxes.

“When I came back I had to evaluate my life and what I had done. It was difficult at first to compare there to here.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment before I continued.

“Here, the focus on the military is on the ultimate sacrifice a soldier makes. They are the few brave souls that protect. The ultimate sacrifice doesn’t involve only lives lost. We sacrifice our definition of humanity and ourselves. It’s part of the job. Here, everything has become sterile and separated. There is a disconnect from what happens there. It’s much like stores. People go to the supermarket and buy their meat and think nothing of it, but if they have to kill the food they must eat, they struggle with the ethics of it. Soldiers are like that to society. No one wants to think about what we do. They want us packaged with a flag. When we come home with wounds inside, they don’t want to think about that. People don’t want to think about the sacrifice. They’d rather us be packaged in coffins draped in a flag, because then it’s something they can get behind, just like they don’t have a problem eating the packaged meat in the supermarket.”

Her hand tensed in mine, but she didn’t look away or stop listening. She remained in the same place—unshaken, stable, wounded, but not broken.

The thread pulled tighter, and the pieces formed as one. The image was becoming clearer; she held the needle that wove us together.

“I want you to see this box. It’s the one that represents the worst part of my memories on deployment,” I said and turned my face to the shelf above us. There were more there, but I was being honest. This was the worst one.

I opened the box and set it in her lap, then stood from the bench. I went back to the stove to check the wood and place another log on the fire.

I heard her gasp when she saw it and my shoulders fell. The pain in my gut was worse than the metal that tore my body years ago. Those were pains that didn’t last with me, but I didn’t believe her opinion of me and the pain brought with it could ever leave me.

I remained with my back to her and I sat on my knees. I looked at my hands in my lap and knew that these were the same hands that did the thing she saw in the box.

“I thought of fancy words to use to explain this box away. I wanted to tone it down. I wanted to tell you that this didn’t happen; that it was just an allegory of the pain I felt when I remembered what I’d done. I didn’t want you believing that about me, but then once we got here, I knew you had to see it. I wanted you to know it all. I wanted you to know you weren’t alone. I know what it feels like to carry something in you that no one else can see. Granted, mine is in my memories, and yours is out of your control, but I know. I know.”

She moved from the bench and I waited for her to open the door and leave. I waited for her to dial her phone to have someone pick her up. I expected it. I couldn’t play the game of being a decent person for her without her knowing everything. I knew I was a decent person now because I tried every damn day to be one. I needed to make amends for what I did. I could never make amends for the scene in the box, but I could make amends to the universe and try my hardest to make sure no one else feels as alone as I did in that moment.

The door never opened, and she never dialed her phone. Instead, she put her hand on my shoulder and then her other arm around my chest. She held tight to my back, and it was a perfect moment—her holding me. She didn’t need to do it. She shouldn’t
want
to do it.

I picked her hand up off my shoulder and pulled it around to my face to kiss her wrist. I held tight to her arm around me and we sat there for several moments.

“Tell me your healing,” she said.

I smiled and kissed her wrist once more. “I don’t have one for that.”

“You need one. That box isn’t you. That box is one moment that happened that you can still move forward from. I know you Karl. I know you can have a healing from that,” she said and then kissed the top of my head and ran her hand through my hair. “I will help you with the healing with this.”

She stepped away from me and returned to the bench. She kept the box in her lap and looked at it once more as the image in my mind for a healing box came into focus. The image was us—simply us.