Cedar Creek Seasons (37 page)

They topped the final hill and headed down toward the sight that never failed to move her—the long-abandoned covered bridge. Traffic bypassed the bridge with one made of steel and concrete. But a few feet away, standing sentry over the history of the area, over the stories lodged in tree trunks and behind rocks and in the crystal waters of Cedar Creek, was the swaybacked, unpainted, unassuming Cedarburg Covered Bridge. Still standing. Retired from its original use, it still inspired admirers.

What was that sensation stealing her worry? She almost laughed out loud over not recognizing it right away. Peace.

Oompa would be okay, one way or another. And so would she.

Derrick signaled and turned off the county road onto Covered Bridge Park Drive. He drove even slower than necessary, allowing his passengers to drink in everything that made the scene a favorite of photographers and romantics.

He’d seen the park dressed more colorfully just a few weeks ago when he and Beth picnicked in parkas. The chill in the air had worked hard to defy the fireplace flame colors of the autumn leaves. Beth pronounced his latest creation—Chocolate-Covered Donut Brownie—a hit. The colors of the trees sparkled in her glacial blue eyes that day as they talked about things that mattered. Their faith. His appreciation of her.

Derrick now pulled the vehicle to a stop in front of the exercise-ball-sized boulders that bordered the parking area. The arched walking bridge lay to their right, the covered bridge to their left, Cedar Creek in front of them, moving left to right. He exited the Escalade and ran around the back to open Beth’s door, then Oompa’s, but warned him to stay put until he extricated the wheelchair.

Beth looped a nubby moebius—he’d never get that pronunciation right—around her neck and pulled gloves over her hands before adjusting the oxygen tank onto the back of the chair and draping the tubing over one handle to keep it from getting run over by the chair’s wheels or, Derrick assumed, his size fourteen feet.

While Beth guided the operation, Derrick lifted Oompa out of the Escalade and into the waiting chair.

With a quilt wrapped around his legs and a wool scarf around his head and neck, Oompa looked like a toddler bundled up for his first toboggan ride, except for the oxygen tubing peeking out of the scarf wrap.

Brakes disengaged, Derrick pushed the chair forward.

“Where to first?”

“Walking bridge, please.” Oompa’s teeth chattered, more from the bumpy terrain than from the cold.

Derrick caught Beth’s gaze. Those compassionate eyes said, “Whatever he wants.”

They hung a right. The approach to the arched walking bridge challenged them with end-of-season long grass and cold-crisp leaves. The uneven ground kept Derrick focused on maintaining at least two of the three of them upright. Beth was on her own.

Why did that thought make his throat tighten? More than capable on her own, she stirred in him a longing to be there for her so she wouldn’t have to be.

Oompa said little as they pushed on toward the walking bridge. The wheels seemed relieved when they hit the wooden surface and the more rhythmic jostles of the planks. In the middle of the bridge, Derrick turned the wheelchair to face upstream, toward the site of the covered bridge.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” Oompa’s voice registered just a few decibels higher than the sound of the creek gurgling over rocks and hustling toward town. “The last standing original covered bridge in Wisconsin.”

Ever the intruder, Derrick was about to step away for a moment when Oompa turned to him and said, “Son, I need a little time with my granddaughter.”

“Sure.” Derrick locked the brakes and tapped the gauge on the oxygen tank, as if he knew what he was doing. “I’ll be over—I’ll just—I think I’ll—”

“Skip rocks?” Beth volunteered.

“Good idea.” He left them and followed the edge of the creek downstream, away from their line of sight. The water fascinated him, but a piece of his heart stayed rooted on the footbridge, wishing it could wrap its arms around the two who remained there.

A
re you warm enough, Oompa?”

“Cozy as a truffle tucked inside a pocket of cream cheese tucked inside a mound of Double Fudge Delight.”

Beth chuckled. “A brownie metaphor? You’ve been hanging around Derrick too much.”

His slight shoulders, padded as they were by the heavy coat she’d insisted he wear, rose then sank lower than before. “Maybe not enough, child. Not enough.”

A squirrel rustled leaves nearby, digging for treasure buried beneath their covering. Oompa sat back in the wheelchair. “I wish I’d had the opportunity to get to know him better.”

Beth’s chest tightened. “He’s not going anywhere.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and planted a grandfatherly kiss that she felt through her glove. “But I am.”

“No pessimistic talk today.” She turned her back to the covered bridge and leaned against the modern version’s safety railing. “Happy thoughts. Happy thoughts.”

“Beth, why would you think talk about heaven is pessimistic? Isn’t that the most optimistic thing a person’s mind can dwell on?”

He’d put her in her place more than once when she needed it.

“The closer I get, I can almost smell it. I get a whiff of something that I know isn’t blooming now, something like jasmine or … What was that fragrance your grandmother always wore?”

“Honeysuckle. Avon.”

His head tipped back. “Honeysuckle. Can you smell it?”

Beth closed her eyes. She smelled wool and old leaves and earthiness. How she’d love to take a deep breath of Grandma Schurmer’s wide, honeysuckle-scented shoulder, the one she’d often leaned on when life stunk. Maybe Oompa could smell that now, but Beth was still too earthbound.

“Child, things are about to happen.”

Beth’s heart tumbled. She knelt beside him and gripped the arms of the wheelchair. “Are you okay? Should we get you back to the car? Derrick!”

Oompa frowned and shushed her. “Not this minute. Soon. Good things. Like with the shop.”

How could she tell him that when he was gone, she wasn’t sure she could keep up the mortgage on the building, much less keep it upright? The repairs and renovations it needed were too much for her. A great old building like that—a great old man like him—and she was helpless to resurrect either one.

She did smell something now. A combination of a familiar fear and a faint scent of basil/lime. Derrick!

Panting, he pounded toward them on the walking bridge. “What is it? Heart? The cold?”

Oompa stretched his neck to look Derrick in the eye. “You came faster than the creek rose the year of the flash flood, back in—”

Derrick knelt opposite Beth and searched her face for an answer she couldn’t give. He directed his attention back to Oompa. “Are you in pain?”

“A little,” Oompa said. “You’re crushing my hand.”

Derrick released his vise clamp on the arm of the wheelchair and Oompa’s hand that had been resting on it. “Sorry.”

Oompa seemed to search for a fitting reply. “Good to know you’re responsive,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “She calls. You come running. Sounds like the start of a great relationship, if you ask me.”

If he hadn’t been so frail, and so right, Beth would have slugged him in his bony arm.

“Careful here.”

Derrick steered the wheelchair around a low spot and onto the approach to the covered bridge. Once inside the hallowed tunnel of wood and history, the three were out of the wind, light as it was, except for where it stole through the gaps between the boards.

“Never did like all the graffiti,” Oompa said, his voice echoing down the bridge’s long belly.

As far up as humans could reach, graffiti covered the walls. Oompa motioned toward a spot almost halfway through the bridge, on the wall facing downstream. “No use for graffiti,” he repeated, “except this one.”

Derrick traced where he pointed. Beth joined him, drawing closer to read the carved inscription.
Found Joy Here.
The words were low on the wall, near a knothole. Eye level for Oompa in his chair. Stoop level for Beth. Pretzel level for Derrick.

Beth stepped back. “Oompa! You wrote that?”

“I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has expired on that bit of vandalism.” Oompa tucked his neck deeper into his coat collar and scarf.

Derrick’s fingers followed the line of the words, worn but clear. Then he traced the knothole. About two inches wide and three inches long, it formed a diamond-shaped window to the world beyond the bridge. He peered through the opening. Cedar Creek glistened in the thin November sunlight. The footbridge downstream stood firm and unweathered, welcoming, but in some strange way storyless. The covered bridge in which the three huddled was bent with the weight of its stories.

“Beth, take a look.”

He scooted back so she could crouch in front of the knothole.

“Beautiful. Interesting how such a narrow window can reveal such a wide scene.”

Oompa laid a hand on Beth’s back. Derrick watched as the knobby gloved fingers traced a sideways figure eight, infinity, across her shoulders. “Child of mine, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s what this spot taught me.”

Derrick stood and stepped away from grandfather and granddaughter. But he couldn’t leave altogether. He backed away to the opening of the bridge. Sound carried well enough.

“You and a woman named Joy used to meet here?” Beth said.

“What?”

“Joy. You’ve mentioned some mysterious woman named Joy. Did … did Grandma know about her?”

“Bethlehem Meredith Schurmer! I was entirely and utterly faithful to your grandmother until and every day of the four years since she died!”

She turned toward him. “It’s just that you seemed so taken with this Joy person.”

“Not a person.”

Beth glanced Derrick’s direction. He shrugged, at a loss to offer any clarity.

“Oompa.” She stood, leaned her back against the wall of the bridge, and sighed. “I want to understand.”

“I came here often in my younger days. To think.” He sucked in a labored breath. “To sort things out.”

His chest rose in another exaggerated inhalation.

“Once, I came a broken man.”

Broken? When had her grandfather ever been less than monument strong? Before his health failed, that is. When had he not been a rock of faith, confident, in control?

Beth shivered. As soon as the thought occurred to her that she should have worn as heavy a coat as she forced on Oompa, warmth encircled her from behind. Derrick’s arms. She leaned into them.

Oompa’s face brightened. He pointed at the pillar of strength behind her. “That one. He’s good for you, child. You hang on to him.”

Beth returned Oompa’s smile but added, “That’s not the subject we were talking about. Broken?”

“You thought I was handling my grief just fine after your grandma died.”

“You kept going.” The words squeezed their way past the tension in her throat.

Oompa stared at his feet on the wheelchair’s footrests. “On the outside. I kept going on the outside.”

Derrick’s arms tightened around her.

“You and Grandma were together a long time.”

Oompa rubbed his palms on his thighs. “I thought I’d be better prepared to let her go when the time came.” He held Beth’s gaze. It wasn’t hard to decipher the deeper meaning for her.

“‘To everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven,’” Derrick quoted.

Oompa joined in, singing. “Turn, turn, turn.”

The two men broke into all-out laughter.

The air chilled by several degrees. “How can you laugh at a time like this? Derrick!” She elbowed him and pulled away. “Oompa! Your heart was broken and you ran to another woman for comfort?”

“Another woman? Oh, Beth. I found
joy
here.” He wiped the corners of his eyes and composed himself. “I staggered onto this bridge almost a year after your grandmother died, an inch from wishing my own life had ended. I fell to my knees where you’re standing, crying out to God to give me a reason, one reason to believe life was worth living.”

Beth’s pulse quickened.

“I peered out through that knothole. Until I got up close to it, all I could see was a tiny slice of water and trees, the size of the knothole itself. When I put my eye right up to it, I could see clear downstream, could see that the creek bent and curved and straightened again, that rocks interrupted its flow only temporarily. I hadn’t sensed anything more than a distant comfort from the Lord until that moment. I rediscovered joy.”