Dogwood (8 page)

“When I was younger, I sang in a church group. We’d travel around to different places. There was something about the leader, though. It was a gut reaction—stay away; don’t get too close. But I didn’t listen.”

“Did he ever do anything to you?”

Ruthie bit her cheek. “Yes. And here I am an old woman, and I still remember that night. Like it was yesterday. To this day I feel vulnerable around people who are supposed to be spiritual leaders. That’s the terrible thing. You stop listening to your heart and you become a shell of who you were meant to be.”

Exactly what I felt like. Empty. “Can you ever get that back? regain the power to listen to your heart?”

“You bet. That’s the great thing about God. He can restore the broken places. It’s really what he’s all about. Beauty for ashes.”

If you’ve ever had a friend who cares enough about you to get down in the dirt and roll around, to cry and laugh and shovel the manure of life, you’ll know how I felt when Ruthie leaned forward. I still get shivers thinking about her words and how true they were. How true they are.

“God is taking you somewhere, Karin. Someplace deep. He wants you to go with him. Most people never hear that call, never follow. They’re too busy or too successful or have just stopped listening. He’s making you uncomfortable. He doesn’t want to let you settle for chicken feed, where you hunt and peck what you want and leave the rest. I don’t know where you’ll wind up, but I’ll bet it’s going to feel a little bit lonely. He probably won’t take away your sadness. In fact, he might add to it. But when you’re closer to God and the things he cares about, there’s no better place.”

“I’m not sure I want to go. I’m not sure I can.”

“You can. You’ve been given a gift. Most people never get old enough to let go of the illusion. . . .”

“Which illusion?”

“The one that says you can have a perfect life, a perfect marriage, a perfect child, or whatever else you dream of being perfect. That you can get to a point where there’s no pain. That you never lose sleep.” Ruthie put her head back on the rocker. “Basically life is a dance through a field full of cow manure. Most people won’t even go into the field; they go around it and pretend. Or they try to tiptoe here and there and stay close to the fence. They never see that all that fertilizer creates some beautiful flowers and some of the greenest grass you’ll ever see.”

“So you what, wallow in it?”

“No, girl, I put my hip boots on and waltz through the cow pies.”

I tensed as the door opened, not knowing whether to sit or stand. I put my palms up, pushed the chair with the backs of my legs, and stood as a withered ghost hobbled into the room. She looked a thousand years old. Her leg bones appeared as thin as straw, her knees just bumps, shoulders stooped.

She transfixed me with those eyes, as if she were an aged vampire ready to suck the lifeblood from me. I doubted her false teeth were up to the task, but the ferocity of her stare left no doubt she had the willpower. I sensed strength in her. You develop that in prison—knowing the ones who will make it and those who won’t.

She stopped to catch her breath, looking like a battle-worn soldier who had come out stronger on the other side. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place her. Was she from Dogwood? one of my mother’s friends? a teacher? She glanced behind her and motioned.

All music that had been the soundtrack of my life in Clarkston faded. The world stopped turning, stars fell, and the sun stood still as
she
entered the room.

“Karin,” I whispered. The word I had spoken only to myself
the last twelve years. The name on my lips as I went to sleep each night. The face in my dreams. I hadn’t dared believe it was true, that she was really coming, but here she stood.

She moved tentatively, as if something in the room might swallow her whole if she made a wrong step. What these two had in common, what drew them together and to me, I couldn’t fathom.

Karin’s face had aged gracefully, unlike my own. I could feel a new line or wrinkle every day I washed my face. Her skin still looked as I remembered in my dreams. Cute freckles just above her cheeks—like someone who studied a map of home and tapped a pencil on a familiar spot—long eyelashes, and milky white skin.

Her eyes, however, betrayed a hard road. I remembered them as deep blue pools, moons circling an unknown planet, full of life. She was thinner, too, and I recalled the fears she used to have of growing up and inheriting her mother’s hips. She hadn’t.

Here was the answer to my prayers, every longing of a dozen years, standing half a room away, and yet so far.

Karin glanced to her right, and the old woman waved her forward. The woman spun to the back and with a grunt sat in a chair shoved close to the wall.

For the first time, Karin’s eyes locked on mine, and she smiled and glided to the chair across from me.

I leaned forward to speak through the holes, unable to quell my excited laughter. “You came. You really came to see me.”

“It took me a while. I’m sorry, Will.”

The mention of my name gave me chills. “Did you get my letters?”

Wrinkles formed at her brow. It looked like confusion. “I don’t think so. At least I don’t remember any.”

I let it drop, but I wanted to tell her I’d written her every day for a year, that some of the other inmates had called me Letter Man.

“How are you?” Karin said.

Did she want the truth? “I’m looking forward to getting out,” I managed. “I’m okay. Really.”

“I heard about your father. I’m very sorry.”

“Yeah. Are you still living in Dogwood?”

She nodded and a shadow crossed her face. “I’m married now. We have children.”

It was like a hand grenade to my heart, though I had heard all the rumors. I didn’t want to believe any of them. I tried to recover quickly. “That’s great. I’m happy for you, if you’re happy.”

“Well, I love my husband. I’m devoted to him and my children. I hope you’ll understand.”

I looked at the old woman in the shadows, trying to figure out this meeting. Why were they really here?

“Can you believe I actually have kids?” Karin said. “You’d think there’d be a law against it or something.”

She told me their names and a little about each. I could tell how much she loved them by the way her eyes twinkled, and she used her hands to reach out and caress their faces in the air. “Darin is a handful. He’s just the most adventurous, playful thing in the world. I swear he’s going to be an astronaut someday. And Kallie is . . . well, I don’t want to brag on them too much.”

“I’ll bet she’s as pretty as her mother,” I said.

Karin grinned and looked away, embarrassed.

“That’s really great. I always thought you’d make a good mother. What about your husband?”

“He’s a pastor. There’s another shocker. Can you imagine me a pastor’s wife?” She made quotation marks with her fingers. “In ministry together.”

I shook my head.

“We’re at the Little Brown Church. You remember it, don’t you? Richard likes it. The people. The challenge of it all.”

“Those people would be a challenge.”

“Yeah.” Karin laughed. “It’s kind of a day-to-day thing. You
can’t plan what’s going to happen long term, but Richard says, ‘Faithful in the little things will work the big things out.’ I can’t believe we actually wound up back in Dogwood, but I guess the Lord’s ways are mysterious.”

I stared into Karin’s eyes, searching for the girl I’d fallen in love with long ago. I had pictured us growing old together. All the romances that lined the bookstore shelves would pale in comparison to our story. “Is he good to you? I mean, are you really happy?”

She chuckled, and a bit of the young girl shone through. “A lot better than some of the other guys I went out with. He’s a good man, Will. He’s kind and caring, loves the children. His schedule is a little crazy visiting the hospital and some of the older members, but I’ll take it. I could certainly do worse.”

“And what about happy?” I said. “Are you?”

Karin studied her hands and fiddled with a scrap of newsprint so thin you could see through it. When she looked up, there were tears in her eyes. “I’m not sure I know what
happy
means. And I’m not sure it’s as important as I used to think, you know?” Her voice was pleading, whining. Tears fell and ran down her cheeks. She wore no makeup that I could tell.

She continued. “I used to dream of getting out of our skanky little town, of going someplace and becoming somebody. But that was all so I could come back and prove to people that they were wrong about me. I’m not sure it’s important what those people think. I’m not sure that being happy is a good goal.”

It sounded like something someone had told her. Something she’d learned in a Sunday school class and was now parroting to me.

“I’m glad you’ve found someone,” I said, trying not to show the hurt.

“What about you?” she said.

I wanted to say I’d been waiting for her, praying she would wait for me, hoping against all odds that there would be a future
for us. “It’s kind of hard getting dates in here. At least with the opposite sex.”

Karin laughed and squinted, taking me in with new eyes. “Will.” She said it like a prayer. Like
I
was the mystery. Then she scooted closer to the glass and put a hand gently on the table, her skin pale. “Remember when we were kids? the day you walked me home?”

“Racing those sticks in the creek,” I said.

“Boats,” she corrected. “And my mother came out.”

“I remember like it was yesterday,” I whispered.

She turned and looked at the old woman, then back at me. “You said something to me. When we were at the spelling bee. Whispered something. I was thinking about it the other day. Do you remember what you said?”

I could almost hear the water trickling over those rocks. I had been there a thousand times in my mind. When the heat of the summer or the smells and sweat of prison overtook me, I retreated to those hills, that water, the sound of the frogs and crickets filling the night, the buzz of june bugs, diligent bees spreading pollen. I had replayed the look of her hair, the smell of elementary school perfume.

“I just said you deserved to win,” I lied.

I have read the story of Joshua and how he prayed until the sun stood still. If God could do this, whether causing the earth to stop its spin or the whole universe to freeze, could he not turn back the clock for me? It seems plausible to a person of faith, whose soul has awakened, to ask and receive. Believe and be given.

I tried to believe and ask, but there must be prayers that amuse God. The Ancient of Days and Giver of Life is also the Laugher at Men. I had harbored a secret hope all these years, like a child who is too afraid of asking for what he truly wants at Christmas but blurts it out at the last minute on Christmas Eve and receives nothing but blank stares and chuckles.

If God sees the beginning from the end, if he knows the secrets and dark avenues of the heart, surely he must know what hope he steals when something like this happens to one of his children. Surely he must grieve as the wound-up world spins like a top, knocking against the dreams of his creation.

To say time stood still as I looked at Karin would not be accurate, because time had no consequence at that moment. I could see myself aged, living alone in some cabin on a hill with nothing but jerky and a bottle. Maybe a dog. Women would take their children by the hands and lead them to the other side of the street when they saw me coming. From this one visit, this one revelation by Karin, I had been banished to my own Patmos.

I closed my eyes and thought of that childish moment long ago. I had thrown the bee, had misspelled the word on purpose, had taken the fall for the lovely girl who needed something good in her life.

“One day I will marry you,”
I had whispered. I had held on to those six words for most of my life, certainly since the day I set foot in Clarkston. I had planned the very spot I would build our home, the playground in the backyard, even the sandlot where our boys would bring their friends to play baseball. We would hike in the woods together, pretend we were great explorers, greet trees and animals that had never met a human being. When our children were exhausted, when they lay sleeping soundly in their beds, I would take my wife to the room that had come to life from my own imagination—with a fireplace near the bed and a skylight above so we could make love watching the moon and stars.

One day I will marry you.

It was as certain in my mind as anything I had ever believed. My father’s love. The 1975 Reds. It was more certain than my conviction or incarceration.

All my life, if I could see something in my mind, I could make it come true. I could take that idea and create. It didn’t matter
what the object was—a cradle, a chair, an end table—if I could see how to piece it together in my mind, I could accomplish it.

That was what I had tried to do all these years at Clarkston—piece together the two separate parts of Karin and me. I had conducted this conversation a thousand times. Perhaps a million. I would make her laugh, her laughter would turn to love, and I would see in her eyes that she truly felt the same for me. We would embrace somehow, if only with our eyes, and she would promise to be there on the day of my release.

One day I will marry you.

I whispered it as a prayer as a child. I whispered it to myself in regret, as praise to the One who knows beginning from end, east from west, freedom from captivity. I whispered it to myself because I could not bring myself to believe the words.

One day I will marry you.