Authors: Francis Porretto
She had read many fanciful stories about dryads and wood nymphs. She wasn't so otherworldly as to believe in any such creatures, but if they were real, surely they would welcome her as a kindred spirit, if not actually one of their own. It was a pleasant thought.
She had tried to capture some of her feelings for the green silences of the forest in poetry. When she read her compositions afterward, she was moved to revulsion by the crudity of her command of language, how poorly she expressed that which was delicate and personal. Yet she persevered, straining against her expressive bounds, in hope that she might craft some memento of that perfect peace for those times when she couldn't take refuge in its actuality. Now that her senior year had begun and her departure for some noisy, hectic college or other was less than a year away, the project was taking on some urgency.
She loved all woods, and all the trees in them, but there was one special tree whose life seemed bound to her own. It was a great oak, perhaps a hundred feet tall and five in diameter, that stood at the center of a circular clearing ringed by Scotch pines, perhaps a mile from the edge of the State preserve. She could not imagine its age. To her it embodied every virtue a living thing could possess: beauty, strength, quiet and endurance. The underbrush and lesser trees stood well back from it. She knew nothing about the natural processes that would produce such a clearing. She liked to imagine that the oak's solemn dignity awed the other trees into keeping a respectful distance.
Few were the times that she ventured into the preserve without visiting the oak. Were she turned loose anywhere in that forest in the dead of night, she was certain she would find the oak by instinct alone. When time permitted, as it did today, she would sit against its mammoth base, reading, writing, humming or singing to herself, or talking to it of her inmost yearnings and fears, as if it were a dear old friend.
She was taken completely by surprise when Jimmy Ducati came crashing through the trees.
***
Louis had walked the unfamiliar woods for an hour, looking for a clearing in which to pitch his final camp. He was about three hundred miles from home. The jolts along his spine had become too frequent and too strong for him to drive any further. They had stopped his breathing twice and had canceled his vision once for several minutes. The most recent one seemed to have left his heart skittering. But in the hour since he'd abandoned his truck, he hadn't found a suitable place to pitch his small tent.
Do I really need a clearing? I'm not going to last. Why not just sit down under any of these trees and relax to it?
His woodsman's habits would not permit it. He continued on, holding the spasms at bay as best he could with willpower and acquired discipline, delighting in passing in the explosions of color in the canopy above. The complex temperature movements of the late summer had given New York its most brilliant autumn in many a year.
Christine would love it here.
Perhaps the progress of the disease had affected his hearing. He was very close to the great oak before he heard the sounds of the struggle, the anguished grunts of the boy, and the muffled screams of the girl.
He broke into a run.
***
Jimmy had just gotten Lori's pants off when the intruder crashed into him.
The impact hurled the big teenager a considerable distance and slammed him onto his back. He blacked out, returned to consciousness, and shook his head furiously to dispel the whirling fog that had filled it. When he could see clearly again, Lori was nowhere in sight. A short figure with burning eyes stared down at him from about three feet away.
Jimmy started to rise.
"Stay there."
The authority in the words cut through Jimmy's tendons. He lay still.
"Turn out your pockets."
"But -- "
"Do it."
He complied.
The intruder squinted down at the few coins, the keyring, and the tiny penknife that Jimmy used to clean his fingernails. He stooped and picked up the knife.
"Any other blades on you?"
"No, sir."
The intruder stared into his eyes. Jimmy would have run, if he hadn't been afraid even to twitch.
"What was going on when I arrived, was that all your idea?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you know that girl?"
"No, not really. Not well."
The intruder assessed him. "I think I'm going to let you apologize to her. You're lucky I stopped you when I did, you know. If you'd gotten any farther before I got here, or if you'd had a real weapon...look me in the eye, kid: is this the worst thing you've ever done?"
As frightened as he was, it didn't occur to Jimmy to lie. "I killed a squirrel once."
"To eat? Or for its fur?"
"No."
The man's face hardened still further. "That's bad. Sometimes we have to kill. But you don't kill for pleasure. Not ever again. And you don't do anything like this. Got me?"
"Yes, sir."
Who is this guy? Why am I going along with all this?
The man seemed to divine the current of his thoughts.
"I'm nobody in particular, kid. Just a decent man who can't see an indecency being committed and walk by. There are more of us than you know. Today, I'm your guardian angel. Not hers, yours. She would have recovered. You came awfully close to losing your soul."
Jimmy said nothing.
"Think how this could have worked out. If you'd regretted it afterward, you'd have had to live with the remorse for the rest of your life. A stain like that never goes away. Eventually, self-loathing would have eaten you alive. If you'd enjoyed it, well, how much worse can a monster get? It would have been a mercy to you to fall under a bus."
The intruder turned and spoke to the bole of the great oak.
"Come out here, Miss. It's safe."
After a moment, Lori Iervolino stepped from behind the tree. She was disheveled, but fully clothed again. Jimmy's face burned with a deep shame.
"I think this young man has a few words to say to you." He beckoned to her to stand beside him, and took her hand before turning back to where Jimmy lay. "Time to get up and brush the dust off, kid."
Jimmy staggered to his feet and clapped his hands along his sides and legs. A small cloud of dust and a few pine needles fell away from his clothes.
"Well?"
Jimmy bowed his head. "I'm sorry, Lori. It won't ever happen again. Please forgive me." He meant every word.
The intruder's eyebrows rose. "Any excuses to offer?"
"Well, it's just that --"
A stinging blow cracked across Jimmy's face. He reeled back, caught himself just before falling.
"Get it right this time, kid. Any excuses?"
"No, sir."
"That's better. Go home and think about today. You just made a promise. Now you have to work out how you're going to keep it."
Jimmy turned and ran through the woods.
***
Lori watched Jimmy's flight without speaking.
"Is he a decent kid?"
She turned to the strange man whose hand she held. "I don't really know him."
He nodded. "Well, sometimes you have to guess." He grimaced and hunched forward, then straightened up again with difficulty. "Miss, what's your name?"
"Lori."
"Would you do me a favor, please, Lori?"
"What, sir?"
"Just lead me back to the big tree and help me sit down against it."
Lori looked at the man's face again. His eyes were unfocused.
He's blind. He was just standing here next to me, holding my hand, and he was struck blind.
She slid around him, took him by the waist, and walked him slowly backwards. When his back bumped the oak, he let himself slide to the ground, legs extended before him. She sat beside him, took his hand again.
"Sir?"
"Call me Louis."
"Louis, are you okay?"
He smiled. It was a strange thing to see under those unseeing eyes.
"No, Lori, I'm not, and I won't be getting better. I was planning to die alone, here in the forest, but I've just changed my mind. If you have a little time, and you don't mind spending it in the company of a dying man, I'd really appreciate it if you'd stay and talk to me." A spasm passed through his chest and jerked him upright. "I don't think you'll be here for long. When I'm gone, take my wallet from my back pocket and bring it to the local police. Tell them you found me here. That'll make it easiest on you."
She clutched his hand. "Whatever you want, Louis. You saved my life."
"Oh, I don't think so. He really wasn't that sort." He settled himself against the tree again. "Just talk to me for a while and we'll be even-up, okay?"
They sat together under the shadow of the great oak. Having nothing else to say, she told him of her poetry, and her times in the woods, and the great oak at their backs, and then, with his gentle encouragement, about all of her life.
***
It was about two hours later that Louis's hand went slack. He hadn't said a word in several minutes. Lori listened, but heard no hiss of breath from his nostrils. She felt his chest, but found no beat. His expression was one of peace.
He said it wouldn't be long.
As he had asked, she slid the wallet from his back pocket, dropped it into her backpack, and headed for town. It would be about an hour's walk to the police station from here. She would give it to them, and they would do whatever it was the police did at times like this. She wondered why he'd cared.
***
In his life's last moments, Louis's sense of his surroundings dissolved. He had long since ceased to be able to see the trees around him. The trunk against his back and the needle-carpeted forest floor upon which he lay no longer seemed to press against him. He could not smell the pine fragrance that minutes ago had been overpowering.
The pain that had been near to unmanning him had muted as well. Indeed, he could no longer feel it, or anything else. He would soon take his leave of the world, but his agonies were already behind him. After months of inescapable cramps, spasms, and struggle, all his muscles had relaxed; there was no tension left in him.
Throughout his life, he had cherished a sense of connection to the infinite and the eternal. After his diagnosis, he had lost it. Every attempt to reclaim it had fallen short. Yet he had never surrendered his hope.
Poised at the edge of time, he found that his five human senses had been exchanged for a wider sense, only just unfolding within him. It seemed to have no horizons. His new sight stretched to the tops of the towering trees, through the roof of the world, and beyond. He saw the galaxies in their grandeur and knew the smallest speck of dust in each of them. His grasp expanded through time as well, and he knew the Universe whole, from its fiery beginning to its frigid end, as if it had been a single event.
He saw, and he knew, and being Louis, he loved.
Enfolding the whole was a Presence that had been the hope of his existence. In his final instants as an independent consciousness, It spoke to him.
Welcome.
- Am I truly welcome, then?
None have ever been more so.
- But I doubted you.
Not even once.
- (puzzlement)
It is a characteristic of human mental structure that you are not always aware of the reasons for your actions.
- You make mistakes?
(humor) Frequently.
- Then I suppose I never really knew what you required.
Courage enough not to surrender.
- Didn't I?
Through all the ages, no man has ever met his tests as unbendingly as you.
- Not even Malcolm?
Malcolm is a special case. He is not as you are. I hope that he may yet be returned to his proper place.
- What? Are there other worlds than this one?
Be still. You must make a choice, and we have only a moment. Know this first: I did not create you.
- WHAT?
I created your universe. I decreed the laws, set the initial conditions, and emitted the first spark. I did not foresee the coming of Man. You are not my conscious creation. You are the result of the working-out of those laws, those initial conditions.
- But --
Be still! You do not end here, but I do not know where you are bound. When a human dies, its soul briefly transits my Realm, then vanishes into some other. I know nothing of that other place. I cannot see into it. But I can deflect you, if you want it. I can trap your essence and blend it into my own.
Do you want to merge with me?
Louis could taste the Presence's yearning. The flux of divine desire was strong enough to swallow all that existed, yet it was throttled back and held under strict control.