Trail

For my cat, Chimeng, who teaches me to be.

In the Garden we were sheltered playthings of God.
Small wonder that we wandered….
Anonymous

The grand essentials of happiness are:
Something to Do
Something to Love
Something to Hope for.
Allan Chambers

 

     “Everyman needs his Eden.”
     If Hopkins Tobit were ever asked what he wanted engraved on his headstone, that is what he would reply.
     Every Man Needs His Eden.
     Hopkins, or Hop as he is wont to call himself, has spent a lifetime perfecting Eden in the privacy and sanctity of his backyard. Surrounded by seven-foot tall cedars that hedge a six-foot tall fence is his own Eden and in the middle of it all stands Hop, leaning heavily on his hoe. The sun is starting its descent, twilight; Hop’s favorite time. The end of the day, the light slowly fading, darkness covering his garden like a blanket for the coming night’s sleep. He smiles as his gaze stops lovingly on each plot. Good night, corn. Sleep tight, tomatoes. Sweet dreams to the underground crew: carrots, onions and radishes. He even gives a quick nod to the butterfly garden, his wife’s addition, not exactly wanted but for the sake of peace he allows it to remain. His eyes stop short of the flowering pomegranate tree. That is strange, he thinks, the cat’s dish, pushed next to the wall, is still full of food. He picks it up and carries it with him as he returns to the house.
     A golden light bleeds through the lace curtain and Hop’s step quickens as he walks towards the door. His reverie is dampened only by a dark space, like a broken tooth, in the next window over. Hop shakes his head and murmurs something softly under his breath. He pulls the cat’s bowl tighter to himself and goes inside.

     “Have you seen the cat?” Hop says to his wife, Maddie, as he puts the bowl on the kitchen counter.
     Maddie clutches the phone to her chest, irritated by the interruption, mouths the word NO as she waves him away. “I’m so sorry, honey, what did you say?………Oh yes, that was Dad……harping on about that cat I told you about.”
     Hearing his name, Hop asks, “Who is that? Hope?”
     Maddie sighs deeply. “Yes. Yes, it is.” She holds the phone out to him, “Do you want to talk to her?””
     Hop grumbles a negative under his breath and walks away.
     Maddie tsks. “I didn’t think so.” she says and turns her attention back to her daughter. “So, tell me, how far did y’all get on the trail today?”
     Hope and her boyfriend, Rick, are hiking the Appalachian Trail. “A damned irresponsible waste of time!” according to Hop but to Maddie, it is a romantic, wonderful chance of experiencing an adventure.
     As a child, during the summers away from the chaos of her parents, she loved listening to her grandfather tell old Cherokee legends he’d learned from his father about the Trail. He told stories of ghost lights that haunted the ridge tops of Brown Mountain, of precious fairy stones formed from the tears of little people and prized by the Cherokee as magical totems needed to pass from one world to the next and stories about the banshee laugh of the Witch of Nantahala, a child- eating monster with fjngers like sharp spears and long white hair so infested with buzzing flies that it whipped around her face as if in a windstorm. Hope and Rick were actually walking the grounds that had spawned legends. Maddie’s mind reeled with the possibilities of the fantastic world that lived out in the wooded areas of the trail.
     “We’re doing terrible time, Momma. We’re at a rest point in Damascus, right over the Tennessee/Virginia border. We’re going to stay here awhile to get supplies and some sleep on a normal bed. Rick thinks we can make it to Cripple Creek in about 2 or 3 days.”
     “Cripple Creek……what an interesting name.”
      “I haven’t told you the best news yet, Momma. You’ll never guess what I found. I swear, lying by the trail near a creek bank, I found one of those fairy things you told me about.”
     “A fairy stone? How wonderful for you! They bring good luck to travelers.”
     “Yeah, I know. It made me think about you. And it made me wonder if you have you given any more thought about what we talked about?”
     “Oh, please, Hope….don’t start on that again. I haven’t heard from you in days. Tell me more about your adventures.”
     “Please, Momma, this could be our adventure. Don’t you see that? Maybe this stone is a sign? And now is the perfect time. We’re still close enough for you to meet up with us here in Damascus. Knoxville isn’t that far away; we can wait for you. You can drive up here in a day. We can put the car in storage, get you some gear and then hike as far as we can go!”
     “Put the car in storage? Do you know how much money that would cost?”
     “Okay, forget storage. So we’ll sell the damn thing instead. Details! God, Momma, you’ll hang yourself with details.”
     “How about this for a detail: a woman my age hiking on the Appalachian Trail. How ridiculous is that?”
     “So what? Do you want to wait? One year? Two? Then you’ll be even older. Haven’t you waited around with Dad in that house long enough?”
     “Baby, don’t be mean. He means well. Your father worked hard to give you everything you need and make this house a haven.”
     “Well, someone should tell Dad he forgot to put air holes in his bunker.”
     Silence. “That is harsh, Hope. And uncalled for. Your father is a good man.”
     “Fine.” Hope said, exasperated. “Hop Tobit is a wonderful, brilliant, freakin’ saint of a man. He’s happy in his Heaven and all is right in his world. But it’s not him I’m worried about. It’s you. Please, for once in your life, do what you want. Come with me.”
     “Honey, …I’m…it’s not so simple…..that easy..”
     “Momma, you’re breaking up…..dammit! ..I gotta go- my cell phone is dying. Please, Momma, think about it. We’ll be here for two days. It’s now or never. Give my love to Dad….really….I’m sorry if I hurt you or him but……..I gotta go……”

     Maddie hears a final click and Hope is gone. The phone suddenly feels heavier in her hand and she drops it back into its cradle with a thud. She sighs and looks at the clock. She should make dinner. She can hear the shower running; good, she thinks, he stinks after a day out there in the garden. She puts the kettle on the stovetop to boil. Perhaps some tea first. She walks over to the phone but can’t think of who she’d call. She opens the cupboard and pulls out a cup. A jumble of assorted teabags are in a tin below the cupboard. She selects one….green tea, she thinks although sometimes she can rarely tell the difference, and puts the bag in the cup as she waits for the water to boil. The shower stops. Hop will be coming out soon and he’ll be hungry. She should start dinner. She flips through the newspaper, stopping at the obituaries; are people dying younger these days?. She turns to the classifieds. She fiddles with the crossword puzzle. She hears Hop whistling as he puts on fresh clothes….probably a white shirt and khaki slacks. The kettle begins to scream. She turns off the stove and puts the kettle aside. She should be making dinner. She walks outside to the garden and stares up at the blank night sky. So many stars hidden behind the artificial glare, so many stars that she’ll never be able to see here beneath it all.
     My God, she’s right. It is a bunker.
     Hop joins her and hugs her, his tall frame completely enshrouding her. “What’s the plan for dinner tonight?”
     “Catch as catch can.” Maddie says, pulling herself out. “I’m not in much of a mood to be around fire tonight.”

     Hop sits alone at the dinner table, a fine table he made from pine, eating a cold baloney sandwich, some chips with a cold soda.
     He watches Maddie, sitting across the room at her desk, and chews his sandwich slowly. He remembers when she found that thing at the flea market. A huge hulking thing, walnut brown with a dozen little drawers and shelves and a roll top with a lock. The seller told them it was an antique; his great grandfather had brought it with him from the “Old Country.”      Hop had his doubts, but Maddie fell in love with it. Even though Hop told her he could build her one just like it, better even, Maddie just shook her head. “I want this one,” she said. “It’s been places.”
     She spends most of her time there, behind a wall of books she keeps stacked here and there, writing letters to Hope. How Maddie expects her letters to find the damn girl all the way out on that fool Trail, he can’t imagine. He wonders if she intends to mail them at all. Maybe she keeps them in her journal. Hop knows she’s been keeping one; he has seen her hiding it. As strong as his curiosity is, Hop has never looked for the secret journal; if she needs her own space, he figures, so be it. Besides, in that labyrinth of a desk, it could be anywhere.
     Hop swallows and takes another bite. Her back is to him; she is writing in the journal. He can tell by the way her shoulders are rolled forward, making her small frame arch over like a hulking crow. She keeps her long hair in a tight thick braid down her back, the silver in her hair stands out like bone against her chestnut hair.
Hop clears his throat. “So…….mighty strange, isn’t it? About the cat.”
     Maddie turns to face Hop, puzzled. “What?”
     “The cat…..disappearing like that. I found his bowl out by the fence. You put it there? Anyway, it was full, not been touched. Strange.”
     “Oh, Hop….cats wander. Especially strays. Don’t worry about him. He’ll either come back or he won’t.”
     “I still can’t help but think if we hadn’t of let him out at all, he wouldn’t have wandered off in the first place. I told you putting his food out there was a bad idea. Keep it on the porch, I said…but you kept putting it out further and further out in the garden.”
     Maddie stared ahead, her gaze focused on the brass handles of the desk drawers. “Are you suggesting, Hop, that I led that cat to stray? That I left him some kind of trail of kibble?”
     “I’m just saying it’s not right.” Hop says, finishing his soda. “He’s got everything he needs here…why go back out there?”
     “You don’t know much about cats, do you?”
     “Pardon?”
     “Cats are feral, Hop, by nature. They need to roam, to explore. So you took in a sick stray….do you think he owes you something?”
     “No. It’s not that. I just thought he was happy here. I got up every morning and made sure his bowl was full. Remember the way he would lay on the desk, right next to the computer, while I worked on those spreadsheets? And how he would hide under the sheets when I made the bed?”
     “I remember how you used to follow him around in the yard, hunched up over him like a hawk, ready to pounce if he made the slightest move towards the fence. Poor cat. He probably jumped the fence just to get a little peace.”
     “Well, he seemed content to me.”
     “It’s not about contentment, it’s about nature.” Maddie put down her pen and faced him. “He’s a cat, Hop, don’t take it so personally. When he wants to, he’ll come back. Probably beat up and half starved to death, if I know cats.”
     “Hmmph. Doesn’t mean I have to take him back.” he says and takes another bite. “Stupid cat doesn’t know how good he had it.”
     Maddie sighs. “Well, then I guess it’s tough luck for the Prodigal Son.” She says and goes back to her journal.
     “Which reminds me, how are things with Rick and Hope? Still out there on the trail?”
     “Oh, yes.,” she turned back to him, smiling, “They are having a wonderful time. They’re in Damascus but soon they hope to make it to a place called Cripple Creek. Doesn’t that sound interesting? Cripple Creek.”
     Hop chewed slowly and swallowed. “Damascus….how appropriate.”
     “Oh and something else interesting happened: Hope found a fairy stone. I have something in a book about them.” She digs in her tower of books and pulls out a green hardback, Legends and Lore of the South , and opens it to a dog-eared page. “See? Like one of these. Isn’t that amazing? She found it just laying there right in a creek bed.”
     Hop takes another bite of his sandwich, wipes the crumbs off his hands and takes the book. On the page is a black and white photo of twinned crystals that has been forged into the shape of a 90 degree runic cross. Text beneath the photo read: Staurolite is a common metamorphic mineral that geologists use to determine the degree of metamorphism. “Huh. So what is it? Like quartz or something?”
     “My Grandpa Jack used to tell me stories about them. He said that fairy stones were supposed to be good luck charms for travelers. The Cherokee shamans believed they possessed the power to allow them to travel from one world to another.”
     “Huh.” Hop said, closing the book. “Rocks is rocks.”
     “On the surface, I suppose that could be true, Hop.” She took the book out of his hand and putting it back on the tower. “Still, I wish I could find one.” She said, an excited grin escaping across her face. “To just have one, solid in my hand, not just something in a book. And to find one just laying there, sparkling in the water, that would be something special!”
“I bet you can get them just as easy in a gift shop.” Hop took a drink of soda. “So, tell me, has she found herself yet? Was she hiding underneath some rock or bush?”
      Maddie’s smile felt heavy on her face. “That’s unfair, Hop. If you could hear her voice, just the sound of her voice, you would understand that she is finally happy being on her own and alone.”
     “Ha! But she ain’t alone, is she? Rick is there, ain’t he?”
     “And thank God she has Rick. He supports her and understands what - -“
     “I supported her for 24 years! What thanks do I get?”
     Maddie’s eyes became like granite. “Rick loves her. He loves her enough to let her learn to love herself. Did you do that? Can you do that? And if you could, you horrible miser, what would you expect in return? God, I wish I had half her courage- to walk away from all of this and just leave. Even that damn cat had sense enough to leave and, you know what, Hop? I hope that cat never comes back! If he’s smart….smarter than me!…he’d never step a paw in that garden again!”
     Maddie sat there, trembling with rage as Hop broke away and stared down at his plate. He looked up at his wife but his eyes could not focus on her; it was too painful. They sat there, deadlocked, until Maddie cried out in exasperation and stormed away. Hop flinched as he heard the bedroom door slam shut. He sat there, alone in the silence, staring at his wife’s desk. She had forgotten to close it, leaving the roll top open like a gaping mouth with her open journal sitting center stage.
     Hop walked over and read the opened page.
     Hope asked me to join her on the trail again today. An ultimatum of sorts. I told her that I couldn’t go. I gave her all the excuses: my being too old, too scared. Hmmm, I wonder if that isn’t the same thing? She called this place a “bunker” and that Hop had “forgotten the air holes”. My girl is a clever one. She gets that from me. She gets her brutal streak from Hop.
     Hop flips back to the beginning of the journal.
     Well, this is fun! I found this empty journal in the secret compartment of an antique desk. Two for the price of one. Hop would be pleased…..
     Bored, Hop flipped until he came to a page with a newspaper clipping stashed alongside. An obituary notice for someone named James Allen Hedgeson. Hop shook his head, “Who in the world?” He read further: ‘He was a pilgrim soul…... Jim traveled the world, a dreamer, a gypsy, a teacher and a musician……..He was Strider, a King not claiming to be King, he was Black Sabbath and Moody Blues, he was a resident of Hotel California and a child of America. All too soon he left us.’

     Alongside it, Maddie had scrawled:
          Madelyn Hearn Tobit
          Cashed in her freedom
          For Four Walls
          And a Clean Kitchen.

     Hop read another entry:
     A little Lesson from nature: All Pearls start out as an irritation. And from the way I’ve been feeling lately, baby, I’m getting ready to pop out a doozie!
     More entries, banal comments on the weather, the garden and housework. Most of them barely rated much more of a glance until Hop came to one dated the day their daughter left home:
     Hope has finally done it. She has left the Garden and gone to hike the Trail like we had always planned. We had talked about it for so long…..leave all this behind , the numbing drudgery of every day security, and go on an adventure. I can hardly believe she is gone. The house is so quiet now. Empty. It’s like a white death.
     I hate it.
     There is nothing left to drown out that tiny tired voice that keeps asking me :
     “Can I go home now?”

     I don’t know how much longer I can stand it.
     Something is going to break…..I just don’t know what.
     Hop felt his heart freeze. He closed the book and put it down gently.

     Hop loaded her bags into the car. “You realize you’ll need to travel light on the trail. You’ll probably have to get rid of most of these things.”
     “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it. Maybe donate them to a shelter..who knows?”
     “Well….you could always box them up….ship them home. I’ll keep them ready for you. If you want.”
     Maddie took Hop by the hand and, on her tiptoes, kissed him softly on the lips. “You’re a good man, Hopkins Tobit.”
     Hop bent down and smelled her hair. “Well, you’d better get going. They’re not gonna wait for you forever. Call whenever you get a chance.” he said, closing her car door.
     Maddie started the ignition and gripped the wheel firmly. “The first fairy stone I find is for you, Hop. Wait for it.”
     He stood in the driveway, watching, until the car disappeared over the horizon.
     Walking back to the house, a familiar flash of orange jump out of the hedge and wrapped itself around his legs, purring. “Welcome back, cat.”