“He, Will Barrett, had learned over the years that if you listen carefully you can hear the truth from the unlikeliest of sources, especially from the unlikeliest sources, from an enemy, from a stranger, from children, from overheard conversations…Are not great discoveries also made at the unlikeliest moments…”—Walker Percy, The Second Coming
Tide ebbed and shone in current and tow of water around dock posts as water carried out from river and returned into the sea. Along frame of the river’s shore shone tall grasses with feather heads and stems and leaves of rich green that paled in descent toward water’s meet. From their stand, water’s leaving told in the wake of water from the stand as redfish finned in the shallows gorging on bat drawn from cover into the river’s muddy flats.
Red cone and green can buoys marked lie of the main channel outward into the greater sea, and on one permanent post that did not move with water’s way, an osprey made nest of a wooden platform. From it, the osprey took to flight, scanning surface and finding, fell in fast strike, catching fish in claws, then flew away into branch of a tall pine where it made quick work of catch.
James and Lauren watched it all, speaking little as they set on view, and looked to on the sun bleached path of dock into the river’s reach, supporting posts copper topped and greened in tide’s salt air, a splash of brightness against pale wood and dark shade, barnacled, bases where tide ebbed and showed where water’s height had been.
They were older than last meeting, the only way life allows. They were changed in ways and true in others—changed in what time affects, and true in fundamentals tied to essence of spirits that seems of stronger make than those, like dock in the salt air, exposed to elements of age and time.
Soft wrinkles and weathering from lives that did not hide from age or sun shone beginning on their faces, but with an elegance that holds when one embraces, rather than hides, effects of age and life’s living, a beauty in naturalness that does not insist, coerce, or force that something, or someone, should be different and present as a false-forever youth.
It was this countenance and spirit that they wore. It expressed in the grey flecks of his hair that thinned a little more each passing year; in the crow’s foot lines in corner of each’s eyes that, if viewed rather than as age, but features to sight-guidance, directed inward to liveliness and vibrance of colored pupils and an energy of entertainment telling in their glow.
In this spirit, they rested, undisturbed in the quiet that fell between; asking little in questions of the other and enjoying freely all that was offered openly and free.
Maybe it was of this spirit that they chose the place, an oyster house on a backwater river distanced from race and gaudiness of modernity, a whole river of landowners too foolish to know they were supposed to take the money and run, who were happy with what they had and did not believe they needed more, who valued views and space and God’s simple gifts more than promises and exploitations that made fortunes and asphalt abominations of the wilds and quiet peace which return and restore man to the sea.
The place was proof there were still wonderful fools living simply in the world who possessed enough resources to still politely answer fuck off when slick haired and white teethed money arrived with fake smiles and big checks, knocking on doors to preach the empty faith that is idolatry of dollars above all else.
These were thoughts that held in minds, thoughts that shape and drive life-actions and decisions even when left unspoken and, even to self, left largely undefined.
The world was racing—to where and for what, they didn’t know—and the two of them were content, for then, that it should pass them by.
The currents of man were not as the tide, and the more synthetic and artificial its shift—the less it can be predicted and the more consequential and grave the failing of the systematic construct.
The osprey was in flight. It dove. They watched its strike then listened to tike and distanced delay of splash at surface contact. Rising with fish in talon’s grasp, it made for the pine. Disappearing into its cover, Lauren and James returned attention to each other, their meal, and table between. With short knives, they shucked oysters brought in fresh from the river on flat bottomed boats that dredged the estuary between river and break of the Outer Banks.
Resting, Lauren wore a taupe colored cover that matched in hue with pale base stems of the feather fronded tidal reeds. Through its light linen fabric, a top of deep green and black bottom half seen as she walked but was covered then beneath table between. She wore broad sunglasses with dark brown lenses and near-matching frames that covered her eyes at first meeting but were raised as sun and familiarity softened. They were raised then, pinning back hair when soft winds stirred, and the green-gold of her eyes spoke when looks caught and spirits whispered in quiet kept between.
There is a beauty some find, and others lose, in the progression of age; an elegance in embracing rather than resisting the unfolding of life and self as each become: in the learning and not denial of who it is we are, our purpose (should we ever learn and find), acceptance and release of dreams we come to see will never be, and the grace of movement and redirection when new should show, aligning one’s self not to a past that is not future, but to course and dreams that further one’s becoming.
This, Lauren possessed, a levity maintained in holding to nothing that was not hers, a freedom to change and grow and redefine one’s self as life and course corrected in refinement of conscious living—not simple existence day to day without consideration of the why; even when answer most days eluded—a slowing down, observing, resistance to world and life coercions underserving of response, enabling openness to conscious after-actions.
Faint lines of crow’s feet in corners of her eyes led sight to her green eyes with ribbons of gold like light on the back of wind-blown riffle waves on river opening to sea. Smile held in their hue, and by it, his own were drawn in reciprocation as they ate the fresh oysters, lemon and hot sauce, and shells gathered afterward in mounding onto plate.
On tabletop too, a book was laid.
“What’s that one?” Lauren asked.
“One I thought you might like,” James answered, “The Second Coming, by Walker Percy. I didn’t’ know if you’d ever read much of him, but thought you might enjoy it.”
“What’s it about?”
“Two people finding themselves…a man with a burden he never should have carried and a woman that learns—despite what family, world, and experts claim—that she is perfectly fine.
It’s a Carolina story, from the mountains all the way to an island on the coast, but mostly of the mountains.”
A wind stirred catching Lauren’s fall of brunette hair and scattered free strand ends unfixed by sunglass’ hold, and when wind stilled and hair’s fall restored, a smile shone as if made and left by hair’s wind-brushing.
“I’m always looking for a good story,” Lauren responded.
“It’s an author Tyler told me about, one of those that shows you God in a story in way, and with words, you don’t expect to find; not holy rolling—just Holy.”
“Tell me about the girl. What does the world thing is wrong with her?”
“She escapes from a mental institution and makes a sanctuary from an old greenhouse in the woods.”
“And, escaping from an institution, you thought of me…” Lauren teased.
James smiled, measuring, deliberating, words to follow.
“No, that wasn’t the reason. She was just quiet. She stayed in herself and sometimes got overwhelmed when she was out in the world and trying to mold to someone else’s expectation of who and what she should be.
There wasn’t anything wrong with her, but when she didn’t’ want to play the game, she went within; and no one could bring her out—unless she wanted to return.”
“That sounds more familiar,” Lauren spoke, in tone of empathy and compassion, to a fictional soul.
“I found it at the library, on a whim, walking the aisles and looking at all the books on shelves that will likely never be touched again—I thought about how absurd it is that people put so much heart and effort into something few will ever touch, for which fewer will ever care, and then will pass into one more chronicle that wil be forgotten and never found, or cared about again.”
“But you found that one,” Lauren countered, “and you brought it back to life. That a story is written and left to exist on a shelf gives it possibility, possibility to be discovered, found and chosen, and—in reading—resurrected.
Your own action proves it so; and sharing, you advance possibility for further follow-on life and effect.” She didn’t know where the words came from. They were just there—an absurd thought that rose and wanted told. “Why do you care if someone should exert such effort and time into an absurdity? I would have thought you, of all people, would understand such a calling.”
She spoke truths.
“Maybe I’m trying to do the same,” he answered, voice and tone collected into a concentration, “speaking now to you for reading and measure of a response.”
“From a girl that crawls into herself and often doubts she has anything to say?”
“She does, when words are there. She doesn’t force them when they aren’t.” James laughed without a levity then drank from sweating glass of water in rest before him on the table. “Absurd…”
“Yes,” Lauren answered. She was speaking truths, “just like life and everything that comes with it.
God gave you a Talent James. Don’t waste it.
If there is a draw and inspiration, a calling, why not give absurdity its chance?
Maybe life and our works are like a book, not or all but for a few who find and choose, read and learn; and maybe something in us will speak to them and both will leave and live on—absurdly—enriched in the encounter.”
Lauren moved eyes from James into gaze outward onto river’s spanse. Osprey lit from the pine and took again to flight. It circled over open water then made again in return to nest on wooden post marking channel’s lie.
“It is good to see you,” Lauren spoke. “I sometimes wondered who you would become. It’s nice to learn and see.
And, if it’s as you are inspired, I think that you should write your absurdities. I believe they will mean something to someone.”
She smiled one last time, gold ribbons in green dancing in afternoon light before covered again in falling shade and guards of brown.
Time ended, life-moment lived and told, and both departed—enriched in the encounter.
*****
He wrote the last sentence, and before it finished and typed, his son brought to him a quarter. The boy dropped it, tails up, on the keyboard before him. He moved it gently, cautious not to erase or flood the story with accidental letters as he moved the quarter from its place.
Caution led him to examine and pay attention more closely. The quarter was tails up, a state quarter from 2015, and absorbing details he stared, stunned, on the state and image that it shone: the road and tunnel of a mountainous North Carolina scene.
“Absurd,” he thought, smiling inward onto spirit and outward to his son, “…just like life and everything that comes with it.”
Absurdity would have its chance.