Surry County...In a Rain Watching the James River Flood

Come here.

He was standing outside of the porch, listening to the rain...listening because outside it was pitch black, but somewhere past the evening air was a river of even darker colors growing slowly, slurping at the sides of the riverbanks...he thought he could hear it growing, thought he could hear it slowly filling like a tub in a movie until the water starts to seep over the edges...

He turned to her voice, coming in from the kitchen.  There was a single light on, so she was mostly in silhoutte and he likes to think he remembers her smoking a cigarette. 

She rarely smoked, and he couldn't remember a prior time.  Her mother's radio was a yellow plastic one and she had it on radio station 92.3 The Tide...

Why are you outside?  Come out of the rain.

 I'm not out in the rain he replied...I'm under the awning...I'm fine.

a bit of silence

I don't want you to get wet...why are you out there?

He stood looking at the darkness....listening to the rain hit the trees, crackle against the car, falling in droves and almost enveloping them in its gray curtain.

I'm listening to the river...I don't want to have it flood.

She took a long draw and blew out a plume of purple-blue smoke....it's flooded plenty of times...one more won't matter.  It's all flat down there anyways.

He could smell the slight tobacco...he suddenly did remember when she last smoked, and the taste of her against the backdrop of it...she was perhaps his hidden habit.  An addictive element...she may have been his nicotine.  He smiled slightly.

Do you remember when we were on the sandbar in the river, that really hot day when it barely moved?

I do, she replied.  It had happened a little after her dad had died, and she had been home making arrangements with her mom...he had stolen down there, invading her calamity, but in the end she was comforted.  One afternoon he had taken her down to the river at a low ebb and they walked barefoot on the brownish sand...the water tub-warm, the sky filled with pillows of clouds and the beads of sweat on both their foreheads.  It was a day of nothing...it was a day of her stacking memories like dishes in her brain, it was the pull of her family and it was his intrusion...old world, new world.  It was perhaps cumbersome and yet inviting.  He stayed on the periphery.

I always tried to imagine that river filled to almost over-flowing...wondering how much it would take to do that...to almost flood...and it was unfathomable to me that it could happen.

Outside the rain pelted the sides of the house, almost blurring the sound of the music...the wind swept away her ash and her smoke...the kitchen was very small and it was just the two of them.

He walked in, closing the screen behind him.  He had a few damp parts on his shirt and his hair was slightly tufted with rain.  She took another drag, regarding him slowly, then blew it out in the air above her before stubbing it out in the ashtray.

You're a foreigner here...it's a little disquieting that you're even here.

I know.  I'm sorry...I just wanted to see you.  It's that plain and pretty simple.

The cigarette burned in a brief orange then settled down to a simple gray smoke...dying in the quiet evening with just the sound of the radio and the rain.

Well...here I am.  You're seeing me.

She was pushed back in the chair, arms folded...she smelled of cigarettes and stress...of a tiny daughter and a father no longer in the kitchen...she was remarkably as alive as the growing river outside, continuing its journey around its places to the sea.

If I told you that I'd go stand in the rain, go stand in the shallowest part of that flooding river just enough to keep my head above it, just to see your shape in the rectangle of the doorway for just a moment...that I would welcome that...that I'd gladly let the water overrun me, slap at me before finally swallowing me...just so long that I could see the angle of you, the stance of you before turning away and returning to a home that I do not know...but knowing that you saw me I'd gladly let the waters pull me down.

She looked at him...her eyes never narrowing...never blinking.

I'd say you were a fool.

Outside the rain pelted and swirled...her southern voice was the bit of a reminder that she was back at home and he wasn't...and that she was his river, and he was a bit of the flotsam that floated and bounced along until she neither no longer wanted or no longer needed him.

Until he might slowly float to the bottom.



 

An Afterwards

After the chairs are pushed back, and the sounds of the meal subside and fade into the echoes of other rooms, perhaps you might find a moment...when it is quiet, and the remnants of the evening are starting to reveal their colors.

What I am thankful for....what I am hopeful for...

Perhaps you'll go outside, out back with a drink in your hand...to escape the noises, to escape a debate.  To look for a star, or a fading sky. 

I am thankful for the moments...sometimes quiet, sometimes filled with words and sentences.  Sometimes just standing close by, close enough to detect the slight perfumes of you.

I am thankful for warm memories, that you can clutch like a sweater around you and pull closer to your throat.  Maybe feel the heartbeat against your fingers.

I am hopeful for more moments...but if those are merely minutes spread across weeks than I will be slowly devastated but thankful for those minuscule times...

And hopeful that you are indeed warmed...and satiated with food and drink...sleepy with a drowsy desire to go lay down, and perhaps you'll imagine the weight of me beside you. 

That is something I would be extraordinarily thankful of...some more.

A City We Might Have Known

We were never there.

Together.

We were never the couple in the park, tree-lined against skylines...cement gray against tea-leave green.  We were never the couple in the crush.  The crush of bystanders, the crush of cabs...the crush of cars carrying them to and fro...and for us to simply be just a simple pair.

We were never there....we didn't see a show, we didn't collect the cards from the comedians in Times Square to get discounts on late night venues...we didn't feel the swell of the tourists and buses and neon.

We weren't in the quiet of a neighborhood...maybe 2nd avenue...off the beaten path...a quiet Italian restaurant...some uncorked wine...a kiss in the middle of a meal and a stare to return to if perhaps only in minutes.

We never were at the rooftop lounge, drinks in hand, shadows and a cool evening requiring proximity...pointing to a planet, debating if a star, wondering if we were closer to some Heaven on the terrace or if that was found much later side by side in a bed...we never whispered against the backdrop of sirens and sounds...outside air and noises impacting our breathing that was inside and oh so close...

We never ordered room service...we never debated menus, or mixes, or mini-bars.  We never stopped in a crowd on 7th and felt the surge of those on the sidewalk and stopped and realized the stark contrast of you...the earthen eyes against urban dyes...the soft and pale parts of you against a cement gray line of building...the human part of you against the backdrop of machines and maintenance...I never got to hold you in a city of millions and allow me to describe you as a soul.  I never got to...I never got to...

I never got to confess to you, in the hours and the minutes...in the times and the moments...in the pieces and deflections that when it came to what really mattered was that it was you that really mattered...
you that distracted...you that impacted...you were reflected, billions of times in mirrors and the way the sun split off buildings and cascaded in colors and in a city of grays and whites and blacks you were the color of earth because of your eyes...a piercing, deepening piece of spring in a city of winters....eyes the color of bourbon....eyes the colors of trees so far off in the distance they may have been stars.

In a city that didn't care...in a place that didn't notice...when the millions were beside us, with their own foibles and troubles, dreams and remembrances....they kept on walking past.  But I held you, or at least wanted to, in that row of people and passers-by.

We were the moment....we were the eclipse.  We were the twosome.  We were the union.  We were all that mattered.  We were the laughter in the hallway, we wakened people with our noise...we caused smiles because those passing us were immediately jealous of the way you looked at me...and I could not take my eyes off of you.

We were never there.

But in the city...each time....as I return, it almost feels like we were.

A Stolen Moment

Light is diffusing.

Sometimes even a tad confusing.  He could always see her in the dark, could always tell where she was by the sound of her voice...the colors of her tone were evident even in the blackest room...slight drawls, a sorta-southern undertone that heightened when she was drinking...or tired.

He had heard that voice murmured against his lips...smashed even...deep in her throat, and glowing.  Embers of some heat behind her, from within...he couldn't tell.  Wouldn't try.  Rather, he soaked it in and felt it like some distant sound that perhaps only he could hear.

He loved when the lights turned out and he stood for a few moments as his eyes adjusted, his visual-purples, his rods and cones all assimilating to the sudden blackness.

Here she would say...

In this tenuous game of Marco-Polo he would drift slightly...waiting for her to merely say it again.  She never said "here" a second time...rather the next word was always...

Closer

He imagined the faint outline of her, the contours and the pillow landscape.  She never would extend an arm or a hand...rather that stayed next to her...she was comfortable...it was his role to join her, not disrupt.


As he got nearer he could detect the slightest scents of her...lotions...tiny whiffs...finally understanding what drew bees to flowers...

what hummingbirds imagined in fleeting seconds before nectar...

perhaps primal, reptilian cells in his brain and the sweet scent of her cloying his mind...he could almost see her, more like a presence than a shape.  It was completely black in the room but he knew exactly where she was laying.

She was the sun...the rest of it just orbiting around her...gravitational pulls and floating freely until he got too close...

The room always seemed warmer with proximity...as he put his weight upon the bed and she knew he was close....she shifted slightly, and at that moment an arm might arise...and he would trace it back to her, where the shoulder was tilted and know that her neck was exquisitely close, and her lips very near from there.



Some mornings, in the diffused light, as she lay peaceful and filled with sleep he stood briefly in the doorway while the grays were lightening and the morning sun was the color of butter...

the artistry of her was in full bloom, the quiets of her face and her tones were mute, and she was there simply as countenance...simply as angles and geometry...

He knew why bees were drawn to flowers, why men painted and sculpted and he knew that in this stolen moment it would paint yet another million reasons of why he couldn't forget her.

The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry

Near the tip of Surry County, where you take Rolfe Highway slightly northeast until you pass Rte 637, you find the road winnowing down until you enter into the unmistakable narrows that suddenly stop dead at the foot of the James River...and guided by pilings and signage, you find the welcoming of the Jamestown-Scotland ferry, ready to transport you across to Jamestown...a fifteen minute ride that may as well go back in time.


He sat near the rail, the slow engine churning up white wash, the river almost as dark as her eyes if he paused to remember...which he fought against, fought against the raging current of a stream of thoughts that crashed against his mind. 

Memory was a ferry...it carried him back to where she once was, never allowing him to return.  It always carried him back there...and he always returned alone.

In the heavy thud of engines against the water, the ferry moved steadily....the vibrations emanating beneath his feet were from the gears and metal parts and not the hull against the river.  He looked at the name of the boat...Surry...an older county, known for agriculture, farming...and lumber.  It was uncomplicated...land, being harvested to grow...steady farmers' lines and straight vertical leaves springing from the dirt.  There were complications...weather, drought, insects...but by and by this little corner stayed the same.

It was easy to see that she was from here...it was easy to see her roots, her depth, her steady part of her that rolled easily past him like a bit of river.  He had introduced complexity.  Deviation.  Mostly it was just something different, something apart.  A sandbar to be avoided, perhaps...

He was made of sand to her...to be slowly turned and eroded by her steady stream...slowly, inexorably until he collapsed and joined the millions of tiny bits below her.

He was the blown harvest...stunted by conditions...blackening along the vines and snapped in two by winds and insects.  Allowing the earth...the darks and browns that were once so engulfing to merely reduce.  Scattered.

He had become the dry riverbed, across which no ferrys would float.

He headed north towards Jamestown, the sky still light in the west although clouds would rapidly collect and bury the colors in minutes.  He headed away from her.

The ferry docked.

He moved off and tried to forget why he had even crossed.