Sanctuary
This be the verse you 'grave for me; here he lies where he longed to be. Home is the sailor, home from the sea, and the hunter home from the hill. ~ (Robert Louis Stevenson)
I live about three miles outside of town, moved here almost five years back after I quit going to the office every morning. The house sits on a hill and except for the days when the fog rolls in off the Pacific, I can see clear to my old place there above what the younger generation is calling a ga-rage.
Well, times change. After we decided to leave Wyoming we came out here and went into the freight hauling and livery business. John - that's my partner's oldest grandson, he'll be taking over someday - John talked his father into switching to motor trucks after the war. That boy is in love with engines. Even when he was a tadpole he was always tinkering, taking stuff apart and putting it back together.
I've warned him what will happen if he sells off the rest of the stock without my permission, though. There's still plenty of call locally for the horse-drawn trade.
I go down there two, three times each week, just to pick up my mail and annoy John Senior and tease the ladies in the office. I'll even take a hand at the reins, if we're short a driver, but not very often, not anymore. Too many posses dodged, too many saloon fights fought, and hell, yes - too many trains I tried to jump that wouldn't slow down for me. Damned inconsiderate, those railroads. Doctor Jean often tells me she doesn't know why I'm not in a wheelchair.
"A man with knees as bad as yours shouldn't be able to walk!" She's a feisty little thing, Doc is, young enough to be my daughter. She's what you might call a Modern Woman. Best pill-pusher in the county. She and John Senior have been conspiring recently to get me to move in with his family, or at least take rooms here in town, but I prefer my independence. As it is I'm at his place for dinner almost every Sunday, and no offense to Mrs. John but she and I could live together for about a week before I'd be parting her hair with a club. Or she mine.
On my way home from town I stop by the graveyard to pay my respects. My partner's buried there with his wife and the two little ones they lost. I fill him in on local news and what his kids are up to. Folks probably think I'm crazy, standing in front of a tombstone talking to thin air, but that's one of the privileges of age.
Funny how he wound up married and I turned out to be the confirmed bachelor. He was a wild one, the last man on earth you'd have thought would ever settle down. Hell, the last man you'd have thought would live long enough to settle down. But he was a loyal cuss and once you made it past the brick wall and the barb wire he kept around himself, you stayed there. I'm proof of that, with all the trouble I got him into when we were young. He always had my back, always.
His wife was an educated woman, out from the East. I was worried about them at first, thinking she'd come to hate the raw little mill town and our rough ways. And it was hard work and hard times for several years before we started getting some good contracts and were making the business pay. She went without a lot of the things he wanted to give her but she never said a word. She was the sweetest-natured woman I ever knew, gentle and pretty and well-bred. He fell head over heels for her at first sight, but how on earth he managed to get her roped and slap his brand on her makes me wonder to this day. I guess still waters do run deep.
She only lasted six months after the Spanish influenza took him and I shouldn't say this, but I'm glad he went first. He would have been lost without her. We were friends from boyhood and closer than brothers, but a wife - well, a wife is something more, if she's the right kind, and that woman surely was. She made him happy and I loved her for that.
I miss them both.
Their kids turned out fine and I couldn't be prouder of that bunch than if they were my own. Mal's a chip off the old block and we're a little worried about the wild oats he's been sowing since he got out of the Marines, but the rest are solid citizens, all of them, with families and homes of their own. Who would have thought a desperado like my partner could raise up such a respectable crop of young 'uns?
Of course, I helped some, if I do say so myself.
Beth's my special girl, Clemmie's youngest. She'd spend every minute of every day with me if her mamma would let her. She's going to be an author, she tells me, like Mr. London or Mr. Harte, and she's always asking for stories about the old days. She writes them down in a little notebook she carries around with her. Clemmie says I ought to put my foot down and make that child stop pestering me but I don't mind. I like to talk and besides, it keeps me young (although I'm glad Beth's decided she's too big now for tea parties. Sitting on those little dolly chairs is hard on the back).
I talk to my lost Gennie, too, but only at the house or up by the lake where we used to meet. Gennie's, well, she's something to be kept private. Even my partner, who knew me better than anyone, only guessed about Gennie. There are some things a man just doesn't share.
When I think about it that should have been my first hint that he was serious about his wife - he never talked about her the way he did his other girls. But she was special. It takes a rare woman to marry up with someone like us, even if we were in the clear by the time they met. Because there was always someone or something waiting to jump up and take you by the throat when you least expected it...
Ah, well. It's all water under the bridge. These days no one remembers us and that's a good thing. Who'd want to do business with a wanted man, even if he was no longer wanted? Now I'm just a harmless old-timer and the most excitement I get is my weekly chess game with Father Fahey. I won't say which one of us usually wins but I've learned to never trust a Jesuit.
My lines have fallen, like the Psalm says, in pleasant places. This is a good home I've found for myself, after all those years of running. Used to be a farm. The livestock and the machinery are long gone, although the barn cats have stayed faithful. John Senior makes sure someone comes up to check on me, if I can't get into town, but otherwise I don't get a lot of company.
Except at twilight.
The place is completely surrounded by the oaks and maples planted by the first owners fifty years ago, and they've grown up so thick and close that you can't see the house until you are smack up on it. There's good water here and the farmstead stands out against the brown hills around it like an oasis. In July and August at twilight, the deer file down from the high places and settle into the cool green shelter of the trees, paying no mind to an old man moving around in the house. When the thick warm darkness closes in they go to sleep until daybreak brings me out to feed the clustering cats and sends them back to the hills.
I'm in good health for my age, but facts are facts and I suppose it won't be too much longer before I'm lying in that little graveyard by the river, myself. I don't think anyone will want the house and it'll most likely stand empty until it falls to pieces. The barn cats will die off or drift away.
But on the hot summer nights, the deer will still come to sleep beneath the trees.