Chapter 2: on his way
Upstate New York, December, 2016
Please note: In the Works Cited portion of Chapter 1 there are suggested music pieces to accompany this and other Chapters to enhance your experience of reading. I hope you enjoy them...
At first she couldn't quite believe this was Reese. The man who, just a few months back, had been sitting in the same kitchen chair, practically mute, hyper-vigilant, with a gun under his jacket – here smiling, talking non-stop. Like a cork had been let out of a bottle, and fizz had gushed from the top. Jules smiled to herself and looked at his eyes.
Tired, of course, but there was something there that she hadn't seen before, in this short time she'd known him. Life. Life had come on in his eyes – that pop of light that was missing before, when Harold had first sent him to her door.
Harold was worried. She'd heard it in his voice on the phone, even thousands of miles away from New York, when she was working again in Sudan. He'd called just at the end of her mission, told her of this colleague of his who was struggling. Of course she'd said, of course she would help. With all the history she'd had with Harold, there could be no other answer.
And when he'd come there, to her kitchen, she could see all the signs of someone in trouble. Reese was the kind of man who wouldn't allow failure, who was constantly the bottom line, the one everyone depended on to get the job done. Jules hadn't known his history at first, and even now not much of it, but she could tell that he was crashing and burning. She remembered how he'd answered when she asked him if he knew why he was there:
"Harold said this is some kind of gift. He wanted to do something for me."
"He told me you saved his life again–stepped in front of a bullet, he said, to save his life." Reese just stared at the fire.
"I owe him a debt I can't repay." He looked her directly in the eyes as he said it, and she could see something fierce well up behind his eyes.
That was the beginning, on her L-shaped couch in the living room, by the fire. Funny how we can be so fragile and so tough. Jules had seen it again and again. Police, firemen, colleagues in medicine, and especially, soldiers – they keep pushing and pushing, until they come to a point where they hit a wall. But they keep going, pushing, dragging themselves forward, until they can't. Jules wasn't immune, either. She'd done the same things, too. But, in spite of the rocky beginning, Reese was something of a home run. Something unexpected had happened, something that had changed everything.
So when she was giving him a hug, sending him off back home to Manhattan, she shook her head no when he offered her the book.
"This is yours," he said. In his hand was the thin white book, with the line drawing of a feudal samurai on the cover. She'd smiled up at him and shook her head.
"It's yours now. You'll be needing it for a little while longer," she said, pressing his fingers around it with her own.
"Besides, I'm going out of town for a few months." He didn't seem surprised, but maybe a little disappointed.
"My group in France called and they have something interesting going on." Reese said nothing, but waited for her to go on.
"They want me to set up a crisis center for people coming out of Africa. Sudan, South Sudan mostly, and others from West Africa, and maybe some from the Middle East, Syria. I don't have much experience with Syrians, but I can help with the others." Still nothing. He seemed like he wanted to, but he said nothing. That furrow was forming on the skin between his eyes.
"Six months. It'll go fast. I'll be training the people who'll take over when I leave. So my usual team won't be there this time." She could see it in his eyes. Imagining what it would be like. He still said nothing.
"I'm leaving by the end of the month," she said. "Rome."
He seemed a little lost. But then he did what he always did. He squared his shoulders, and got himself ready. Whatever came his way, he would handle it. He was the bottom line. Everyone depended on him.
He slid the white book into the deep pocket of his coat, and gave her a kiss on the top of the head. Then he backed his way through her front door, and left.
For hours after he'd left she could feel a fluttering in the air in front of her chest. In that space, roughly in the shape of an upright cylinder that she kept for him there. She felt it like bird wings fluttering.
It wasn't sitting well with him, that she was leaving. Or maybe it was something about the place. She didn't know for sure. But she could feel the disturbance, the fluttering. There was still time. Still time to work on that, before she left.
In the weeks ahead, she had gone each day to her school down the hill from the house. She went twice a day, at dawn and at dusk. She sat on the mat on the floor, with the candle lit – in the center of the low table in front of her; and the incense cone, trailing a thin gray line of smoke from the glowing tip; and the single fresh flower in the tiny vase.
She would empty herself of her thoughts, sit there breathing, until she was deep in Flow. Unaware of time or space. Floating. Until she opened her eyes and found herself there as though nothing had happened. And then, in that quiet, centered state, she would slide the cover from the Wooden Man, and close her eyes. Her arms and hands would slide and strike against the polished wood, the arms and leg clacking with the strikes, and the heavy trunk lifting and thumping down on its frame.
Then she would practice her form, pressing forward, always forward, as if against a force thrown toward her. And when she was ready, she would cover the Wooden Man, snuff the candle, rub the glow from the cone, and walk barefoot to the door. She would turn, and bow to the center, then back out through the door of the school.
These weeks had been a deeply peaceful time for her. Healing. Replenishing. And as the time grew closer for her trip, she chose a day when she moved from room to room in her house, sensing the energy and quiescing each one. Until the house had found its still point and she felt she could leave it in peace.
On one of her last nights, she had fallen asleep on the L-shaped couch in the living room, with one of the wool blankets from the coffee table trunk pulled over her, and the fire snapping in the fireplace. She was waiting for him. The fluttering had started again, in the air in front of her chest. She knew he was on his way. The sense of it had been growing each day until today.
He'd made his decision, and was on his way. She would rest on the couch until he was there.
Around midnight, she heard tires on the gravel and a car door thump. She opened her eyes, and sat up. The fire was low in the fireplace, blue flame devouring the last of the log. She spent a minute stacking more wood, and gray smoke curled up to the flue. Yellow flames leaped from the logs.
She walked around to the front door, and when she opened it, he was waiting at the top of the lawn, leaning against the side of his car. When he saw her he smiled and shook his head. How did she know? How did she always know when he was on his way?