"WILLOWS"

 By Kenneth W. Anderson, Jr.

     She moved closer to him, her leg hugging his warm thigh as her hands began to search up and down his body. She found the back of his neck and began to kiss it again and again.

     “You awake?” she whispered into his ear.

     His eyes still closed, Jonathan turned and pressed his nose against her cheek.

     “No,” he replied.

     She kissed him once more and then slid her long legs off the bed, tiptoeing to the bathroom.

     A burst of light escaped into the bedroom and touched his face. His hand quickly shot up, shielding his eyes from the glare. The sound of rushing water began to echo through the walls and slowly, he pushed his heavy head up from his pillowed grave. The room gradually came into focus as he looked up to see his wife now standing in the doorway. Her naked body bathed in the light, casting a long shadow. He watched the shadow enter the room and stop at the foot of their bed.

     “What time is it?” he asked.

     “You still have time.  You’ll call me tonight, right?” she asked.

     “As soon as I get there”

     “You’re going to the hotel first?”

     “Yeah,” he yawned.

      Jonathan moved to the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. He stood up, taking the bed sheet with him and then let it slip out of his hand onto the cold floor. She walked over, picked up the white sheet and wrapped it around her.

     “I’ll go and make us some tea.” Her voice lingered for a while down the hallway and then died.   

**

     The bed was one of the first things they had purchased together as husband and wife.  They had discovered it on one of their Saturday morning excursions. She had seen the old oak frame and headboard hidden away in the back corner of a local antique store. It was a small bed for two people, but when they placed it in the bedroom, it made the room feel larger. More bargain Saturdays enticed an old armoire and a tall iron-rod lamp to keep the bed company. On one wall, hung two old black and white photographs of a tall girl and a grinning boy. She had moved Jonathan’s writing desk several times until finally settling on a space against the wall, next to the bed, under a small window that looked out to the back of the house.

     The front yard was unassuming compared to the backyard. The backyard was wild and defiant. They had begun to till and plant the previous spring, but the dandelions and the foxtails were a constant battle. A large willow tree stood in the middle of the backyard. He had wanted to cut it down.

     “I don’t think we can save it,” he said.

      She took off her garden gloves and wiped the perspiration from her forehead.  She walked over to the tree and touched a leaf.

     “I think she’s beautiful. She’s just been neglected.”

     “She?” Jonathan chuckled. “My wife the tree activist! I thought you were a prosecuting attorney?”

     She ignored her husband’s remark and continued to gaze up at the old tree. She took a deep breath. Her thoughts were lost upon the black branches, the long yellow leaves, and the blue sky above.

     Jonathan knew there was nothing he could say once his wife had made up her mind. Her silence told him that she had decided to take the tree under her care, her protection. He took a drink and then handed the cold glass to his wife.

     “No, we’re going to leave her right here,” she finally replied.

     The willow’s long branches bowed down a little lower to her as though it was saying, thank you. She held the glass up against her forehead. Drops of water began to stream down her face.

     “This feels wonderful,” she said, satisfied.

**

     They had met in a bookstore.  She was part of the small crowd that had braved the Iowa snow to see “Jonathan Graves, 2003 book winner of the Silent Springs poetry award.” Despite the honor of receiving the “award,” by seven o’clock the crowd had quickly dwindled down to two. Far from being depressed, Jonathan was elated. His tired body was more than ready to tramp back to the motel and collapse on the springy mattress. This was his seventh city in nine days, and ten more cities and springy mattresses awaited him. Jonathan handed a signed copy to an elderly woman and thanked her. A tall, young woman stepped forward. She was holding a book that was clearly not his. She was pale and angular, and her black hair swayed a little past her shoulders and her eyes were a deep, watery green. He could see his reflection in her eyes. His eyes pulled away from her to the book swinging in her hand.       

     “Good book?” Jonathan asked, pointing to the book.

     “I don’t know.  I haven’t read it yet.” She held it up, showing the cover. “L'Amant by Marguerite Duras.”

     “Ah yes, Marguerite Duras. She’s good. You speak French?” he asked, as he stood up and started to put away the few books that remained into a box.

     “Not fluently, but I manage,” she replied.

      “Well, good night.”

     He smiled and nodded and then turned to walk away, but within a few steps, he felt the urge to look over his shoulder. He turned around with a perplexed expression that quickly transformed into a grin. She was very pretty he thought, and soft.

     “I wanted to buy your book,” she said quickly.

     She took several steps towards him and was now close enough that he could smell her perfume.

     “Book ...”Jonathan was embarrassed..    

     “I’ve read your first book,” she quickly continued. “Your poems are amazing.”

     “Well, thank you. You are very kind.”

      His eyes were now lost on her red lips and every word she exhaled tenderly caressed his flushed cheeks. He wanted to kiss her.

     “Do you write?” he asked.

     “I scratch out a little at night, but during the day I spend my time pouring over legal briefs. I work downtown at the Department of Justice.”

     “Attorney?”

   “Yes, graduated law school last year.”  She was amused. “We women have come a long way since the Mayflower. Many of us are attorneys, doctors…”

     “Butchers, bakers and candlestick makers,” he playfully interjected.

     “Yes, and some are even published poets.”

     “You hungry?” he asked.

     The question seemed to leap out of him in a sudden burst of romantic courage or desperation. Whatever the cause, it was too late. His fate was now in her hands. She smiled at him and lightly touched his hand.  His dinner proposal was not entirely unwanted.

     “Famished,” she replied.

     He looked down at her hand with a sense of relief.  He had always liked the word “famished.” They left the bookstore, walked over to a little restaurant around the corner and ate dinner. That night they talked about everything. Six months later, they were married.

**

     Jonathan was troubled that someday he might not remember every detail. He often mused about having the power over time; to be able to hold on to a minute, an hour, a day, every kiss, every smile, every touch, every tender moment that he had held her in his arms and never let it end. He walked over to the curtains in the hotel room, pushed them aside, and stepped out onto the balcony. There was nothing to see. They had turned the desert into a blaze of artificial lights and sounds. In the distance, he could faintly see hills. He stood there for a long time watching until he could no longer stand and finally, he surrendered to the bed and closed his eyes. When the phone rang, he was still dreaming.

     He was sitting in the kitchen. The steam from the teapot shot upward as she removed it from the stove. His eyes followed her hands as she poured the hot water into the cups. She sat down next to him, stirring her tea, and rubbed her bare foot gently against his leg.

     “You okay?” she asked.

     Jonathan watched the steam slowly rise from his cup. He took a sip and then looked into his wife’s eyes, searching.

     “Yeah, I’m okay. Tired, very tired, and you?”

     “Just the expected morning nausea, I’ll be fine.”

     “You’re staying inside today, right?”

     “I told you that I was fine,” she said.

     “You know, I really don’t have to go to this thing.”

     “What? Not go? Listen, I’m okay.” She squeezed his hand and smiled. “Really, I’ll be okay. Besides, all those people are coming to see Jonathan Graves the poet in person!”

     “I can cancel,” he said.

     “Nope,” she shook her head and took another sip. “The doctor said I just needed to rest and I’d be okay.”

     “He said more than that. He said you would need a lot of rest and that you needed to stay off your feet, and that means no more cases.”

     “Well, Harry saw to that. He informed me yesterday that I am now off the case. I guess having a pregnant assistant district attorney collapse in court was not a good image for his re-election campaign. Now the defense is motioning for a mistrial on the grounds that my fainting incident has unduly influenced the jury. What a bunch of crap.”

     “You know,” Jonathan began. “There are other competent attorneys in your office who can handle this case.”

     “They’re not as good as me,” she said. “I can’t let that bastard get away.”

     “Why is this particular case so important to you? I mean, I’ve never seen you so –.”

     “What?” she interrupted.

     “I know you are the best prosecuting attorney in the county, perhaps even the whole state, but look what it has done to you!”

     “I told you I was fine.”

     “You fainted in a packed courtroom!” His voice trembled, “I went crazy when I got the call that you were in the emergency room.”

     She looked down at the floor for a moment, and then put her cup on the table and got up and walked over to the kitchen sink.  The sink was full of dishes and she picked up one, turned on the faucet and started to wash it. The wind outside began to howl and through the window, above the sink, she watched the branches of the willow push against the wind.

     “Last time you had to leave town,” she began, “I went to bed and I woke up in the middle of night thinking that you were still sleeping next to me. When you weren’t there, I panicked, and it took me a few minutes to clear my head and then I remembered that you wouldn’t be home until the following day.”

     She turned off the faucet and looked at him.

     “We’ve been married five years now and I can’t ever imagine my life without you. Just those few minutes in the middle of the night when I turned over in our bed and saw that you were gone, I …,” she paused and for a moment she could not look at her husband. “I’ve never in my life been afraid of anything, except for the thought of you not being there.”

     She walked over to him and sat on the floor next to his leg. Jonathan kissed the top of her head and then she grabbed his hand, brushed it up against her cheek and kissed it.

     “When this case was assigned to me,” she continued. “I told myself that I was not going to get emotionally involved. I had met the mother and talked to the arresting officers, but when I met her, I saw fear in her eyes.  I wanted to find someplace to hide and cry. My God Jonathan, she was only nine years old! I bent down, took that little girl in my arms and just held her. I told her that she was safe now, and that she didn’t have to be afraid anymore.  I made a promise to Emily and her mother that he would never get out of jail. I gave them my word.”

     Jonathan stood up, picked his wife up from the floor, and held her in his arms. He wanted to just to stand there and not let her go. Nothing else was important to him at that moment.

He closed his eyes and gently stroked her hair. He touched her face, then he kissed her forehead, and then her cheeks and then he kissed her lips. The phone was ringing, but he didn’t care. She was in his arms.

     The sliding glass door to the balcony was open wide and the warm desert air filled and pushed the curtains high like sails on a ship. It was dark and he did not know what time it was. At first, he thought it was his cell phone ringing before he realized it was the phone in the hotel room.  He grabbed the phone and sat up.        

     “Hello… yes, this is … yes.”

     A chill entered his body, wrapping itself around his spine.

     “What? No! No, no, no, no, no, no …no!”

     The words echoed through his head and off the walls of the little room. He began to shake and the tears streamed down his face. His throat closed tight as though two cold hands had grasped firmly around his neck, its long fingers digging deep, so that he couldn’t breathe. There was a long pause before he could answer.

     “Yes …the next flight out,” he agreed.

     He let go of the phone and it fell to the floor. He could feel his heart beat fast and hard, desperately trying to escape. The curtains in the room continued to bellow in the wind and with each swell and rise; they parted way to the false lights from outside, slapping his face again and again with distorted hues of yellows, blues and reds. There was a loud knock at the door and his cell phone started to ring, but he just sat there and could do nothing.

     It was several hours later when the flight attendant tapped him on the shoulder. She asked him if he wanted anything to drink and he replied “no” without looking at her. He sat alone, next to the plane’s window, and for much of flight he was lost.  He watched the tip of the plane’s wing bob up and down in the turbulence. It seemed as though the plane was slowly passing through the clouds, but he knew that the he was going very fast. He pressed his face up against the tiny window and looked down. In between the white and gray clouds, he could see the distinct lines of large and small sections of land, varied shades of browns and greens.  There were parts that appeared to rise up against a mountain or fall into a deep valley.  A flock of birds flew in a different direction.  The birds quickly became little dots in the sky and then disappeared. He turned to see the flight attendant motioning him to buckle in his seat.

    When the plane landed there was a limousine waiting for him. He stepped outside the terminal and watched a young woman and an older gentleman walked towards him.  They both shook Jonathan’s hand and the woman gave him a slight hug. He knew the man. The women looked familiar to him, but he was unsure when or where they had previously met. She took his hand and led him into the car. Jonathan gazed out the window. The man began to speak, but the woman interrupted.

     “Anne was an amazing woman,” the woman’s voice began to shake.

     “Where did…” Jonathan struggled with the words.

     The woman looked at the man. The man took off his glasses and dropped his head.

     “They found her by our office,” he began. “They said she,” he could not finish. “I’m very sorry Jonathan.”

     The woman reached out and touched Jonathan’s knee, but he did not notice.

     When he walked through the front door of the house later that night, Jonathan found that it was dark and cold.  That night he slept on the couch. The following day a few came by to see him. Some he knew well. By the end of the day, his body was sore and bruised from everyone wanting to express their sorrow and condolences.

     At night, he struggled to fall asleep. Eventually his eyes would surrender, but after only a few hours of sleep, he would suddenly wake up, not knowing where he was. He would lie there and try to go back to sleep, to force himself to close his eyes and not to think.  He would finally get up and walk around the house. He would wander to the bathroom and then to the kitchen and then out the back door and over to the old willow tree and sit.

     The hours and the minutes passed and Jonathan could not hold on or stop it.  His face was empty and his eyes were dark.  He tried not to look too hard into the mirror as he pressed the razor across his face and down his neck.  A black suit waited patiently for him on the bedpost. His fingers fumbled with the tie and for a brief moment, he forgot how to tie the simple cross-knot.  After he had dressed, he sat down at his writing desk.

     He looked out the window. The wind had blown hard in the night. Fallen leaves and broken branches had scattered across the yard, but the giant willow still commanded the middle.  Its branches were completely bare as it stood still underneath the gray sky. He watched the old tree for a long time and then he took out a pen and began to write. He wrote fast and the pen did not stop until it was at the end, and then he folded the paper in two and put it in his breast pocket.

     On a late Sunday afternoon, a long line of cars followed two elegant black hearses through the town and up a long serpentine road to the cemetery.  The cemetery was one of the oldest in town and its headstones covered the entire hill.  A crowd gathered around two caskets draped with white roses. A minister stood up. His message was about life and death, love and hope. When he had finished, he prayed and led them in an old church hymn. Almost everyone knew the words. Then a few stood up and tried to speak about Jonathan and Anne Graves, but their voices were lost in the tears. When the service was over, many put letters, cards, and flowers on the graves. Eventually the crowd slowly dispersed down the hill and in their wake, someone carelessly knocked over a flower vase.

     The day’s sun fell from the sky and all had left except for a woman and a little girl in a blue dress.  The woman wore a rumpled black dress and a wide brimmed hat adorned her slightly graying head.  She had a handkerchief in her hand and was constantly dabbing at her swollen eyes. The little girl held the woman’s hand tightly. Soon they turned and started to walk away, but every few steps, the girl would turn her head and look back. The walk down to their car seemed much longer and harder to the woman than the walk up. When they reached their car, the woman saw that all of the other cars had left. They quickly got in their car and drove down the road, turned on the main highway and headed out of town.

     The woman looked at the girl and nervously asked, “Emily, are you okay?”

     The girl did not look at her mother, but had her nose pressed up against the car window.

     “It was a pretty funeral,” she replied.

     Her breath had left a small spot on the window. She touched the glass with her finger and started to write, but then quickly wiped away the marks with her sleeve. She opened her mouth to breathe against the glass again, but paused for a moment to look out the window.  Her eyes searched the horizon for the few lost rays of light that had perhaps, been left behind by the setting sun. It was too late and too dark and she knew that they were gone. The night was empty, but the sky was full of stars.

 
Author’s Footnote:  No suicide note was found, but the following was found in Jonathan Graves’ pocket, and his handwriting has been verified. It is believed to be his last poem.

Willows

It was always the same
when he walked through the door,
she shook his ground --
her lovely painted toes
softly stepping on his feet.
Her long eyelashes fluttered against his cheeks,
brushing away the bottle green mud.
Her white hands pulled him in,
pasting him against the plaster with painter’s ease.
Her sweat carved around his face
escaping down his chest.
His lungs collapsed into her arms
finding rest from the heat.
But tonight when he tried to caress her lips,
she slipped through his fingers
gliding off the tips.
He ran and hid behind her wet pillow,
drowning in the stillness
until his eyes drifted away
underneath the giant sheets.
And before the morning sun
hit the window pane,
the bending willow
kindly broke his neck.