“Hers was one of the wealthiest families in Lexington, and I was foolish enough to think that mattered to her. But she embraced my family like we were Vanderbilts.”
“What’s it like, Jukes Hollow?”
“Kevin, I’ve traveled the world, and it is truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I’m not saying it cause I grew up there. I’m saying it cause it is the bald truth.”
“When can I see it? I’ve been here a month and a half and you haven’t taken me yet.”
“Very soon. In two weeks you and I are going on the Tramp. You’ll see it then.”
“What’s the Tramp?”
“Every year in August, I hike up into the mountains for a few weeks, deep into Old Blue National Forest, which is on the other side of Bridger Mountain.” He pointed to one of the mountains ringing the town. “About twenty miles into Blue, on a plateau, is the best fishing east of the Mississippi, place called Glaston Lake. That’s where I took your grandmother for our honeymoon. I couldn’t afford a real honeymoon and she couldn’t have cared less… another reason I loved her. Jukes Hollow is at the trailhead that goes up there. So we can spend the morning at Jukes, then head up into Old Blue.”
“You mean hike up there?”
“I do. Little walk in the woods never hurt a boy.”
My camping experience consisted of a pup-tent blanket in the living room and my recent backyard foray. The idea of two weeks in the woods excited and scared me.
“That’s a lot of food to be bringing up there.”
“We won’t be bringing much food. Only enough to get us there.”
“How are we going to eat?”
“You obviously have never been fishing with me,” he said with a tired smile. “I know all the secret honey holes. We are gonna fish, trap, and live off the land like mountain men. Bout time you learned how to do that, don’t you think?”
“I guess. It sounds cool, like we’re pioneers or something.” I was still brooding over Paul’s funeral and the thoughts that attended it. Escaping into the mountains was appealing. With death all around, it seemed like the last, best chance for peace of mind.
Evening finally came with an uncharacteristic bite to the air. I looked out to the streetlamp and a form materialized. I was expecting Lo or Chester, but the shadow grew with each stride. He stayed at the bottom step watching us as if looking through a window opened on a living room. “I was… I was out walkin an I saw the light from the road.”
“I’m glad you did. Please come on up and join us.”
He took the steps and eased himself slowly and silently into a wicker chair. I brought him a straight-up whiskey and a glass of ice. He took the whiskey with both hands, the way a child holds milk in a grown-up glass. He sipped and brought the glass back to the cradle of hands.
Pops didn’t try to soothe him with words of a life well lived or fill the silence with eulogy platitudes, for he, above all, knew there was simply nothing to say. So there they sat in silence, sipping mash and leaving each to his own memories.
Pops with Sarah moving into the new Chisold house and trying to push the Lexington-bought mattress up the stairs with little success. They finally collapsed in laughter and spent that first night on the mattress in the living room laid out before a dancing fire.
Paitsel up a ladder in July scooping gutter sludge and Paul matching him muck for muck, but geared out like he was handling radioactive waste—rubber kitchen gloves to his elbows, head swaddled in a white towel, a surgical mask. Paitsel chuckled, which brought Pops out of his rememberings and back to the porch.
“He was a fussbudget, warn’t he?”
Pops laughed. “He was indeed persnickety—but always with a smile. One of his greater charms, I think.”
Paitsel sipped, held the glass from the bottom. “Took me five years to get the dang coffee makin right. Hadta be fresh ground. Hadta be exactly the right mix a coffee an water.” He shook his head, smiling. “I’m always the early riser, so coffee was one a my jobs. I’d always bring him up a waker.” He went silent and staring, as if another memory had come forward that appropriated all of his faculties. Pops abided. After about five minutes, Paitsel spoke again.
“Goin home’s the thing.”
Pops shifted; the wicker creaked.
Another long silence.
“I don’t think I can.” More silence. “He’s everywhere in that place… in the walls, the floors, the bricks an the blocks… then suddenly he ain’t. Tonight I think I hear him callin me downstairs, so I rush down… I rush down cause I swear I heard him”—his voice hushed—“but it’s all empty.”
Pops was leaning forward now, elbows on his knees. His eyes were red and moist. “I wish I could tell you that it gets better, Pait, but it don’t. It just gets less bad.”
Paitsel nodded with hard-bought understanding and finished his glass and stood. “I don’t know where this chill come from. Feels like September instead a July.”
“They say it’s the jet stream, dipping down from Canada.”
He turned, hands in his pockets, and looked out over the night, then slowly took the steps down to the walkway and off into the darkness.
He stood half in Paul’s closet, brought two shirtsleeves to his face, and breathed in slowly, deeply. When his lungs were filled, he closed his eyes so that the essence would take him back to the archive of their life together. He held the scent like he was holding Paul one last time, afraid that if he let him go, let his essence go, he would never capture this moment again. This and the moment Paul exited his car on Highway 81 with a smile that obliterated flat-tire frustration; or the first time he thrashed violently in his sleep against the old tormentors until Paitsel slayed them by simply holding him tight and whispering into his ear; or the moment Paitsel’s brother surprised them at the Kaymore place and Paul covered, sleeping the weekend at the Notion Shop. And town hall, the moment ten days fresh, when he had never been so proud. Never been so proud.
Finally he exhaled slowly, closed the doors, and went down to the kitchen to start coffee for one.