The Book of Knowing (F)

The Book of Knowing was the only item left behind at the Gunderson place when it was put on the market. Well, that and the tabby that eked out an existence in the barn and in the meadow beyond the pond. Professor Harold Borowitz bought the place for cash after a friend of his at the local college had driven out to physically confirm the property’s existence and the details as listed.

More accurately, retired Professor Borowitz, for he decided after 35 years in the SUNY system that enough was enough, and so southward he came. Fifteen years earlier he taught a semester on Chaucer when his Charleston friend took a sabbatical at Oxford. He spent three times as long on Troilus and Criseyde as was called for in the syllabus, but that is another story.* Professor Borowitz was quite taken in by the charms of the city and the surrounding countryside, and so he believed someday he would return and there live out his days.

He closed the deal at the office of the attorney for the seller and left within an hour with a map, an aerial photo, the closing papers, and an almost giddy sense of relief that his former life was behind him and set before him was a veritable brave new world to be taken in hand. Soon, he was in his 12-year-old Forester and headed up the Interstate to 17A—there would be plenty of time to drive along the east side of the river some other day.

At the Stop-n-Shop just before the river, Professor Borowitz pulled in to top off his tank. He noted with a chuckle that the pumps were not automated, surely, he thought, the visit inside would be at least charming if not entertaining. True to form the clerk recognized him as someone who was not from around there, and Borowitz quickly volunteered that he was the new owner of the Gunderson property. The clerk expressed some surprise that no one local was willing to buy the place, but as she said, “Folks here have always known the Gundersons to be special people. Don’t know where that Evie took off to.”

Yes, charming, Borowitz thought to himself as he hurried back to his car. A thing of mystery is a beauty to consider. The place was easily found, the huge For Sale sign still in place next to the entrance. Although more than a few bumps and dips marred the dusty lane, Borowitz enjoyed the notion of being on an unpaved drive and so very far from all that he had ever known.

When he parked in front of the house, he grabbed his cellphone and the door keys and was in such a rush to look the place over that he left the car door open. He paused for a moment and looked back down the drive and surveyed the field of pink Delphinium. Lovely, he thought, lovely in every way. Up the steps then he headed and was pleased that the door seemed to spring open as he turned the key.

Two thoughts nearly collided in his brain as he stepped into the large sitting room. The lack of dust and the amount of light in the room. Gloriously lighted, and when he walked into the kitchen—well, spotless to be sure, and the light was more than good, more than pleasing, energizing is what it was.

Borowitz did a quick mental inventory: refrigerator, dishwasher, huge pantry, stainless double sinks, and granite counters that must be new. The pine floors were flawless even as the patina of age showed them to be milled most likely a century before.

Then, he noticed it. One cabinet door was open, the one over the refrigerator. And something was left behind. He stretched his arm across, up on his toes, and could just get his hand on it. A book. He took his reading glasses from his front shirt pocket and studied the fat volume. The Book of Knowing the cover said. Hefty in his hand, covered by a deep red calfskin and light cloth, with gold spine title and decorations in six panels between bands. All edges gilt.

Carefully he opened the cover, marbled endpapers. The title page said simply The Book of Knowing. The reverse was blank as was the next page. The page after that was blank, too, and so the next one. No page numbers. He opened half-way through the volume. Blank. Blank, the next page. Closer to the end, blank.

Borowitz closed the book and leaned back against the counter. What in this world he wondered is the book all about, and he once more opened near the middle of the pages. There he read, To answer questions as answers are sought. He looked up from the page and stared out the window that looked out on the pond.

He shook his head. Could he be just a bit dotty from the trip. Again, he opened the book, this time only a few pages in. You are not dotty. Yes, he laughed, he must be. He took the book out to the front porch and sat on the top step. He looked out beyond his car to the field of white Delphinium. No, pink, weren’t they pink before? He opened the book deep into its pages. They were pink before.

Madness, divine perhaps, without method to be sure, but surely not his madness. Then, what of my dissertation Borowitz thought. His thumb separated the pages. Troilus and Criseyde: The Expedience of Love. He stared again out over the field. What did he want to know, what did scholars want to know?  What would he trump all of them with by knowing? Of course.

“Who truly was William Shakespeare?” He waited for a moment, and then with his eyes closed he let his right thumb run over the edges of the pages. Gently, he sort of let the book come open in both hands. He opened his eyes. “I knew it, I knew it!” He got to his feet and twirled about as if set spinning like a tornado. “I always knew it! Knew it! I! Knew! It!” Borowitz laughed, loud and deep. He took in a deep breath.

Sitting back down, he again put his glasses on. “I knew it.” The excitement caused by what he most certainly had not seen coming exhausted him as much as it thrilled him. He sighed. Of course, there was another question that would nearly always come to any person.

And so it did with Professor Harold Borowitz. As a mortal being, he too wanted to know—fearfully, to be sure, but still all the same. The time of his death. He took another deep, deep breath. The book fell open.  Ladson 2014

*A. N.: Should the tale ever be told, which remains to be seen.

 

Baker's Falls (F)

Me, I hate going to town because I hate driving by Suicide Falls. It’s Baker’s Falls Park rightfully, but no one but the county commissioners and church ministers and the mayor call it that. There’s a picnic table at the pull-off out there, and someone is always leaving flowers.

My bad luck, I’ve seen four jumpers. Folks have been jumping from way back, and it’s about 60 feet give or take and all rock at the bottom. Water’s almost never more than ankle deep going over the edge.

Tourists stop during the summer, folks heading from the city to the lakes. Families picnicking, kids rolling in the grass—people for a quarter can look through a spyglass at the valley.

First I saw go over was Ted Pearce. He lost his family’s feed store when interest rates spiked. I was just close enough to recognize him. He sort of turned toward me and leaned back. Done, just like that. I stopped at the Wayland place to call it in. Because I didn’t go look, Sheriff Buck gave me hell.

Next time, about two years later, it was Biker Mike. He went to Iraq a couple of times. I was coming back from town and I saw him. Just as I turned the truck around, he gave me a salute and jumped—actually, he kind of fell, had his arms wrapped around himself. I went to the ledge and I could tell there was blood and he wasn’t moving. Bad stuff came up in my mouth, but I choked it back.

Lucky me I went seven years before seeing the others—even ate lunch out there two or three times with a girl who worked for the Ace Hardware, but she decided it was creepy and even creepier I saw folks jump, so she would only meet at the Bait ‘n’ Bar.

The last time—well, I wouldn’t know that, I guess—was two kids. They were Ohio girls a long way from home. I saw them in my headlights. I pulled into the lot so that they were in the light and when I got out, one of them shouted, “Don’t come over here.”

I just started talking. “What are you girls doing out here?”

“We’re not doing anything.” The taller one was the talker.

I guess I was about 30 feet away from them when they stepped toward the edge of what was just black, like a big, black hole.

“Y’all need to be careful.”

They were kind of clutching each other. They kicked off their yellow flip flops.  

“Y’all step back over this way.”

“Y’all have family?”

“Don’t come any closer!”

”Girls, you’ve got to get away from there. You don’t know—“

“We know.”

I half raised my arms. “You don’t. You don’t know anything. Girls—“

“Stop calling us girls!” The silent one flinched and they teetered and then steadied again.  “We know where we are.”

“You don’t. Y’all are—“

And they were gone.  Ladson 2013

 

 

 

 

The Girl at the Gate (F)

He walked alone as if without a destination outside the four-foot brick wall, the sidewalk uneven, a few dandelions here and there in the cracks. When he reached the man-gate, he called to the girl on the swing beneath a great limb of an oak.

“Becca!” he called in a harsh whisper. “Let me in. Becca!”

The girl in question looked away as if to study the clouds.

“Becca!”

She stood up and made a show of smoothing the front of her white cotton dress. She came across the yard as if she were lost in her own thoughts, and when she stopped a few feet from the gate, she gave him a sharp look.

“Hush, Daddy’s on the porch.”

“Thrown out again?” He smiled and then wrapped his fingers around two bars of the iron gate.

“He is smoking his morning cigar.”

“Out with the dogs. Again.” He snorted.

“Shouldn’t you be reporting to school?”

“Upper classmen don’t report until Sunday at 4:00.” She looked down for a moment. “Becca. Becca! Let me in. We could walk down by the barn.”

“The barn. Oh, yes, that would be a pleasant walk—strolling down to the barn.”

“Well you liked it well enough last week.” He tightened his grip on the bars. “Becca!”

She moved just a bit closer to the gate. “I don’t think that suits me today.”

“That is your mother talking.”

For a moment she fingered the locket worn just below her throat. She tipped her head to one side and studied his face. “No. No, I don’t think so.”

He shook the bars a bit, just enough for her to hear the slight rattle of the hinges. “Becca” he pleaded.

“No.”

“You, you are an insufferable girl.”

“Well, the last time you came calling, I was a, a beautiful young woman, I was a—what did you say—you said I was like a fawn.”

“You are like a fawn. But you make me suffer too. You could at least do me one small favor.”

“I don’t know.”

“Please.”

“One, and make it very, very small.”

“If you would take two steps back, please. Please. Yes, and now maybe two steps to the right. Perfect.”

She shrugged her bare shoulders. “Now what would you have me do?”

“Nothing. Just let me look at you. The sunlight is perfect behind you in that dress. I can see—“

“Jefferson Allen Tate, you are a monster! You are horrible!”  She rushed forward and locked her hands on the gate just below his. “You are a cad!”

“A cad? Who uses such a word.” He laughed. “You sound like Miss Ginny.”

“You would do well to spend some time with Miss Ginny.”

His hands slipped over hers. “Your eyes have gotten darker, Becca.” He lowered his voice. “Open the gate, Becca. Please.”

“No.”

He rested his forehead on the gate. “Mmmm, you smell nice.”

“No.”

“Just for a little bit, a few minutes.”

“No.”

He dropped his hands. “Well at least walk with me down to the park.”

“No. I have some things to do for Mother.”

“Later, then?”

“I don’t know.”

“This evening. You could meet me here. At half past eight.”

“In the dark?”

“Yes.” He reached up and took hold of her hands and squeezed them. “Say yes.”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know. Becca. You will meet me?”

She pulled her hands away. “I don’t know.”

“Well, I will be here. I will be here every night.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I will.”

“Rebecca!” Her father’s voice from the front of the house called.

“I have to go.” She half-turned.

“Then you will let me in later?”

“I don’t know.” She started toward the house.

“Becca, wait! Becca! Becca! Marry me!”

She looked back over her shoulder and shook her head. He looked for her smile, but it did not come.  Ladson 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Doctor's Wife (F)

Three weeks before the big hurricane back in ’89, I had the opportunity to travel up the river to look at a piece of property with Dr. Walker and his two sons. The boys as he called them were in their early 30s, and Dr. Walker’s wife—his second wife—came along as well. She was 27. The boat Esmeralda, known locally in racing circles as Essie, was a 35-foot sloop with a long and narrow cockpit featuring a small wooden wheel just a foot inside the transom. The boat was handsome under sail, but that day we followed the tide in with the diesel churning up a moderate wake.

We left the pier shortly after noon and when we made the turn to the north around the southern tip of the city, Karen Walker went down below and came back with cold beers for the four of us—the doctor did not drink.  Karen—Rennie he called her—took off her white dress shirt and tossed it down below. She settled herself in between the two brothers. Her one-piece suit was dark red and cut high on her hips and deep in the back.

The brothers sat passively, but the doctor was happily telling Karen the history of the various wharves along the city as we headed toward the bay bridge. With each sip of beer, Karen tipped back her head so that her yellow hair fell away from her shoulders. When we reached the bridge that marked the beginning of the river, she stood up and went below. Both brothers watched her step down into the cabin and disappear for a moment. This time when she came back up from below, she brought just one beer for herself. Again, she squeezed herself in between the brothers.

From the time a boat passes under the great bridge, it follows a river that bends back and forth in sweeping turns for nearly eight miles up towards the highest bluffs in the region. With each mile the houses and their piers that reach out over the marsh and to the river begin to distance themselves from one another. Doctor Walker seemed to know the owners of every home along the banks and more often than not could offer up the names of their boats if they owned one.

When the river narrowed to perhaps fifty yards across, Doctor Walker throttled us down to about three knots.  Karen handed her empty bottle to me with a slight smile—she had gone down for a third beer—and put her hands on the thighs of the brothers and giving herself a push, stood up and then stretched her arms overhead so that she rose up on the balls of her feet.   

The property we were taking a look at had a generous pier head, and the Doctor eased the boat around so she would be against the tide and ghosted her in. The brothers made the boat fast, and I stepped over the lifelines and waited for the doctor to do the same. He joined me after checking the height of the three bumpers. Looking at his sons, he said, “Take good care of her, boys.”

Dr. Walker and I walked up a narrow trail that led up a bluff covered with high grass. As we got to the top of the rise, Dr. Walker continued on toward a weathered tobacco barn without so much as a glance back at the river. I looked back. Karen and the two brothers were no longer to be seen. Ladson 2013

 

 

The Portal (F)

The article, from the Hurriyet Daily News, offered a comment from a 57-year-old Cezmi Korkmaz, who according to the story is the last witness to a person being lost through The Portal. My friend Sam Richter, who played shortstop with me when I played second base in Sarasota in 1963, faxed the clipping over from his office at the University of South Florida. The story only reported that Korkmaz was there and that he was 9-years-old at the time. Mostly, the reporter focused on the decision by the government to seal the entrance in 1983.

Two months later, through a contact at the Ministry of National Education, I was seated in front of Mr. Korkmaz at the Kirit Café after the lunch rush. He spoke with a British accent after the fashion of a man who earned a degree at an English university, his an undergraduate degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics.

 

After a few pleasantries and inquiries after each other’s families, I put the question to him. “Will you tell me about Altan Tilki? Please.”

 

Mr. Korkmaz looked at me for a moment, and then he nodded his head. “I was 9. Altan Tilki was a friend of the family and wanted to take photographs of the tower and then the sea from that summit. He paid me a few lira to carry a bag of lenses and a lunch basket.

 

“He was a tall man and I had to walk quickly to stay up with him. A few times on the steps along the cliff I fell behind and he would turn and scowl at me. But then he would raise his camera and shoot several frames of the sea below.”

 

“Do you know if those pictures might be seen?”

 

“I do not know. He has a great granddaughter in Pursaklar, or so I have been told. I do remember he was short of breath when we got to the foot of the tower on the other side away from The Portal.

 

“He took more pictures of the sea, and then he stood very close to the stone wall and took a photograph nearly straight up the tower. I remember because the clouds were very high that morning.

 

“When we moved around to the north side of the tower where The Portal opens, Mr. Tilki bent down and picked up a fragment of stone and scratched a chalky line across the stone path that led to The Portal. He told me to stay behind the line at all times, no matter what I saw or heard.”

 

“What was he planning to do?”

 

Mr. Korkmaz looked off and seemed to be in some way back in that moment. “Dr. Cooper, he was going to take a photograph of the inside of The Portal.”

 

I leaned forward in my chair. “The legend says no light could penetrate that space.”

 

“No. No light could enter that darkness. He told me again to stay behind the line that he had drawn, and he changed cameras, and with no hesitation he walked up the 20 or so steps to The Portal and stood just outside the opening.

 

“Mr. Tilki stood so his toes were just at the threshold and extended his camera into the darkness and clicked the first shot.  The flash went off but none of the light penetrated the interior. Then, the first of the smells came.”

 

“Smells?”

 

“First, I could smell cumin and believed my mother’s sarma was being prepared right beneath my nose. Tilki reached the camera into the darkness, but kept his feet planted outside the opening. Again a flash, but the light seemed in some manner trapped in the bulb.

 

“Next came, even more strongly, the smell of mint. My mouth watered. My mother’s manti, no doubt. Tilki leaned forward so that his face was through The Portal, but again the light of the camera did not escape into the darkness. The smell was so strong. I wanted to run to his side.”

 

Mr. Korkmaz took up his cup of coffee and sipped slowly. He set the cup down and very carefully wiped his lips.

 

“I will tell you that I have a bad heart, Dr. Cooper. In all other ways, I have been blessed in my life. One’s memories cannot always be certain. What happened next is the truth.”

 

“Yes? Go on.”

 

“It was the cinnamon in the end. My mother’s pudding, I smelled it a hundred times as a boy. It was so strong that I thought myself in a cloud of cinnamon. I was surely in my mother’s kitchen. Tilki leaned into the darkness so that only backs of his legs and his heels were in the light.

 

“I ran, I ran toward The Portal. Tilki turned and for a moment his face and his feet and his knees were in the light, but somehow he fell back into the darkness just as I got to within several meters of him. He was vanished.”

 

“Vanished? Gone where? How?”

 

“I do not know, Dr. Cooper. There was no sound. He did not cry out.  Nothing. Not a sound came from The Portal.”

 

“What did you do?”

 

“I gathered up the bags and ran as much as I could down to my home. I told my parents what I had seen and about the smells. The police came and they took my report, but I left out the part about the cinnamon. It was in the papers for a few days because Tilki had taken photos for Time during the war.”

 

“Have you been back up there? To The Portal?”

 

“Never. And as I am blessed, I will not return in this lifetime.”  Ladson 2014

An Every-day Life

The Inquisitor this time, pony-tailed, in knee-length shorts and t-shirt, barefooted, and pacing. She turns, grips the chain link fence, and with all the steeliness a 7-year-old can muster, puts it to me. “What is your every-day like?”

“Well, well you know I get up pretty early, before the sun, every day.”

She rests her head on her shoulder, still clinging to the fence.

“I let Max out. Make some coffee. Uh, turn on the laptop. Read some news, check email and Facebook, watch YouTube videos, walk Max, fix breakfast and sit outside. Maybe not every day.

“Brush my teeth, get cleaned up, maybe work outside, then read, do some housework.”

She straightens up. “You do housework?”

“You think Max is doing it? Then lunch, maybe a nap, not every day every day. Walk Max, do some more reading, supper, outside, talk to you. Read some more. Watch more YouTube videos. Go to bed.”

She’s scampers back to her trampoline. Judgement rendered by way of silence, I suppose.

Boring, escapist, lackadaisical? Admittedly not a lot of meat on those bones when merely a listing.

For me—I hesitate to use the word idyllic. But.

My mornings every day bring something of note. Two Red-shouldered hawks sharing a branch. The first Black swallowtail butterfly of the season. This year, a day before the first Eastern tiger swallowtail—now I see them every day.

The first leaf, on an elm, a poplar, a crape myrtle, the Bloodgood Japanese maple. The first leaf of a tomato grown from seed, the first flower on one of the Bragger cucumber vines. A tiny bell pepper forming.

Honeybees in the Natchez crapes overhead. Baby geese feeding on the neighbor’s grassy knoll. First Passion butterfly.

The morning half a dozen Carolina wrens showed up, picking through container plants and raised beds.

The first Knockout bloom, the first Japanese beetle. The first cherry tomato eaten right off the vine, the first tomato hornworm. Hey, it’s a jungle out there.

But, I ramble—and that is just part of the morning inventory—not every day every day, but something special, every day.

A final verdict? A cruel one.

Je suis à la retraite.