A Long Way From Home

It had been a hard road that brought Curtis Springer  to stand at the end of the long and lonely looking driveway which slivered through an avenue of ancient live oaks.

Sandy and overgrown with tall weeds the forgotten drive whispered, inviting. Curtis listened with his heart feeling lighter than it had in a very long time. The happy ending to a lifetime of sadness was in sight. For the first time, in a long time, Curtis felt at home.

The driveway and the trees and the house looked just as they had in the photographs. Just like the pictures. In the red glow of the sun shimmering through the humid Mississippi  delta summer evening, everything seemed surreal. With the dignity of a true southern gentleman the tired old plantation house in the distance rested itself inside shadows as darkness fell.

Like a blanket, nighttime slowly pulled itself over Curtis as he made his way toward a distant porch light.

Dust from the taxi had begun to settle as Curtis took one final look over his shoulder with mild regret. The old cabbie who drove him from the airport and through the swampy lowlands would have gladly delivered him to the front door of the mansion. He even offered. Curtis waved him on. With a face that looked like one of the road maps lying in the seat beside of him, the cab driver’s eyes screamed exhaustion.

Beat up and old like himself the suitcase, which Curtis lugged, was filled with his things – his entire life. It should have been heavier. Wiping the sweet summer sweat from his forehead as he eyed the distant porch light, he was glad it wasn’t.

Looking around, he was reminded of the photographs which sat on the night stand  beside of his bed for  a very long time. They were now nestled in the battered suitcase among his other treasured belongings.

It was all just as Trinity LeVeau so vividly described to him. There was a smell of the not so distant salt water, which crept into the bayou  and reminded him the ocean from which it came was not far away. Also, there were the screams of cicadas and throaty croaks of bullfrogs which echoed through the evening air. It was all there. Even the smell of a promising thunderstorm, the kind to  which he and Trinity had fallen asleep more than once. Many were the times they lay together in bed, listening to the rain, phones in hand, miles apart and falling so madly and deeply in love.

Three years passed since they met. His marriage had recently come to an end, Then his ex-wife was  killed in a hit and run accident which left him no one to hate but himself for the way things turned out. Equally tragic, Trinity’s husband was killed by friendly fire somewhere in France during a battle.

It was quite by accident they  met. A wrong number on her part had jarred him from his restless sleep. Somehow in trying to fend off her apologies, the two of them exchanged names and stories. Within a week they were having  conversations lasting well into the night.

That’s where things stayed for a while, just friendly phone talk. It was as much as either of them could manage at the time — emotionally. They were just someone for the other to talk to and listen to, to laugh with and cry with, and to fall asleep with-someone safe.

Time changes things, and three years was enough to do just that. Lovers healing side by side Trinity often reminded Curtis was what relationships are all about.

“Healing our souls and helping us grow past the hurts and the pains of living,” she often reminded him in the soft southern voice which Curtis came to love. He agreed.

With no wife, no children and his parents long since passed, he was ready for more. Curtis was ready for the family he had never known and somehow with this sweet and gentle woman on the other end of the phone, he knew he found it.

As he made his way up the drive, Curtis was more than a little nervous. This would be the first time the two would physically yet somehow Curtis felt a soulful connection with Trinity. He was sure she it  felt too.

He and his wife who he married just out of high school, and like so many grew apart rather than together. The “lets play house” connection with her, could not compare with, “the real thing,” he had with Trinity.

With Trinity, the nights were not so lonely as the two of them would chat for hours on end on topics ranging from philosophy to cooking. And there were always the chats with Mrs. Ruby, Trinity’s mother when the old girl could pry the phone from her daughter’s hand and squeeze a word in edgewise. There were also sweet short ramblings with Bonnie, Trinity’s six year old, with whom Curtis also fell in love.

Like icing on a piece of stolen cake, there were also many deliciously exciting and  toe-curling passion filled exchanges between Curtis and Trinity in their midnight ramblings.

It was thoughts of these conversations of erotic interludes which filled Curtis’s imagination and left him tossing and turning in bed night after night for over a year. Thoughts which seemed to consume him as he stood in the over-sized claw footed tub in the upstairs bathroom of the old mansion as warm water spilled over his body like summer rain.

Under the silver snake like nozzle from a bygone era, Curtis lost himself in the spray of hot  water, the first he had known in over a year. After losing his job, hot water became a luxury, which eventually went the way of other luxuries. Many were the times he was awakened by hunger and shivering, glad his wife was not there to witness his financial ruin.

Thoughts of being cold and hungry and his wife were nowhere to be found as he stood naked in the shower letting the water flow over him, his belly full of cookies and milk. Rinsing the thick blanket of foam and shampoo away from his flesh pink from the overly hot water his thoughts were of Trinity. Flashes of fantasy and Trinity’s voice echoed though his mind like the heat lightning he saw dancing on the far off ocean. His reflection smiled back at him from the ancient full length mirror in the corner of his room. Curtis, for the first time in a while felt clean, though, he could not say the same for his thoughts.

Only a few hours earlier after finally reaching the porch of the old mansion Curtis was greeted by Ruby, Trinity’s mother. She, though a bit older, than he imagined was as sweet and dear in person as over the phone. She reminded him of his grandmother with her now snow white hair in a bun perched on the back of her head. Her face, years of laughter and tears and worry was etched in wrinkled lines.

“Trinity and the baby ran to town,” Ruby explained as she invited Curtis into the shadowy parlor where the two of them sat and talked for the longest time. Then Ruby excused herself, leaving Curtis all alone to examine the contents of the living little room before returning from the kitchen with a tray of freshly baked cookies and a glass of tall ice cold milk.

With the  only food in two days being a half eaten honey bun he found under the seat of the taxi, Curtis’s eyes grew as big as the cookies. It was while sitting there trying to control his almost insatiable hunger for the cookies and thirst for the milk, Curtis got a strange feeling.

It was the feeling that a cat gives when it unexpectedly brushes by. Maybe it was from the flickering hurricane lamps and the dancing shadows they cast over the tall furniture, or the lonely piano, or what must have been a million pictures of Trinity and Bonnie which stared at him from deep within their ancient frames.

The two of them talked on until the sun disappeared and night settled in. Ruby wanted to know all about his trip and if he was tired and if he was comfortable.
Finishing his second tall glass of milk and what must have been a dozen cookies, Curtis felt his thoughts begin to run together but not before he realized, looking around the dark and dusky room, there was no sign of a telephone.

Weary from the trip and letting this slip by,  he listened to the beginning of a summer shower as the fat drops a rain tapped danced on the tin roof.  Ruby smiled her sweet old smile.

Seated on the sofa, thoughts colliding, Curtis felt a strange memory wiggle in his brain. The rain on the roof brought it all back,  but only for a second. Then, the soothing satisfaction of the hot cookies, cold milk, steady drizzle and soft voice of Ruby’s which from time to time reminded him of Trinity’s, got the best of him.

He was left helplessly captive to the exhaustion created by a thousand sleepless nights.

“Go on upstairs and draw your bath, you have time for a good hot soaking before the kids get home,” Ruby said with a smile that Curtis found somewhat strange. Curtis hesitated but Ruby insisted and pointed him in the direction of a once busy stairway.

“Yours will be the first room on the right. Trinity left you some bath linens on the bed and the light switch is behind the door.

“We do have electric,” Ruby admitted. Then, with another strange and twisted smile she added, “I just prefer the old ways,” pointing to the kerosene lamp.

Then came silence.

“Trinity and the baby will be back shortly. It is a good ways to town and the rain has probably slowed her down a bit”, Curtis remembered Ruby saying as he felt a strong urge to stretch out in the inviting canopy bed amidst the walls papered with intricate designs cased in crushed velvet, designs which soon began to chase each other about the room. Curtis was sure he could catch the elusive rest he needed and be up fresh before anyone was the wiser. He was wrong.

The rest proved to be less than elusive as he nestled himself in the deepest of sleeps, lost in the smell of the once fresh sheets and softness of the down filled tick.

Almost clawing himself into wakefulness, Curtis struggled to remember where he was when sleep grew tired of keeping him in its clutches. The light in his room was now off and there was a faint smell of lavender and lilacs on the pillow beside him which he could not recall being there before. Maybe just maybe, the dreams he had of being tangled in passion-filled-sheets with Trinity were more than dreams.

A smile crept across his face as he brushed a stand of long hair which somehow found its way onto his pillow.

Catching up with his thoughts, Curtis heard the sound of an old grandfather clock from down the hall and around the corner as it chimed seven peals before returning to the silence of it ticks and tocks.

Standing beside the bed Curtis realized  the clothes he remembered laying down in were strangely and neatly folded and laying in a rocker at the foot of the bed.

Curtis was naked.

Without giving much thought to anything, he quickly threw himself into his clothes, laced his slippers and made his way through the shadowy darkness to the wafting smell of breakfast.

Reminded of something he knew as a child a feeling of being home and safe and waking up at his grandmother’s swept over him. He bounded down the steps toward the conversation in the kitchen.

Trinity and Ruby arguing over the best way to prepare pancakes and laughing. Even Bonnie joined in, her giggle high and light. Then Curtis stopped. Outside of the kitchen door he stood for a long time and listened, wondering how to make his entrance into the open arms of his new family.

“Oh he’s a keeper, hon,” he heard Ruby say in her morning voice.

“I know mom, I really do,” Trinity replied.

Curtis felt suddenly afraid as early morning light was beginning to spill through the kitchen doorway. The feeling of being wanted was strange as he stood, in the wafting smells of breakfast, and mustered his courage.

Stepping into the doorway, his eyes widened to take in everything as it played out just the way he imagined.

His beautiful lover, Trinity, would turn away from the stove and smile shyly and tenderly as Ruby excused herself taking Bonnie to another room, allowing her daughter and Curtis the intimate privacy for which she knew they hungered.

Curtis anticipated a deep embrace and a kiss from Trinity’s full and pouting lips that would last forever.

Instead, standing in the kitchen doorway, with heart suddenly on the floor Curtis discovered the meaning of ‘Loving eyes will never see’.

There alone, all by herself, in the kitchen among the shadowy flickers of the kerosene lamp and chatter stood Ruby in her Mother Hubbard nightgown that was as thin as her long and silvered hair hanging wildly and loosely as she stood barefoot on the tired linoleum facing the stove  from which she only turned long enough to cast Curtis a deep and invitingly maniacal glance.

Curtis’s heart still on the floor, stopped.

Epilogue

Finishing up his second helping of breakfast; hot cakes dripping with creamy butter and sticky syrup, eggs sunny side up, sausage and bacon, Curtis decided this was about the best breakfast  he had had in forever and was already beginning to wonder what he would be have for lunch.

This is a work of fiction, any resemblance to any persons living  or dead is purely coincidental.

Copyright Edward Reed 2018