"The rain poured down from the
sodden, bleak sky for the fifth straight day.
There was only so much hot tea one could drink, seeking solace in a
comforting beverage. After a while the
caffeine gave her the jitters.
Summer in upstate New York can be
ever so beautiful, but the weather makes or breaks the loveliness, rain turning
the landscape melancholy and bleak.
She gazed again at the open book in
front of her, the history of Saratoga interesting, but unsatisfying. After all, all that was spoken of were famous
people and she wasn’t looking for traces of them. Since her father had died, all she could think
of was his face, remembered from her childhood, his aging, vacant eyes of the
last few years erased. He had dreamed
once, when his final illness began and he could no longer stand on his own legs
that he was walking through Congress Park, his whole life ahead of him. Then he awoke.
Richard James Bootier was born
March 26, 1919, into a very young 20th century. His parents had witnessed the first
aeroplanes, the first cars, and then he would live into the age of total
destruction and the mass impersonality of America’s post industrial revolution. And then he would die and go…..where? Where was he now?
Looking up at the quiet brick
interior of the library, she was conscious of her own mortality. The scythe that had cut him down was hiding
in the shadows, sharpening it’s blade for another cut. If only she could hop off the assembly line
heading inevitably to the blankness where he had already gone.
Sarah had tucked a small Bible
into her pocket before she came out. Its
ancient words, although she wondered if she could really believe them, were so
sure, so majestic. Eternal life. All one needs to do is look around at the
tattered chaos of life, read a little history, and the words don’t seem to have
as much power. But she carried it with
her anyway as a sort of talisman. It had
been her father’s, and he had been as unsure of it as she.
A damp draft teased the back of
her neck. Her hair in a ponytail, she
could feel the change in temperature and it brought her a little frisson of
chill. Someone must have opened the door
of the library to the outdoors, and the cold wet air of a rainy Adirondack day
swept behind her chair.
Closing her eyes, she felt the
empty dull sadness roll over her. The
one person who had admired and loved her was gone, the one of whom she was a
female carbon copy. It had been a
mistake coming back to Saratoga, walking the streets of her father’s
childhood, imagining his world, introducing the phantom boy to the child inside
of herself. She just felt old and
lonely.
Shrugging back into her rain
gear, she was startled by the feeling of a sleek, furry creature rubbing
against her leg. Imagining a rat, she
quickly looked down and identified a ginger tabby cat gazing up at her, its’ green
agate eyes filled with what could only be described as sympathy.
“Stuck out in the rain, buddy?”
she asked gently, and the cat began to purr loudly, making movements as if it
would jump into her lap. “How the heck
did he get in here,” she wondered. He
was obviously someone’s pet. As she
gathered her things to leave, he followed her.
“Great,” she thought. “Now what
do I do.”
Walking through the revolving
door, he kept close to her legs, and, slipping out next to her, he followed her
the five or so blocks to her father’s old house.
“Hey – you want to come in?” she
asked. The house felt so empty, so bare. Even though many years before it had been her
grandparents’ house and the home in which her father was born, it had been sold
to strangers and remodeled. It took all
of her savings to buy it back. She could
never afford now to get rid of the modernization, to restore the huge kitchen
complete with Hoosier cabinets that she remembered from childhood.
Ginger cat meowed and stepped
right in, hopped up on the reclining chair, curled up, its paws folded under,
and watched her confidently.
“Calm down.” he seemed to
say. “I’m here now and I’m going to
answer some of your questions.” Sarah
shook her head for a minute, thinking she really had to stop drinking so much
tea. It truly was as if Ginger boy had
spoken. This is what happens to lonely,
old women, she thought. They become
daft. Just another sign of the Grim Reaper.
Sarah hung up her coat and laid
her purse in the corner behind the chair.
She pushed Ginger boy off the recliner, sat down and, releasing the foot
rest, sighed deeply as she sank into the plush chair. “I’ve got to come up with
a name for you,” she thought – “I sure can’t keep calling you Ginger boy.” Clear as a bell, the name, “Gabriel,” came to
her. “Are you a Svengali cat,” she
asked, gazing into his inscrutable eyes.
“Well, Gabriel it is,” she said out loud. “You can stay here as long as you want – I can
use the company.” Feeling a bit guilty, she checked and found no collar and
noted his fur looked a bit scruffy as if he had been living outside for a
while.
“Poor fellow,” she crooned, and
he promptly leaped into her lap and began making biscuits on her chest, purring
all the while. “Gabriel, you’re going to
snag my sweater,” she said, but allowed him to continue contentedly. Finally, he laid still, his paws resting on
her chest, his face close to hers, his eyes half closed in utter relaxation. As she watched him and stroked his fur, a strange
peace came over her, something she hadn’t felt for a very long time. “He’s magic,” she thought, and fell asleep.
“There’s a cell phone ringing,” she
thought as she struggled up from the depths of her nap.
Yawning, she realized she hadn’t felt so rested since, well, forever. Fumbling for her phone, the call was just a sales call.
Yawning, she realized she hadn’t felt so rested since, well, forever. Fumbling for her phone, the call was just a sales call.
Gabriel was sitting on the end
table next to the chair. He looked alert
and his eyes were so impelling, it was, for all the world, as if he was trying
to talk. Protruding from under his paws
was a piece of folded lined paper. As
she picked it up she noticed it was fragile and yellowed. “Where did you get this, Gabriel,” she asked,
carefully unfolding the paper. It was
written on in pencil, in a childish hand, the letters carefully formed. It was the Lord’s Prayer, the “Our Father.” At the top of the page was her father’s name,
Richard Scott, and the date, February 2, 1926.
Under the prayer was adult handwriting, somewhat feminine in its curves,
the penmanship lovely and spidery.
“Today my son understood that
Jesus Christ is his savior. I am so
relieved. He will be in heaven and I will
see him again after I die.”
How macabre, I thought. Lovely sentiment, but why would she, so
young, be thinking about death? Perhaps
the realities of life, especially in the days before penicillin and great
medical care, made people more pragmatic about life.
Underneath her words were some, I
assumed, Bible verses. Gabriel, at that
moment, decided it was time to eat. I
put down the paper, wondering where it had come from, and, rummaging around the
fridge, found some cooked chicken. I put
it in a dish and warmed it a couple of seconds in the microwave and placed it
on the floor for the cat. It met with
his approval, evidently, because it was gone in about three minutes.
My attention went back to the
little lined paper. I thought how
comforting it must have been for my grandmother to believe as she did, and I
got out the small Bible. Looking up the
verses written on the paper, Gabriel once again in my lap purring, I began to
consider this line of thought, of faith, more seriously. And I began to read."
