Comfort and Reverence

Comfort and Reverence

Felix slid the ladder through the open window and onto the roof of the front porch. He ached as he carefully stepped out and into an aroma of cut grass simmering in morning dew. From this perch above his yard, Felix looked across at the Queen Anne commanding its place along the street. Next to it, veiled by a canopy of ash and maples, emerged a stately Italianate. Further down, the street was awash in Saturday activity - a man infusing a garden bed with compost, a teenager trimming a hedge, a young woman waiving from an open car door, a puppy dragging a leash up the street.

As Felix checked his supplies, the puppy spotted him on the roof and sat near a pear tree in his front yard to watch. Last winter, under weight of icy snow, several branches split off from its trunk. Its remaining limbs formed an f. Even nature graded his house. How could others not. Felix looked up at his decayed gutter and above that at a seared roof. He bit down on his lower lip and felt the broken edge of a tooth. Felix shimmed the ladder and tethered it to the post between two windows. He clipped into his fall harness. With the prep work done, he stood ready to fix things. Felix brightened then paused. His thoughts turned to a notion lingering from a recent trip to the Mediterranean.

Felix shuddered, recalling the swarm of vendors in a narrow market hawking food and spirits. Jostling lines of stooped matrons with upraised palms beckoned shoppers into lively banter. Then their grateful nods to complete the toil from seed to basket. Felix held back in the tail of the beastly mob, wary of a thumb on a scale. He slipped next to a wool-capped tour guide gesturing for a travel group to close circle around an open rack of baklava for a telling of its history. Felix listened to the guide’s story. Long ago, to improve the marketplace, any cook preparing a tasty new dish could prevent other chefs from making it for a year. One ancient baker layered filo dough with chopped nuts and honey. Baklava became a thing in itself - refined, good, and lofty. For that the ancients granted the baker a year to build a craving for this pastry. The guide finished and invited his group to sample pieces of the comfort food.

Felix resisted the urge, as other souls stepped closer, pleased not to honor it. He turned to look at nearby stands as if for clues how this baked dough rose in stature. The stands were simple and scrubbed. There were no bins of rancid produce or street gutters clogged with dirty water. Once in a while a merchant would shout out a price of her wares, but not fiercely. Felix did not see what he wanted to see; that Baklava’s honor was earned by trial and torment. Other sellers gave a blind eye to the circled tourists. Commerce welcomed that pastry’s destiny without hesitation or stony silence. As the group pressed forward, a man stumbled against the display rack. It began to tip. A matron hurried over from another counter to steady it.

Still, Felix sought ploy in the facade. Patrons were not given an unenviable choice in price for good, better or best. It was all from that baker or none. All it allowed for the baker was to get ahead and to look after dependents. Baklava was not lifted atop a column; its baker was provided a comfortable floor. Still, Felix could see shady merchants making back alley Baklava. Why if he were that baker, he would marry a daughter of a nut farmer or a beekeeper. Corner the market. He could see that. Felix gasped, “But flavor?” A woman in the travel group edged away from Felix. “Hey Lady, flavor is just a help in getting it down your gullet.” The woman turned and nodded, “Then you would have no taste.” The group moved on. Felix was alone.

His peril on the ladder returned. His house was like a cupboard, a place needing to be stocked. He did not have a year to get things done. The roof was perishing. He needed renters soon. His neighbors kept watch. He felt their anticipation of the home’s unique features waiting to be restored. He felt their passion that it be fixed so all would see wisdom in its preservation. Felix waited for the moment when a neighbor would display ire. He fancied that scorn. It was useful. It steeled him to undertake this task. “What do they know?” he fumed as he climbed up the ladder to his digesting wood. Part way up, he heard a voice. “Hey, stop!” He turned. There was that young woman trying to grab a leash. “Apollo, stop!” She turned to Felix. “Sorry, Apollo got out of the car. I shouted for him.” The woman caught the leash and jerked it. Apollo stopped. “Looks nice,” she said, “Be careful up there.” Felix muttered back, “Why don’t you climb this ladder.” Apollo pulled at the leash, but the woman yanked it and the dog sat. “Felix, it looks nice. I like it the way it is,” she responded. “You certainly are a tenacious sort. Make yourself useful. Step on up here and help,” Felix retorted. The young woman gestured down the street, “Mom and dad did the same thing. They had the same misfortunes as you. What you are doing is not that different than what happened at every house along this block.” The young woman returned to the car and pushed Apollo inside. Felix reached for a trim board, leveled it, and then secured it in place with his nailer. Felix labored on.

Over the years, northern winds blew wintery rain, while southern winds fanned blistering heat. Nature’s ordeal had tested and vanquished this roof. Felix strove on, feeling as if watched by gargoyles. As he worked, he waited for a visit from winged creatures, with scales in their claws, demanding a pound of flesh. And there was good in it, Felix and history and place. He set about this task as a time for chastening, as opportunity to discard flawed architecture, and to rebuild this house to comfort those who would dwell in it.

Delicate tastes

Delicate tastes

Olivia woke to a brisk day. She had time to linger. What mattered was getting to the forest for the bird count. That was at noon. At last year’s count, animal paths led her through underbrush and thickets. She plowed through. Her noisy presence flushed out feathered quarry. That world noticed her. She savored the encounter. Olivia tallied doves, crows, cardinals and starlings. She rewarded them by not charting less common Indiana birds.

Enthused, Olivia met her morning with a liturgy of tasks. She tended to her plants, rooting out a few browned leaves here and there. She decanted water into her kettle and turned on the burner. She ground the coffee beans as the water neared its boil. She counted spoons into the press. She stirred in the water, attached the top and steeped the coffee. After a while she slowly and gently pressed the plunger. She filled a porcelain cup and poured the remaining coffee into a thermos. After a few sips, she reached for her flavor wheel for an apt word of the taste and aroma of the brew which she noted in her journal. She edged over to the computer and gazed on updates and images. She felt connected.

Toward noon, she wandered toward the detached garage behind her shotgun cottage. Olivia fumbled for her keys. She was distracted by a slate grey streak high up over the roof of the garage. She realized it was a falcon momentarily upside down at the top of his arc. A distant memory descended upon her. She grimaced. She realized she would see Brandi tonight. As she drove to the forest, she put herself in Brandi’s place. She saw the route Brandi took.

She had no joy for the count when she arrived at the snowy forest. She slipped away from the group and headed into the forest alone. She moved as quietly as possible. She avoided stepping on icy twigs and moved silently through white mounds covering tall grasses. After a while she doubled back and circled downwind before sitting down to rest. For a quarter hour she leaned her head into her lap, her hands cupping the back of her neck. She went back to the parking lot, backed her car around and returned home.

The Infiniti tunneled past curved mounds of snow as it neared the store. Inside, Erica nestled like a spoon against its heated seat. Off to the side, she saw an array of plows harvesting a parking lot of its winter crop. Erica found a spot near the food coop and sloshed inside. She waved at a clerk who nodded back. She liked that the store sold just a few types of wine and frequently changed selections. Her lips tightened into a wry smile as she placed a bottle in her canvas bag. A moment later her phone vibrated with a text message. At the checkout she sampled a biscuit offered by the clerk, paid and hurried to her car. She read the text from Dan just as another arrived from Sam. She fired off a quick reply to Sam. Back out on the street, the Infiniti kicked a wake of frozen brine onto the sidewalk. A few blocks later she pulled in front of the yoga studio. She arrived just as class was beginning.

Erica inhaled the torrid air. Music whispered in her ear. She lowered her hips and held a long awkward pose. Sunlight wove in through a studio window. It cast a ripple of shadows of her across the maple floor. She released. Calm fell upon her like pillows of snow on a spruce branch. Out of habit, she cusped one arm under the other, and then her legs in the same fashion. As she compressed she realized everyone else in the class had risen into a mountain pose. Erica fought the urge to fall in sequence. She looked straight ahead. She stayed in this moment long enough to sense a root of her discord. She released and felt diminished notes that dominated her life resolve.

The story is told that Brandi hit the post, driving Olivia and Erica into peril. Brandi felt that missed the mark since the wreck just sort of happened. How would she have known that the bollard was planted in the roof of a cistern, or that the nudge would dislodge the stones holding it together, or that the parking lot would collapse, or that their car would plunge - rear bumper first - into rubble? In the aftermath, Brandi thought of it as an adventure, a tale to be told.

That is, until they got together a few weeks later with a group of friends. They failed to hear her out, the story the group was interested in seemed substituted, and it went beyond what she expected. The incident was received as just another false step by Brandi, another example of Brandi that diminished her in the eyes of those she held dearest. Brandi retreated into her own world. Her studies languished. Her smile waned. Eventually her parents transferred her to private school. Tonight, Olivia, Erica and Brandi would meet for the first time in decades, for the second time since their backwards fall.

Brandi welcomed the short walk to the restaurant. It allowed her to collect herself before meeting up with her old friends. Splatters of slush pooled on the street edge of the sidewalk, so she kept near the buildings. She passed several cheerful window displays of pleasantly arranged goods. Brandi grasped the bar of the glass door and noticed her reflection slide away as she pulled. Brandi carefully folded her coat over her arm as the hostess escorted her back toward the low slung couches grouped around a hooded fire pit. “Everybody just got here Brandi,” said Olivia, her legs tumbled across a sofa, “would you like a cosmopolitan?” Brandi adjusted her grey tunic blouse and looked up at her old friends as a tear rolled gently from the corner of her eye. She was happy. “Yes, I would,” she replied.

The earth laughs in flowers.

The earth laughs in flowers.

Milton cupped his cigar as he wafted it under his nose. His field glasses lay on a shelf. From his perch on the Glenn Block watch tower Milton could see bits of ember rising from chimneys across the city. Ascending claps of leather on wood rose from below. A gaunt woman in a cloth coat climbed up to the capsule. “Betty, you’re late,” he stated. “What’s it to you? You were going somewhere?” Betty replied. “Get over here,” he responded. As they embraced, Milton saw flame had replaced ember on a building about a ten blocks distant. Abruptly, he pushed Betty away and grabbed a mallet and rang a cast iron bell four times. A minute later, he rang it another four times.

Off in the direction of the fire, a station house stirred to action. “Just look Betty,” Milton said, “those bucket monkeys at the Marions will not find that fire.” Milton aimed his cigar toward a crate wagon emerging from the station house trundled with hose reels, ladders and leather buckets. As he spoke, a team of horses drew a fire engine out of the station. Milton swung his cigar toward a second station house. “I bet the Invincibles get first water,” He said. Betty’s shoulders sank. “I’m not here for the view or your wager,” she replied. Betty tightened as Milton repeated his shop worn tale, “Betty, the volunteers first to the water cistern take the fire and the prize offered by the insurance men. Either company better hope that fire is near water or it is not going out.” “Milton,” said Betty, “I’m headed out. I need to get back.” Milton was lost in seeing what he had set in motion. He paid no attention to the descending patter of Betty’s boots as she left the watch tower. Milton reached in his pocket for his tin match safe to ignite his cigar.

Alone on the tower, Milton looked across a horizon of pitfalls. The smoke darkened night cast lasting shadows on the street. He strained to hear the cries of alarm and distress of city folk escaping the burning structure. He was too far away. His post kept him safely away from mayhem. That distance left him spotty with the volunteers so he was careful not to brag near them about his role in these rescues. These volunteers risked their lives in perils brought on during ordinary moments of city life. Milton knew a family that lived right there. He did not commiserate with the trouble those folks always got themselves into. It was not that he disliked them or their lot in life. He just lived in a city that seemed to have so many wrongs. Solving one mess seemed to create more. He sure did not like this fate for them.

City hall was just two floors below him in the Glenn Block building. Milton was there when the city fathers celebrated placement of the one hundredth cistern. They received hearty praise for their far sighted planning in storing water for fires at tactical locations. He thought all that back slapping had an odd lack of concern about times effects on brick arches. Wedge-shaped bricks held each other brick firmly in place. Unless the bricks stayed in place, especially the keystone, those cisterns would collapse. Masonry crumbles. He felt the city would be better off using those bricks for buildings instead of letting more wood structures be built. No one would hear him out though.

At the end of his shift, Milton returned home to his wife, Louise. Hsun Tzu was cooking ham and bean soup and cornbread in the hearth. He had migrated here after working on the transcontinental railroad. Louise and Milton provided Hsun Tzu with a room. In return, he cooked, cleaned and laundered. “Louise,” said Milton “the Landers were routed by that fire tonight. They are headed back to Martinsville.” Hsun Tzu was in the room, so Louise kept to her cross stitch sampler. It read: “The earth laughs in flowers. - Ralph Waldo Emerson.” It kept her fury in check. She had heard the four clangs on the bell and had gone to the Glenn Block building. She saw that woman creep away from the watch tower. Met with silence, Milton took up discourse with Hsun Tzu. He began to recount the night hoping it might kindle talk from Louise.

At length, Hsun Tzu broke him off. “No man can bear to see the suffering of others.” Hsun Tzu said, “We have four beginnings. Develop these beginnings or destroy yourself. Give them in the fullest and you will be like fire beginning to burn or a spring beginning to shoot forth. When in full, they protect all people within the four seas. When empty, even your parents are not served.”

Milton was silent. Coals faded in the hearth. Louise stopped working with her hands and lifted her head. “Hsun Tzu,” she said “what are these beginnings?” He replied,”The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of humanity. The feeling of shame is the beginning of righteousness. The feeling of deference is the beginning of propriety. And the feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.”

Milton blankly looked at Hsun Tzu. Louise gently folded up the proportions of her sampler and retired to her bedroom.