new chapter

Posted on January 9, 2026 by labeak52

Jacob Eaton for a time in his senior year held a job at a downtown filling station. The owner, a faithful member of Jacob’s father’s flock, offered the job, seeing Jacob as an able and decent young man and one who was in some need of a little money. Another employee there was Jayce Masters, a second-year student at the junior college five miles upriver from Walhonde. Jayce was a particularly handsome twenty-year-old and, given his past dominance as a high-school basketball and track standout, one who retained considerable influence among his peers and those who came after him.

Even then the move had already started toward self-service at the gas pumps, so there were many hours of leisure within the walls of the little business where the two boys sat, gathering their minimum wage hour by hour and chatting about life in their little town.

“Why don’t you give Linda a call?” Jayce asked Jacob. Linda was the younger sister of Katherine Dubois, Jayce’s girlfriend.

“Just don’t want to.”
“Come on. We could have a great time together. The four of us, you know. It wouldn’t have to be anything serious. Just having fun.”

“You know I don’t want to do that.”

“I know, but I’m trying to convince you. What could be the problem with it? You’re unattached, so is she. It’s no big deal.”
“You’ve been put up to this, I know. You wouldn’t keep doing this on your own.”

“She’s a nice girl. Popular. She really likes you.”

A car rolled onto the lot and over the wire that rang a chime inside the station. Jacob stood and saw that the car stopped at the full-service pump. It was his turn and he went out and put ten gallons of gas into Mr. Morgan’s 1968 Diamond Blue Ford Fairlane sedan and took from him three dollars and fifty cents. When he came back inside, he put the cash into the register drawer and took his same seat near Jayce.

“Katherine has put you up to this, hasn’t she?”

“Well, yeah. She has mentioned it a few times.”
“A few times?” Jacob smiled.

“Well. A lot, lately.”

“I can’t do it. It would be wrong.”

“Why? It’s so simple.”
“No, it’s not. And you know better if you’re honest.”

“I’m not sure I do. Why don’t you explain that to me.”

“When you are with Katherine, do you want to be anywhere else?”

“No. Absolutely not. Easy question.”

“Well, I don’t feel that way about Linda.”

“You don’t have to, bud. It’s just for fun.”

“But that’s the way she feels, isn’t it?”

“It is. Yeah.”

“That’s why Katherine keeps bugging you about it. Right?”
“I guess so. But why don’t you just give it one chance? You may find that you do like her.”

Jacob leaned back in his chair, away from Jayce. He put his hand on his chin, looked at the floor, and exhaled.

“Can we speak in complete confidence now? I don’t want anything to affect our friendship, and I want to explain myself to you honestly so that you’ll understand. But to do that, I have to tell you something that I’ve never told anybody, and right now I don’t want anybody else to know.”

“It’s okay. I’ll keep your secret.”
“I do know that I won’t change the way I feel about her. I know how it’s supposed to feel. I feel about somebody else the same way you feel about Katherine. Have for some time now.”

Jayce paused and looked out through the tall window, as if hoping for another customer to break the flow of conversation. None came. “That’s news,” he said, “I haven’t seen any evidence of that. Who are you talking about?”

“Okay. I’ll tell you because I want to convince you that I’m telling the truth and not just being a hardhead. I like you, Jayce. You know that. And hanging out with you and Katherine – and even Linda – would be great fun. I’d enjoy it, I know I would. But for Linda, it would mean more than that. You know it would. And the day would come – soon enough – where I would have to let her down, stop leading her on, and that would hurt her and make me into a pariah at school. I’ve been down that road before. Not going again.”

“So. Who’s the girl?”

“You cannot tell this to anyone. Least of all her or anyone who would get it to her. I don’t want her to know.”

“Okay, I swear it. But why not?”

“Because we are friends, kind of, and though I want more, I definitely don’t want less. If she knew how I felt, and she didn’t return those feelings, she’d have to throw cold over everything, just for protection. She would. To keep from hurting. And I just don’t want to put that on her.”

“But that’s what you’re doing with Linda, right?”

“Yeah. But that’s my call. And it’s not wrong.”

“Okay, fair enough. Who?”

“Rachel Thompson.”

“Oooh. Can’t say that I blame you.” Jayce tilted his head and wrinkled his brow. “Does she ever date anybody?”
“No. But that’s part of the attraction. I’m just going to keep the way clear for what might or might not develop. I don’t have any desire for anything else.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Poem of The Day, 12-29-2025

Posted on December 29, 2025 by labeak52

.

The spirit wind lives

I hear it when it sings

It hums in morning river fog

And howls in high ravines

.

copyright 2025

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Posted on December 4, 2025 by labeak52

“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him. Do not fret when evil men succeed in their ways, when they bring their wicked schemes to pass.”

We have several seasons or holidays throughout the Christian year. Christmas, we celebrate the birth of the Messiah and Easter His resurrection. It’s easy to understand the emphasis there, the joy and hope and encouragement that are to be found in the events we celebrate then. But in Advent we “celebrate” – can that even be the right word? – at least we “observe” a season of waiting. Why that?

What joy is there in waiting? We think not of happiness or celebration, but of hours sitting in a long line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, desperately hoping for our number to be called, or time spent in anxiety anticipating the return of test results – whether for college admission SAT scores or results from a biopsy.

Why then has the church in its wisdom devoted an entire season to the idea of waiting? What is there to be celebrated about that? What is there to be gained by devoting a month or more to thinking about waiting?

One answer that comes immediately to mind is this: we meditate on the subject of waiting because waiting makes up such a large part of human life. It’s inevitable that we will spend a great deal of the time allotted to us here on earth waiting for something or other and so it makes sense that we should talk and think about it. We should want to do it in the right way. To exercise some discipline in the matter.

But this morning, I want to take the matter a step further and ask this: Why is it that we spend so much time and emotional capital in waiting?

We might jump to the conclusion that we spend so much time waiting because of the scarcity of resources.  Our situation is that we don’t have enough of what we need and so we have to wait. That answer might hold some water in third world economies where the very essentials of life – food, clean water, medicine, shelter – are in short supply. But you and I can’t really put much weight on that answer. We cannot say that most of our waiting has to do with the essentials of physical life. We have food – more that we really need – at our immediate disposal. Our water is clean and we all have roofs over our heads and warm beds to sleep in.

If we say then that much of life – even our privileged lives – is about waiting, then the next question is What are you and I waiting for?

We may say that we are waiting for fulfillment. For the satisfaction of some dream or another. A promotion and raise at work. A new project that will allow us to make fuller use of our talents. For a relationship that will give us some gratification and contentment. A bigger house. A nicer car. Enough money to allow us to retire.

But we may find that, even when those definite hopes and dreams are more or less satisfied, we find that we are still not quite at rest, we are still incomplete, we still long for something. We are still waiting. At least that is what so many great Christian teachers tell us.  Thus, it is CS Lewis who says:

“…we remain conscious of a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy. But is there a reason to suppose that reality offers any satisfaction to it? …A desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.”

“…we want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it. At present we are on the outside of the world…the wrong side of the door

That quote may sound a bit esoteric, coming from and only applicable to an artist, philosopher or poet, and not the sort of thing that is really within the experience of people like you and me and therefore not really instructive, not really worth our time and attention. But what if it isn’t esoteric? What if it isn’t only for the poets and philosophers?  

Ronald Rolheiser, the Catholic theologian, in his book, The Holy Longing, tells us that this desire or longing is in fact inborn in every human soul. It is a part of what makes us human. What distinguishes us from the animals. More than that. He, along with Lewis, tells us that how we handle this desire will determine our destiny – will determine the course of our lives.

Desire makes us act and when we act what we do will either lead to a greater degree of integration or disintegration within our personalities, minds, and bodies – and to the strengthening or deterioration of our relationship to God, and others . . .

If we put any credence in the idea that we are bothered or motivated by desire and that how we handle that desire is determinative of our mental, physical, social and spiritual health; if we admit that we have tastes that impel us to try to fulfill them, then the season of Advent, a sort of celebration of waiting, a sort of study in how to handle desire, is not a secondary thing, relatively unimportant, it may be the most neglected and important

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Looking Through The Woods on a Grey Morning

Posted on November 25, 2025 by labeak52

There is no brilliance on this damp and soundless morning. The sky is a blanket, not a distant, bright dome. There is no glare, no cause for squinting, and the newly barren branches, though muted grey, are vivid in their lines, their definition. It is as if sight is somehow easier in this passing hour, a greater power than before, taking in the reality of substantive things and not merely the effects of light. Is memory in this moment likewise freed from friction? As we gaze uninhibited into the maze of trunks and branches and see the last of the dying leaves still clinging here and there, quivering in the cold breeze, are we reminded of – no, can we actually see – time passing, slipping silently along?

And if that, may we also see through time and to the red roofs of the old houses that once stood on the other side of these woods and imagine the people there, just as they once were, and remember them not as we always remember them, but in ways that surprise us and have the feel and taste of the early days themselves?

Can we hear the vanished voices and imagine the dreams that we knew nothing of in that day.

Posted in blogging, books, fiction, photography, poerty | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Brian Wilson: Please Let Me Wonder

Posted on June 14, 2025 by labeak52

Posted on November 8, 2021 by labeak52

“And now here we are together…”

Posted on August 25, 2016 by labeak52

The whole trip had been my idea, but it hadn’t been hard to sell. We drove 200 miles from Charleston, West Virginia to Roanoke, Virginia last weekend to see Brian Wilson in concert. We were lucky to have all our schedules open for the date, but it happened and so my wife, my two adult sons and I jumped into one car on Saturday morning and by mid-afternoon we were standing in line outside the Elmwood Park Amphitheater in downtown Roanoke in the August heat waiting for them to open the gates.

Wilson belongs to my generation, but my wife, whose tastes were formed in the eighties, has learned to love his music and our two boys, both millennials, have, in their separate ways, developed a real appreciation for him. We’ve watched Love and Mercy, passed around copies of Pet Sounds and discussed the life and music of Brian Wilson hours on end.

Our older son is a drummer with experience in several garage/frat-party bands. He has learned something about the history of rock and roll and through his own reading and listening to my stories has come to appreciate the truth that the real explosions in rock music occurred in the sixties and that pretty much everything that has happened after that has been echoes of that first thunder. He’s an unabashed twelve-bar- blues-progression guy and he locks on to the big Beach Boys hits – Barbara Ann, Help Me Rhonda. Our younger son is a guitarist who has played some electric in college campus bands, but is essentially bent toward more pensive stuff. He knows Pet Sounds inside and out by now.   My wife loves it all, but, bless her beautiful heart, she gets something extra just from seeing me as happy as that music makes me.

And it does make me happy. I was fourteen when Brian Wilson was twenty-four and right at the peak of his powers. I lived in Houston, Texas for the 1966-67 school year and the Beach Boys were everywhere then. Like everyone else in those days, I would wait by the radio until the DJ played the Beach Boys and then I would turn it up. At night I listened to In My Room while I was in my room, doing my dreaming and my scheming and lying awake to pray. And did I mention that down there in Texas there was this girl. I loved the colorful clothes she’d wear and, oh, yeah, the way the sunlight played upon her hair.

I stayed loyal to the Beach Boys even when I was in college and it was uncool to like that kids’ stuff. My friends looked for the unusual and esoteric in the record stores and I was still cranking Don’t Worry Baby. Living in landlocked West Virginia, I nonetheless bought a surfboard and found ways to get down to the Carolina beaches every summer. They thought I was crazy. What I learned then was that I just wasn’t made for those times.

On the way down to Roanoke we talked a little bit about why Wilson had undertaken such a monster tour. He’s seventy-four years old, for crying out loud, not in great health, either, and this juggernaut consists of 73 dates in places as far away as Norway and Iceland. I think we all came to agree that he doesn’t need the money.

There could be many reasons. Maybe he’s more than a little steamed at cousin Mike Love for cutting him back out of the Beach Boys, Inc. that Love now owns controlling interest in. Maybe he wants to show Mike that he can still do it – still withstand the rigors of the road and still draw crowds. Maybe he wants to prove that whether Mike Love will admit it or not everyone else realizes that Brian Wilson was and is the Beach Boys. Subtract any one of the other founders and not much would change. Subtract Brian Wilson and you would have had four or five teenaged Californians who, if they had a band at all, would never have made their way into anything grander than local high-school dances.

The Elmwood Amphitheater in Roanoke is a pretty comfy place. The terraces going up the hillside are lush grass and the seating is generous and uncramped. We arrived early and staked out seats directly in front and only a few rows back from the stage.

I had seen the Beach Boys once or twice in my younger, concert-going days, but I had never seen Brian Wilson. He didn’t tour with them back then. I knew that when I saw him I would nonetheless feel some recognition, all of it emotionally based. I knew that when I saw him, I would feel like I knew him. But that’s not what happened. At least that’s not all that happened. When Brian Wilson lumbered onto the stage and sat down at his piano, he looked into the crowd. Into the crowd in front of him and a few rows back. He looked at me. And the feeling I got was not so much that I knew him, but that he knew me. Why not? He has written my life.

And I knew then why he took on this tour. It was to see me and people like me who have lived on his music but who he missed the first time around. This was one last gift. This one was for me.

During the encore, a generous helping of powerfully-and-faithfully-rendered Beach Boys’ up-tempo hits, I stopped my own singing and dancing and took a look around at the crowd.  All inhibitions were gone and the air was incandescent and filled with joy.  Most were dancing, but a few stood simply entranced, smiling and nodding.  Yes, this is it, they may have thought.  This is exactly it.

What is it?  What are these songs that light us up like nothing else can do?  I’ve heard them described several ways – as anthems, even as hymns.  But the better analogy is this:  the songs of Brian Wilson are the Psalms of young Americans, reminding us, on the one hand, that our struggles are real and shared and, on the other, promising us surpassing happiness in some place without dissonance or grief where all the kids surf and dance, drive hot rods, get the girl, make the varsity, and stay true to their school.

The songs of Brian Wilson gave us solace and our first hope of glory.  What would our generation have been without them?

God only knows.

copyright 2016

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Brian Wilson: Love and Mercy

Posted on June 14, 2025 by labeak52

Caroline Yes

Posted on August 3, 2015 by labeak52

Have you seen the official trailer for Love and Mercy? The one that starts with a shot of Brian Wilson’s shoes on the floor of the showroom of the Cadillac dealership? It’s a fantastic, two-minute piece of work; almost seamlessly pairing dramatic shots from the film with unforgettable hooks from the Beach Boys biggest hits. The first bit of sound you hear in this trailer is the first word of the song “Good Vibrations.” What is that word?

Ahh.

In moments a spark passes between the disheveled Wilson (John Cusack) and the bushy, bushy blonde saleswoman and Wilson’s doctor intervenes and asks the pretty girl if she knows who the man she’s been talking to is.  “This is Brian Wilson,” Dr. Landy announces.   “Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.” The salesgirl’s response is, again, one word.

Ahh.

That is first-rate movie production. That is great storytelling.

But did you also see Brian and Melinda on The View when they appeared this past spring to promote the movie? Whoopi Goldberg had a real grasp of what a giant she was dealing with in Brian Wilson and showed some sincere personal appreciation for his music. About halfway through the interview, she mentions the song “Sloop John B.” At that cue the song starts playing in the studio where they are sitting. Just as those first few unmistakable flute notes sound, someone on the stage utters a single word.

Ahh.

I don’t know if it was Brian or Melinda or Whoopi or the other hostess there on the stage. It doesn’t really matter. The reaction was obviously spontaneous and genuine. It’s the same reaction that almost everyone has had when one of those three-minute sonic masterpieces of his comes on the radio. Maybe you’ve been driving for miles, listening to ho-hum pop oldies for an hour or two and then you hear the unforgettable harp swirls – the first notes of “In My Room.” Your reaction? Same as everybody else’s.

Ahh.

What does that little word mean? Well, a lot. It means recognition. It means agreement. It means pleasure. It signals that the speaker is vibrating to the tune of what they are hearing or seeing; saying to him or herself: “This is the real thing; this hits the target.”

It must have been what Brian Wilson said, at least to himself, when he first met Melinda Ledbetter at the Cadillac dealership. Ahh. This is it. This is the girl I’ve been dreaming and writing about for twenty years.  It was what I said to myself when I watched Elizabeth Banks play her role in Love and Mercy. Not that she was the girl I’d been dreaming and writing about (I’ve already found her) but that this girl is the girl that Brian has been dreaming and writing about. I just knew that he would love the colorful clothes she wears and the way the sunlight played upon her hair. Whoever it was that did the casting for this movie must have seen it that way, too.

There has been plenty already written about this wonderful movie. Lots of sincere and deserved praise for how faithfully and affectionately the film treats Brian and his magic music. One reason to go and see the film while it’s still in the theaters is the quality of the sound. The music lifts you out of your seat. I suspect that Beach Boys records are selling very well in the wake of this movie.

But maybe not enough has been said about this: the real hero (heroine) of the Brian Wilson story is Melinda Ledbetter. If not for her, we would very likely have had a very different ending to the story.  How familiar we pop music fans are with that other ending.

In Christianity Today, one reviewer wrote that the movie had a little too much “love conquers all in it.” Well, can the screenwriters be forgiven for such goody-goody sentimentality when, after all, they are dealing with a true story and that is what actually happened? And don’t give me any business about there being “ragged edges” to this story that the movie doesn’t include. There are always ragged edges to any story, this side of Jordan. What happened in the movie – and in Brian Wilson’s life – is that love conquered.  All of the things that the beauty Wilson wrote about and that Melinda possessed and that Elizabeth Banks so convincingly portrayed – all of the things that beauty promises and points to: sensitivity, trustworthiness, purity of heart – everything that beauty promises, Melinda Ledbetter delivered.

Brian Wilson knew about disappointment:

Where did your long hair go

Where is the girl I used to know

How could you lose that happy glow

Oh, Caroline no.

Who took that look away

I remember how you used to say

You’d never change

But that’s not true

Oh, Caroline you

Break my heart

That was Brian Wilson’s song. But thanks to Melinda, it was not his destiny.

And thanks to Elizabeth Banks, I now know the story. Thanks to her subtle, nuanced and convincing portrayal,

Ahh!

I totally get it. I see what happened. What a wonderful, happy story.

Brian Wilson deserves all of the accolades now coming to him. He has my thanks for stirring my heart and imagination throughout my life. Hats off to brother Bri.

But Melinda Ledbetter deserves a crown.

And Elizabeth Banks deserves an Oscar.

Copyright 2015

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

March 28, 2025, Appalachian Spring

Posted on March 28, 2025 by labeak52

These days in early spring bring contrast.  Those first sunny days where you step through the door without a coat or jacket, without having to brace against the cold. They are invigorating, even for the very old. We then remember how the sap rose in us when the mornings were again golden and when light lingered long into the evenings. We were on the go then, stretching like new vines toward the sun.

Then, always, come the grey days. The cold returns and it all seems like a broken promise. We see the dark branches, still bare, moving in the wind against a dull sky. But we wait. We have learned to wait.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

May 30, 1970

Posted on March 12, 2025 by labeak52

We had finally gotten away

This time to a place we wanted to go

All of us were there

And the river was at last flowing blue

,

That cool water

And a fire on the little beach

And our music in the faint breeze

,

School had ended

We ended it a day early. Ha!

What could they do to us now?

,

We swung high on the trapeze hanging from the leaning sycamore

And at the peak let the bar and everything else go

In that sunny sky we could not see the stars

But we knew they had aligned for us

And we dove into the cool blue dream to make it real

,

We laughed and said that from now on it will always be this way for us

But we knew in our hearts that it would never be this way again

.

copyright 2025

Posted in beauty, poetry, post modern poetry, spring, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“A Complete Unknown” Movie Review

Posted on February 1, 2025 by labeak52

Are you gonna go see that Dylan movie?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve heard mixed reviews.”

“Me, too. But you know, the other music biopics have been good. Buddy Holly.  Johnny Cash.”

“Yes, they were.  I liked them both.”

“And this movie is really sort of required reading for you and me. Our generation. Wouldn’t you say? We really kind of have to go.”

And so I did.

My friend was right in saying that I am one of those people the movie was made for.  I am the intended market.  I’m eleven years younger than Dylan, so just the right age to have been tuned in when his records were hitting the airways. I did not start with Dylan directly. My first appreciation of his work was unconscious. I loved the Byrd’s version of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” but I didn’t know or care who wrote it. I was too young to ask such questions. I just knew what I liked.

But, my appreciation grew. I think the first Dylan album I bought was “Blood on The Tracks,” which anyone will tell you is a pretty good place to start. Being a believer myself, I enthusiastically bought all three albums from the “gospel period,” and I still think those are very good records. I’ve been to two of his million live shows and found them underwhelming. Have no intention of ever going to another one.  Read his autobiographical Chronicles, and read and reviewed Scott Marshall’s excellent book, Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life.

I think all of that puts me in the category of a fan, but not a fanatic.

But I went to the movie, and here is what I saw.

Someone has said that good casting is the key to the life or death of a movie.  I think the casting in “A Complete Unknown” missed the mark. I know that there is a lot of breathless praise for this Timothee Chalamet guy – the voice, the looks. But it did not work for me.  I was totally on board with Gary Busey as Buddy Holly, and Joaquin Phoenix was a convincing Johnny Cash, but I did not see Dylan in Chalamet.  I’ll admit that, given Dylan’s enigmatic character, Chalamet had a more difficult job. But it is only sad when someone is aiming at being enigmatic and that is what I saw in this movie. So many of his lines were mumbled or muttered and lost on me. Makes me wonder if Dylan himself was not so much enigmatic as he was determined to appear enigmatic.

Likewise for Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez.  Barbaro is pretty and has a nice voice, but Baez was angelic. This would have been a hard mark to hit, but it was missed here.

For a story to involve the audience, the writer or actor must normally foster some sympathy for the main character. I didn’t get that here. Maybe it is because Dylan, viewed as a person and not as a songwriter, is not a very sympathetic guy. If the movie portrays his relationships with women anywhere near accurately, he certainly is not. He is impulsive, selfish, superficial, and inconsiderate at every turn. Seemingly lacking much in the way of self-awareness.  “Why do these women not like me? Why do they want to get away?”

The movie comes close to making you sympathetic to the women in his life, but it is hard to shake the notion that they, as portrayed, at least, are so stupid they deserve what they get.

In fact, as the movie tells it, these same egoistic characteristics seem to mark every sphere of Dylan’s life. He doesn’t care about those people who have nurtured his career and made him famous.  Pete Seeger comes across as a sincere, sensitive and well-meaning man. Dylan abuses him. He doesn’t care about his adoring fans. They are holding him back from something or another. Self-actualization?

All these people buying records and paying for tickets are somehow the bad guys, holding Bob back.  Poor Bobby! He’ll just rub their noses in it. Yeah.  Show them what a bunch of phonies they are. After all, he just couldn’t have chosen any forum other than a folk festival to break out the Stratocaster, now, could he?

The only characters in the movie who are perfectly cast are Pete Seeger, played by Edward Norton, and, particularly, Albert Grossman. Dan Fogler is convincing in that role.

The story attempted in “A Complete Unknown” is a very small part of the Dylan bio, but even at that, the movie attempts too much. Relationships are portrayed but are underdeveloped.  Surfaces are only skimmed.  There is little in the way of interesting, profound, or clever dialogue. Here is the movie’s defining moment of the relationship between Dylan and Baez. After a night of lovemaking:

Baez:            So, what is this?

Dylan:          (pauses) I don’t know.

But what is undeniable and perhaps even worth the price of the ticket is the showcasing of the songs.  The songs themselves, as they appear in the movie, are so strong, so vibrant, so still alive that they make everything else, the clunkiness of the production, the unseemliness of Dylan’s life, pale by comparison. Imagine seeing a movie about the life of Michelangelo and then standing in the presence of his great works, the David, for example, or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The movie may have been pretty good. Even very good. And the life story might be interesting. But they are nothing compared to the sublimity of his works.

The point of it all then, we must say, is the genius, for it is nothing less than that, of these masterpieces that are the touchstones, the very soundtrack of our lives. When he sings “The Times They Are A’Changin’” and the crowd rises as one man I get it. My spine still tingles.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Posted on November 23, 2024 by labeak52

Chapter 30

Posted on November 22, 2024 by labeak52

The cataloging of the contents of the trunk was complete.  The group from the law firm were still making phone calls and searching the web in hopes of finding some authentication.  But at dinner the night before, Rachel had struck up a conversation with one of the paralegals who had been charmed by the house as it was now in its renewed state.  This woman was more than willing to accompany Rachel in search of what she might find to wear when she received Jacob in the house the next evening.  They drove to Charleston and to a store where she had never been before and they shopped in a way she had never shopped before, ignoring the price tags on every garment they inspected.

When they returned to the house, bags in hand, they were surprised to see a van in the driveway and workmen maneuvering a baby-grand piano, now legless and turned up on its side, through the front door.

“Jacob had this delivered,” said the chief of the security crew.  “He said that you could send it back if you want.  He knows that you don’t play but he said that he didn’t think the house would be complete without it.”

At three o’clock Rachel sat in the room at the top of the turret.  All was quiet in the house now.  The security team had the perimeter controlled and were relaxed at their stations.  The folks from Jacob’s law firm were still at their laptops but now focused on other matters of business. There was no noise from hammer or saw and, at long last, no feeling of anxiety in her heart.  It had happened.  The dare was met.  There would be a great house here again, and the influence of it was yet to be seen.  It would certainly be greater than she had ever imagined it.  And all that was left to her now, in this moment at least, was to wait. She had been waiting for a long time as the house progressed and as the obstacles manifested themselves and as they had been addressed.  But this afternoon, here in this silent little room, was a different kind of waiting.  To wait quietly and without interruption or worry for Jacob to come. She thought again of their time together in the early days and she remembered scenes that had stayed with her all the years between, and she allowed herself to ponder them in a way she would not have before and in that reverie she remembered other scenes – scenes that she had long forgotten, and she remembered the words of their conversations that seemed so spontaneous and matter-of-fact at the time they were spoken but that now seemed prophetic, imbued, even heavy, with meaning that neither of them could have imagined at the time.  And she felt then the only true and final satisfaction that any woman or man can ever know: that there was more to her story. That the course she had determined and on which she had wagered her fate led further than she had even dreamed. Not only more than she deserved, that would satisfy her risk and venture, but a surprise of even more than she dreamed.  

She and Jacob had been young then and too lighthearted to consider the possibility of destiny, to take seriously any idea that they were caught up in some other plan, something bigger than them both, something that they might only accede to or ignore and that they might begin to see the faint outlines of as they followed that light.  But she saw it now. 

Maybe he had always known. But there was no denying it now.

The late-winter sunlight poured through the narrow windows and made long, golden streaks across the polished maple floor. She stood and walked to the window and looked out at the meager and slow-moving traffic of the little town.  All the people going places.  But now she was in her own place, the place where she belonged.

The sound she heard was faint at first and she thought it must have come from outside, but she could not identify it, could not imagine such a sound, such an even and pure tone, coming from nature or any of the commerce that surrounded the house.  Then it came again, a high, pure resonance.  Then again.

She opened the door of the little room and now the sound was clearer, and she recognized it from her days at college when she worked one semester as a desk clerk in the school’s conservatory.  This was the tone of a tuning fork, struck humming and then amplified as it was stood and held against the soundboard of the piano.  Then answered by the corresponding note from the piano keyboard.  Down the stairs the instrument – her piano – was being tuned.  She stood there, hypnotized, till the tuner had finished his task and then, as a reward to himself, rolled and wove the newly perfected notes and chords until they flowed into a melody.  What was it?  She knew it.  It was one of those songs from the records her parents had played during their bridge parties when she was just a child.  She had listened to it, time and again as she laid in her little bed at the end of the hall. She knew she knew it but could not remember its name. She tried without success to think of the lyrics as he continued until this phrase, like the touch of a magician’s wand, lifted the veil from an indelible memory:

The melody
Haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you
When our love was new

copyright 2024

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment