The Year After

First few chapters

                                                 


The Year After





Chapter 1:  No Turning Back          





I wake up in the middle of the night from another nightmare.  My right arm stretches out to the empty left side of the bed where Lyle used to lay.  I stubbornly succumb to the realization that, as always, it wasn’t a dream.  In the twilight darkness, through the haze of half-sleep, I hear the clicking of the dog’s claws on the wood floors – heart-of-pine wood floors that set the tone for this rustic farm house which is exactly what Lyle and I were looking for.  The dogs used to sleep in the bed with me, but my tossing and turning in the night gets on their nerves, so now they prefer to sleep in the den.  It’s pitch black in the room with only the red numbers of the alarm clock glaring at me, telling me it’s 3:00 am.  It’s always 3:00 am.  Whether it’s a function of coincidence or predetermination really doesn’t matter.  The point is the consistency, and I’m sure there is a reason for it, if I only let myself remember.  I’m still shaking and for a moment, discombobulated, wondering where I am. 


My yellow lab Noel, who although is 5 years old and still looks like a puppy, jumps up on the bed to lick my face.  She’s the worried one – sensitive to any sign of emotional distress.  These last couple of months have been hard on her.  Phineas, my other dog¬¬ – my first dog¸ a majestic black Sheppard mix - looks concerned as if to say, “Why don’t you rest?  It’s the middle of the night.  We’re not supposed to leave yet.”  I pet him and tell him, “I know,” and explain – as if trying to convince myself - that it makes sense to leave.


         In a situation like this, the only thing I know to do is to get in the car and drive.  With some luck I could make it far enough to cross over into a completely different world with nothing from the past to haunt me.  I decide that tossing around in this lonely bed trying to fall  back to sleep is, once again, pointless, so there is nothing left to do but to get up.  My bags and the dog’s food are already packed.  I throw on a well-worn pair of sweats, something that would be comfortable for the drive ahead.           


I walk down the narrow hall- past the two sepia tone pictures hung side by side in perfect alignment.  Together they form an arrangement signifying the theme of hands.  There are no faces in the pictures – it’s as if the hands are floating in space, not connected to anyone.  As I briefly glance at the pictures on my way down the hall, the ghostly image of the hands brings to mind another crazy, but familiar idea - that maybe Lyle never really existed and that all the goodness, all the joy, all the love we shared, was always simply the product of my fertile imagination.  The picture on the left is of Lyle’s hands zipping up my wedding dress, showing only my back and his two hands at the zipper.  The one on the right is a close-up of Lyle’s right hand holding the watch I had given him with a glimpse of my index finger touching his.  My mind, like this hallway, is haunted with ghosts. 


The eager patting of paws and panting snaps me back to the moment, and the dogs follow me from the hall to the kitchen with curiosity painted all over their faces.  “Will we eat now?” I imagine Noel asking and Phineas answering, “Who knows? Nothing is routine these days.”  I open the door and stare into the mostly-barren pantry to grab something to eat for the trip.  If Lyle were here, he’d need M&M’s – nothing else would do, no matter how much I complained about him needing to eat healthier.  Oh the irony, that here I am, with nothing else to take with me except candy. I can still see the look he would have had on his face.


I will need something to keep me awake on this vacation from reality, so I grab my CD player and adapter.  My car doesn’t have a CD player.  I considered such things to be an unnecessary indulgence and ended up with a car stripped down to the bare bones- function over flash.  For a moment I contemplate taking Lyle’s unfinished book along for the trip, a documentary he was working on about an extraordinary dog who seemed to possess mystical powers called The Good Sheppard.  But I’ve read it a hundred times and could recite it by memory.  And, after all, it is partly the ghost of Lyle that has driven me to set out on this temporary escape.  I make one more trip through my mental checklist of travel details, then tell the dogs, “Ok guys, let’s get outta here,” and like a flash we step out into the black night. 


         Outside it’s silent.  Dead.  The world is sleeping.  There’s barely even a star in the sky.  But usually the stars are brilliant out here.  I’m out in the middle of nowhere Louisiana.  The location of our home was born out of a promise to Phineas that he’d have land some day.  These two acres, his to roam and chase and lord over, were the first of many promises I intended to keep.  I peer into the darkness, searching for any sign of life in the surrounding homes.  Most of the houses are owned by either retired individuals or young families who wanted a little distance from other people.  These are definitely not the kind of people who’d be up in the middle of the night,  like their disparate New Orleans counterparts. 


Phineas and Noel meander in the dark, sniffing the ground looking for the right place to do their business, leaving me alone standing on the wrap-around porch under the front porch light.  I look out into the vast empty space which immediately becomes the backdrop for another vision – this one of Lyle spinning me around – as he had when we moved to our first apartment in Virginia, and then when we moved to Atlanta – to celebrate our arrival at each place for a new chapter of our lives together.  He was supposed to do that here, in this home that we intended on settling in, till our old age.  As he had said several times, “I’m tired of us having to move around like we’re gypsies.”  But, there wasn’t going to be any spinning this time, and there won’t be any new chapters.  I put the dogs in the car - turn the lights on bright for better visibility - and leave them that way until I reach the interstate where it’s just me, the truckers, and the other lonely souls trying to get somewhere, anywhere but here.


The intolerable loneliness! I am, once again, captured by this desolate, depressing stretch of road with only my thoughts to keep me company - down that road that defies natural law.  There is no real end or beginning.  This road, and each trip I have made on it, is a time machine.  My mind drifts far back into the distant past, thoughts racing at 100 miles an hour.  I put the car on cruise control because I don’t want my foot to keeping pace with my thoughts.  One memory mutates into the next until I pause for a moment on the beginning of this train of thought and recall the first time I was every alone on the road.


It was back in ’93, almost 10 years ago and I was leaving college in mid-semester to come home to Virginia – to come home him.  It wasn’t my choice to go to a religious school out west in the first place, and my mother and I fought furiously over the issue.  There was no point in arguing with her.  I never won.  I recall my father dutifully consoling me, saying, “I know you don’t want to go, but it will be good for you to get away.  Your mother made the mistake of not getting away from her family.  It’s best for you to go away as far as possible. “For him, avoidance and distance would solve almost any issue.  I gave it a go, because there really wasn’t any other choice.  I always felt that I was a misfit; too nerdy to socialize and engage in small talk with the girls, and too independent and driven to fit the image of what the boys considered to be the “marrying kind” of woman.  I wondered if I’d always feel misplaced, as if I were the star of my own puppet show, with some malevolent unseen hand pulling the strings.  I ended up leaving that college before finishing my second year, but I had good reason. I was coming home to see Lyle and there was “no turning back.” 


That was the trip that put me behind the wheel of my ’92 Honda civic, which was my first new car.  On that trek across most of the country, I carried only myself, a loaf of bread, and a single suitcase through the biggest snow storm the east had seen in years.  The blizzard of ’93 they called it.  The weather forecast called for snow, but like all snow alerts in the east, I took it with a grain of salt.  And besides, thoughts of Lyle attenuated any fear of loneliness on the road, and I couldn’t wait another day to see him.


My thoughts drift back to our unpremeditated meeting the summer after my first year of college.  I had to come home to make some money to put myself through school and to have enough left over to live on – an additional expectation from my family which came as no surprise to me by then.  Lyle and I met at our summer job, working at an amusement park.  I worked as a cashier foreman, which was somewhat comical because I couldn’t keep the balance sheets straight to save my life.  Math was never my strong suit.  I left a mess for Lyle to clean up that seemed comparable to the Bear Stearns scandal, and I apologized profusely.  That struck a chord with Lyle – “a helpless innocence,” he said.    We hit if off immediately, and then there was “no turning back.” 


Our courtship started off with teasing one another relentlessly through notes we exchanged back and forth.  It became a contest to see who’d write the wittiness note, and I loved the anticipation of getting his next reply.  But if push came to shove and a winner had to be declared it would have been Lyle.  Our first “date” happened as a result of his prowess in reeling me in on a bet, which I lost, possibly on purpose. I can’t even remember the bet now,  but the payoff was being a slave to him for a day.  With an impish grin, he told me, “Now my slave extraordinaire, in order to pay off this dept you are required to make me dinner and take my dirty clothes to the laundry mat.  Then he smiled and said, “I think I’m letting you off pretty easy.” 


Just outside the steamed-up glass of the laundry place in the strip mall on the corner, filled with whirling machines making dirty things clean and new, we sat outside at a small table on the sidewalk and played checkers.  We made effortless small talk – something rare for me – which was the first of many signs that Lyle was different.  The hours passed quickly as we stared into the rows of laundry baptisms, waiting for our lot to be saved.  It’s odd how something so seemingly insignificant can gain such significance.  All depends on who you are with I suppose.  Funny thing is, I mustered up the courage to drive past that laundry mat a month ago.  Wouldn’t you know it, there was still a checker set on the table outside, and it looks as new as the stacks of freshly folded linens being carried out to the cars.


  I made him dinner at his apartment in Ashland, not far from where our first apartment would be.  He shared the place with Arial, his best friend’s girlfriend, and her cat he nicknamed “Diablo”.  Arial was a Spanish teacher and had named the cat “Hablo” because he meowed constantly.  However, Lyle told me, “I call him Diablo because he’s evil.  Don’t misunderstand me, I love animals, but this one is evil.  Just watch how crazy he is when I let him out.”  Lyle crept toward Arial’s bedroom door, slowly opened it about halfway, then deliberately started to move away towards his room.  I fixed my gaze on the open door, and after only a momentary delay, this feral white blur, with teeth and claws and hair going in every which direction, looking like it had just been electrocuted, came racing out through the air, screeching and wailing like a banshee.  Diablo sprang skyward, claws flying, and grabbed onto Lyle’s back.  Lyle started screaming and flailing around until he shook the cat loose and then quickly sat on the bed.  Without taking his eyes off the cat he said, “Now watch.” 


It was like a scene out of “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” was unfolding before my eyes.  Lyle sat still, his hands resting nervously on his legs as he looked deep into the Diablo’s eyes.  Diablo crouched low, shifted his weight on hind legs a couple of times, and peered directly back at him.  It’s as if they had practiced this choreography hundreds of times.  Who would be the first to flinch?  Before I had time to answer myself, Diablo leaped into the air one final time lunging towards him.  Lyle opened his knees slightly and then forced them shut just as Diablo’s head reached in between them.  The cat frantically moved its limbs around as it hung suspended in mid air with its head trapped between Lyle’s legs.  Then Lyle calmly said, “Now, once he knows he’s beaten and settles down a bit, he’ll leave me alone long enough to get him back into his room.  If I leave him out and he regains his strength, he’ll do it all again.”  I was stunned.  I have to admit, I’ve never seen anything like it.  It was definitely a devil of a cat. 


When Diablo finally conceded the fight, Lyle got up, grabbed him by the scruff, and took him back to Arial’s room, shutting the door securely.  While he was busy caging the devil, I noticed two bookcases lining the walls of his room.  They were filled with real books – real literature.  Unlike most everything else in the entire apartment, these books were precious.  He had created his own world by surrounding himself with this impressive mini library.  These were not like the Reader’s Digest and book club editions we had around when I was growing up.  I immediately started scanning the titles one by one, eager to go through them all.  Lyle walked back in from the adjoining room and noticed my interest in his collection.  “So, who’s your favorite writer?” he asked.


“Oh, that’s easy Dostoevsky.”  As I search the bottom shelf I cannot help but smile.  “This is my favorite book right here, Crime and Punishment.  Have you read it?”  I bend over to pick it up and thumb through the pages.


“Of course.  I’ve read hundreds of books, and all of these on the shelves at least twice.  I’d like to have a whole library someday, but at least this is a start.  Dostoevsky, huh?  I didn’t picture you as that type of girl.  Isn’t he a little dark and pessimistic about the human condition for a dreamer like you?” 


“I suppose I can see where you are coming from.  But, I think of him more as introspective.  He has an impressive conscientiousness about him and a way he brings forth a deeper meaning in things.  I think most people don’t take the time to appreciate that quality.”


“Hmmm.  Pretty insightful Sarah.”


“Well, I’m just trying to impress you.”  I say with a childish giggle as I duck my head into my shoulder as if to hide for a moment.  “And what about you?  Who’s your favorite writer?”


Lyle responds with excitement, “Well, I’m a hippie, or at least that’s what dad calls me.  It’s Kerouac’s “On the Road”.  Best novel ever written.  Have you read it?“


I paused sheepishly and shook my head back and forth.  “I’ve never heard of it.”


He told me, “I’ll buy you a copy.”  Then he paused and caught my eye as I looked away from my book, and said, “But the real interesting thing is that Kerouac was heavily influenced by Dostoevsky.”  I’ll never forget his smile at that moment.  It was a warm and genuine smile that went straight to my soul and there was “no turning back.”  The next week, he bought the book for me – it was the first gift he ever gave me.  I still love to pick it up and hold it, just to hold a little piece of him.


The entire summer seemed to be a crazy whirlwind of flirtations, movies, concerts, and candle-light dinners in the park – all to end when school resumed in late August.  He laid on the bed, propped up on one elbow, and watched me sleep the night before my flight back to Utah, never wanting to close his eyes for a moment. He always said I looked so peaceful when I was sleeping, as if I didn’t have a care in the world. “I want to memorize your face,” he lamented. “I want to carry it in my heart. “ 


Tears filled his eyes as he helped me load my bags in the cab bound for the airport.  In a letter he later wrote me he said, “Driving away that day we said goodbye was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”  He proposed the following February.


I wipe a tear from my eye.  Is it the memories I keep replaying in my mind or the strain from the lights of the cars passing by?  I change the CD – something a little more upbeat should do – and grab another candy.  I’m almost to the Alabama border and am glad to be through Mississippi and beyond the towns of desolate poverty.  In just a few hours I’ll be in the big city of Atlanta – with the skyline lit up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and people are happy with no thought of some small town in Mississippi.


But now that I think about it, I’m not even sure why I am even going to Atlanta.  It’s not my home anymore.  I don’t have any connections there except for a couple of girls I met just before the end…well, the end of life as I knew it anyway.  It’s as if my they link me to the surreal present, and without it, I’d float away.  All I know is that I had to drive somewhere.  I’ll end up staying with Patricia.  She’s expecting me and has been planning a good time out together.  I’ll be the designated driver, DD they call me, because I’m the one who doesn’t drink.  Maybe at least something from that religious school stuck with me, for a few years anyway, but it doesn’t last.  We’ll hook up with Audrey, a mutual friend, and she and I will dance our woes away while Patricia finds a young cowboy to go to bed with.  Hopefully this time it will not be in the bed of his pick-up truck parked in the lot of his apartment complex, where he’ll leave her when he’s done with her.  All of which led to her calling me to come pick her up and she couldn’t even tell where she was in the not so small city of Atlanta! 


My mind is exhausted from the endless parade of images and I don’t know what is real anymore. Without even realizing it I arrive at  I-285, the Atlanta beltway, and it’s only 9am.  “Wow, I made good time honey.  We’ve made it home.”  I reach over to touch Lyle’s knee in the passenger seat.  The glare of headlights bothered his eyes, so I often did most of the driving.  But as I stretch my arm across the car the way I’ve done a thousand times, all I feel is Noel, sleeping soundly in the seat where Lyle should be.  I glance behind me to see Phineas sprawled out in the back seat.  Now I know what is real.


This latest crash of reality might have been enough to send me over the edge, down into a dark depression.  But not yet.  Doing so would admit defeat, and I’ve already worked so hard to pull together the scraps of what was left from before.  No, it will take more than this joggle to weaken me.  I take a deep breath to purge myself from the distressing rumination and allow the excitement of the familiarity of what used to be our home envelope me.  There’s almost nothing as strong as the feeling of coming home after a long struggle on a lonely road.  And it’s all so etched in my mind – the interstate signs reinforcing that I am home, the towering skyline dotted with landmarks I know by heart, the morning sun dancing off the river. I can’t help myself.  It feels like home.  Like nothing ever changed… nothing ever happened.  Everything is as it once was – like the saved lot at the laundry mat. 


I take the exit for I75 North, which was the very same exit I’d take to go to our first apartment.  I ask Phineas “Do you remember your first home ol’ boy?” as we pass by.  He opens his eyes –those eyes still filled with the deep concern they had when I first began this feigned attempt to escape the past.  Somehow he knew that we’d end up here, like it’s already written into the chronicle of my life, and all that remains is for me to make it real.  I mindlessly follow the exit ramp, straight to my personal paradise,  Sope Creek, which was the State Park that Lyle and I found a month after we got Phineas.  It’s the dogs’ adopted back yard, and I promised them that anytime we came back to Atlanta I’d bring them there for a little time out in the woods.  Like I said, I keep my promises to them.


My body is weak from exhaustion, but as I turn down the familiar winding road that threads its way into the heart of the park, Noel springs to attention knowing instantly where she is.  She begins to whine, and through her energy of anticipation I comprehend her thoughts, “Faster, faster, must go faster.”  “Ok girl, we’re going, “ I tell her.  I bring the car to a stop in the leaf-covered parking area, step out into my old world, and walk around to the passenger side. I watch the age-old performance of the dogs dancing from side to side, as if to influence which door I would open first.  For the 150th time in the row, since Lyle has been gone, I go to the front passenger side and open the door.  The balls of fur that were simply luggage in the seats not ten minutes before explode out through the door like a couple of bootleggers burning rubber through the North Carolina hills.  It wasn’t long ago that Noel had to work hard to keep up with Phineas, but Phineas is ten now……Ten,” I mutter to myself.  “Where does the time go?”


I walk down the usual trail, lagging well behind the dogs that know where I’m going even before I do.  This is the same trail I walked every day for four years.  Sometimes I walked alone, sorting through my own thoughts, performing soliloquies for anyone or anything that cared to listen to a girl who never felt as comfortable anywhere as she did in this protective cloak of trees.  The secret that I carry with me, on this walk today, is the hope that Lyle is out there listening.  He was what made this place perfect.  During the times we walked together, I knew that I didn’t have to feel alone anymore.  It was the first I can remember ever connecting with something other than my own internal thoughts, in between taking turns catching up to whichever dog was the latest to bound out of sight. 


Then there were times I’d meet up with two friends, Jason and Scarlett, and their dogs, Onyx and Bunky.  We met them at the river on Phineas’s first trip to the Chattahoochee Park.  Scarlett’s dog Bunky was watching Onyx play with her ball.  Onyx was 12 but in perfect shape.  She kept to herself and no one, and I mean no one, was to touch her ball except for Jason.  Somehow Phineas understood this, so when Bunky, who was a pup himself, made a lunge for Onyx’s ball, Phineas intervened.  This noble act of bravery impressed both Onyx and Bunky.  They, along with Phineas, immediately fashioned the canine version of the Three Musketeers. 


The Chattahoochee Park was where all the dogs used to bring their masters to play on Saturdays until the rangers started cracking down.  The dogs waited all week for this moment to rub shoulders with one another in a game of chase through the wide open field.  And when they got hot, which was often the case in Hotlanta, they’d cross the gravel path to wade in the river, as long as the current wasn’t too strong.  But, all it took was a few complaints to spoil a great place for a lot of people. One couple complained that Calley – a yellow lab – attacked their baby in the stroller. In reality the dog was going after the bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken these rocket scientists had placed on top of the stroller while they watched the dogs play.  Then there were the complaints of dog’s peeing in the river, as if all the kids and half the grown-ups don’t do the same thing.  And worse of all were the complaints of the dogs getting in the way of cyclists who found it a difficult feat to slow down from the mandatory 10MPH speed limit on the flat gravel trail for a dog crossing in their path.  But I didn’t mind that the tragedy of the commons forced us to move to Sope Creek, because it’s the first place where the dogs and I truly felt free.


I could walk the trails at Sope Creek with my eyes closed.  It’s as familiar as the image of Lyle’s face, with his feathery brown hair, big blue eyes, thick glasses, chipmunk cheeks he hid with a goatee.  We pass the small fishing pond, tucked away behind a stand of pine just to the right of the path.  Around a few more bends through the canopy of Kudzu covered trees it’s as if we stepped into a different world.  We reach the backside of the trail, and walk along the small stream gurgling its way down to the floor of the gulley that feeds into the larger Sope Creek.


Noel finds her favorite “dipping” hole in the creek and lays down to get cooled off.  She seems to have found this particular spot through some sort of “Goldilocks” strategy, having tried many locations and deciding they were either too deep, too shallow, to muddy, or not muddy enough.  This one was juuuust right.  Phineas, ofcourse, will only get his paws wet.  He’s always been the dignified one.  Noel gallops out of her watering hole trailing a cloud of water and mud and dust behind her.  Phineas, doing his best to put up with such a free spirit, dutifully tries to start his grooming of her then, but she catches sight of a squirrel scampering up a tree in the corner of her eye and like a flash she’s gone.  I’m convinced that if I were to see Noel’s Top Ten list of attention–getting things in life, 8 of those things would be four-legged critters! Phineas follows her, and she was counting on it, looking back to make sure he was there. Something about Phineas being around brought her comfort. 


The sunbeams peek through the trees, throwing random spotlights across the colorful carpet of leaves and I reflexively smile at this beautiful sight. There is nothing around for miles except for the forest of trees which muffles the sounds of civilization threatening to encroach upon its barrier.  I think to myself that there’s no way I’m only 23 miles from a city of 4 million people.  My mind wanders faster than my legs and gets lost in this ocean of tranquility.  I start thinking about the one thing I have left to connect me to Lyle – his documentary. 


He began his career as a columnist for the Richmond Times Dispatch just after we were married.  At first, he struggled to come up with ideas he felt people wanted to read.  His thought process was, for the most part, unconventional, and his insecurity showed in the fear he had of the reader thinking he was a crackpot. But within a few months he started to hear of some unusual events occurring on the West Side of town, and he had this fabulous spark of confidence that this was THE story he had been waiting for. 


Most of the West Side was rather affluent, but some sketchier neighborhoods abutted and clashed with this civil suburbia.  Criminal activity - kidnappings, women being raped, drug-related shootings on the West Side -were all sad stories all-pervading in the daily paper to greet the residents each morning.  There was nothing unusual about that.  However, the victim being alive to tell the story – well, that was news.  That was a tale people wanted to hear.  When Lyle investigated the details of each story he noticed a similar curiousness.  They all possessed a peculiar, surreal, borderline-religious turn of events that he uncharacteristically accepted.  Deep down, he wanted it to be real, he wanted to believe. I think he needed it to be real.  I want to believe it too, which is why I continually revisit the stories in my mind.  They remind me that anything in life, even something that seems improbable, is possible. 


He tumbled the stories over in his mind for a few weeks, bending and stretching his thoughts, breaking his meditative silence occasionally to bounce an idea or two off me, or ask a question.  After his deliberations he announced to me that he had a story he had been writing in his head, and he wanted to try and put it on paper.  He wanted to write a book……and so it began. 


I first learned of the Superhero when I began working as a columnist for the Richmond Times Dispatch, about five years ago.  My wife and I had just gotten married and were starting a new life for ourselves in the small town I lived in while we were dating.  She knew I always wanted to be a writer, and encouraged me to take the job, even though I thought my style would never have the mass appeal needed to be a columnist.  But back then, I couldn’t have possibly imagined that this would be the story I would tell.


I pride myself in being a realist.  I have cloaked myself in beliefs based on that which can be seen or touched.  Tangible life is the way I viewed it.  And faith, well, faith was a convenient crutch that was, for most, only occasionally dragged from the back of the closet when they didn’t’ have the balls to face the dark realities of life on their own two legs.  But I must admit, in my own darkest of times, I have been as equally weak-minded.  As many before have done, I have found myself perplexed at the meaning of life.  Surely at some level, there must be more to it than what I can see and touch…….right?  I am here to tell you there is, and this is one such story. 


I first heard of him the winter after we moved to town – well, since few have even caught the dimmest glimpse of “him”, no one is really sure whether it is a him, a her, or even an “it” of some unknown description.  It was December 26th , a frigid winter morning, and I braved the cold and headed out to my car to take a drive into the city.  I’ve always done some of my best thinking while I’m driving.  I drove aimlessly around the affluent neighborhoods on the West Side of town, until I came upon a TV news van and a crowd of people gathered around a woman being interviewed. 


I parked my car and crossed the street to investigate what had brought these people together on such a chill December morning.  The smallish woman looked young, perhaps in her early 20’s, smartly dressed, reflecting the stylish homes to which she was accustomed.  Her face looked slightly haggard through the perfectly applied veneer of make-up.  Her shoulder-length auburn hair was pulled back into a functional, yet attractive, pony-tail, spilling out over her plush white ski jacket. 


Children were running along the rows of well-manicured bushes lining the sidewalks that framed the immaculate front lawns.  Adults made up the majority of the crowd, and gathered around the woman, who’s name was Alicia Johnson, with their eyes fixated on her as if she were an angel descended from heaven.  As I looked closer, a few discretely wiped tears from their eyes as they listened to her story. 


I approached the scene and heard the reporter ask, Alicia, “So what would you say to your hero if he were listening right now?”  Alicia’s face softened.  The worry that I had seen earlier melted from her face.  “Well, some of that is very personal.  I wrote it in a card to him and left it with some flowers on the sidewalk where he saved my life.  What I can say is that, although I’ve always been a free and independent spirit, I recognize that I am also mortal.  That makes it all the more comforting to know that he is out there.” 


         As I listened to the words spill from her, before my eyes, her whole face changed.  Not only was the worry that I had seen weighing on her when I first happened upon the scene completely erased, but, and I’m not sure how else to explain it, her face absolutely lit up!  Here I was, a witness to this accidental drama, having never seen this woman before today, and the beautiful expression of hope that overtook her as she described her story of survival….that single look changed the way I viewed the world.


         The interview ended, and the reporter packed up his gear, but the crowd didn’t disperse immediately.  The children continued to play while neighbors shared their stories of what they’ve heard about the hero and why they admire him.  I even overheard invitations for couples to have dinner together and they could talk about him over “their wife’s amazing chicken marsala.”  What I had witnessed was almost as amazing as the story that introduced me to the hero in the first place.  I saw neighbors being neighborly.  I don’t know if I can say that as an adult, I have truly ever gotten to know any of my neighbors.  Yet these residents, strangers before today, were starting to form bonds with one another.  They were relationships born out of a shared hope and belief.  Was this perhaps the true mission of this Superhero? Might he have been visiting on this otherwise ordinary place to teach us how to believe? 


I wonder if this was, once again, Lyle’s attempt to stretch beyond his cynicism, and nothing more.  Did he ever really believed in the impossible, or was his failure to do so ultimately responsible for what eventually happened to him?


It’s a smell that startles me back to my senses this time, shaking me from my inner conversation.  As I get closer to the creek, it’s the smell that reminds me that I’ve been here before, but I can’t quite describe it fully – a “wet” smell perhaps, heavy with the rich scent of long-dead leaves piled deep, slowly turning into topsoil.  Every step awakens another memory, another ghost, and I trick myself into seeing them– that I see Phineas playing with Bunky and Onyx up ahead. “It’s not possible, “I tell myself.  Onyx died two years after we started coming here, and Bunky moved up to New York a year or so after that.  But even still, I see them galloping through last year’s fall leaves now a brittle blanket spread over the rolling hills.  They charge up over the ridge until they’re out of sight - jumping the ravines with a reckless abandon that sends my heart racing each time I see it.  I’m always worried they’ll get hurt and I used to call poor Phineas back constantly when he was a puppy just to make sure he was OK.  Jason would laugh as he tossed another ball into the creek for Onyx and say, “You worry too much.  You just have to let them be dogs.”  And, although I know he was right on some level, the reality is, Phineas has never been “just a dog” to me.  I couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to him, particularly if I could have prevented it with a calming word or two…..


How long have I been here?  The dogs look exhausted.  I hadn’t realized how far we had traveled down this mountain trail.  They certainly aren’t used to this amount of activity in one outing.  But none of us want to leave.  We are here.  We are home, at least for a little while.  There are no woods at our new place, and there are no woods like this anywhere but right here.  Back in Louisiana, I bike them around the neighborhood and they swim in the pond behind the house, but they miss chasing the squirrels and running through the trees and the leaves and the streams. 


As we come around the final bend in the trail, I know - and so do they - that our time in this fairyland is nearing to an end.  We cautiously approach the parking lot, not quite ready to leave our world.  It’s as if we are trying to elude captors with ill intentions.  We had stolen a little slice of time in paradise.  The dogs’ ears hang low, and they glance up toward me with their pitiful faces, a slight whine coming out of Noel.  It is almost more than I can stand.


There is more highway ahead, so I choke back the tears and the thought of never leaving here, and I get the “kids” all settled in for the next leg of the run. As I begin to drive back down the winding road that brought us here, I start thinking – not really a conscious thought, but something beings to stir around my mind.  The renewed memory of Lyle’s words reverberates through my head.  Maybe I didn’t have to be captured by this world.  Perhaps there is some Superhero out there that can save me.


I drive back past my old apartment complex on the way back to the interstate, this time continuing up 75 north toward the first and last house Lyle and I would ever share together.  The trip to the park left the dogs sleeping soundly.  Noel, as usual, riding shot-gun, with Phineas curled up in the back passenger seat.  I worry about them having to be in the car again after such a long ride with no home to go to.  “We’re moving around like gypsies,”  I hear Lyle say in my mind. They dogs can rest at Patricia’s place, but they won’t feel at home there.  I know that feeling all too well.  I want to drive to Pine Harbor Court and see the house.  It’s on the way – or could be on the way if I take the right route.  But I can’t do it.  The dogs might think we are going back home, and I might believe it too, which would make it all the more painful when I have to drive away.


I decide to take the more direct route to Patricia’s, although I’m not in a hurry to get there.  And besides, it’s only 10:30 am so she’d be just getting up about now.  Like my father, I’ve always been early to rise.  Patricia, my mother, and even Lyle, however, are the late day bloomers and could sleep half their morning away.  Lyle and I constantly battled over this.  He always wanted me to stay awake late at night and I always wanted us to get a jump start on the day.  I usually won that battle because it was much easier to hike the dogs and let them run free in the early morning while all the other late day bloomers were still sleeping.  Besides, early morning is the most beautiful time of day.  Seeing the sunrise push back the canopy of night. Taking in the exact sequence of moments when the dark ominous gloom changes to warm brilliant colors of yellow, red, and green.  I would never trade my years of early morning sunrises for anything.


The blazing morning sun assaults my weary eyes as I exit off the interstate using the same ramp I’d take everyday coming home from Atlanta.  I was in graduate school at Georgia State University – which was the reason we had moved to Atlanta in the first place.  The university had a top rated Behavioral Neuroscience program, and Lyle was the one who encouraged me to pursue my Ph.D. there.  We knew it would be a seven year commitment to the city, but I didn’t mind.  I adjusted to life here rather easily, which was another of those rare occurrences for me.  I usually take a while to settle into a new location. Everything seemed more radiant and alive compared to my familiar and seemingly ordinary hometown of Richmond.  It was a place worth exploring.  And for a city of its size, the people here seemed rather friendly.  In fact, I might even go as far to say that for once I felt like everyone else.  Most of us were transplants and shared that common bond.  Lyle enjoyed the irony – the idea that the lack of a shared history was the bond that seemed to unite the city.


Patricia was not a native of Atlanta either, having moved down from Rhode Island about eight years ago.  Her reason for a new start in this new place was to shed her old life.  Before moving here, she was married to an alcoholic who repeatedly wound up in jail for DUIs.  He also seemed to have a strong aversion to any activity that might produce a regular paycheck.  She finally got fed up and divorced him, packed her bags, and headed south.  Quoting a line from a movie she once saw, “What has to be done eventually, should be done immediately.” 


All this happened well before I met her.  She and I first started talking at a dog agility class.  Lyle and I began taking Phineas to agility when he was two.  We didn’t know much about it, but Lyle had seen it on TV and thought training for agility competitions would be a fun idea.  What he didn’t tell me at the time, however, was that I would do all the training. 


Agility training involves teaching a dog to run an obstacle course.  There are jumps, tunnels, technical courses, flat speed courses, and climbs – all events that are loosely based on the skills needed by herding dogs to herd sheep or other field animals.  The trials are timed and all obstacles must be performed on cue, so I was immediately attracted to a partnership that has to form between the dog and the trainer to run the courses cleanly.  The classes were a great way for us to spend an evening together, but it was also a lot of work. 


Lyle was content to come to agility class and watch from the sidelines each Friday night as Phineas learned to perform the sport.  I was simply happy to spend the time with him and Phineas.  I had been with him long enough to know that while Lyle was great at ideating such things, he was never strong in the execution.  His lack of confidence held him back from trying new things or even finishing things he started – like his book – because the “finished” product was never perfect enough. 


In some ways, that experience changed my life, and it’s fair to say that I owe it all to Phineas.    He is one beautiful dog, with a black strong stout body, his visual power amplified by the thick mane of fur around his neck, and his deep, penetrating, chestnut eyes.  At times it’s as if he can see right inside you, past your words and into your thoughts.  The agility training and the hours we spent taking and listening to each other strengthened that bond between us, and the classes and competitions became something I truly looked forward to.  Finally I felt some reprieve in my continuous struggle to connect with the world outside of Lyle.


My relative isolation isn’t for lack of wanting or trying to be more social, but more of a difficulty in being able to relate to and communicate with others, and them with me.  People often mistake my quiet shy nature as being conceited or aloof.  The truth is, after being misunderstood so many times by so many people, keeping to myself often seems to be a better alternative than having another acquaintance think I’m weird.  The only person who really understood me was Lyle.  And while that’s all I needed, at the time, I was excited at the prospect that I belonged somewhere with others like me.  For the first time I felt I belonged to a group.  What’s more, I began to feel that perhaps I even had a purpose in this crazy world.  I was connecting with it, and it was easy.  There were no expectations, no difficulties, no disappointing one another, no judgments or envy.  Just a simple group of misfits that for whatever reason, came together to find purpose in the world with the help of their canine friends.


During this time, Lyle, unbeknownst to me, continued to withdraw from the world, as I filled my days trying to excel at the hobby he had suggested.  I allowed the distractions- the training, the weekends spent at agility competitions, the sheep herding for Pete’s sake – and I’m afraid of sheep – I allowed myself to be distracted from the impending reality of my life.  The oceans of separation in my marriage were producing monstrous waves that were about to come crashing down around me.  Had every piece of me belonged to Lyle, I surely would have suffered the same loss of self that he did. 


It was during agility classes that I started to hear of Patricia.  And well, maybe my earlier statement regarding the absence of judgments in this social circle was a little too absolute.  Patricia’s reputation preceded her.  I’d overhear people I didn’t even know talking about her, but then again, she is an easy target for those who need someone to talk about.


“Did you see what she wore last week?”


“Oh, you mean the short short shorts?”


“And what is with the low-cut tank tops?”  Maybe when I was in my twenties, but in my forties? When she came in braless last week, it looked like two puppies fighting in a pillow case!”


“Not that it’s any of my business, “began the one woman who had started the conversation. 


“Of course not,” I thought to myself.


She continued, “If she wants to wear clothes like that, that’s fine.  But, even so, to an agility class?  What in the world for?”


“Well, there’s talk that she got her eye on Doug.  They’ve been going to a lot of trials together this year.  Maybe it has something to do with that?”


“Nah, she’s always dressed like that, since she lost the weight.”


The chief busybody asked the instructor, Patricia’s long-time friend Sue, “Are Patricia and Doug an item?”


Sue was never one to participate in idle gossip, and shrugged off the question replying, “She might be interested, but I’m not sure that he is.  Even so, I’m sure he likes her enough.  She’s got a really good heart.”


And that’s always how the conversation ended, with Sue declaring, “Yeah, but she’s got a good heart.”  It was her typical defense of her friend, born out of the knowledge of what Patricia had been through recently with her divorce and her new start in Atlanta.  Sue had a soft spot for her, regardless of how much Patricia behaved like a teen-ager.


When I first met Patricia, however, she appeared to have her life pretty well together, in spite of the way she dressed.  She was taller than I, with a big frame, like she could have been an athlete if only the years of hard living hadn’t left her looking bloated and barrel-bodied.  Commiserate with her spit-fire personality; her hair was brassy red, with a frizzy perm and well-endowed breasts to match her frame.  She was hard not to notice.  I didn’t know anything about her husband, divorce, fickleness with men, or anything else about her other than what I had heard, including the story being passed around about her interest in Doug.  Patricia had been spending a lot of time around him lately, given that he was one of the few single guys in this thirties in the agility crowed.  They traveled to more than a casual number of agility shows together.  They traveled to more than a casual number of agility shows together.  While I was only participating in about eight shows a year, they were attending almost every weekend.


Since Patricia seemed to be so familiar with the agility scene, I thought I might be able to pick up some tips from her to help my training.  Within minutes of introducing myself ot her, she talked with me like we had known each other for years.  She has a very outgoing gregarious personality, and as part of that, she really didn’t keep much secret.  Being a shy and reserved person, I’m sure my face has been painted with a look of purse shock and horror on more than one occasion at the stories she told and the languages she uses.  But she seems oddly oblivious to the reactions people have to her stories. 


Before long, without me even asking, she confirmed the rumor about her love life that had been circulating.  She did have her sights set on Doug.


“The problem is him,” she stated emphatically.  “He just can’t get past the age difference.  He says it’s because he wants kids.  The real problem is his fear of commitment.  He’s never shown any interest in anyone who is truly available.  I mean, seriously Sarah, I swore he had a thing for you at one time.” 


“Me?  How did I get dragged into this?” I thought to myself.  “He knows I’m happily married right?  That doesn’t make any sense to me,” I told her.   


“That’s what I’m trying to tell you Sarah.  That’s exactly my point.  You aren’t available.  He doesn’t want available.  He’s all about ‘the chase’, and then he runs away if things get serious.  That’s why most of his relationships have been affairs.  Then, in the very next breath, she said, “But, Sarah, we just get along so well.  I mean, we’re soul mates.” 


The whole conversation baffled me.  She was obviously aware of this issue, which seemed to me to be a pretty big issue, so why would she even be interested in him?  It’s as if she thinks she can somehow save him from himself and turn him into the man she imagines him to be.  And that term – soul mate – has never really made sense to me.  Almost every time I hear someone use it, they present it in a way of a cloaked excuse for doing something they shouldn’t be doing, with someone they shouldn’t be doing it with. 


After that conversation with Patricia, I got home and told Lyle about it.  He just laughed and said, “People are strange.”  I was so glad to be back home, surrounded by all the special touches that made the house feel like a home.  Lyle was sitting on the couch watching TV, while across from him Phineas climbed into the weathered “Archy Bunker” chair - inherited from my Grandparents.  All of us relaxed and at peace, safe from the crazies and the weirdness that ran rampant outside our walls.


I feel that familiar pull, wishing I could go back there now.  I’m well past the roads that would have taken me to Pine Harbor Court now, though.  My arms are weak, like I’ve been fighting with the car to stay on course.  I realize I really should get something to eat.  All I’ve had since I left Louisiana is the candy I brought with me.  My eating habits have been less than ideal lately.  There’s just no pleasure in it. No more special home-cooked dinners or fancy desserts.  I ache to do all those wife-like things.  But, what’s the point in doing any of it now?  Agh, but I know I need to eat, if for no other reason than survival.


I imagine Noel, in a hunger-induced delirium, asking Phineas, “How can anyone not feel like eating?  I only hope she remembers to give us some.” The imaginary comment offends me, as if I would ever forget food for the kids!  I turn to ask them if they want some of my chicken biscuit, and Noel cock her head toward Phineas, “Wow, can she really read my mind?”  Phineas lets out a brief huffing sound, which must be dog-speak for, “Oh, please,” and drops his head back down to the seat.


As I pass the next road sign, reality sinks in.  I have to call Patricia and let her know I’m almost there.  I’ve put it off long enough.  No use putting it off any longer.  I reach for the phone and the air becomes heavy, closing in around me.  Why am I dreading this so much?  It’s true, I was never one to enjoy chit-chat, especially over the phone, and that was even before what happened to Lyle.  Am I afraid of the questions? Perhaps.  But the reality is, I know that I am the restless one surrounded by all those who live comfortable lives, blissfully absent of the tragedies that have ripped at my heart.  Even so, I came here to get away from all that and to try to connect with the Lyleless world, right?  I swallow hard and dial the number. 


“Hel-lo,”  Patricia fully enunciates the hello, dragging it out a bit in a northerner’s best imitation o f a true southern drawl. 


“It’s Sarah.” 


“I know who it is, silly”, she says laughing.  Are you almost here?”


          “Yeah, in a bit.  I made it into town a little earlier than I planned, so I took the dogs on a trip down memory lane out at Sope Creek.  Anyway, thanks for letting us stay.”


          “Oh, no problem.  My house is your house.  Oh, Maggie stop that!  Ok, Ok, I’m getting your food.  You still there Sarah?”  She often carries on more than one conversation at a time – this time with both me and her dog.  She often loses track of who’s listening to what.  So do I for that matter.


          “Yeah, I’m still here.” 


“Ok, good.  Sorry about that.  I just woke up and the dogs are getting restless.  Well, I have to get dressed, since you are almost here.  Oh, everything is such a mess in here.  Do I have anything clean to wear?  Hmmmm.  Oh yes.  Ok, well let me throw some clothes on and feed the dogs, then we can head out to Starbucks when you get here.”  She’s also addicted to Starbucks, and knows I don’t drink coffee – at least, not yet. 


I’m only a mile or so from Patricia’s house now.  I drive slowly past the accident site, lost in the memory of that evening. It happened not long after Lyle and I bought the new house together.  We had just adopted Noel from a woman who could on longer handle her exuberance.  The woman had three young children, and her husband had recently died, so her plate was pretty full.  Poor Noel. So much death and chaos around her at such a young age.  This beautiful lab puppy, then eight months old, needed a new home, so we adopted her even though she would have served admirably as the poster-dog for amphetamines.  I tried to tire her out the usual ways with long walks at Sope Creek, 10 mile runs at Kennesaw Mountain, exhausting training classes….I tried everything until my mind fell numb, too tired to direct me to walk upright anymore.  Nothing worked.  She was still as rambunctious as the day we got her.  Doggy day-care became the last resort, but still, only one day a week.  I was not going to be an absentee parent!


I had just picked her up from the day-care.  Noel had received another bad report card, the third in a row, with the box “I was a little devil” checked.  The unchecked options read “I missed my family” and “I was a good dog.”  We were heading home to Pine Harbor Court in my 92’ Honda Civic – my reliable friend that brought me back to Lyle.  And at this spot, the very spot I was now passing, for whatever reason, I “blacked out.”  I ran headlong into the back of a Jeep stopped at a light in front of me.  That’s the last time I rode in the Honda Civic –my four-wheeled friend that carried me home to Virginia, then on to our new life in Atlanta. And now, she’s only a ghost car.  Just a memory, like so many other precious things in my life. 


It seems that whenever there is a hiccup along the road, when something goes horribly awry, I immediately think about the odds and all the variables that had to align for the thing to happen in the first place.  In the case of my accident, think about the whole constellation of evens coming together at exactly the right, or wrong, moment, to produce such a calamity.  One small change and nothing happens at all.  When the stars align, the inevitable twist of fate, lives are changed in an instant of malignant circumstance.  I’m not sure what caused the blackout, and neither were the doctors I visited afterwards.  But I couldn’t help but think, “If I had just left five minutes earlier. If I had only slept in a little later instead of going for such a long walk at Sope Creek with the dogs that morning, maybe I wouldn’t have been so tired.” 


If any of those alternatives had been a reality, I might still have that 92’ civic.  Who’s in control of all these variables?  Is there a purpose or a reason to it all?  I used to believe that we had some control over these events.  I believed we were endowed with some degree of free will and the opportunity to change, or at the very least, influence the course of our lives.  Maybe I still do.  Perhaps it manifests in the thought that someone or something out there watches over us.  When I read Lyle’s book, I think that at some level, he must have believed that too.


I turn into Patricia’s neighborhood, an older subdivision of up-scale two-story homes with manicured front lawns, an SUV, or some other luxury four-door car, in the driveway with tall white-washed fences leaving all clues to the imagination regarding the oasis within, and happy faces on the people inside going about their business.  Any of these could have been my house a few months ago.  The “clue” in our house were the plant lights (I called them up-lights) casting soothing shadows on the walls while eliminating the need for glaring lamps or overhead lighting.  It was an idea I had gotten from a decorating show I used to watch.  Every night before dinner, I’d turn off the ceiling lights and bring the shadow making lights to life for a little ambience.  Lyle paid close attention to the “little touches” I added around the house, which is what made to house a real home.  He’d say, “Baby, you make such a nice home.“ 


Then he’d get that comical look in his eye that told me he was up to something, and say, “Is that another little trick you learned from the flaming decorator?”  I was surprised when he first said that.  I couldn’t tell one way or the other if the decorator was gay.  And Lyle would howl with laughter at my naïveté and say, “Come on!  He’s flaming!  How did you not know that?”  And though he was probably right, he really didn’t care about stuff like that.  What a person did of their own free will, assuming there is such a thing, was their own business.  It’s an example of how he liked to poke fun at my innocence.  He possessed the ability to joke about borderline offensive topics freely without worry of offense because no one could mistake his comments for well-intentioned humor.  Even when his mother called and started the conversation with, “Last night I had a dream.”  Lyle’s response, which had us laughing for days was, “You mean little black kids and white kids playing together?”  He loved everyone and everything, in spite of the mile-wide streak of cynicism that made him reluctant to believe in anyone or anything.  But you’d only see the cynic if you peered deep, very deep, past the happy smiles and soft beams of light in our oasis.


After a few more left turns I finally reach Patricia’s house.  It isn’t hard to spot.  It’s the one with the knee-high weeds in the front yard that creep even higher near the dilapidated half-fence that borders the left side of her property.  Although obviously well-used, her house looks oddly abandoned. It’s a lonely house.  The windows are lightless and lifeless, even though the clouds are thick and dark on this cools September morning.  The dogs wake up when I hit the turn signal and the brake, as if they were checking their maps to make sure I was heading in the right direction.  “We’re here guys.”  Phineas stands up in the back seat, stretches out over his front paws, and cuts loose a gaping yawn while Noel dances inside the car from window to window.  I put the dogs on leash because Noel will bolt like a greyhound anytime she knows she isn’t tethered to something.  She looks up at me with those sweet, chocolate eyes as if to say, “Please?  I can try to be good.  I won’t run off this anywhere this time!”  I could swear she is stifling a momentary dog-smile sometimes when she makes such ridiculous requests!  I look at Phineas and smile, asking if we should we trust her this time.  He gives me that familiar, indignant expression in reply just to make sure I was kidding.  “You’re right.  It’s better to be safe than sorry,” I assure him.  I lead the dogs up the broken concrete walkway to the front door and ring the bell.


         After a brief pause, Patricia flings open the door, using her right leg to fight off her dog’s repeated attempts to escape.  It doesn’t seem as if she’s made much progress since our phone conversation, because she answers the door in her bra and underwear.  It’s odd how we differ in our sense of modesty.  I remember times when I’d get dressed in the closet because Lyle was in the bedroom. 


She greets me with a big, warm hug.  There’s a hugger in every crowd.  She steps back, while instructing her dogs to settle down, and I pass through the half-open door, squeezing myself into a scary and unfamiliar world.  Although this alternate world looks very much like the inside of the house I grew up in.  It’s the evil twin of my house at Pine Harbor Court.  The wood floors are absolutely ruined, with deep scars and ruts from the dog’s toenails.  The carpets are soiled and stained with untold pet disasters, leftovers dragged across the floor, and a trace of anyone and everything that has crossed the threshold.  No one has dared to clean for years.  Ms. Havisham herself would have run away screaming.


Patricia had draped a sheet across the doorway to the dining room, which doubled as her office.  But is some ways, the cloak made the area even more repellant.  After looking around the rest of the first floor, I don’t have the stomach to consider what the parts of the house that she doesn’t want you to see must look like!  The den is a mess, with papers and clothes haphazardly thrown around the furniture and floor.  There is a large paint-bucket full of old marrow bones on the fireplace hearth.  I’m still not sure where the paint bucket came from.  The faded walls tell the story of a neglected interior which needed painting years ago.  Phineas runs straight for the bucket and starts taking out bone after bone.  He lies down on a pile of underwear, which I wouldn’t care to bet if it they were clean or dirty?  The scary thing is… I would wager Patricia doesn’t know either.  Noel is interested in her border collie, Zippity, so we let them out back to run around a bit.  To be honest, parts of me want to run back outside with them.  Her older border collie, Maggie, watches passively from the only clean spot in the room, a black vinyl sofa, as Phineas chews on his newly found treasure.


My arms hang down by my side holding the dog’s food bin in one and my suitcase in the other.  They start to go numb, so finally I muster up the courage and ask, “So where do you want me to put my things?” 


“Oh, I’ve got the spare bedroom ready.  Let me show you.”  She turns on the stairwell light and leads me upstairs.  It’s sticky hot.  Within a few steps I begin to sweat and my clothes become plastered to my body.  “The upstairs A.C. is busted again, so you might not want a blanket.  I’ve been sleeping downstairs on the sofa where at least it’s a little cooler.  You can open the window if you think that will help.” 


It makes me feel ungrateful to think it, but I couldn’t fight the thought.  “This is Atlanta!”  I thought to myself.  “There is no way opening the windows is going to help anything!  Which is why 98% of the people who live here have an air conditioner that works!” 


We walk past her room, with more clothes piled on the dresser, spilling over the hamper, and hanging form doorknobs as if it were a clothing jungle.  There are dirty dishes on the night stand, and more stains on the floor.  Is this why my stomach knotted up when I had to call her?  We continue down the hall to the spare bedroom.  I can hardly bear to look as she opens the door, but I am pleasantly surprised by the lack of mess and clutter.  There is a nice mattress on the floor, with a clean sheet and pillow.  There is absolutely nothing else in the room.  I’m trying to be positive, so I take a breath and smile as I think to myself, “At least the dogs don’t have anything to get into while I’m out.” 


“You can drop your stuff in here.  Oh, yeah, and don’t you want to come to Starbucks with me?  I have to go get my coffee.” she says. 


“Yeah, I’ll just go change into a clean pair of sweats and brush my teeth.  Gimme 5 minutes.”


“Oh sure thing.”  Then she finally clues in to her attire, or lack thereof rather, and begins to laugh.  “Oh mercy!  Looks like I need 5 minutes to find something to wear as well.”


When I come back out into the hall, my eyes struggle to adjust to what Patricia considers to be “coffee attire.”  There she is, in a too-small black tank top, the neckline scooped low showing the lace edging of her bra, with a pair of very short pink shorts, and the word “HOT” stitched across the back. 


“You ready Sarah?”


“Yeah, let me put the dogs away and I’m ready to go,” I stammered.


I bring Noel and Phineas up to the room.  Noel looks confused, but it’s the look on Phineas’ face that breaks my heart.  He looks at me with disgust for having to stay in that room.  I feel guilty for leaving them here in this place, but I kiss them both on the forehead and tell them, “I’ll be back in a jiff guys.  This is only for a little while okay?“  I shut the door behind me and head downstairs.  “No turning back now.”  Here I am.  By whomever’s will and for whatever reason, here I am.  And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it now.


Patricia puts her dogs downstairs in the garage.  I don’t know why she puts them down there.  Seriously, what more damage could possibly be done to the main house?  I get in her van and she starts to laugh, and snort, and says, “Oh my gosh!  The trash must be having sex.  It’s multiplied.” 


I laugh on the outside, staring at the mound of garbage collected at the side of the house, but inside I’m disgusted.  I don’t dare say it out loud.  I slither into the passenger seat, careful not to touch anything.  Patricia throws things out of her seat, adding to the heaps in the back seat,  so she can sit down.  Then she rummages through her purse for some lipstick, haphazardly runs the color across her lips, and smacks a kiss into the rearview mirror to even things out.  She tosses the tube back into her purse and lets the purse fall to the floor at her feet.  So much commotion for such a simple task!  My dad always said, “Your mother is like a bull in a china shop.”  What does that make Patricia?  The atomic bomb?


It’s getting to be about lunch-time, and we’re only five minutes from Starbucks.  Somehow, it takes us 25 minutes to get there.  Patricia got caught up in a story she was telling and forgot where she was going.  Never mind that it’s the same coffee shop she goes to every single day.  However, once she got started with, “You know, the problem is that I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I call it like I see it,” her mind was completely wrapped in it and nothing else, not even her Starbuck’s addiction, could snap her out of it. 


Initially I was taken aback.  Considering all I had been through, I guess I expected some questions about how things were going for me, or at least some kind of consoling gesture or words.  But that never came up here.  She continued on with her story, as if we speak to each other every day, and nothing important had changed in my life since we last talked.  Her story was about Doug, of course.  “I don’t know why he’s fighting his feelings for me.  It’s just making it harder.  But he can’t be my friend, then sleep with me, and then try to pretend like nothing ever happened and that we aren’t even friends anymore.  It’s just not right, Sarah.” 


I sat for a moment in an awkward silence, and then said the only thing I could say, “Well, you know I’m not good at this sort of stuff.  I never know what to say in these situations.”  Inside I am telling myself, “And anyway, romance hasn’t been high on my list of priorities lately.” 


“I know you’re not good at it.  It’s just……. “  Her words start to run together in my head, but I get the gist of her message.  She complains about Doug all the way to Starbucks in what I am sure are rehearsed arguments she’s had while attempting to analyze his behavior.  Her major complaint is how he doesn’t interact with her anymore, as if they were never even friends.  It’s October, and she’s still going on about this like it happened yesterday, instead of nearly seven months ago.  Perhaps it’s because the whole conversation makes me feel uncomfortable, or because I know that Patricia needs someone to talk to, and not with, but nonetheless, I don’t say a word.


The truth is, the few close friends I’ve had felt that I was extremely adept at listening and giving advice.  Several have told me I had a natural talent for it.  At one point earlier in my life I even considered going into counseling before deciding on the research route.  But unlike the motherly demeanor I sometimes had with those other friends, I specifically had an issue of being mute with Patricia.  I just couldn’t bring myself to offer advice to her.  First of all, I knew deep down that it wouldn’t have done any good.  Secondly, what could I have said and still be honest?  Because, in spite of the version of their “courtship” she was telling me, I know the truth of what happened.  Doug didn’t concoct some clever plan to seduce her and then kick her to the curb.


Patricia told me her version of what happened when we went out to a restaurant back in June.  It was for her birthday, and she seemed to be having a really tough day, so I felt sorry for her and invited her out after agility class.  We’d never seen each other outside of agility, and she didn’t know much about me.  She suggested a combination restaurant/bar that wasn’t’ far away, so I agreed, though I told her I didn’t drink. 


We walked in to a joint buzzing with all kinds of people talking loud, trying to be heard over the blaring music, cigarette smoke hung thick and heavy in the air.  Although it was early in the evening, it was clear that several patrons were already thoroughly drunk as evidenced by their weaving, meandering attempts to locate the restrooms.  She saw some good looking guys, ten years younger than her, at the bar and immediately asked, “You want to sit at the bar?  Oh yeah, you just said you don’t drink.  Fine, then let’s just get a table and we can eat.”  As we were being seated, before either of us could even manage to open our menus, she began her story of Doug.


Audrey was a mutual friend who had missed a couple of agility classes recently.  I had been told her father had died, but I didn’t know Audrey well then, and didn’t go to the funeral.  As Patricia told it, all this started when she and Doug decided to go to the funeral together.  Now, I have never imaged that a funeral could be a “mood setter” for supposed soul mates to consummate the fact that they are soul mates, but something had convinced them to stop off and buy a bottle of bourbon on the way back to Doug’s house. 


And so, they started talking, just friendly chit-chat, like they had many times when out at agility trials.  And during all this, somewhere around the time that the bottle was nearly dry, with Doug having had most of it, they started kissing.  Patricia, being well-versed in flirtation, sensed the approaching homerun play.  She described every last detail, keenly aware of all that was happening.  She told me, “Doug had to stop and run to the bathroom to throw up over and over again.  But he kept coming back for more.”  Even she realized some of the events she was describing seemed weird, but I’m not sure how anyone could think these things are exchanges “soul mates” should be having!  She said he kept repeating over and over, “What the hell am I doing?  Why am I doing this?  What the fuck is wrong with me?”  Then he’d run and throw up again, come back for more, and repeat the cycle until he finally passed out.  Then for the clincher.  I can only imagine the look on my face, which I’m sure she ignored in her oblivion.  She told me, “The next morning, he wouldn’t even look at me.  Didn’t even want to face up to what he did.” 


The counselor in me begged to ask the question, “And what do those events tell you he was thinking at the time?”  But I couldn’t do it.  She was living in her own little world, seeing what she wanted to see in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  My two cents would make no impression on her.


She had called him numerous times to confront him about it, but he refused to talk about it.  “He almost acts like he wished it had never happened!” she proclaimed indignantly.  Funny how some people can look the truth square in the eye and not even realize it.  A line from a Springsteen song replays in my mind, “….at the end of every hard-earned day people find some reason to believe.”


I remember the safety of my home, sitting with Lyle on the couch, comfortable in the warm ambience of the shadow lights, where stories like this never existed, and I couldn’t even invent such a thing.  Yet, here it is in front of me.  How many other people in this place have stories equally bizarre?  Isn’t there anyone else here that married their sweetheart at 19 and filled their days with loving dreams of their futures together?  Apparently not.


         Patricia never stopped eyeing the guys across the room that she had noticed earlier, and finally asked a question that had only one answer, “Would you mind if we moved to the bar?” 


Begrudgingly I agreed, and ordered a non-alcoholic banana daiquiri as we settled in at the bar.  She positioned herself between me and the guys, and started talking about work in that booming voice trying to make it sound as if the whole company would come screeching to a halt without her.  She sounded like her role was that of a supervisor, always having to get on people to get their work done.  Never mind that she actually has no staff, and is, in fact, a lower-level account representative.  Her efforts were wasted on this bunch because the guys didn’t pay any attention.  They settled their bill five minutes after we sat down. 


The bartender came over to pick up his tip, plucked the towel from his back pocket, and began to wipe down the black granite counter, making it new and fresh for the next customer.  As he finished up, he looked over at us and said, “Hey girls.  What are you doing here?  Don’t you know its lady’s night over at “Gilley’s?”


  “What’s Gilley’s?”, I asked.  Patricia rolled her eyes.


“It’s a dance and bar joint – country music, wood dance floor, line-dancing.  The whole bit.  Even a mechanical bull.  Didn’t you ever see “Urban Cowboy?”  John Travolta, Debra Winger?  It was set in a Gilley’s bar in Houston!”


All I heard was the word dance.  “Line-dancing?  What’s that about?”


“You know, just how it sounds.  Uh, people just, you know, get out there in a line and do some routine.  Different songs have different steps, so you just watch what the others are doing and imitate them.” 


“Huh?,“ I gave a puzzled mutter.  It sounded sort of interesting.  A good ole country place where groups of people are out having good clean fun together. 


Patricia momentarily paused her survey of the room as she scouted for her next potential lover and said, “Sounds pretty boring to me.”


“Oh, come on.  I think we should check it out,”  I said, seeing a possible avenue of escape from the current situation of sitting at the bar waiting for her to pick up someone.  Maybe this would even help take her mind off Doug. 


Then she told me, “Audrey took me there last week and it was boring.  We walked in, saw nothing was going on, and then walked right back out.” 


“Well let’s give it another try.  Who knows?  And if nothing has changed, we can always walk back out again,”  I told her. 


The bartender chimed in, “Oh yeah.  You ought to.  You must have just hit a bad night.”  Then he really seals the deal with, “And good lookin’ girls like yourselves, you’ll be a real hit.”


         I didn’t pay any attention to that.  My mind was still on “dance, dance, dance.”  But Patricia asked for the check and was ready to give it a go.  In hindsight, maybe I should have paid more attention.  I sometimes don’t understand how other people think, and am often surprised when friends give me their interpretation of events.  Dancing is a good example.  A guy friend of mine once explained it to me like this.  He said, “For women, it’s about half and half.  Half like to dance because they like to dance.  Period.  The other half are out dancing to try and get laid.  Now with the guys, 90% are dancing to try to get laid, 10% like to dance, and 7% of those are gay.”  Deep down, I don’t want to believe such things are true, but sometimes, the more I see, the more I think my friend might have been right.


We headed off to this mystery dance place.  I called Lyle on the way, more just to hear his voice than for any other reason.  “We won’t be long.  She’s just all upset over Doug. I’m kind of scared I’m getting brought into this chaotic mess between them though.  And I don’t think I can help her in the state she’s in.  But I feel sorry for her and she has no one else right now.” 


Lyle was quiet.  Being a great listener, he was never one to interrupt or offer his opinion until he was sure it was being requested.  And because his character was built on genuineness, he had a keen ability to empathize as he listened.  “You are truly a good person, Sweetheart.  Just be careful.  I’m not really sure about this place you’re going to.  But, I’ll be fine here – probably better than you will be.  Call me if you need me.”


It’s puzzling when I think back about it.  In all the ways, large and small, Lyle showed me he adored me, he never worried much about my whereabouts.  It’s almost as though he thought I was encased by a mythical shroud of protection, like the people he wrote about in his columns.  We didn’t even have cell phones to keep in touch until after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the one day he did worry where I was and if I were okay.  But my sporadic need to connect with the outside world allowed him to have the alone time he craved.  Introversion and solitude.  Like a hand in a glove. 


I remember my heart pounding with excitement as we pulled into the parking lot at Gilley’s.  Judging by the mass of cars, this joint was going to pretty crowded.  I saw at least three pick-up trucks with “Don’t mess with Texas” bumper stickers.  “What have I gotten myself into?” I thought.  Maybe Lyle had been right.


We flashed our ID’s at the door, and the bouncer took an obligatory glance, pretending to check our ages.  We definitely did not look like we came here together.  I was in my blue jeans, the same pair I had worn to agility class that evening, with a simple white long-sleeved shirt, and black, flat-soled shoes.  Patricia, on the other hand, sported a white miniskirt, red 3-inch heels, and a tight black tank top.  She was dressed to be seen.  The place was absolutely packed, and as we moved inside we were squeezing past every person there, brushing against the crowd of strangers, the occasional stray hand landing where it should not be.  But you could barely make out the faces through the smoke and soft, amber lighting.  Patricia yelled something in my direction.  I could barely hear her over the band on stage in front of the polished oak dance floor. 


“Sarah, I’m going to stand over here and watch,” Patricia screamed a second time, loud enough for me to hear.


I left her standing to the side, scoping the crowd as I headed for the dance floor.  I watched the line-dancers begin a new routine for a song the band just started to play.  Although I had never done this before, I picked up the steps right away and joined them without even thinking.  Everyone around me was little more than a blur, and everything on the sidelines was completely blocked out.  I couldn’t help but notice a few of the people around me who were all liquored up, moving in close to talk to one another, clutching at each other in the semi-darkness.  They swaggered onto the dance floor, holding each other up, even as their eyes wandered, shopping around for an easy lay in case their current target didn’t work out. 


That’s where Patricia found her place.  She needed it – needed to be wanted.  She was paying close attention to every nuance from the sidelines.  Her flirtatious instincts immediately told her who was married, who was gay, and who the real players were.  By the time the song was over and I pushed through the crowd to check on her, she had already met Hank.  Yes, this is the same Hank who is half her age, and would later leave her in the back of his truck after having screwed her on top of the spare tire.


We had only been there for about an hour when Patricia came out to the dance floor to dance a slow song with Hank.  For the slow ones, it is me who watches from the sidelines.  I do have enough sense to know that I don’t want some drunken stranger approaching me, thinking that I’m like most of the other girls here.  Even more so, most of these guys wouldn’t have the ability to stomach the circumstances that brought me here tonight.  Deep down, it’s probably the same thing that brought them here in the first place.  They were fending off their own fears within through the conquering of another.  But then, I’m sure the wedding ring also helped to keep the wolves away.  As the song ended and Patricia scooted off the dance floor, she said,  “Hey Sarah.  Don’t worry about taking me back to my car.  I’m going with Hank tonight.”  She had left her car at the dog school, and I had planned to drop her off on the way home.


I literally went into shock.  I stared at her, my mouth slightly agape, as I tried to digest her words.  Today I wouldn’t be surprised, but I didn’t know much about her then.  Regardless, I knew that a girl shouldn’t go home with a guy she just met.  I tried to talk her out of it.  “Are you sure?  I mean, you’ve had a little to drink.  Maybe you want to take a few minutes, sober up and think about it?” 


But of course, it didn’t matter what I said.  “Sarah, I’ve only had two drinks in the last 3 hours.  Come on!  I’m not drunk.  I’m a grown-up and this is a grown-up decision.  Don’t start being a mother hen on me!” 


Okay, so that last one hurt a little because all I want to do his help her and protect her from herself at this point.  And I couldn’t stop running through my mind that this definitely didn’t seem a grown-up decision to me.  But regardless of my good intentions, I couldn’t stop her.  She’s free to do what she wants, I suppose.  For whatever reason, though, it bothered me that I couldn’t intervene in some way to help her come to her senses.  And it’s as I expected.  She went home with him.  Hank’s friend drove the truck while Hank got his easy lay in the back in the bed. The slightly mildewed blanket he threw over the tire did little to cushion the punishment.  He left her in that truck.  About an hour after I got home that night, the phone rang, and on the other line was a sobering Patricia pleading, “Can you come get me?  The bastard left me in his truck and I have no idea where his apartment is or where the hell I am for that matter.”


Lyle and I went to help her up because he wasn’t going to let me go by myself, and I felt it was my duty to do something for her.  If I couldn’t prevent what she did, at least I could try to help her past it.  Lyle didn’t want to go at all.  He thought we should stay at home and force her to learn her lesson.  “She’s got a phone.  Let her call a cab,” he said.  Why are there some lessons that can’t be taught?  You find yourself a hapless witness, watching the person slip deeper into their own madness, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.


I felt sorry for her, and couldn’t imagine the embarrassment she must have shouldered as a result of her poor judgment.  I thought Patricia would never talk about that night, and never set foot in Gilley’s again for fear of being recognized as the “truck bed girl.”  But the very next day, she called Audrey and told her we had a blast.  She said Audrey should give the place another shot and go out with us.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing!  Hooking up with a stranger and getting stranded in the back of a truck was her idea of a good time?  I fooled myself in to believing that Patricia wouldn’t make the same mistake again.  I thought her behavior must have been a one-time thing.  Okay, that makes sense.  We all need to feel wanted every now and then.  Maybe she would try and just dance this time. 


Audrey approached me at agility practice the night before we were planning to go back to Gilley’s.  She said, “I think it’s really nice that you went to pick Patricia up and gave her a ride to her car.  I know I wouldn’t have done it.”


“How could I not have?,” I asked her. 


“Well, you’re a nicer person than I am.”  She could tell I was still disturbed about all of the events of that evening.  “Sarah, it’s not like this is the first time, and I’d bet it won’t be the last.”


“What do you mean?”  I asked her. 


“She slept with her husband on the first date, if that tells you anything.  This is what she does, and I wouldn’t get my hopes up that it will change.”


“Well, maybe after this last time it will change.” 


“It won’t change, Sarah.  There are some people you can’t help, no matter how hard you try.  But listen, I still want to go out.  Let’s just forget about her.  I’d like you to show me some of the dances.  It will be good for me to get out.  Fun as been hard to come by at my house since my father….”


“Oh yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I told her.  It was all beginning to make sense.  People need to redirect their mind from pain.  Patricia and her divorce.  Audrey and the death of her father.  Lyle and his introversion.  A person can only stand so much pain.  Then they either give in to it or get over it.  The methods people use to get over it are sometimes hard to figure.


And that’s how it started – our supposed pain-free nights out to Gilley’s.  Patricia made plans for us all to go back the following week, and then the next week.  But while she was happily planning our social calendars, everything in my life changed in that short span of time.  It all ended on our third evening at Gilley’s, when we were out until 3am.  Three weeks and two lives are gone.  Memories.  Ghosts.


I want to get away from it.  I want to run out of the house – run far away until I am safe and protected, much like Alicia Johnson the night she went out for a casual run and was attacked.  So why don’t I leave?  Because this is my present.  This is my new reality.  Had I never started on this path, Lyle might still be alive.  In some ways, even torturing myself as I stay the course I have currently chosen, or been set upon, feels like I’m getting off pretty easy.





Chapter 2    The Hooligan





         Lyle’s first column on the hero read like this:


The Johnson family had a glimpse of Scrooge’s Christmas future as their daughter faced the Grim Reaper yesterday evening.  Daughter, Alicia Johnson, 23, was home visiting her family while on Christmas break from an agricultural university in the rural western part of the state.  The college is located in a small, friendly, pastoral community safe from the common perils we wearily accept as our neighbors in this crime-ravaged city.  But, regardless of those who say she should have known better, let’s be careful not to blame the victim.  Such is the consequence of random events – evil can happen anywhere, any time, to anyone.


Alicia is an avid runner who was simply trying to take in a little fresh air, and enjoy the lights and decorations on that frigid Christmas day.  Her Aunt and Uncle had arrived late for the Christmas lunch, so Alicia had not completely digested the meal until dusk was already claiming the evening sky.  Still, she felt compelled to get out of the house and absorb her small window of time in the city.  The path she chose took her down the well-lit, usually busy road, but on this Christmas evening, the streets were absolutely deserted.  “Perfect.  Just the way I like it,” she thought.  “No traffic, no horns, no exhaust fumes, and no whistling creeps.  Complete freedom in the cool crisp air.” 


The sidewalks were lined with expertly trimmed shrubs guarding the pristine, manicured lawns in this part of town.  And, although the homes were beautiful and festive in their finest holiday décor, each had something of a fortress quality to it, as if the families locked inside held vigil against the world beyond those hedges.  Alicia pushed past the comfortable houses skirting downtown, and headed towards the city, her attention captured by the bright lights ahead reflecting eerily off of the lowering clouds.  The lights formed the shape of a large triangle, and she realized that she had reached the James Center, where the city-dwellers decorate the gigantic Christmas tree and sculptures out in front each year as a pale imitation of what is seen in Rockefeller Plaza in New York.  “Some things never change,” she thought, and with that, she looped around one final block and began the uphill climb back home.


In spite of the barren, desolate landscape, however, this time, she had the distinct feeling that someone was watching her.  A small, cold finger of fear touched the back of Alicia’s covered neck, and snaked its way briefly down her spine.  In the quiet night, interrupted only by the occasional buzzing of a streetlight, she could hear each footfall on the weathered sidewalk, her breathing now labored from her two miles of running.  Her mind wandered momentarily, but, with a start, she realized she could hear another, deeper breath, distinctly out of sync with her own.  And the breath seemed to be getting closer as she continued to run.  Alicia quickened her pace, not wanting to turn around - not wanting to face the unknown thing she could hear lurking behind her.  Her breathing became ragged, as did that of her follower.  It was full dark now, the glow of the city having faded behind her, with only an occasional sliver of moonlight peering through the sweeping clouds.  Only the sparse streetlights provided relatively safe polls of illumination.


The neighborhood appeared deserted, with only the front porch lights indicating the location of the large homes.  “Would any of these people help me if I screamed right now?” she wondered, weighing the list of options that were flashing through her mind.  As Alisha continued to run down the sidewalk, still not daring to look back, she passed under a lamppost and could see a large stick lying underneath the bushes.  She immediately cut to the side, crouched down and picked up the stick.  She whirled around with a grimace of determination set in her otherwise innocent face, the club cocked back ready to strike… but… there was nothing there.  Nothing.  Not even the barest whisper remained of the breathing that followed her earlier.  “Is my mind playing tricks on me?” she questioned, surely hoping no one would answer.


“Guess I’m hearing ghosts,” she half-heartedly chuckled to herself.  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly as she dropped the stick.  “Not that far from home now,” she thought as she resumed her run at a more enjoyable, relaxed pace.  At the next cross-street, less than a half-mile from her parent’s house, it came back.  That raspy, hungry breathing coming up behind her again, daring her to look back.  Once more she quickened her pace, her heart pounding so hard she could hear it.  “Why didn’t I keep that stick?”  Then came the moment of terror when she noticed yet another source of labored breathing shadowing her moves on the opposite side of the bushes.


She froze in surprise, paralyzed at the thought of not one, but a pack of two malevolents looking to rain havoc on an otherwise serene setting.  The pause was all he needed.  Her previously unseen attacker leaped at her, the blade of a knife gleaming menacingly in his right hand.  His left hand grabbed a handful of her ponytail, jerking her head back and exposing her throat.  He brought the knife-point up under her jaw, pressing just hard enough that she could feel the bite of the blade splitting the outer layer of her skin.  A warm, sickening drop of blood etched a line from her neck to the sweat-soaked collar of her T-shirt.


The man threw her to the ground and roughly pushed her face away, telling her not to look at his face, forcing her to look at the cold, cracked sidewalk along the direction she had just came.  It was then, in a momentary glint of moonlight, through the shadows of that desperate night, that she saw the other follower.  He presented himself in full view, facing Alicia and her attacker head on.


“That’s what I don’t understand,” she said later when talking to the police.  “I know I got a clear look at them both, but it’s all muddled and confused to me now.”  She could only scarcely describe the man who assaulted her, and even more jumbled was the mental picture of her other follower, or rather, or hero.


“I’m sorry.  It’s hard to tell exactly what happened,” she said apologetically to the police.  “I heard a noise, then this guy got on top of me, then something made him stop.  That’s when I looked up.  I only caught a glimpse of the other…thing. 


“Thing?”  The police chief asked.


“Well, I can’t quite explain what I saw.  I blinked, and before I knew it, I felt a rush of cold air sweep past me and a little pull on my jacket, and they both vanished, just that fast.  I turned around and ran home as fast as I could, thinking how stupid I had been for going out like that, at night, alone.


“He vanished….Just like that, huh?”  The policeman asked sarcastically while snapping his fingers.


“Well, I saw him – my hero - again.  At least, I think I did.  I stopped in front of my parent’s house and turned to look back down the road.  I just couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, but I guess that’s understandable considering what I had been through.  And I saw him.  He was moving, walking, I guess, away from me.  It’s almost like he sensed me looking, because he stopped, turned around and looked at me.  And then he vanished one more time.”


The only other information she could provide the police regarding the incident was that her hero had a lot of hair, a lion-like mane, and he was black as the night sky.


“Did he walk erect?  Did he fly?”  The police chief asked her as a couple of junior officers stifled snorts and giggles.  The summary of his report was a single sentence, “Obviously distressed over the situation – probably in shock.”


But, regardless of the skepticism evidenced by law enforcement, the town believed her.  More than that, they believed in him.  They believed even though only a few have seen him, and their accounts of these encounters have been maddeningly vague.  And now, add Alicia to the list of the chosen few.  He doesn’t have a name, yet let me be the first to offer a suggestion to suit such a champion of the common man.  I will call the hero, The Good Sheppard.  That’s the easy part.  Now the hard part is for you to read this story and examine the “evidence” for something that is more belief than flesh and blood.  It is for you to decide, does this mystical superhero even exist?


As I recall Lyle’s story I think how easy it is for me now to imagine Alicia’s terror that night.  I know all too well that fearful feeling from evil lurking in the dark, waiting to claim its victim and leave the wounded love-ones behind to rot.  Once again I think, no, I wish he had finished his documentary.  I think it is a story worth telling, and he told it well.  He didn’t like having to delve into the dark underbelly of life to be able to tell what he saw as a story of belief and hope.  But he knew it had to be done that way.  He once said, “There is no hope without despair.  No joy without pain.  No good without evil.”  On some level, I think Dostoyevsky would have liked that.  I’ve seen enough despair for a while, thank you.  I came on this trip for a change of scenery, both visual and mental.  Tonight is a night for line dancing at Gilley’s, so I can forget about reality for a little while and remember what the fun side of life’s balance sheet feels like.


For tonight I decide to get all decked out.  Why not?  I haven’t had much of a reason to get dressed up in ages, so it might feel nice to wear something other than dog-training attire out in public for a change.  I pull on a pair of snug, faded jeans, a cream-colored camisole under a turquoise long-sleeved wrap-around top, and a cute pair of cowgirl boots I picked up not long after I first tried line dancing.  I step back and study my image for a second in the hallway mirror.  It feels like a portal to the past, like I could step through the glass and be back to the girl I once was.  That fun child-like girl that Lyle adored.  “But I can still look like a fun person.  I mean, this isn’t bad, right?”  I think to myself.


But I wear my wedding ring because I’m not looking for anything but dancing.  I don’t want anything.  Well….except to forget.  I want to forget.  It’s been almost five months since I’ve been back.  Wow, already five months since the unthinkable happened.  I get that familiar pain.  That momentary panic.  I try to tell myself that it will be good for all of us to get together again and catch up.  I just wish there were more positive things to catch up on.


I make my way downstairs and Patricia is still getting ready in the bathroom.  She looks up from the sink with a mouthful of green toothpaste and sees that I curled my hair.  I usually wear it straight, mostly because Lyle always said how much he liked the way it fell naturally around my face.  Tonight I decided on a different look.  She says, “My, my.  You sure look like you’re ready for a fun night.  Something other than dancing on your menu?”  Then she looks down and sees my wedding ring.  “Sarah, honestly!  Don’t you think it’s been long enough?”  But nothing occupies her for long.  She gives one quick shake of the head, then back to brushing her teeth.


We take my car, because we know I’ll be sober enough t o drive us home at the end of the night.  We arrive at the restaurant to find our other friend already seated.  In most ways, Audrey is a control freak.  She is really strict with managing her time, so she insists on driving herself everywhere.  She refuses to be at the mercy of someone else’s schedule.


Audrey is my age, never been married, lives with her mom in a good part of town not too far from Patricia.  She rescues greyhounds – takes them in and gives them a good home when they are too old or injured to race anymore.  She and her mom are both good-hearted dog people, and that’s probably why I like them.  She looks like we both got the same wardrobe memo, and she doesn’t appear surprised either when she sees Patricia has sported a different look.  As she waves her arm to motion us towards her booth, something tells me that this is just one slice in the footage that will be captured of my life.  I can’t put my finger on why, but as we sit there gathered at the table, I realize that this temporary kinship will end.  Part of me wants it to last, wants this to be all there is to worry about in life.  I don’t want to think about the lonely drive back to Louisiana, to the emptiness.  But, I know that this respite from reality will end. 


Audrey and Patricia order something to drink to get their evening started, both of them obviously flirting with the waiter, Steve.  When he gets around to taking my order, Patricia interrupts, leaning forward a bit in case he had missed her cleavage, and says, “Oh, that’s DD.  She’s having water.”  I don’t say anything. 


Audrey, looking chipper as ever, asks, “So Sarah, I was wondering.  How do you like teaching?” 


“Well, it’s just the first semester, but I like the students there.  They just seem to want to be there more than students I’ve had at other colleges.  I mean, for most of these kids, the living conditions in Louisiana are atrocious.  They have to fight a huge up-hill battle just to get into college, and they take it seriously.  Most of them are working full-time and paying for their own education, so they are pretty invested.  They are good kids, trying their best.  I like to think I can help them.” 


“That’s really great, Sarah,” she said.  “I’m glad to know you are still enjoying your job, you know, with everything that has – uh – happened.“  Audrey’s voice trailed off, and she glanced away for a moment, taking a quick sip of her water.  “I’m glad to see you are getting along alright.” 


“I guess I’m doing as best as could be expected under the circumstances.  Not that it’s been easy.  Some wounds just take time to heal.”


“Did you find someone to talk with?  Someone who can give you some advice when you need it, or just let you talk things out?”


“The school has got someone.  I’ve met with him once.  It should be helpful,”  I lie, as I stare down at the table, not wanting her to notice the deception. 


Out of habit, I twist the ring on my finger, wishing, just wishing that I was back at my favorite diner, sharing another small slice of life with Lyle.  The diner was owned by a Greek family, and it’s the only place Lyle and I would consider going if we wanted to dine out of the house for a date night.  We thought that eating out was a waste of money, and money was always tight.  Lyle enjoyed going to the diner because it was quaint and they gave free spanakopita for appetizer.  I liked going because of their amazing desserts, which they displayed in a tall glass showcase designed to catch the customer’s eye the moment they entered.  It seemed like a cruel tease in a way.  These delicate treats were strategically positioned in full  view, just out of reach.  You could see your own reflection in that handsome display case¸ and observe the turmoil in your face when you see something you want, but know that either you shouldn’t want it, or that if you succumb to the temptation, you will regret the indulgence.  But when I was with Lyle, we did enjoy.  We did indulge in the decadent pleasure of sharing a piece of cake as we conversed about his book.  He’d look at me with those soft, beautiful blue eyes through his thick glasses, and my heart would simply melt.  He’d pretend to get mad when I threatened to eat all the frosting on the cake.


“De-press-ing!”  Patricia sings out.  “This is supposed to be a fun night ladies.  No sad talk!”  My mind quickly snaps back to the present.  Patricia gives a, “Woo-hoo!  There he is!”  Steve rounds the corner of the bar with the tray holding our drinks.  As he lays down the napkins in front of us, I look at the glass of water he offers me and I say, “You know what?  We’ve got a few hours.  I think I’ll have a drink.”  I believe those words surprised me more than either Audrey or Patricia, although the looks on their faces were priceless.


“What can I get for you?” 


“Uh, I don’t know.  I’ve never had anything.  Can you get me something that would, well, that would be a little easy on me?” I ask.


Steve smiles, “I think I can find something.  Be right back.”  He returns to the table a few minutes later with something called an Alabama Slammer.  I give him a big tip for being such a nice guy about it.  Patricia and Audrey converse about the tip amount and whether the waiter (or waitress) met the criteria for a specific percentage.  This is one topic they love to argue over, so I just keep my own thoughts on the subject to myself. 


We finish up at the restaurant and head to Gilley’s where, like a scene froze in time, the parking lot is packed.  I start to notice details – things in the periphery were only a blur the first few times I was here.  For instance, after we show our ID and walk inside, there’s a girl behind a stand of drinks submerged in a large open ice chest.  She’s wearing a pair of white chaps over short, tight, red shorts and a thin white half-shirt tied at the waist showing her tight abdomen, lacy bra, and everything but nipple.  She smiles at us, with a forced flashy smile, knowing that women are not her target audience for tips, and asks, “Wanna beer?” 


A guy answers from over Audrey’s right shoulder, wedging his way between us, and says, “From you, Honey?  Anytime!”  Then he turns to face us and says, “How have you ladies been?  Haven’t seen you in a while, Sarah.” 


It’s Dan, who we met our second time here, only two weeks before that last night.  We nicknamed him “Dancin’ Dan.”  He knows all the line dances and helped teach Audrey and I some of the routines.  The best part is his own trademark on the floor – he does them all with a beer in his hand and has never spilled a drop.  In some ways, he’s a little uptight with things, but that’s more of a feeling I get form him than any particular events I can point to.  All told, he’s a smiley kind of guy just out to have fun and not cause any trouble.  Patricia uses Dan as her “just in case” partner.  Some nights are slow nights for her, and when she doesn’t feel like she’s getting the level of attention she needs from the guys, she can always count on Dan to boost her ego and get her through another night.


I begin to notice how much of the “attention getting” is going on in the sidelines.  As is often the case, I feel like I don’t belong here in this carnivorous environment.  I feel like a wildlife photographer, detached, documenting a scene of the hunters and the hunted, doing everything in my power to stay unnoticed and out of the fray.  For a moment, I get distracted by all these scenes of the chase, the near-misses, and the occasional capture of the perhaps not-so-innocent prey.  As I let those thoughts slip away, I realize that Audrey is already out on the floor, dancing.  It’s a new routine, so I end up stuck on the sidelines, back in observation mode.  I see a bleached-blonde girl lewdly riding the mechanical bull, hootin’ and hollering.  It’s barely 9:00 pm and she’s already thoroughly drunk.  The guys are all lined up around her, some barely able to contain their thoughts of feasting on this willing prey.  They are ready to pounce, and it strikes me that this is all just a game.  Tonight, some will win and get their fill, and others will go home alone and hungry.  And most will get up tomorrow morning only to start the cycle all over again.


I notice a tall young skinny kid, probably around my age, talking to Patricia.  She is in full flirtation mode, talking loud with a huge fake smile, laughing and throwing her head back as if this kid was the most entertaining story-teller on the planet.  There’s something about him that I don’t like.


But before I have time to rationalize the judgment, Dancin’ Dan grabs my arm and leads me out onto the floor for a two-step.  We shuffle our way through the crowd and around the dance floor with me faithfully following his lead. 


“I like this dance,” he shouts in my ear.  “It’s the only time I can actually tell a girl what to do for two minutes and she has to listen.  Well, except perhaps your friend Patricia.  She seems to have her own agenda.”  He shakes his head and laughs.  Then he shifts the conversation to what Patricia’s wearing, “Maybe it could work for her if she were under 30.  But, it’s a little much.” 


He starts to sing along with the music and for a moment, as I focus on the upbeat rhythm, I put the thoughts of this place out of my mind.  Dancin’ Dan, however, remains aware of his surroundings.  He notices a familiar face across the floor and shouts in my ear, “Hey Sarah, see that girl dancing with the guy in the black Stetson over there?” 


I look over to the direction he pointed, “Yeah, what about her?” 


“Well, I’ve noticed her in here every other week or so for the past few months.  She’s married.  It appears that she never leaves with anyone else.  She must love her husband because she could get any guy here.  But I tell you what Sarah.  If that were my wife, and she looked like that…..well….I wouldn’t be sitting around at home.  I’d be getting my ass ready to come out here with her.  That’s all I’m saying about that.”


At least with Dan, I know I don’t have to say much.  He does plenty enough talking for at least two people.


As the two-step fades, there is barely enough time to catch a breath before the next song starts rockin’ the house.  “Dan!  This is my dance!” 


“Go for it!”  He smiles, always happy to see people having a good time.


I jostle my way to the center of the floor and see Audrey, who falls in line beside me.  We kick off the routine dance together, as the other dancers flock in to join us.  It’s all one big party out on the dance floor, and we’re all spinning and rocking back and forth, and twisting the toes on our right feet into the floor like we’re putting out a cigarette with our leather boots. 


When the song ends, Audrey and I take a break and head over to Patricia, who is still talking to that kid.  He and his two friends are hanging out by the mechanical bull.  Patricia introduces him, “This is John.  He’s from Oklahoma.” 


A shiver raises the hairs on the back of my neck.  Somehow, I knew, something is not right about this guy.


Audrey puts forward a friendly smile, “Oh, just visiting?” she asks.


         “Nah.  I live here with the other two bums over there.  But Oklahoma rules!  Go Sooners!”  Then he says, “Hey, why don’t we all get out of here and go see the battle of the bands.”


Patricia says, “Oh, c’mon gals.  What do you say?  That sounds fun!” 


This is exactly what I hoped wouldn’t happen.  I’m the one driving and it’s already 10 o’clock.  The dogs are probably mad at me, and besides, I have no interest in seeing the battle of the bands.  I say, “Why don’t we just dance a few more here and ……”


Mike, one of the “bums,” interrupts and says, “Yeah, let’s get outta here.  You ladies want to come back to the place?”


         And Patricia says, “Oh, yeah, let’s do that instead!  I’ve had enough music for tonight.”


To my surprise, Audrey speaks up and says, “Yeah, I’m in.  Sounds like it could be fun.”


I’m still not sure about all this.  Didn’t Patricia learn anything recently from going home with guys she just met?  I’m the one who’s driving and have no desire to go to this thug’s apartment.  But if we let Patricia go alone, I’ll probably get another phone call in the middle of the night to come get her.  Before I know it¸ I’m out-voted and we’re off to their apartment.


After a ten-minute drive we arrive at the Sooner house.  We make our way inside and end up sitting in their den.  John is sitting with his arm around Patricia, practically crawling on her at times.  I swear that Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic” is a more comforting and pleasant sight.  Fortunately, all of them notice the ring on my finger.  When Mike moves to casually drop his hand on my thigh, I politely brush him away and tell him I’m happily married.  The other guy met the same fate with Audrey.


For the next several hours we are treated to a trivial laundry list of “Facts about Oklahoma.“  John tells us about oil production, the Sooner’s record last season, Sooner’s playing pro football, how many tornados they had last year.  I might have fallen asleep from boredom if Mike didn’t shout out a question every few minutes.  It was always the same question, “Does anyone want any hotdogs?” 


At 4 am, after at least a half-dozen offers, none of us can take it anymore.  Audrey and I both say, “Ok already.  Make the damn hotdogs!”  With that, Mike jumps up from the sofa in a burst of excitement and grabs the dogs out of the fridge.  As Audrey and I listened from the den, we heard the sound of the microwave door slam shut and the timer start.  I couldn’t believe it.  All this excitement over 30 seconds of cooking dogs in the microwave?  We looked at each other and rolled our eyes, both of us thinking that this is probably Mike’s signature dish.  Mike yells from the kitchen, “Who wants mustard?”


It’s 4 am.  It’s been a very long day.  And I want to go home.  My mind is too tired to remind my weary body that I don’t have a home anymore.  Nevertheless, we finally say our good-byes and leave at 6.  Audrey gives me a hug, hops in her car, and heads back to her house.  For me, it isn’t so simple.  As Patricia and I strap ourselves in to make our way back the her  house¸ wouldn’t you know it, she feels the urge to stop at Starbucks.