Afterglow
A Story By Ned B. Johnson
Smashwords Edition Copyright 2011 Ned B. Johnson
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Afterglow
The fire nestled itself nicely between the sand and the crook of the sun-bleached log, right where the ground used to separate its visible and invisible universes. To the left of the fire, massive roots began like thick, wooden legs, each traumatically amputated above the knee. To the right of the flames lay the first 25 feet of the once proud trunk of the derelict tree. Now it was being slowly eaten in two by the hungry tongues of flame which flickered and danced up and around its girth, leaping occasionally into the night sky like marooned space travelers from far away, seeing their home near a distant star and jumping at it in a vain attempt to return.
Ted had built the fire in the elbow of that driftwood log after the last violent storm several months before. The log was still there and, though there had been many fires built in that same place, it was only now beginning to show the effects. He had chosen that spot for the fire because it offered good shelter in case there was a strong breeze blowing, and the tree reflected the heat outward so one got more warmth from the same fire. Later, though, he had found that, once the fire was lit, its glow created an environment that transcended time and space, providing a venue for truth to be spoken, fears conquered and love fully expressed. It was a place in which it always felt wonderful just to be alive as yourself. Best of all was sharing it with others who felt the same. Tonight there were four of them, including Ted, and he sat down on the blanketed sand to wait for the others to walk down from the cottage.
Ted sat there staring into the fire, lost in his own thoughts for several minutes before he heard the others coming. He could not yet see them because it was quite dark by now and they were still out of range of the firelight. He closed his eyes and just listened. He heard the constant roar of the surf, the crying of gulls and the distant voices of his companions, talking softly to one another as they walked up the beach toward him.
There he sat; eyes closed, listening, still as the log, hearing the voices growing louder and louder. At first he couldn’t distinguish one speaker from the other. As they drew closer, he could make out John’s voice clearly since it was much deeper than either of the women. Then Kathy laughed out loud. There was no mistaking the husky resonance of her laughter. She had the kind of laugh that comes only from those who genuinely love to laugh. Ted mused that Kathy had spent a lifetime perfecting the art of experiencing joy fully. Secretly, he was so fond of Kathy that he sometimes envied John. He would never trade Barb for her, so it was all pretty academic, but he did enjoy thinking about the possibilities.
Now the trio was almost visible as they walked three abreast; John in the middle, Barb and Kathy on either side. Ted could hear and understand most of what they were saying even before he could see them well. By the time they entered the hemisphere of firelight, he heard everything perfectly.
“Ahoy, captain, permission to come aboard?” shouted John as they approached.
“Argh, matey, heave-to and rest your bones,” Ted replied in his best Long John Silver voice.
Barb broke away from the other two and bounded over to Ted, hurling herself at him at the last moment. Barbs laugh spoke of the secret laugh that children know, the one they laugh while they are doing something naughty but not quite punishable. She gave you the impression that she was delighted about getting away with something forbidden.
Ted was bowled over by the force of her momentum, even though he outweighed her nearly two-to-one. He wound up on his back with Barb pinning him to the blanket. After some rolling around and an immodest kiss hello, Barb rolled off and made a depression in the sand under the blanket to use as a seat.
Meanwhile, John and Kathy had simply and quietly sat down to their left.
John joked, “Nice fire, Ted. Keep up the good work and we may hire you on as designated fire-starter,”
“Gosh, boss! You really mean it?” Ted responded with mock excitement.
“Yep. You’ve got my word on it.” They all laughed, then fell silent for a short while. If anyone had asked why they were not speaking, the most likely answer was that they just wanted to get used to the feeling of this place and time. They wanted to settle in and really be there so that when they did speak, it would be from the right place within them, the place that always came to the surface before this fire.
Barbara was the first to speak. “Warm night, soft breeze. How sweet it is. Don’t you just love it?”
“You bet your sweet buns I do,” Kathy said, her words carving a place for themselves in the night, like a dog circling around himself before a warm hearth, then lying down to rest. “I like the stormy nights too, but it’s different. Remember that big blow last year when we were here? Wasn’t that something!” Her mood changed from introspection to excitement in a heart beat.
“It sure was,” Ted replied and the others nodded. “You know what I like most about natural violence like that? It’s the power. Actually, it’s the immensity of the power. It puts things in perspective. Oddly enough, instead of feeling insignificant by comparison, I feel empowered myself, because I sense that I am part of it. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yah, I do,” said John. “Sometimes I feel like it’s a command performance of this huge traveling circus just for me. Once in a while, I even feel like I’m somehow orchestrating the whole thing. You know, conducting it like a symphony.” His arms conducted an imaginary orchestra for emphasis.
Kathy, who was sitting with her arm around John’s back, said, “You never told me that, John. I know exactly what you mean. I haven’t thought about that since I was a kid. I used to love to walk on the beach during storms, the bigger the better. My folks wouldn’t let me do it at night, though. They thought it was too dangerous. I knew they were right, but I still wanted to. One time, I sneaked out in the middle of the night just to walk in a storm. It was incredible. The winds were up around 50 or 60 with gust of 70 or 80. Half the time I couldn’t even stand up, but I didn’t care. I’d just sit down or kneel until the gust died down and then keep on going. Man that was being alive. It seems like I quit doing it so much as soon as people stopped telling me not to.”
“I can believe that,” John quipped. Kathy gave him a gentle sock on the shoulder and everyone laughed. “What turns you on the most about storms, Barb?” John asked.
Barb thought for a few moments then, speaking slowly at first, “It’s kind of hard to explain. I know that storms don’t start right here. They start somewhere else and travel thousands of miles to get here. The really big ones start as typhoons on the other side of the Pacific. I like to think of where this storm has been, the lives it’s touched, the havoc it has wreaked. It seems to create a sense of spaciousness, like seeing this place in its proper context instead of experiencing it as a solitary spot. And I like to think that there are other people all over the world feeling storms the same way I do. That makes me feel connected. I guess that’s what it’s all about; storms make me feel my connectedness very strongly.”
“Me too,” said Kathy. “I could never have said it as well as you, but then I’ve got you for a mouthpiece, so I don’t need to. It’s a real trip to feel plugged into something that big and mean. Makes me feel like a 500 pound mouse,” her voice dropped an octave, “here kitty, kitty, kitty.”
That brought the house down. Cries of laughter rumbled around like thunder, tapering gradually into silence again. It could be said that no one knew nor cared what the others were feeling and thinking. It would, however, be more accurate to say that they all cared very much because they did know.
Some time later, as the fire dwindled, Ted got up, walked over to a stack of driftwood scraps he had collected, and carefully laid a couple of them in the fire. As he sat back down next to Barb, John spoke again.
“Mom used to love storms too. We talked about it once. She said a lot of the things we did, in her own way.”
Barb looked directly at him, “You miss her a lot, don’t you John.”
“Yep. I surely do. Even though it’s only been a couple of months since the crash, I don’t think I’ll ever stop missing her.”
“How’s your uncle doing? Is he out of the hospital yet?” asked Ted.
“Uh huh. Been out for a couple of weeks now. He wants to get back to work soon. It was awfully tough on him. Probably tougher than on me. Not only did he lose his kid sister, but he was flying the plane too. That’s a double whammy if there ever was one. But he’s handling it better than any of us has a right to expect. He’s a damn good man, my uncle Clifford. A damn good man.”
“So you don’t blame him at all?” queried Ted.
Without hesitation, John said, “No, I never really did. What could he have done? He had rented the plane from a first class company, he damn near landed it safely after the engine quit. Twenty yards on either side and neither of them would have had a chance.
“To tell you the truth, I find myself thinking that she wanted to go that way; quick, clean, with no foreplay. I just have this picture in my mind of her getting a huge kick out of it, like driving straight off a cliff at 100 miles an hour, eyes wide open, looking right into the jaws of whatever’s there until impact.”
“I think you’re right, honey,” said Kathy. “She’d have loved to go out in a blaze of glory like that. She’d always wanted to get her name in the paper, too. A tough way to grab headlines, but effective. She was very concerned about being a burden in her old age and being sick or blind or whatever. She hated to even think about it. Now it’s a done deal. I’m glad she never had to live it out that way. No matter how much we may miss her, I would rather lose her now than to see her go through that kind of hell.”
“Right on, babe. Right on,” John said with just the merest hint of a crack in his voice.
Barbara fidgeted, shifting her weight off a nearly sleeping cheek, “Do you really believe that she had a hand in choosing to go that way, John?”
“Yes, I really do,” John said, nodding. “It’s just too perfect to be untrue. Even casting uncle Clifford in the role of pilot. They were always so close, like there was some kind of cosmic bond between them that could never be broken. They loved each other in a way I doubt any of us will ever fully understand. They were an intimate part of each other’s life for over six decades and still acted like kids half the time when they were together. It’s just perfect that he was with her at the end, even though he decided to stick around. It’s sort of like she was moving away and he drove her to the airport and gave her a nice sendoff. Just the kind of thoughtful gesture they both made so often. I don’t feel sorry for her. I only feel sorry for we who have to live in a world without her. Especially myself.”
Ted looked into the bed of coals collecting under the fire. “I hear ya, pal. I felt the same way when my dad died. As far as I was concerned, as sick as he’d been getting all those years, dying was the best break he’d had for a long time. But it made me an orphan and that went down like a case of broken iodine bottles. Guess it still does even after 10 years.”
“I’ve never lost anyone close to me,” Barb said quietly. “I don’t know how I would handle it. My parents are both alive and well, and I don’t have any children or other close relatives. When Mom and Dad die, assuming I don’t beat them too it, I just don’t know what to expect from myself. For one thing, I don’t understand how you guys can make jokes and find anything good in the death of your own parents. If I didn’t know you better, I’d think that either you didn’t care or that you were faking to avoid your real feelings. But I know that’s not true, you’d never do that.”
John interrupted, “You’re right about that, Barb, I do care a very great dea,l but I’m not trying to avoid my own feelings either. It’s just that I don’t believe that what happened to her is bad for her. I believe that she chose her death and everything else in her life just like we all do. I trust her to have made a wonderful choice. It leaves me hungry and sad, but the only way to have avoided that would be for me to have died first. Given the choice, I must say I rather like the way it worked out. She got what she wanted and, given that, I got what I wanted. Do you see what I mean, Barb?”
“No. I really don’t. My God, John, she was your mother, the only one you ever had, if I’m not mistaken. She died horribly in a flaming plane crash and you’re sitting there telling me that she cooked the whole thing up and everybody got what they wanted. John, that’s crazy. I suppose that you’d just as soon drop the big one now and avoid the rush?”
“Calm down, sweetheart,” Ted crooned. “You’re getting in a little too deep. You’re starting to believe your own horror stories. I know what John’s talking about and I agree with him completely, at least in principle. All he’s saying is that we are all at choice in our lives and dying is no different. We’ve talked about that and I know you feel the same way. So what’s this really about? Come on, you’re among friends.” He gave her a little squeeze and a quick ear-nibble.
She smiled a little and took a deep breath. “You’re right, I was getting a little full of myself for a minute there. I thought I believed that we’re all pulling our own strings but I don’t think I ever really considered it in connection with death before. All of a sudden I felt like death had to be an exception. It was really hard even to see that, much less let it go. Don’t ask me why, though.”
“Okay, why?” asked Ted.
Barbara looked over at him smiling, and said with mock irritation, “I told you not to ask me that, you bastard. I can see I’m in for it now. Okay. The only thing that comes up is that I know I’m afraid of how I will handle it when it’s my turn. I don’t just mean my parents death but mine. It’s hard to imagine being at a point where you know it’s over; no more second chances, no phone call from the governor at the last moment, just certain and immediate extinction.”
John lurched forward, “But that’s the point, Barb, I see no extinction. I see continuity. I expect that when I die, it will seem to me that the real world died, not me. I’ll just wake up one day and look around for all the familiar stuff and say, ‘Where the hell did they go?’” That brought a chuckle from the group. John continued. “So when you get what you came for, you just send in a cosmic change-of-address and move on.”
Barb had been listening intently and now she blurted out, “Alright, but leave to go where? To do what? How?”
“We must each continue to grow and expand ourselves so, after a little R&R, we cook up a new plot, one we expect will bring us the experiences we most want to have, then we live it out. Now before you jump all over me, remember that people love to go to horror movies, not just romantic comedies and musicals. So if a life looks to you like a horror story, realize that you’re probably witnessing Son of Dracula or something.”
Barb was already laughing. “You got me, sheriff. I give up. Don’t whup me no more.”
Kathy had been very quiet for some time. Now that the floor was again open, she said, “What about babies who die, though. They can’t choose, can they? I mean I just can’t see a tiny or even unborn baby spouting ‘to be, or not to be...’ It just doesn’t compute.”
Ted responded first. “Speaking for myself, we choose our lives, too. We choose when, where and if we will be born as well as the circumstance that go with it. We choose our parents, our era and our body. Choice doesn’t begin at or after birth. Choice is forever.”
“So it’s just a little joke we play on ourselves, when we think that we don’t choose.” Smiling at John, Kathy said, “I am catching on, though, aren’t I?” John nodded. It was clear in the expression on his face that he was very proud of the woman with whom he’d chosen to spend his life.
The conversation turned to other topics as the fire was stoked over and over again until deep into the night. Sometime before dawn, the four friends drifted away, back toward the cottage and their own sweet slumbers. It was their last night together for this year’s vacation, and they were well satisfied with it’s outcome. And as their consciousness slipped away into the netherworld, the last embers of the fire scurried out of sight, and burrowed into a secret world of their own.
--fin—
Author’s Note:
I hope you enjoyed this story. It has always been one of my personal favorites. If you’d like to read more, please go to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/NedJohnson to find more of my stories and books. Some, like this one, are free. Others have a modest price tag. However, if you liked this example of my writing, you are almost certain to enjoy most, if not all, of my other work.
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Since I only write about things I feel strongly about, my words are my heart and mind in tangible form. So thank you for taking the time to read my words, and through them sharing a piece of their author.