September Again (September Stories) (11 page)

The sun finally dips below the r
iver gorge and night falls over the Scenic City. Sounds set the tempo with the insects and frogs singing from the river bank. As always, the temperature drops almost ten degrees once the sun vanishes and takes most of the humidity with it. The breeze blows stronger, the way night breezes do. She feels the calming sensation of the air on her face. Once the water of the river is on her face, it will almost be over. Once she goes under the water, she will be saved from this life of pain and heart break. Going under the water will save her. At this time of evening, with no one on the bridge, her plan will be successful. Everything is lined up now. Zelda, her father, and Marlowe would never want for anything as long as they live. They would now be rid of her and free to live their own lives. This is the only way to make everyone happy - including Liz. She can’t go on. She is just too tired anymore.

Looking around, she sees no one else on the bridge. All is
quiet except for the music from the club, Rhythm & Brew, down by the river, and an occasional dog bark in the distance. She sits on the rail, then straddles it for a moment before moving both legs to the ledge on the outside of the rail. She stands up. The breeze is blowing stronger through her long, blonde hair. Holding out her arms as if to welcome the fall and descent into the muddy river, she raises herself onto her toes. It is time to leap.
This act will finally make my daughter love me, idolize me the way she does Indie Shadwick.

As Liz leans to fall forward
, she feels an arm go across her stomach while another reaches across her chest. “Oh no, you don’t,” a man’s voice says as he picks her up and pulls her across the railing to the bridge side.

At the same time
, Liz sees two people approaching them in the darkness. As they move closer, she sees it is Marlowe and Zelda.

“
ZELDA
,” Liz utters as a sighed scream.

“There you are.
We’ve been looking all over the River Park for you. The police scan picked up your cell location, then you must’ve turned off your phone when you started walking the bridge. What are you doing here anyway?” says Marlowe. Zelda looks sheepish and stares at her shoes. “Liz, Zelda has something to tell you.”

“Liz?” the man’s soft voice says again
.
“LIZ?”

The three women look at each other, then
turn to look at the tall, rugged man who is standing behind Liz, wearing a clean white tee shirt, jeans, and old boots.

Holding her hands to his
scruffy face for an excruciatingly long moment, Liz whispers only one word before fainting.

“
Pete
.”

While Liz sleeps in the adjoining hospital room, Marlowe and Liz’s attorney sit in the chairs opposite Pete in the small visitor’s chamber.

“Can you tell us where you got these?” Marlowe
asks.

“The Poet and I had a correspondence before he passed away. These are all the letters he sent me,” Pete
says.

“Some are in Liz’s handwriting,” Marlowe
states and the attorney agrees.

“I don’t know anything about that. All I know is that he sent me these letters. I am giving you everything he ever sent me so that you can give them to Liz and their daughter. I had no idea that The Poet had married Liz Snow.”

“Yes, she has always been a very private person,” the attorney says.

“After your
, um, accident, Pete, Liz wanted to escape everything to do with you and her past. You can understand that, right?” Marlowe asks.

“Of course I understand. Who wouldn’t want to get away from the mess I caused
? That’s the other reason I’m here,” Pete says.

“What do you mean?” Marlowe
questions him.

“There are poem
s in here that Jack wrote for his wife. Personal poems he said he had never shared with anyone. He trusted me to keep them private. It’s all there in the letters. He wrote something about leaving verses scattered all over the world. He wanted me to keep these because he knew I was from the Tennessee Valley, same as his wife. Go ahead; read them. I know they’re not going beyond those of us here.”

“But this one is from you,” says Marlowe.

“Yes, I was going to just leave the verses for her before I bumped into you guys here. Go ahead; read. I’ve nothing to hide. My only hope is the verses may help Elizabeth feel better.”

Marlowe reads aloud:

“
Dear Elizabeth,

“I hope you are recovering as speedily as possible after your ordeal on Walnut Street Bridge. Life is indeed puzzling in the way it puts us through stuff.

“
I'd best keep this simple. It is impossible for me to meet you because of what happened between us all those years ago. But I have to contact you because I have something important to give you.

“
I suspect you know that I was lucky enough to enter into quite a long correspondence with your beloved husband, Jack O. Savage, God rest his soul. I swear to you I did not know you were his wife when I first wrote to him. Nor did I expect him to reply to me. But he did. And we became friends. We exchanged letters about poetry and life. I was truly shocked to my core when he became ill. I am sorry about the loss you suffered when he passed.

“
Jack and I exchanged many letters. His friendship helped me to come to terms with the terrible things I did in my earlier life. I never told him about the train wreck and the deaths I caused because of my sinful ways. He just knew me as a guy in the woods - haunted by his past mistakes.

“
I sent your husband many of the poems I started writing when I was looking for salvation. About every third or fourth letter, he would send me a few lines, sometimes just two lines of his own verse.

“
Then, one day, he sent me some poems which he said he was writing for you because you were having trouble sleeping after some trouble in the village near to where you live in Cornwall, England. He said he intended them to be a meditation in the form of five sonnets, some seventy lines in all. They were to relax you, Elizabeth, to make life a little easier for you. God knows, you have had some troubles in your time, me being one of them – for which I am sorry.

“
Here are the poems. They were written for you exclusively. He did not intend to publish them. They are yours. As you will see, there are only four of them in his hand because he was having trouble finishing the fifth and final verse. The fifth verse is in my hand because I wrote it after he died. I don’t know why I wrote it. I just did. Maybe Jack knew that I would have to. I don’t know what.

“
I hope they will make you feel better at this time when you have been feeling troubled in your life. I hope God will look on you with pity and that you will find new strength to deal with your troubles.

God bless,

Pete Hendrix

BE STILL

There is a morning in your mind

A time of peace-made otherness

In primacies of gentleness

You find yourself a mote of life

Suspended in a wand of light

You float in perfect harmony

You are a living wealth of calm

A lichen of relaxedness

You slow oxbow you surgent flow

Until you still yourself to know

Love is a morning in your heart

Be still that it may be in you

That you may feel its beauty true

In stilling Nature's loving art

~

JOIN WITH ALL

In meditative balance true

We are at one with all who love

To love is how we're born to be

A part of all made right and free

We feel the strength of all we are

At one with all who are long gone

Made one with all still yet to be

No longer just a lonely me

We are made one the truth to see

Our Human Soul's great primacy

Join soul to living soul alive

In balanc'ed morality

One human commonality

We hold each other's hand to thrive

~

FEEL NEW GOODNESS FLOW THROUGHOUT

From me to you and back again

In surgent spiral nourishment

From first to last in life it gives

And gives and gives a gain

To give in life with every breath

To live to love and love to live

To give new goodness to the last

To live in love brings happiness

To give to others in our hearts

A pulse of calmness new imparts

I feel you in my arteries

In every limb in every vein

You give to me tranquility

A son rise in my soul again

~

GIVE ANEW

Your life's a dream that somehow flew

A miracle on wings aloft

You live anew with every breath

Your Poet Nature writes in you

A shimmering of given life

You live, o how you live this dream!

A breathing stitch, a living seam

A gift of givens made to give

New joy to other gifts you bring

Because to give anew's to live

This joyful dream's your air borne lift

To give and give and give anew

Instinctively you know it's true:

To give wins all the greatest gift

~

BE TRUE

To love is all we need to do

To know the best of all it is to be

Alive to this imperative

We are reborn with every breath

We are made universal in our birth

We are, o how we are!

Made mediums of joy!

A beam of truth illuminates our core

A seam of primal light

A stream of life forgiving right

Be true to love for love to you be true

To love commit to be complete

The universe makes love

To know herself to be made true

~

L
iz picks up the loose papers one more time as she sits on the side of the bed in her parents’ home. The little house had originally been a log cabin two hundred years ago. It had evolved into the little white clapboard house in which Liz and her father had grown up. Her father’s family had owned this property since her grandfather’s great-grandfather had moved into the Tennessee Valley when it was the Cherokee Nation. And, there they had stayed. Her feet are on the polished hardwood floor. Her mind roams to think of Jack as a lone tear tumbles feather-like down her right cheek. She brushes away the tear with the back of her hand before it can damage Jack’s writing on the pages. Too late. It hits the page and blurs Jack’s writing. Even his poetry is weeping now.

Oh
, Jack! You left verses for me. Seventy lines of you at your finest, written just for me, for us.
The world knew he left thousands of lines for Indie. Numberless verses were spread across the globe, celebrating her. But, his most perfect, most exclusive words had been secreted away and written in honor of their life together.

Jack’s love made me, an ordinary girl from North Georgia, into someone extraordinary. In return, my love for Jack made him normal, which was no small feat for
wild Jack O. Savage.
But now this. Just like it was after Jack's death. The insane media focus. And all because a hospital nurse wanted to earn a few dollars and leaked the story to the press. Now Jack's lines are out in the world. And the internet has its usual feeding frenzy. The media has picked up on the documents and the news has spread rapidly via the internet.
Liz’s Love Letters
.
Poet’s Posthumous Promises. Dead Letter Office Comes Alive.

Damn the internet trolls.
The most hurtful was the British press. They attacked Zelda, calling her the Savage Dwarf.
Savage Dwarf Loves Indie (but her dad loved her mum). Oh the hurt of it!
Zelda is just a child - an eighteen-year-old little girl whose father died when she was very young. There is no reason to hurt a child.
Especially when that child is my baby girl.