Jonathan Moler
Amaranthine Memory by Jon MolerJon Moler
“Just one?” I ask, horrified.
The gatekeeper, Gabriel nods, “It is difficult. You may take your time; a week.”
“What if I’m not able to decide?”
“We are understaffed,” Gabriel says.
My mouth drops open in disbelief. A young man takes hold of my arm and gently leads me away. Walking is constant vertigo. The world is bright and nebulous.
We walk away from Gabriel, and distance brings relief. Slowly, the world begins to come into focus. I see the man with my arm more clearly. He is young with old eyes. “Is this purgatory?” I ask him.
“Nothing like that,” says the man. He pauses. I can tell he has done this many times before. “Think of this place as a Way Station. Every soul must pass through here before going on. Every soul must focus itself before going beyond.”
“Are you an angel?” I ask.
The man smiles and the skin crinkles around his eyes, “Nothing so grand as that. Gabriel is as close as you will find.”
I look at him curiously, and he sighs. “I was just like you once, except young. I was full of indignation at finding myself here. I was not willing to choose. I refused because I was afraid.”
His suit is old and faded navy. I think I recognize it from an old Charlie Chaplin film that my uncle showed me when I was young. “Have you been here long?”
The man nods, “When are you from?”
“Two-thousand and four,” I answer.
“I died eighty years ago,” he says wistfully.
“Do you still remember?” I ask.
He smiles, not so sad this time, “Perfectly. That’s what makes it difficult. If I had my turn again I would still not be able to choose.” He puts a comforting hand on my shoulder, “But you will choose. The young have the most trouble, because they lack the perspective of age. I have age now, but not the experience that comes with it.”
I wring my handkerchief anxiously, fingering the letters embroidered in the now dull white fabric. I sit down on a mottled stone bench and contemplate my feet in the grainy gravel path. In front of me is a fountain with three stone fish rising out of the water at varying heights, suspended by nothing. Their stone scales glisten. Their eyes are fixed on me. The clearest crystal water arcs from their mouth into the smooth, circular pool of marble.
My eyes trace the path of the gravel. Beyond me is another bench, there is a woman, forty years old is my best guess. Her shoulders are slumped slightly forward, and her head is tilted back ever so slightly. Her eyes are closed. There is the barest hint of a smile painted around her lips. My guide smiles, sadly, “She is almost ready,” he whispers.
“Maybe she can help you,” I suggest.
My guide looks alarmed, “No. No, she cannot help me, and disturbing her would be a great disservice. And how can anyone help me decide what memory to keep? You would do best to focus yourself. I will decide or I will not.” He begins to walk away from me.
My eyes widen, “What if I can’t decide?”
“Then we will talk much further. There are other arrivals to see to.”
I fix my gaze at the stone fish and their geysers of water. I stroke my white mustache and I try to wade into my stream of memory.
Emma and I walked slowly down the brick path in the park. She held my arm with affection and resignation. I basked in the chilly fall air. Tasted it. I pointed my cane weakly toward a pile of leaves swirling red, orange, and yellow in the wind over grass, defiantly green against the coming winter. “And they say we don’t have twisters in New York.”
Emma sniffled, “Marshall, what am I going to do without you?”
I put my arm around her shoulder and said nothing. We walked into autumn, watching the leaves dance.
It was cancer. I had nodded numbly when the doctors had told me. I wasn’t surprised. At my age, it wasn’t unexpected. I smoothed back my remaining wisps of gray hair and put on my tweed hat. I walked out of the office into the sterile waiting room.
Emma was waiting for me. Her hair was pulled back into a tight, nervous bun. Her auburn hair was streaked with white. I liked it better than when she had been dyeing it.
She looked up from her magazine, “Eating Well,” and looked at me. I smiled at her, but my eyes gave me away. Emma stood up. Her hands were shaking and the magazine slipped out of them. Her small body forced out a heavy sob and she disintegrated into tears. I walked over, wrapped my arms around her, and held her, “Shhh,” I said, “I promise I’ll do the dishes from now on.”
She laughed and looked up at me disconsolately, “You’re no good at housework.”
It was cold as the dickens outside, but I really had no choice but to be there. Outside work on the roof in the dead of winter is suicidal at best. My hands ache with my progressing arthritis and the sun doesn’t feel like gracing me with a few rays of rejuvenating light.
Mrs. Thompson comes outside, armored from head to toe in an outrageously warm looking goose-feather jacket, “Marshall, are you done yet, this has taken weeks!”
“Ma’m,” I said, “you have no idea how difficult roof work is in the winter, especially when it’s cold and treacherous.”
She rolled her eyes impatiently, “If you’re not up to the task, I can find a younger carpenter. I can’t afford to pay you indefinitely.”
“And I can’t afford to fall off the roof and break my back,” I responded irritably, growing colder from the few moments of inanimation.
She sighed dramatically and stalked back into her house, leaving me in peace for at least a moment. The sun peeked through the clouds and I got back to work on the roof, content to be outside and working in the sun, the crisp air just made me feel that much more alive. I continued contentedly with the reshingling, working the arthritis out of my hands as I warmed them.
I sat back with a happy grin on my face. My graying hair shot out from the sides of my old baseball cap with the intertwining “NY” proudly displayed in front. Daniel and one of his friends from college were jumping up and down, celebrating, screaming incoherently as the announcer on the television yelled, “Buckner misses it! The Mets win the World Series! A fitting end to a spectacular season!”
I summitted the crest of Katahdin. A Maine wind tousled my hair as I breathed heavily and clutched my knees. I sat down laboriously and let my pack slide off my shoulder. I took a swig of crisp mountain water from my dented canteen and stared into the distance. The sky was achingly blue, and I felt like I could see clear through to Georgia.
I lay under the stars, listening to the rain patter on my helmet as it cut through the humidity. I cradled my gun, and stared up at the stars with my mouth open, tasting the clean water, letting it roll down my throat and cleanse me. I could hear Pvt. Jenkins breathing beside me.
It was strange to see the same constellations across the world from Manhattan. I forgot that I was in a jungle and not in a summer downpour in upstate New York as the smell of Napalm tickled my nose.
Emma and I were curled up together in bed. Our legs intertwined and sweaty from love. I glanced at the door, where my green Army sack was sitting. I took a deep breath of her hair, inhaling the violets. We stayed like that for hours, it could have been days. She turned her head and kissed my upper lip, “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself, Soldier Boy.”
“I promise.”
I look up, unsure of how much time has passed. I wonder if the people who say that their life flashed before their eyes during a near death experience were here for a time. My guide walks up to me, and asks, “Have you made a decision?”
I shake my head, “There are so many memories to go through. I can’t understand how anyone could decide.”
He nods, “They will begin to separate themselves. They always do.”
“But they didn’t for you.” I state doubtfully.
He looks angry or offended for a moment, but realizes that I didn’t mean to offend or implicate anything about him, “I’m a coward.” He says, and walks away. Not knowing what else to do, I drift back into my memories.
“Son, you’re making a huge mistake,” my father told me, wringing his hands angrily.
“I’m tired of you lecturing me about school,” I said, “I’m not spending another two years of my life learning useless facts that won’t do me any good when I graduate.”
He looked around at my room; a jumble of boxes and piles of clothes, “What do you intend on doing now that you’re a dropout?”
“I want to do something with my hands, create something. I was thinking about studying to be an architect, maybe a carpenter.”
My father snorted in disgust, “Try raising a family on a carpenter’s salary. You’ll regret this, Marshall, you have to be rational about things.”
“You can help me take my things down to the car or you can leave,” I told him. My father walked out the door without a box.
I sat in my dim room at 2:00 AM. I was staring glumly at my textbook.
“BIOCHEMISTRY” the intimidating lettering on the cover of the book mocked me, daring me to dive in again. It threatened me with coenzymes, nucleotides, and any other number of gibberish words and unfathomable chemistry. It might as well have been Greek. “I’d have a better chance of understanding Greek,” I mutter, and toss my pencil at the wall.
I sniffed and wiped a tear from my eye with a muddy paw. I gently put Charger’s broken body into the hole I had dug in the backyard and started filling it in. The arms of the wooden cross hung limp and skewed in the twine I used to fashion it. “You deserved better, boy,” I whispered to him. I sobbed every time I shoveled a mound of dirt onto him.
The boys had circled around Stanley. Greg pushed him down to the ground, dirtying his slacks. “Red bastard,” Greg spat. Some of the other boys jeered. I hung around in back, meekly, hoping to escape notice.
He looked back and saw me shuffling from foot to foot, eyed down, fiddling with the strap to my backpack. “Look at Marshall, maybe he feels sorry for the Commie.”
There was an “ooooh” from the pack of boys. “Shut up Greg,” I said, “You know I’m not a Communist.”
“If you hate Commies, show us,” Demanded Greg.
I walked up to Stanley, who had peed himself to add insult to injury. He looked at me pityingly, and like that, I kicked him sharply in the shin, “Stupid Commie!” I yelled.
It was a cloudy day and the wind pulled me along like I was a puppet as I clung to the line of my kite. They sky was blustery and gray and my dad was yelling directions over the wind. The wind picked up and I held on for dear life as the kite took me at least a foot off the ground. I let go and rolled, settling on my back and watching with wonder as my kite ascended to the heavens.
I look up from the fountain. One of the guides, a young woman, is getting a boy settled. I feel a pang of sympathy at the confusion on his face. The boy hugs his knees to his chest on the stone bench. He sees me looking at him, and I give him a reassuring smile. He smiles timidly back.
The young woman guide glides toward me, “Will you tell the one that led me here that I’m ready?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says.
I don’t know what time means here, but he comes shortly after. “You’re ready?” my guide asks.
I nod, “Yes, thank you, I think I’m ready.”
He smiles his sad smile, “I told you that you would manage.”
“What was your name?” I ask him.
He pauses, “In eighty years, you’re the first person to ask me that.”
I shrug and extend my hand, “Marshall, I was a carpenter.”
He grasps my hand fervently, “Louis. I was a musician. A Cellist.”
“Will you get another chance to choose?” I ask.
“Eventually,” Louis says. “Whenever someone cannot choose, the one who has been here the longest is given another chance. Eventually it will be my turn again.”
Louis turns to walk away, I am about to drift off when he turns to me, “What will you remember?”
I was hunkered down in my workshop with my goggles on, working with my hands, pressing the boring bar to the wood as it whirled around like a pinwheel in a hurricane. A smile dawned on my face as the wood began to take shape. The way the block of wood was transforming from splinters and corners into elegant curves mesmerized me. It was as if the shape had always been embedded in it, and my hands were the key needed to coax it out.
The sawdust mingled with the smell of fresh pancakes cooking on the griddle upstairs. Emma peeked in the door, and the sawdust drifted around her head and her hair like a halo of golden snow, “Breakfast, honey.”