Virgil
I live in a tiny cabin in the woods. Don’t need much. Never have. Can of beans, stack of firewood, good book. I read other people’s lives. To see how it’s done. Biographies teach you. That’s how I learn about love. Passion. Affairs of the heart. Flaubert stayed single. Yet who better knew a woman’s heart? Love thundered from Beethoven’s hands. Still, he died alone. Henry James, unwed, liked it that way.
My mother found love twice. Who can say what’s right? How much to keep? How much to lose? I’ve seen pictures. Blue hat, penciled brows. Confusion in her oval face. My father died from his grudge.
I’m ninety now. I’ve lived in a city, a farm, even a vineyard. Picked grapes, sowed corn, sold hats. But home is best. Teapot, firm bed, front porch. The rest is extra. A dividend. Some folks disagree. Call me a misanthrope.
I have no phone. No television. No computer. Silence has a sound. You can hear it if you listen. The whisper of time. I get weary of that whisper. There are others like me. I spot them, alone at the checkout. Pint of milk, Can of tuna, an apple.
Sometimes before supper I doze and wake up wanting. Not tea. Not toast. I stir the coals, browse my book. It isn’t words I want. I put out the fire. Put the wanting to sleep.
Not that I don’t believe in love. I get curious. Who wouldn’t? Why I missed out. Did I stand on the wrong spot? The wrong moment? Lord knows I’ve lived ninety years. Gave it a chance now and then. A glance. A kiss. A touch. A summer fling. But then, I’d go on home. Wherever home was. California, Cleveland, Rome. Didn’t matter. A tidy room. Pick up my book. More love between pages than between cold sheets.
There was someone once. I called him Max. Sold shoes in Akron. Quiet man. Big feet. Took off his shoes at the door. He liked picture shows. That’s what he called them. Old fashioned. Careful. Like me. Maybe, I thought. Just maybe. He said he loved me. He said it more than once. Maybe it was only words. But I couldn’t say them back. What did it feel like, love? I couldn’t ask. You’ll know, they say. But you don’t.
I left him in front of his shoe store. A wet day in April. He wore rubber boots, a stocking cap. I think of him sometimes. His big feet, his picture shows. Maybe I missed out. My pulse beat out the rhythm of the years. War, peace, war.
Then I found him in the woods. Big dog with a big nose. Classic, Roman. I didn’t seek him out. He came to me. Abandoned. Filthy. Scared. I bathed him. Groomed him with a wire brush, dried him by the fireside. I named him Virgil.
We didn’t go out much. Just to the woods and back. Virgil loved it by the fire. Winter passed. We walked. I read my book. We slept. He breathed. I breathed. He snored. I snored. Not harmony, by any means. But the tempo suited us.
I didn’t see it coming. Foolish me. He stopped snoring. Whimpered in his sleep, rolled over on his back and died. I held my breath and waited for his.
“Breathe, Virgil!”
But he was gone.
Another winter passed. Hour by hour. My books. Pot of tea. The hearth. Once they were enough.
Then I had the dream.
Virgil runs through the woods. He spots a soft-eyed beagle. They roll in the grass. Night comes. The beagle howls at the moon. Then he runs away. Virgil slumps home, lies down on the hearth and dies.
I envy Virgil. Hearts are made to be broken. Or so I’ve read. Tonight I feel a sharp pain in my own. Perhaps it’s the beginning of a tiny, precious crack.
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Diane Stevens