Today’s Story
“So I’ve been thinking about our future,” Sam whispered.
He’d always found eye contact to make his eyes water, so instead he stared off somewhere in the sky where the infinite blue could grab ahold of him. A breeze rustled through the leaves overhead, and he felt himself start to sway with them, like a wheatfield bracing for a storm. Sometimes he had to remind himself to twist his toes into the earth so he wouldn’t blow away.
“Is that so?” Alice asked back with an atheist’s skepticism—sharp as a squeeze of lemon. She’d never been the dreamer Sam was, but it bothered him none. He was the head in the clouds and she was the feet on the ground and they existed somewhere in the middle making a life of tug of war that thrilled them both and made the days fly by. Too fast.
“It is so. Do you mind if I tell you?”
“I’ve nowhere else to be,” Alice said matter-of-factly, and Sam reckoned that was true.
“I think I’d like us to make a home in the forest.”
“What type of forest?” She was skeptical. Sam knew her mind would race right to the practical—the bugs, the damp, the distance to the nearest grocery store. He had his work cut out for him yet to convince her the house of his dream was worth even the air spent to speak of it.
“It would be an enchanted one,” he promised, and he looked down in her direction now to make sure she saw the wink and the clever in his eyes. Far off beyond where they stood and sat he could see a line of trees and he laughed at their short, unimpressive stature. No, in a forest fit for Alice, the trees would be giants, scraping the sky and outnumbering the stars. “We’d have pets, too, do you mind if I tell you about them?”
“I don’t mind.”
“There’d be a dog, of course. A Pointing Griffin I would think. I’ve named him Wild Boy. There’d be cats, as many as would like to live with us. I imagine we’d turn none away.”
“You would not.” Alice would smile but surely she’d think of all the animals he’d tried to save. All the broken winged birds and fish out of water that he hadn’t been able to nurse back to health but that he’d liked to think he had given a more comfortable end. He’d need to convince her not every pet he hoped to have would be her burden.
“Wild Boy would look after them all. They’d be his flock, and he’d herd them all throughout the thicket as they romped around gaily and if the coyotes ever dared look at one like they were lunch he’d grit his teeth and tell them to bugger off if they knew what was good for them. And yes, there’d be rescues. Of course, there would be rescues. There’d be a wombat and you’d think it silly for us to keep a wombat but one look into his chocolate chip eyes and stinky breath yawn and you’d swear to protect him until the day you…well—”
Sam felt himself losing the plot and he thought it best to start over. Less wombats, more Alice. More them, together. He closed his eyes and imagined how their laughter would echo between the trees.
“Let me tell you about our forest,” he said and he waved his arms over his head as if he could paint the clouds away. “This is no mess of tangled roots that skins your knees and poison hemlock that turns your skin into inflamed bubble wrap. In our forest, we can run for miles in between the alleyways of lodgepole pines and ankle-scrubbing shrubbery and not break a sweat. The air just dabs at our skin like a towel wrapped ice pack. Every morning when we stir in bed, we’ll throw the covers off and pull shirts over our head and make for the front door. You, me, Wild Boy and the wombat.”
He felt in a trance now, and the sky overhead became to fill with ripples of color like northern lights and it made him so dizzy he had to rub his eyes to stop them from crossing forever. Words began to tumble from his mouth like they were tripping over their own letters.
“You can ride the wombat, you know. And I’d ride Wild Boy. We’d climb atop them and make our way deeper and deeper into the Enchanted Forest and we’d open our ears as wide as we could to take in all the clamor of the world. You’d love the call of the chickadee the most, and you’d sing back ‘chick-a-dee-dee-dee,’ until we all joined in and created a chorus that would be stuck in our heads all afternoon long. Then, hours later as the sun began to peak behind the jagged canopy, we’d hear the cats calling from the homestead—singing their songs of dinners to be served—and we’d turn on a dime and begin to race back home. ‘Faster Wombat!’ you’d yell cheerfully, ‘faster, faster’ but Wombat’s little legs could only move so fast and eventually we’d tumble and fall to the ground and scrape our knees—but we’d like it because they’d scar. And in that way, we’d have the memory of it forever. For as long as we had those scars we made together, we’d all live forever.”
He paused, breathless, and for a moment it felt so real he imagined if he spun around he’d be standing before their cabin, watching smoke wisp out of the chimney and float away to places unknown.
“So,” he asked, his voice small, “what do you think?”
“I don’t know,” Alice said back, and as she spoke her voice began to evaporate into the air until it was so faint it was not even there. “It all sounds a bit make believe.”
“Yeah..” Sam allowed and the hold the sky had upon his body released and he could feel as his shoulders became still and the wind no longer danced.
“Make believe. I suppose that’s all we have left.”
He patted her gravestone the way he had once patted her knee as they drove in the car, and as he folded up his chair he placed a sketch of their enchanted forest down on a small pile of dirt.
“But I promise to imagine it always.”
