Footprints
And there, I saw, the great secular salvation. One set of footprints, followed by a trough in the sand. I had been told the old story of Jesus carrying the burdened soul through difficulties, but these were my feet. The trough had been cut by the misconceptions I had drug throughout my life. It wasn’t by grace that I would be saved, but by letting go; letting go of Christian dogma, letting go of the expectations of a world my mind had created.
Here, I leave the penance of self-sacrifice. Here, I leave the denial of self and identity for the construct of the husband and father. Here, I abandon the stones I had used to wall myself within a faith I had created. Here, I stand, naked and bathed in sunlight with the dawning of self-realization. It is within my own being to persevere; to save myself.
Blinking my eyes, I stretched as my room came into focus. The orange light slanted through the long awning window, illuminating an errant sock on the graying spruce floor.
The phone had been chirping below me, sounding through the open floorboards; only calling my attention with the final alarm and click of the answering machine, “Halo” my own voice called out in a fake Spanish accent, “Eef you are a friend or relative, please leeve your message now. If not, please rot in Hell, as I will not be talking to jou.
“Please hold” another recorded voice replied to mine, “ a representative will be with you shortly.”
“Christ” I moaned as I rolled sideways to stare vacantly at the clock. My amusement listening to two machines exchange small talk was replaced by disbelief that a company already intent on shaking me down for money would have the audacity to put me on hold to wait for the next available collections agent. There was a fumbling on the other end of the line, then a click. For a second before the disconnect, I thought I heard a woman’s voice. Running my hand across my jaw line, I felt the day-old scruff and tried to picture her. She was young, I decided; about twenty-two. She had long blonde hair that she kept pulled back. She wore a crisp blouse with khaki pants; casual yet professional. Her face was kind, yet determined, with the beautiful glow of youth upon it. She didn’t like her job, I thought. Who would? But, she was fresh out of college and this was the best paying gig she could land at the call center somewhere… Atlanta, I decided. There she sat. In a room full of cubicles, with my number randomly routed to her phone. I decided if I ever met her, I would tell her I was sorry. Sorry for all the mean things my machine told hers. Sorry my life was a disaster. Sorry that I had to make it her problem as well.
Getting up from my mattress, I examined the coil of sheets and blankets I had discarded sometime in the night. It was nice, I thought, not to have to worry about making the bed. First of all, I could argue that there was no sense in making the “bed” since the actual bed was a days journey south of here. Making a mattress on the floor would be as deluding as buying throw pillows for a camping pad. I shuffled through the covers and made a little bounce the six inches down to the floor with a muffled thump. The boards were warm on my feet as I stepped into the sunlight allowing the warmth to creep up my legs. Through the window, Breezes lifted apple leaves and made gentle tracks through the tall grass.
How many times had I looked out that window? How many seasons have I plaintively watched pass across it’s pane? The feeling rose in me that the scenes as they played out cared nothing about the presence of my eye to record them. The hands that had laid the foundation to this structure some eighty years prior were, undoubtedly stilled; resting across a skeletal breast in the cemetery over the next rise. The indifference of nature below my feet was comforting; like standing before the ocean, vast, ancient, and powerful.
Kneeling down on the floor, I pried my fingers under the boards that made the hatch to the ladder below. Eventually, I thought, I would tire of using a ladder to reach the loft above, but now that I was alone the ladder was like a youthful friend. This was my fort, my tree house, my club of one. I would have placed a big hand-painted sign saying ’no girls allowed’ if it were not already painfully obvious that there weren’t any girls trying to get in to begin with. Still, it had become a man’s playhouse. There were shelves made from hand-hewn logs in the kitchen and dining rooms. One corner of the dinning room floor was littered with various woodworking tools, relegated to their new home mid-project. On a beam high above the computer desk, hung a shotgun, and, peering out at visitors to my primitive abode, was the head of the first and only deer I had successfully shot.
The ladder creaked as I stepped down to begin my descent to the living room. Beneath the ladder, Sheba looked up hopefully; swishing a bushy tail lazily and stirring up thousands of sparkles of dust in the slant of morning light. Stopping at the bottom tread, I carefully reached down with my foot and smoothed the fur on top of her head. Lowering her head, her eyes closed; two long black lines as she drifted into a doggy sleep.
Crossing the floor, I felt every ridge in the worn pine. It had come from a pallet of barn sheathing that I thought would do the job for a temporary home. It was funny, I thought, how the things we take for temporary often become permanent; and the converse, although not as funny, was just as true. Pulling two Benadryl from a box on the computer desk, I popped them into my mouth and went to the sink for a cupped handful of water to wash them down. One capsule cocked sideways, gave in to the water, and eased it’s way down my throat. My allergies had lessened a bit by now, but I still kept my system primed with antihistamines. Taking down a small cast iron pan from a nail in the small doorway, I examined it briefly before setting it back in place with a thunk. I wasn’t hungry enough for my last egg and three strips of bacon.
Turning to examine the log shelf that spanned the six foot galley, I set my eyes on the planned meal of the day. By making an abbreviated electricity payment, I was able to buy a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey. The anniversary was approaching, and this was no time to skimp. I started the coffee and stepped into the shower
**********
The screen door creaked as Sheba slipped past me and around behind the house. The military surplus boots I had donned made a sound clunk on the porch. Standing there, finishing off my coffee, I examined the meadow. Starlings skated gracefully over the tops of the wheat-grass that strained toward the spring sky. Trees shook their fledgling leaves at the shifting air currents, while red squirrels raced through the rocking limbs. The morning air was clear and cool; not yet offering the promise of the oppressing heat a month’s time would bring. Below, a low drone alerted me to a wasp, drifting lazily by my boot. I watched him pass slowly by and towards the grass tops before gaining momentum and ascending in a quick arc, toward the woods.
Downing the last gulp of cooling coffee, I tromped heavily down the steps and into the meadow. I was quickly enveloped up to my knees in the fresh tide of grass. A crisp breeze playing off the apple branches touched my cheek before lifting a small aspen leaf, carried over from the harsh winter, to play with. The yellowed stubble of last year’s grass crunched beneath my boots. New life sprung from old. Soon my boots scuffed upon bits of charred wood, drawing my eyes to focus on a circle of scorched earth pierced throughout with new shoots of grass. I reached down and touched the blackened side of a log, remembering its specific placement the previous spring. This was the place.
**********
Garden rake in hand, I began my work in earnest; dredging up the thick under-matting of dead grass. Bundles were gathered and placed in the center of the scorched circle. With a sufficient haystack gathered, I leaned on my rake and stared out to the hillock where Sassafras lay buried. Green spruce boughs knelt before the spot as the horrific details flooded my mind. Bowing my head toward the grave, I entered the woods to gather the dead tree branches claimed by wind and snow. For the final step, I brought a double bit axe with me. As with all creatures, the winter brings death to the weak, so that the strong may go on. This winter had harvested about fifteen trees from the ranks of fir, cedar, and aspen. Of these, I sectioned and removed the closest to the pile. Once back at the pile, the logs were stacked teepee style with bits of broken pallets and scrap wood tucked between. Soaked with sweat, I inspected the pyre; some five feet tall and six feet at the base. The sun had already reached its apex and was beginning its long slant toward evening. Rivulets of sweat poured down my back and bathed my aching arms; washing, along the way, tracks of dirt and forest compost. Blackflies buzzed around my head, searching for a safe place to land and gorge themselves. The hay would be dry by tomorrow; proper tinder for the task at hand. It was a car-sized mass of potential energy; waiting, expectant. Perfect in form, it was a bomb, with a fuse, waiting for a spark to set into irrevocable motion, its complete destruction.
Standing beside the circle, I leaned my head back and filled my lungs from the passing breeze. The world around me penetrated my senses. The earthy smell of decay from the forest floor, still clinging to the back of the logs rested heavily upon my palate. The green shoots of the wheatgrass played lightly upon my nose before being washed clean by the warm smell of spruce all around me. There was a trickle down my arm, warmer than the sweat that covered me. I looked down to see a thin trail of blood running from my forearm, down along the curve of muscle and tendon, across my wrist, and down my little finger. I watched each slow drop swell, and fall to the grass below. Like the yellowed undergrowth I had raked earlier, each drop of expended life, fell to the earth to provide for nourishment.
The preparations had been made. There was nothing left to do but wait. The way I had waited then. But now, as in every year since, the outcome has already been written. Gone is the blissful ignorance I held that day. Gone, the hope; the belief in miracles, in rescue. There is only remembrance.
**********
I rose again to the slant of light. The call to work had already been made before my manager arrived. It was a call I had planned for a month now. I was as certain about having to feign illness as I was they would not have approved a day off. What excuse could I give them that would make sense to a civilized mind?
Making my way down the ladder, I paused at the bottom to examine a static sky through a single pane of glass. Randomly painted cirrus clouds clung to blue cellophane as a distant sun watched from above. The wheatgrass stood expectant in the field; unchanged by the prospect of a passing breeze. To the right hung the framed footprints. Touching them, as I had touched those very feet a decade ago, I remembered each detail of that day. A liturgy of despair: I was at work when I got an emergency call. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. I arrived just as she was admitted. The contractions came. He was born, he died, I died too. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. It was all her fault. Amen.
The words of condemnation toward her had still left me with no feeling of absolution. Closure was an illusion and payment would never be made for one soul thrown to the wind. This was a date that had passed each year without mention. The weight of the air bore testimony to the day that words would not do justice. Now, alone, I had resolved to bear the annual penance worthy of the crime committed. The day would no longer pass into obscurity without mention of the treason that had placed an infant in an unmarked grave; as if the body had to be destroyed and hidden to cover the shame.
“May God damn her to Hell,” I said aloud as I slowly pulled my hand back, allowing the words to hang in the air; to settle in the dust on the open rafters and be witnessed by the faces on the walls.
Drawing a match from the box on the pie safe, I struck it slowly, immersed in the moment when spark becomes flame. Sulfur curled around my nose as I lifted the flame to the wick of a candle beneath the framed footprints. The wick glowed orange before becoming a dancing flame, sending thin, black tendrils up to the beams above. Blowing out the match, I set the charred stick aside, and passed into the kitchen. Taking down the Jameson’s, I poured a full shot and returned to the pie safe to place it before the candle. For several minutes I stood there, my mind a flat lake, rapt in the vision of the flicking orange flame through the amber whiskey. I was an acolyte.
The next glass of whiskey was mine. I stepped out onto the porch, watching the sunlight play joylessly around the rim of the glass, casting sparks into the warm liquid below. Draining the glass, I retrieved a branch section from the previous day’s scavenging. Returning to the living room, I began tearing one of Shawn’s old shirts into strips and fastening them to one end of the branch. Layer upon layer. One from Shawn. One from Caitlin. One from Keagan; until the branch resembled a colorful novelty Q-tip. Dousing the end of the swab with lighter fluid, I carefully leaned it against the porch.
Once lit, the torch flared to life with surprising intensity; orange upon red, swirling around the top in ravenous layers. The torch held out to one side, I solemnly approached the wooded mound in the meadow. Thrusting deep, the flame broke off; quickly spreading through the tinder. Moving around the base, I ignited five fires along the perimeter before casting the torch to the top of the pile. From deep in the center, there was a rumble, then a gray cloud, out of which lashed fresh tongues of flame; eager for a taste of the larger kindling.
From below, flames grew; multiplied, and merged together to form a new life. The separate flames now became a fire, swallowing branches and enveloping logs. A log shifted, coughing a shower of sparks into the sky. Orange sprites danced and darted around me; filling my eyes with the glowing streaks of their courses and my nose with the spent life of the forest.
Alive now, it rose before me; it’s back hunched as it clawed and tore at the fallen timber; a beast of consumption, conjured before me at the end of a torch. I approached it’s heat; arms stretched, feeling each wave as my skin tightened against my face. I confronted the beast now, in it’s frenzy, eyes closed. I wondered. Would it feed indiscriminately? Would it accept all that was offered it? Would it devour my pain, my loneliness? Would it accept my guilt; my penance? How long could such a thing live off those parts, so invisible, yet so tangible they can paralyze?
I stood there, in the heat, every nerve in my skin now tingling with the searing energy before me. It was drawing me in. It was feeding.
**********
Evening fell with the darkness I had come to know so well in the meadow. Sitting on a section of log spared from the fire, I rested my feet in the charred circle and gazed into the mollified blaze. Putting the exhausted bottle of Jameson’s to my lips, I took a long draw, hardly noticing the warmth as it moved down into my gut. My body had become leaden. My feet were embedded in the ash, my backside pressed into the log, and my very soul felt poured out. Glancing at my hand, I could see a patchwork of soot in the flickering light. It followed up my arm and I presumed to be covered in it; a perverse ashen camouflage.
Lifting myself from the dying fire’s gaze, I made my way back to the porch. Closing the door behind me with an uneven thunk, dim light of the candle sent out a jumpy flicker of disapproval. Again, I paused before the footprints, watching now as pale yellow light crept at the heels. Lifting the whiskey I had set there, I bent, blew out the candle, “Happy birthday, Justin.”.
"Professor Lee, an Asian-born mathematician nearing retirement age, would seem the last person likely to attract the attention of FBI agents. Yet after a popular young colleague becomes the latest victim of a serial bomber, Lee's detached response and maladroit behavior lead the FBI, the national news media, and even his own neighbors to regard him with damning suspicion.
Amid campus-wide grief over the murder, Lee receives a cryptic letter from a figure out of his past. The letter unearths a lifetime of shortcomings – toward his dead wife, his estranged only daughter, and a long-denied son. Caught between his guilty recollections and the scrutiny of the murder investigation, determined to face his tormentor and exonerate himself, Lee sets off on a journey that will bring him face-to-face with his past – and that might even win him redemption."
Novelist Susan Choi likes prickly, difficult characters. In this fascinating interview, she explains why.
Susan Choi was born in South Bend, Indiana, and raised there and in Houston, Texas. She studied literature at Yale and writing at Cornell, and worked for several years as a fact-checker for The New Yorker.
Her first novel, The Foreign Student, won the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, and her second novel, American Woman, was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize.
With David Remnick she co-edited the anthology Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker, and her non-fiction has appeared in publications including Vogue, Tin House, Allure, O and The New York Times and in anthologies including Money Changes Everything and Brooklyn Was Mine.
A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, Pete Wells, and their sons Dexter and Elliot.
Please join Susan Choi and host Paula B. as they discuss:
Interviewee: Susan Choi
Host: Paula B.
Date: November 2, 2008
Running time: 38:48
File size: 19 megabytes
Rating: G
Susan Choi's Web site: SusanChoi.com
Leaving the hospital from work this morning, as I reached my car I noted a constant beeping, much like the sound of
a dying smoke alarm. I gave this sound only passing thought until I was
in my car and the annoying beeping noise followed me. It seemed to be
coming straight from the vents in my air conditioner. At this point, I
had not started the car; the key was not even in the ignition.
Perplexed and with a tinge of aggravation toward these bells and
whistles coming from the dashboard of my car, the set of wheels I
purchased with the intention of taking me into my sunset years. Well I
am not ready for the sun to set on my independence and for goodness
sake, I have put only 58,000 miles on this gas-guzzling contraption!
Somewhere in the recesses of my mind Cher is singing “and the beat goes
on, drums keep bounding rhythm to the brain” I have just worked twelve
hours, am tired and feel like I am in need of a friend! I locate my
cell phone, and called a guy friend in Oklahoma. I am in California and
as there is a two-hour time difference, I hope he has had his morning
coffee and can be of help with my request for an-over-the-phone
diagnostic. “Is it a bird Judy?”
Pulling ideas out of thin air I replied, “No, it is a regular beep…It
does sound almost like a chirp but it is a rhythmic regular beep, maybe
a metronome is caught in the dash my car!” I replied “Does the radio
work?” “Yes, you can almost hear the radio”
Terry and I decide this is too much for us to solve so I call Phil. He
works on various cars and surely, he can put my mind at ease. Did not
happen “Judy, I would take your car in now and have it looked at as it
could be the serpentine belt. If this belt goes out so will most of the
functions of your car.” I feel ‘so much not better’ after our
conversation. Now I am sitting stop-and-go amongst a flood of morning
traffic on the busy I-15 trying to remember just where I passed a
Nissan Dealer. “And the beep goes on; la-de-da-de; la-de-da-de-da” Now,
my Oklahoma Insurance adjuster is ringing to visit about storm damage
to my roof. “Oh by the way Tommy, can you hear this beeping noise?” A
brief conversation with Tommy, a long time friend and now the third
person from Oklahoma to be privy to my current dilemma, was of no help
to shushing the indomitable beeping!
Negotiating the harried morning traffic on the I-15, I am too tired to
be lost in San Diego searching for Nissan service center. So elected
let one more guy into my circle of friends and called my son-in-love
Tom, “Tom, I have this problem with my car. A continuous beeping seems
to be coming right out of the dash. I am trying to remember where the
Nissan place is located. Is it on Balboa or Claremont Mesa Drive?” “I
don’t know for sure Jo, (he calls me Jo) but you better get it in to be
checked. Call me and let me know what they find” “Oh! I found the
Nissan place Tom, thanks, I will let you know”
I breath a sigh of relief mixed with apprehension, relieved to have
located the Nissan dealer (I am way tired by this time) and
apprehensive as to what this will cost to repair.
Now if you have ever one made a trip or two to an automotive service
center on the way to work, you will readily agree it rates as
unpleasant as shopping and negotiating a spot in a parking lot on
Christmas Eve. I am fortunate, as there is but one car in line when I
arrive. After about ten minutes of no motion, and silence, (except for
the chirping coming from the dash of my car) I walked into the office.
As I passed the Nissan Altima parked in front of my car (the same make
and model as my car), I turned for a closer look. “That car is beeping
too; I ask myself, what is it with these Japan automotive wonders?”
I catch the attention of a young man in the office who politely asked
if he could help me. I said, “There is a beeping noise coming from my
car and would he please come see whatsamatter?” He walked with me to
the car as I began to relax, finally there would be an answer to the
questions I just had peppered four knowledgeable men. I was not
embarrassed with a sudden silence as Cher kept belting out “and the
beep goes on”
With expert precision, he quickly determined it was the lights; I had
left the lights on. No, this was not the answer as when he switched the
lights off, Cher continued with her “drums keep pounding rhythm to the
brain!” (By now the beeping has settled nicely in my brain) He then
took a step back and said, “It is you! The beeping is coming from you!”
“It is coming from me?” I stutter, “Not a chance! Here is my cell phone
and it is quiet as a church mouse!”
The technician said, “the beeping was in the office, so it has to be
somewhere on you,” as he assumed this "let-me-frisk-you posture" I
quickly relieve him of his thoughts and searched the multitude of
pockets of my scrubs, and pulled out a small beeper!
We use these beepers at work to alert us of our assigned patient’s
cardiac arrhythmias. Fortunately, this little contraption (which i
inadvertently carried off from work) was signaling a need for a new
battery. I was beyond embarrassment. We said our goodbyes as the
technician chuckled saying I had made his day! I arrived home and as I
finally laid my head down on my pillow, drums kept pounding rhythm to
my brain.
If we have not the pleasure of meeting personally, I will share that I
am a blonde, a L’Oreal blonde, I might add to quote their
advertisements, “I am worth it”
Judy
