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back out. After sitting down again, he looked
at the book. It was old, the cover was torn, and the pages were stained
with mud and water. It was Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and he
had carried it with him throughout the war. He let the book open
randomly and read the words in front of him:
This is thy hour, 0 Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from hooks, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.
He smiled to himself. For some reason Whitman always reminded
him of New Bern, and he was glad he�d come back. Though he�d
been away for fourteen years, this was home and he knew a lot of
people here, most of them from his youth. It wasn�t surprising. Like
so many southern towns, the people who lived here never changed,
they just grew a bit older.
His best friend these days was Gus, a seventy-year-old black man
who lived down the road. They had met a couple of weeks after Noah
bought the house, when Gus had shown up with some homemade
liquor and Brunswick stew, and the two had spent their first evening
together getting drunk and telling stories.
Now Gus showed up a couple of nights a week, usually around
eight. With four kids and eleven grandchildren in the house, he
needed to get out now and then, and Noah couldn�t blame him.
Usually Gus would bring his harmonica and, after talking for a little
while, they�d play a few songs together.
He�d come to regard Gus as family. There really wasn�t anyone else,
at least not since his father died last year. He was an only child and
his mother had died of influenza when he was two. And though he
had wanted to at one time, he had never married.
But he had been in love once, that he knew. Once and only once, and
a long time ago. And it had changed him forever. Perfect love did that
to a person, and this had been perfect.
Coastal clouds slowly began to roll across the evening sky, turning
silver with the reflection of the moon. As they thickened, he leaned
his head back against the rocking chair. His legs moved
automatically, keeping a steady rhythm, and he felt his mind drifting
back to a warm evening like this fourteen years ago.
It was just after graduation 1932, the opening night of the Neuse
River Festival. The town was out in full, enjoying barbecues and
games of chance. It was humid that night�for some reason he
remembered that clearly. He arrived alone, and as he strolled through
the crowd, looking for friends, he saw Fin and Sarah, two people he�d
grown up with, talking to a girl he�d never seen before. She was
pretty, he remembered thinking, and when he finally joined them, she
looked his way with a pair of hazy eyes. �Hi,� she�d said simply as
she offered her hand. �Finley�s told me a lot about you.�
An ordinary beginning, something that would have been forgotten
had it been anyone but her. But as he shook her hand and met those
striking emerald eyes, he knew before he�d taken his next breath that
she was the one he could spend the rest of his life looking for but
never find again. She seemed that good, that perfect.
From there, it went like a tornado wind. Fin told him she was
spending the summer in New Bern with her family, because her father
worked for a tobacco firm, and though he only nodded, the way she
was looking at him made his silence seem okay. Fin laughed then,
because he knew what was happening, and Sarah suggested they get
some cherry cokes, and the four of them stayed at the festival until the
crowds were thin and everything closed up for the night.
They met the following day, and the day after that, and they soon
became inseparable. Every morning but Sunday, when he had to go to
church, he would finish his chores as quickly as possible, then make a
straight line to Fort Totten Park, where she�d be waiting for him.
Because she was a newcomer and hadn�t lived in a small town before,
they spent their days doing things that were completely new to her.
He taught her how to bait a line and fish the shallows for largemouth
bass and took her exploring through the backwoods of the Croatan
Forest. They rode in canoes and watched summer thunderstorms, and
it seemed as though they�d always known each other.
But he learned things as well. At the town dance in the tobacco barn,
it was she who taught him how to waltz and do the Charleston, and
though they stumbled through the first few songs, her patience with
him eventually paid off, and they danced together until the music
ended. He walked her home afterwards, and when they paused on the
porch after saying good night, he kissed her for the first time and
wondered why he had waited as long as he had.
Later in the summer