We stood now in the copse of death. Rotten things swayed gently in the nonexistant breeze. They weighted down the branches and their toes pointed towards the earth, an earth so stained and corrupted that no dust or motes stirred at my passing footsteps. By then, my footsteps had grown rather heavy. We were approaching the end of another 'day'.
But to stay here was insanity. To stay here under a sick yellow sky - darker now, we had traveled west quite a distance - with sick fruit hanging from dead trees was absolutely not in the picture. While my exhausted mind tried to process the 'solution-to-the-problem', my eyes happened upon Eve.
She had seated herself beneath one of the twisted, thorny, dead, yet violent trees. Her back was leaned against the trunk of this particular tree and I could see the runnels tears had made down her cheeks. Never mind the horror and revolt I felt towards this evil place, those feelings were selfish and childlike when I looked at her. All of these poor souls' pain flooded through her and came out in great sobs and tears as big and pure as the eyes they came from.
I went to her. Without any thought or hesitation, I went to her. I folded her in my arms and I wept with her, I rocked with her. I held her against spasms of pain and sadness that broke against her pale little body like huge waves against massive stone cliffs. I went to her and I held her.
I believe another piece of me died that afternoon, in that plagued land. My tears fell from my cheeks onto Eve's head, and some of them caught in the blue ribbon in her hair. Not my Ruthie's anymore, Eve's - not my Eve, she could never be mine, but perhaps I was hers for just a short time in a much larger life - blue ribbon. I think those tears, the ones that caught and held onto that blue fabric were some of last pieces of me.
The rest of me went later. The part of me I think of when I think of Abe Kastel, that part went later. Just then, in our huddle beneath the hateful tree, Eve was shaking herself loose of me and as she rose to her feet I slumped against the tree truck. I remember I couldn't see well through the tears and all. A blurry image remains in what's left of me: Eve stood under the tree in her pain and sorrow, under an umbrella of the dead and lifted each arm to grasp the toe of the body to her left and the one to her right. She wrapped her slender perfect fingers around the big toe of each and the tears streamed down her face. Her head was tilted back and the sound of unbearable compassion came from her open mouth. Maybe it came to me through my ears, maybe she connected with the me that's left, I don't know.
I don't know how long Eve's cry for the dead - not just the two right here, for all of them - went on. I know my eyes closed and my hands and arms grasped the wooden box I'd carried all this way. All through me, in every pore and cell, Eve's voice resonated on to forever.
Her hand was on my head and my eyes, squeezed shut as they were, opened slowly and my breathing turned from hitches and sobs to deep breaths. "It's okay now," the tears were still wet on her face and down her dress. Almost mechanically, I undid the strap around my box and opened it. I looked into Eve's eyes, for reassurance perhaps, whatever I looked for in those infinite blue eyes I found it.
An empty box lay before me on the ground. Opened wide the top was and Eve knelt down in front of me, she placed her hands gently against my temples again and again I can't be completely sure of what happened next. Maybe what I saw, I saw in the foreground and background around me; maybe what happened all took place in front of my old treasured, loved wooden box.
The bottom of the box seemed to glow. I tried to squint but my eyes stayed open despite my efforts. Then, in the distance past this evil orchard I could see a small hut and the name DAVID assaulted my senses with comfort and wellbeing. Maybe Eve, holding my head, turned me and my sight back to what hung above us, close up. There I saw a sight that rocked me more than anything ever has, or had, or ever will.
There swinging from the branch, a woman. She wore a big smile as her hands gripped the branch and she swung her legs back and forth. On the forward swing small giggles escaped her mouth and her full, beautiful lips. Lips I knew, I knew the silky brown hair flowing like water behind her as she giggled and swung. Delicate feet padded softly to the ground when she let go and the dust from the midsummer drought puffed up around her ankles. I knew those ankles, those knees, that smiling face coming toward me.
"I just love it here, don't you?" she managed somehow through the pure delight on her face.
I looked around at the country side, dotted with houses here and there. The orchard we were in, the tree she had been swinging from weren't doing the greatest - it was the dry season, after all - but they had buds on their branches.
"Yes, dear," I said. "But not nearly as much as I love you," and she giggled again and wrapped her arms around me and nestled her face in that special place in between the jaw and shoulder.
I fumbled in my pocket and brought out my fist closed tight.
"Love..." I took a deep breath, "Will you..." and now, looking back from this place I think in that moment we shared that telepathy that only the truly in love share.
She released a breath of relief and shouted for all the lonely hillside to hear, "YES, YES, YES" and there were tears. We shared the only kind of tears the truly in love can share. She jumped up off me and pulled me to my feet and we danced around under the half-alive trees in the setting sun. Before the world burned.
Our dancing slowed and we held each other. "I don't have no ring," I said.
"Any, Abe, any ring," she giggled into my chest. "And I don't care about rings or fancy dresses. I love you."
"Turn around, turn around for me," and she did, and I tied a blue ribbon in her hair.
"My Ruthie."
We made love on that hillside under those trees, and the sun set - or maybe the lid of the old wooden box - and it was night and dark and lovely. And has been ever since.
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