I wake up, and it’s cooled off.
It looks like the Lord wants me to go on living, for some reason. I feel right light-headed, and I wait a couple of minutes before I try to raise myself up off the little stool. It must of clouded up, because I don’t see any shadows, but everything looks bright, like the sun is shining just back of the clouds and making them glow like sunset.
I’m wondering how come the weatherman didn’t tell me nothing about this cool front a-coming in when I look over and spy that pine tree. It’s as big as it was in my dream, two hundred feet high at least, and six feet across, biggest pine I ever saw. And out from behind it steps Lafe. He’s nineteen again, skinny and smiling, with his red hair all mussed up like it was most of the time. He’s got a scar over his right eye.
Lafe don’t say a word, just motions to me, and I don’t seem to have no voice right now. I get up, easier than I’ve got up in years, don’t even need my cane. Lafe is walking out toward the millpond, which is clear and blue now, like the water has been purified. And then he’s in the water, except he’s not really so much in it as on top of it. I’m supposed to follow him, but I still remember my dream and I’m still wondering if this is another one. Lately, it’s got harder and harder to tell what’s dreams and what’s real.
Finally, he’s about a hundred feet out in the water, and he turns around again and looks at me, just looks and don’t say a thing, but it’s like my feet have a life of their own, and they start moving toward him, toward the pond.
The water isn’t even getting my feet wet. I’m out several yards and I look down and see that I’m just walking across the surface. Lafe somehow makes me understand that I’m supposed to look up. I do, and he nods and smiles, makes a forward motion with his hand and I follow him. That old hymn we used to sing at church, “Walk on Galilee,” comes into my head, the one that had the chorus that went:
You can walk on Galilee,
Cross that shining, peaceful sea; If you put your faith in Jesus,
You can walk on Galilee.
Now I’m out where the water ought to of been over my head, but it’s like walking on glass, except different, because this feels more like feathers. Lafe points on up ahead, and I can see where we’re heading to.
There is a mist now, making everything hazy and hard to see, except out in the middle of the pond, where the sun seems like it has broke through and is shining on a whole bunch of people. It’s just like in my dream, only prettier even. There’s Momma, looking like she did at maybe thirty, still in good health and smiling to beat the band, happier-looking than I’ve ever seen her. And Daddy, with the twinkle in his eye he’d get when he would tell us about the war and all, but looking younger than I ever saw him, a lot younger than he was when I was born, I reckon. Him and Lafe don’t look like they’re father and son, but more like they’re brothers, both with their wild red hair and long, bony faces. I can’t figure out how they can all be so clear to me, because they’re smack in the middle of the pond, must still be a quarter mile away.
I see Angora and Rose, standing side by side, with their different kinds of dark complexions, both looking as pretty as they looked on the prettiest days of their lives. They’re waving at me and motioning me like I ought to hurry up, or like they can’t wait to see me. And I see Lex and Connie and Century, not that long gone from my memory, all looking like they’re young-uns again, or in their twenties anyhow, and they look like they might be getting ready to start a game of run-cat-run.
I think about the time that Georgia and Jeff took me to see a play that the college was putting on. It was a terrible sad one, with everybody just tore apart at the end from what they had said and done to each other, and I wondered why anybody would want to watch something that made you feel that bad. And then the curtain went down and came up again, and these same folks that was destroying each other just a minute before was all smiling and bowing, with their arms around each other like they’d been best friends for life. Was we all just play-acting?
Back behind the rest, a little higher up, is my Sara. She has her hand on Angora’s shoulder, in a way that tells me somehow that they’ve found each other and know everything. Sara is even prettier than her momma, as pretty as she was in the parking lot of the Geddie Presbyterian Church when she first let me know that she cared about me, with her dark hair and flashing eyes, misted over now with tears like mine are. She holds out one tan, thin wrist, one of the wrists I used to love to kiss when I’d wake up in the morning with her curled beside me in our feather bed, and I feel like I won’t be able to stand it if this is a dream and I have to wake up old and crazy.
I’m not more than a hundred yards away when I catch up with Lafe. I put my arm around his waist and he puts his around mine, and we walk toward the light.
This time, I won’t look down.