There’s a thing about tending miracles. You may have done nothing at all to manifest them; you just wake up one day and they’re there, all bright and shiny and concrete in their permanence. And it’s part of every human’s natural inclination to keep watch over them night and day, because someone or something is usually waiting in the wings to make those miracles that much harder to tend. But watch we must, as the only other alternative is to simply let things take their own course.
I have taught myself in one hour what Garrett had once claimed would take a hundred. The blades of the ancient John Deere tractor break the crusty red earth into neat rows of submissive powder as I circle the trunk of the sweet gum and start all over again. Pulling weeds from the edges of my handiwork, Tina gives me a double thumbs-up, a habit she only recently picked up, a silent signal she now works into her routine as often as possible. I offer her a single thumbs-up back, since the unwieldy monstrosity I’m still mastering requires at least one strong hand on the wheel at all times.
Turning down the driveway from Blue Cove Road, Garrett steers his pickup away from the house and down to the top of the hollow, parking too close to my project for comfort. Hopping out of the truck with what appears to be a portfolio, he approaches my latest path, waving his arms like he’s pulling a 747 in for a landing, hollering over the tractor’s engine, “WHAT’S GOING ON?”
“PLANTING A GARDEN!” I holler with a grin.
Garrett comes over to the tractor and unfolds a set of contractor’s blueprints on the ground below me. I cut the engine, glancing over the prints without a clue. “What’s this?” I ask from my elevated place on the seat of the tractor.
“Plans,” Garrett says excitedly, “for the camp house.”
Tina walks over, attempting to look over Garrett’s shoulder.
Garrett pulls her close for better viewing. “I always told you my dream would be to one day build a huntin’ lodge up on Poppy’s place before I die.”
He was referring to a piece of densely wooded property his father had deeded him after his death thirty years earlier, a place Garrett relentlessly surveyed on foot every Sunday that rolled. Eventually he’d coerced my mother into giving up her Sundays to tread and retread the isolated area with him.
Tina answers like she’s not sure she’s hearing him right. “Yeaaaah.”
“Well, that’s what I’m going to do.” Garrett puts an arm around her shoulder.
Tina is silent for a moment. “You’re gonna build it now?”
Garrett turns a page of the blueprints, careful not to make eye contact. “Now what?”
Tina is stunned. She clears her throat. “I mean, with what all we’ve got going on.”
Garrett huffs and tucks the prints under his arm. “You’re doing great,” he says, looking at her, then at me. “Right, Bo Skeet? Now’s as good a time as any.”
Tina bites her lip and looks out over the swimming pool before she turns and makes her way brusquely back toward the house.
“What’s the matter with her?” Garrett says.
Unwilling to further engage with the tidal wave that is Garrett with a plan, I restart the engine on the tractor and get back to work.
* * *
“Hel—heeeee-heeeeeeelp! Oh, God—HEEEEEEEEEELP!” Tossing and turning on my stomach, attempting to rouse myself from a nightmare where I’m smoking cigarettes and eating pork chops, I finally holler as best I can through the sheets twisted about my head.
“Hey, hey, Bo Skeet—”
“HEEEEL—” I open my eyes with a start and exhale another holler.
“Crap,” I say, as Sis, seated next to me, comes into focus.
“You okay?” she says, sitting me up against the headboard.
“Huh? Uh.”
“Jesus,” she whispers, putting her hands on her face. I’ve never heard her take the Lord’s name in vain, and the sound of it startles me. Embarrassed beyond belief, I pull the covers under my chin in silence.
Ready to move on, she motions to the bedside lamp as she quickly rises. “I’ll leave this on,” she says as she walks out the door. “Good night, okay?”
Still frozen, I manage a weak, pathetic, “’Night.”
Two seconds later, Sis walks back in the room. “Are you seeing Joe Tischman?”
“Huh?” How could she possibly know?
“I saw you walking across his lawn yesterday,” she volunteers, like she was reading my mind. “You had this blissed-out grin on your face, and it looked like you’d dried your hair with a cake mixer.” She crosses her arms across her chest and waits for me to answer. “It’s okay if you are. The Stalworths don’t love like other people. You know that, right?”
Even in my half-awakened state, I am touched by Sis’s reference to Tina’s words and their possible effect on me from decades ago. Maybe because she’s caught me in such a vulnerable state, the ridiculousness of all the fears I’ve sat on all these years is staring me in the face. Who gives a shit if I, like half the other Stalworths, don’t love like other people? So what if Garrett’s bloodline stops with me? What if, like Tina, I’m handed some life-ending diagnosis over breakfast one day? Would I give a damn about any of it? Would anyone?
The sound of my bedroom door closing pulls my head out of the clouds, and I realize Sis has already made her second exit.
* * *
Shaking off the remnants of my fitful night of sleep, I am huddled in the north corner of the tree house, the first shard of daylight piercing through the water oaks around me. The tang of gardenia in the air fuses with the steam from the cup of bancha tea I’m nursing. Just when I think the day couldn’t get any better, I spot him for a split second, just across the creek in bright orange swim trunks and nothing else on the rebuilt Tischman sundeck. He commences what appears to be some sort of tai chi ritual. I set my cup of tea in the corner and lean into the windowsill, taking a bead on Joe with the binoculars. Although the squat roof keeps my head tucked into my chest, I make a feeble bid to reproduce his fluid movements as he welcomes the day.
“Hey.”
Startled out of my furtive tutorial, I grab the roof for stability and peer out through the paneless window.
“What are you doing up?” Tina looks from the ground below like a baby bird waiting to be fed.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at Joe, now flat on his stomach, arms outstretched before him like a long, sensuous snake.
“Me neither.” Tina looks about, rubbing her arms for heat. “Are you dressed warm enough?”
“Yes. I’m dressed warm enough.”
She grins. “Are you playing fair?”
I feel my neck tense and release, trying to allocate equal time and attention for these two exceptional people in my life. I laugh at Tina, suddenly in on the reference she’s tossed me from half a lifetime ago. “Yes, I’m playing fair and, yes, I’ll run in the house if the skeeter truck comes. Now go back to bed.”
Tina smiles, waves, and heads to the house as I turn back to the now-empty Tischman sundeck and squat with my cup of tea. It’s over so fast, I wonder if it even happened.