Episode 61. The Thicket

They were playing hide and seek and somehow in the thicket he had lost them all.

He called out for his mother and father and sisters and brother. He called out for Big Bertha his wife. He called out for his friends who had died in the war and for those he had killed there. He called out for his daughter Delilah and her son the child Noah and their canine companion Sir Barksalot. And then he stopped. There was no end to all this calling out. And when he stopped he could hear rolling in from all sides the calling out that was coming in, from everywhere and everyone, from all the forlorn hide and seekers in the world.

And then Sir Barksalot was barking and licking his hand and, with leaves in his hair, grandson Noah was shaking him. "Daddy Mac," said the boy, "how can we play if you are going to sleep? I had the greatest hiding place. I thought you just couldn't find it. But I waited and waited and never heard you at all."

Little Mac blinked his eyes and sighed. "Here, boy, help me up," he said. "I need to walk."

They went on through the thicket till they came to the escarpment by the sea where the view was unbounded and the great whitecapped expanse breathed wakefulness back into him.

He sat down on the bench there, that was bolted into the rock, and said, "Noah, people find it hard to love someone. Because it hurts. From time to time it hurts so bad you want to never love again. So what if they tried to love everyone? How would that be? Who could stand that much hurt?"

Noah put his small hand on the old man's gnarled fingers. As if not to be left out, Sir Barksalot reared up and added on a paw and barked and barked. Out there in the open, the chill wind from the northeast added on to the embrace. Little Mac nodded and nodded, as if he were agreeing to something, till the boy suggested that they go back home.


5 June 2018
Texas Jim
Prospect, Nova Scotia
www.granitecoast.ca