We moved out there in spring. The trees in that place were something to see, out in the wind, blowing like nothing all day and night, howling through the cracks. The lights were small, and our faces loomed big at each other all night around that little table. I set to work. There were ditches to be dug, holes to be filled in. We didn’t find anything out in the woods until later, but when we did I decided to do something about it. It felt good, that summer and into the fall, watching the waves whiten and collapse down the slope, and drinking that tea made from the lavender we found growing in the grasses out there. I finally managed to get some decent work done, not being in that little place anymore, with all that noise. Out here was silence, the real kind, that you only dream about when you live in one of those boxes, and it was the thing for work. Sometimes we would walk down the slope and look at the seagulls picking at a dead seal or find some kelp or a jellyfish washed up and poke at it, talk about the smell. Other times we would walk in the woods, hear the wind in the boughs and talk about the sun, or the earth, or not talk at all, just walk and listen and be out there. It turned up one afternoon, right as the sun was turning its way down to the salt. We were on the porch, I don’t remember what else. It came out of the woods. I thought it was a deer. We’d seen a few of those around. Once we even saw a bear, a little one, and it looked sad and we sort of felt sorry for it, but it ran off. But it wasn’t a deer. I don’t know. It was something else. It might have been a big cat, maybe. It was sleek like one, anyway, and moved like one, but it didn’t look like a cat, or a dog, or an animal, really, it was just itself, which was fine, since that’s all you can really ask of anything. Like I said I decided to do something about it. I got off the porch and waved my arms at it to try and make it get out of there, and it did. We didn’t mean to be mean to it or anything like that, it’s just what you do. It came back later, I think a week later, and I was in the kitchen doing something and saw it out the window, over the flower bed and the railing of the porch. I thought of the last time, and how I’d been sorry. So I didn’t swing my arms at it again, didn’t do anything really, just watched it. Followed it with my eyes around the yard, for a while. It just moped around. After a while it climbed a tree, and I stopped watching and did something else, and when I looked again it was gone. Later I was out in the woods and I found what must have been its nest, or its home. There wasn’t much, some sticks, a piece of garbage that must have been from the beach. It was sort of sad, looking that way, and I decided to do something about it. I went back to the house and got some wood from the woodpile and brought it back and built the nest up into a little lean-to, against a tree. I want to think it liked that, but it was hard to tell. I never went near there again. The next time I saw it we were out there on the beach, and it was there in the waves, ducking under them like it was looking for something it had lost down there. We just kept walking and left it alone. It was a whole year before we saw it again. We decided it had migrated. Then I saw it for just a second ducking behind the woodpile, or what I thought was it. I looked around but couldn’t find it anywhere. One day we found a pile of fish on the porch, which was nice, not having to catch them ourselves. The fish kept turning up, but we didn’t see it anywhere anymore. We thought it was repaying our kindness for building the lean-to. I guess we saved it the trouble of building a new one. But then the bad part happened. I wish it hadn’t, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault, of course, but it did, and there you go. One night we’re in bed, late, the moon is out and full coming through the curtain. I get up to go to the bathroom, and come back to find there it is, standing in the bedroom. Naturally I make a big noise, and then the lights are on and it doesn’t want to be in here anymore and makes a break for it. Heads for the door. Goes right through me! I swear, I’ve never felt anything like that. It felt like sticking your finger in pudding, but inside out, where the pudding is sticking its finger in you. Best way to explain it, I’ve tried everything. After that we moved. I felt bad for scaring it like that, but if it was going to start coming into our bedroom uninvited, that’s what’s going to happen. So we packed up all our things, and said goodbye to the place, and the trees, and the wind, and the salt down there and that wonderful silence. Haven’t been back since. I’ve wanted to a few times, just so we know it’s still there, but I’m worried if we do we might not leave again. It really is something to see out there. It’s like heaven on earth, to me, anyway.
2024-01-01