Strum Page 3

  Snow covers the landscape like a coverlet of fine white lace. Silently he watches a solitary figure in the distance wend her way slowly through the forest toward him. She is wrapped head to toe in a thick cotton blanket and listening intently through the weave of the cloth for the sound of water. A small sleeping bundle is cradled in her arms beneath the blanket. When she comes upon the water she stops. Before her a colossal old cedar stands taller and straighter than all else in the wilderness. Its impressive trunk and ancient roots heave themselves above the earth. There she settles and begins to softly sing, rocking the baby in her arms. A teardrop falls upon the sleeping child; a loose wave of auburn hair escapes from her small black bonnet and spills down across her shoulders.

  Her singing summons a young scout who appears amongst the snow drifts. He is draped in deerskins below the waist but above he is bare, his wide brown chest emblazoned with the black markings of a young Iroquois warrior. He slowly makes his way across the snowy ground, his moccasined feet making no sound at all. The young mother closes her eyes and releases herself to a deep sleep. Content with their sleep, the brave begins to climb the great tree, clearing the highest branches and disappearing into the tree top.

  The woman awakes, peels away the blanket and stands up carefully, the child with her now much older. With a joyful laugh the boy runs off to chase a rabbit as it bounds its way across the spring forest. She calls out to him, but does not follow or appear alarmed. Her auburn hair now is crowned with gray and her pale translucent skin a soft freckled brown from the years of exposure and hard work. She pulls a black shawl around her shoulders and sinks back into the embrace of the tree. The roots seem to come alive and wrap their tentacles around her as she begins to sing a melancholy song, and the tree absorbs her into its bark as the last phrase trails off.

  When the boy returns he is a young man of about seventeen, with long black hair tied behind his back. Hawk feathers adorn the thin braids that fall on each side of his face. He carries a guitar casually over his shoulder; it seems dwarfed by his tall frame but in his large graceful hands it becomes a thing of infinite beauty. Where his mother had previously sat, he leans now back against the tree and begins a slow lilting ballad, a haunting canto so full of sadness and passion it sounds like an emotion being forced from his body.

  And then all at once the stone-walled room engulfed the dream, the dreamer, and the sounds and vibrations of the haunting ballad. Bernard abruptly awakened and looked about him and saw no one, but the notes of the song resonated as if they were bells chiming from the belfry of the church at a far distance. It was early dawn outside, he saw from his quick glance at the small windowpane. It was open fully, a square of pale light clearly framed by the dark gray stone wall. A nightingale landed on a low maple branch just above the window and began a plaintive song that complemented the guitar music. It trilled a laconic melody that permeated the small window and reverberated throughout the stone chamber.

  He was fully awake now and looked to the small window for the bird outside, but there was nothing. He threw back the sleeping bag without a thought and was hit immediately with the frosty air, his breath making a cloud as he let it out sharply. He wrapped the still warm bag around him as he walked across the short distance to the window. Only then did he notice that he had slept with his boots on, a fortunate oversight considering the freezing temperature and the bare concrete floor.

  He stood for a moment peering out across the churchyard. At a distance he made out a fence line that defined a cemetery, the vaguely luminescent tombstones dotting the small yard like haphazard teeth in an old beggar’s mouth. No one has swept out these stones for nearly a century, he thought to himself. I will pay a visit later. But now he headed back to the bunk and reached down to retrieve the flashlight, which he believed had been kicked under the bed when he first alighted.

  His hand felt nothing for a few minutes as he blindly patted the floor beneath the bed. Then, in the furthest reach of the cot against the wall, he felt something hard and significantly larger than the flashlight. Surprisingly it did not move easily with pressure. This discovery made his search for the flashlight urgent, and his random patting became more frantic. After a while he gave up and sat back on his haunches, only to nearly sit on the torch which was merely inches behind him. Flicking the switch, his momentary light blindness was discomforting but also brought with it a sense of relief.

  When his eyes had adjusted he brought the light under the bed and found beneath the bedding, as far against the wall as it could possibly go, a large, oddly shaped and scuffed black case. Dragging it out carefully by its worn leather handle, he immediately recognized it as an instrument case of some kind. It was covered in a thin layer of dust and its single large clasp was barely attached, the original brass thoroughly tarnished and battered. The clasp came away in his hands. Carefully placing it to one side, he pried open the lid — there lay, nestled in the faded red satin of the lining, an ancient guitar, its five double strings strung loosely across an intricately cut rosette, but showing no signs of deterioration.

  With two careful hands he lifted out the old instrument which he was certain would be over a hundred years old, perhaps two, and felt its solidity and smoothness like an old hymnbook he once sang from at Sunday mass. Something about the way its strings lay less than taut, but not limp, across the filigree sound-hole reminded him of sadness. Gingerly he laid the guitar on the bed and resisted the temptation to strum it or pluck the translucent strings, fearing the instrument would give way with the sudden force and disintegrate with the vibration after the unknown years — perhaps a century — it had lain untouched.

  Beneath the space where the guitar had rested in the case, he found a thin notebook hand-printed on parchment. The archaic hand-lettering was replete with flourishes and the occasional inkblot; the words were also accompanied by exquisitely drawn pictures, detailed illustrations of musical instrument construction of the time. Leafing through quickly, he found the final illustration was similar to the instrument prone on the cot before him, but not identical. It had, however, very noticeably six strings. Lying beneath the notebook, a few thin and yellowed sheets of hand-inked music appeared as old as, if not older than, the notebook, perhaps of the same vintage as the old guitar. Across the top was written in a spidery hand, “Per il mío caro Tomás.”

  Altogether it was an unexpected find. Closing the manuscript and replacing the sheets of music, he carefully positioned the guitar back on top of the brittle and fragile pile of musical and personal memory. For how long it had lain there, he could only guess. The manual, he noticed, was remarkably detailed. What could have inspired someone to write down and draw such meticulous instructions on making these instruments, he thought? Was it the original maker? Or was it something extracted from an encyclopedia about musical instruments? And then he heard it again, a soft woman’s voice humming a familiar lullaby in his ear. He could almost feel her breath.

  It then struck him that this guitar was no stranger. The young man in his dream had played it against the large tree. Could this be the same guitar? There was no doubt in his mind; it had the same burnished reddish-ochre sunburst finish and a small filigree sound-hole encircled with an intricately braided red, brown, and yellow timber inlay. Finding it there under the bed where he had slept, however, was overwhelming and his mind was spinning with the largeness of the events that had unfolded in the last hour. All at once it came together in his mind. The melody was the same as those of his dreams in the last three months. Different arrangements, same tune. The music in his inner ear, the moonlight flight, the giant tree fallen in the river, the incessant dreams. And now, finding the guitar and the music — these were the newest pieces of the puzzle, but where were they leading him?

  Subsequently he noticed that dawn had fully arrived and the room was no longer trapped in darkness. The soft rose light framed by the small window was comforting. Morning had brought a reve
lation, but also more questions. Bernard, however, was accustomed to life’s mysteries and as per usual put the questions out of his mind. He did not like to dwell on uncertainties, choosing rather to proceed boldly and finding answers in time without ever having to ponder a question. Quickly he gathered up the guitar case and placed the broken clasp in the pocket of his flannel shirt. He wrapped the sleeping bag around the case and tied it with the short piece of rope he normally used to secure the sleeping bag. The large awkward bundle he carried under his right arm and in the other he carried the flashlight. He made a swift glance about the room, memorizing its dimensions and the details of its furnishings, then attempted to exit through the door beside the stairs.

  At first the door would not open, even after he undid the various latches and locks. It refused to release its firm position in the frame. The years and the weather had warped the door so much it now stuck, not budging against the weight of his body. Bernard took out his pocket knife again and wedged it between the door and the frame just at the top corner above the doorknob. He felt something give slightly and with just a bit more downward pressure the timbers separated and the door scraped free.

  He opened the door outward and before him was a welcome vision. The snow-covered churchyard was bathed in the morning’s gentle glow and the row of maple trees created an intricate and gothic lattice of bare black branches. On closer inspection he could see the early preparation of greening buds bidding to rupture on every branch. He saw a lone warbler — or was it a cedar waxwing? — land on one of the lower branches and throw its head back to sing in earnest. But the effort was lost to him. He closed the door firmly behind him with some regret. He stepped off the concrete landing and his boots sank into the snow and did not yield until the crunch of ice was nearly up to his knees. He made deep tracks around the ruin of the church from the back door to the truck, which had burrowed and shoveled its way through the snow right up to the front vestibule the night before. It appeared from his perspective to be buried to the height of the flatbed. As he approached it from one side the canoe tied to the bed had the appearance of floating on the snow drift, and the picture brought a smile to the young man’s face.

  He would only have to reverse out of the position he left the truck in, he thought to himself. Luckily it had not snowed overnight; otherwise the new blanket of snow would have presented a fresh obstacle to his early departure. Carefully he placed the sleeping bag–wrapped guitar case upright onto the passenger seat and wedged it in place. It sat upright like a stately personage, and in a way Bernard felt he now had a traveling companion and a partner on his rescue mission.

  When he reached the edge of the forest, he could see that the snow had begun to melt into a hard cover of ice on the forest floor. This was good news for he knew that the canoe would be easier to transport, gliding along with its central spine acting like a skate blade above the ice, than if the snow had still been powdery or the ice slushy. For a moment he pondered whether he should throw the case into the canoe to bring his companion along for the trip, or leave it in the truck to retrieve after his mission was completed. The thought of someone coming along and lifting the precious instrument from the truck while he was deep in the forest, however, left him with no alternative.

  He removed the leather case from its seat, leaving it still wrapped in the sleeping bag, and hoisted it with care into the body of the canoe. He tied the loose end of the rope to the forward seating plank and secured it on the floor of the canoe alongside the rest of his provisions and camping gear. The possibility of the guitar becoming damaged by the wet or lost in the rapids did not escape him, but somehow he felt it was safer in his company than out of it. And, no matter how treacherous the journey might be, its presence provided grounding and a sense of direction that the music in his inner ear had previously provided.

  It was with a new sense of purpose that Bernard placed ice cleats underneath the soles of his boots and proceeded through the rough terrain of the forest with the canoe tied to his waist and dragged behind him. The ice provided a frictionless surface for much of the journey, but at several unwieldy turns along the way he had to haul the heavy boat bodily and use all his strength to bring it back into a more viable position. At one juncture in the late afternoon he was tempted to heave the canoe over a ridge and let it free fall to the other side to conserve the small amount of energy he had left before he would collapse in exhaustion.

  This ridiculous temptation lasted only a fleeting second, but it reminded him of his near fatal fall during the last trip to this ravine, and how it was the roots and brambles that had saved him from a certain death. He remembered feeling like a splintered old wooden boat after that accident, the bruises on his upper thighs and minor fractures on his ribs aching for weeks on his return and the blisters on his hands never entirely healing.

  Learning from the previous incident he stopped in his tracks, secured the canoe on the flat, and lay down inside it. He felt the hard edge of the guitar case wedged into his ribs through the sleeping bag, and this reassured him. He closed his eyes momentarily and the darkness that fell felt like a soft blanket of infancy covering his head and eyes to protect them from the bright lights. Sinking further into slumber he felt a mother’s hand on his head through the blanket and then heard a rhythmic murmuring sound that must surely be blood pulsing through veins and a beating heart, then total emptiness.

  When he awoke, he felt refreshed in a way that only a short deep sleep can achieve. Looking down now below the ridge where he had bivouacked, he realized that he was again at the pass where he had previously fallen. The bottom of the ravine was covered in ice and snow, which obscured the river, but he was certain that the tree would be lying in wait directly below. Buoyed by this discovery, he set out once again with canoe in tow. When he began the steep descent into the ravine, however, the boat became difficult to restrain. Now it towed him, rather than he it, and he had to use a series of calculated throws, tree and rope anchoring, and rein-ins to strategically sling the canoe and himself down the slope without losing person or boat.

  It was a slow and treacherous descent but when he reached his destination in two distinct and intact pieces, the relief it brought was the sweetest reward. He was able to tow the canoe behind him in the final hundred feet of the trek that led him to the creek’s edge, precisely to the position where he had parted the two sections of the fallen cedar. There it was before him, the snow and ice forming a glass-like encasement over the tree.

  The creek had already begun to thaw, and large rivulets formed over boulders near the tree. He leaned into one of the flows for a long wet drink, and the freezing cold bit into his exhaustion with a fierceness that made his entire body shudder. But the action cleared his head and the shot of clarity and renewed purpose gave him the strength to untie the canoe from his waist, settle the boat into a dry, comfortable, half-upturned position under a large spreading spruce, and prepare to make camp for the night. He lit a spare fire, changed out of his damp clothes, and hung them near the fire. When his clamminess finally dried away and he was nearly paralyzed with cold, he layered on several dry articles of clothing and socks before settling down before the campfire to dine on a heated can of white beans and a half baguette. He savored the sweet taste of the bread and legumes, knowing they would provide his body with sufficient fuel for the long cold night ahead.

  When the fire finally died down to a small glowing ember, he left it to crawl under the sheltering upturned canoe, wedging himself between the guitar case and the wooden paddles. The thick bed of pine needles beneath him gave off a pleasant scent that lulled him almost immediately into sleep. This night he did not dream. Even when the rain came down tapping lightly and steadily, then more urgently on the wooden canoe, he did not wake. By morning the rain had passed and he was surprised to find the sun already high in the sky above the tree line by the time he crawled out of the canoe tent. He had not slept this soundly for a long while, a
nd with a wry smile that would not leave his face, he undertook his morning ritual before consuming a light breakfast of bread with butter and an apple.

  The combination of pine canopy and canoe was a perfect foil for the dampness that permeated the site. The first rain was a sign that warmer weather was ahead and the creek would soon swell to a minor torrent. Already it was beginning to flow, thawing from the center line outward to the banks. Where the fallen tree was moored, the ice was visibly breaking away in large chunks. As the sun rose higher in the sky, he rushed to position the canoe with the precious cargo inside over the remaining ice ledge beside the smaller top section of the separated tree. The long rope emanating from the front of the canoe, whose other end was earlier attached to him at the waist, he now secured to the uppermost part of the tree. He strung the end of the rope around the trunk just below two top branches that fanned out like arms of a ballet dancer in pirouette. He secured the rope with a double bowline, and again around a branch.

  Together the twinned logs would make their way down river as an odd pair — one hollowed and light and the other solid and unwieldy. The young man planned to ride the canoe through the slow icy rapids and carefully guide the log down the river before it became a swollen white-water rapid. From memory he knew there were no precipitous waterfalls but he could not be sure if there were rock ledges or other foreseeable obstacles to snare the linked pair. He placed his fate in the hands of the spirits that drew him to the forest in the first place, and believed with all his being that this journey was his destiny. If he made it through with his life and limbs intact, and his prized load not lost or destroyed, he was prepared to believe there was indeed an Almighty God who guided the lesser spirits of the trees, the animals … and our human souls.