The curtains are moving in little gasps, puffing in and out with a western breeze that blows across an open pasture into this historic farmhouse servant’s quarters on Colorado’s pastoral Western Slope. I roll over, comfortable beneath the weight and warmth of the covers, and lay my chin on the windowsill. There’s no screen, and my gaze works past a split-rail fence, past piles of firewood and junk cars, past the cottonwood trees that line Tomichi Creek near the base of the hills a couple miles away. I scan the scene, working from near to far, and my eyes come to rest on the horizon, where the sagebrush has already turned blue-green with the mingling of seasons.
The pile of blankets moves next to me, and her arm flops across my waist. I roll back over and prop my head on a pillow, reaching to the floor for the scrap of paper she scribbled on last night. I hold it without reading, thinking it perhaps wiser not to confront events about to unfold. But she sighs, and my heart softens. I read the short lines another time.
Greater is the sorrow
Of a future that was
Never there to begin
The sun glides across
The sky pulling time itself past
I blinked and the day was gone–
And so were you
I cried for the loss of a commitment
Although it was always slightly beyond my grasp
Now all that stands
Before me is a
Reflection–a side of
Love I thought
I almost knew
One of her canvasses is on the wall. It’s a vivid, black-and-blue landscape, a mountain composed of a naked female form, her torso twisted with shoulders slumped, her long hair flowing across her face, hiding it from a viewer’s prying eyes. A person could look at the painting and see a woman, or a person could see a mountain. It depended what you wanted. Both were apparent. Both were true.
Her poem is true, too. We’ve got plans to reunite in Key West in three months. It’s one of her favorite places, a climate of beautiful sunsets, palm trees and drinks with little umbrellas. We’ll sit on the beach, make love in the sand. We’ll paint things and write things. We’ll live and be happy. But her poem is true, too. As true as the mountain. As true as the woman. It depends on what you want to see.
She begins to stir and nuzzles under my arm, and we remain tangled like that a few minutes, the curtains puffing in and out, an avian chorus drifting from the pasture outside the open window.
“I should get going,” she says. I can smell her warmth.
“Yes,” I say.
She begins to gather herself, then falls in a heap on my chest, her mouth slowly moving onto mine. She eases over my chest, and I can feel her breasts move subtly on my skin, the little nubs of her nipples passing back and forth, back and forth, and the sun stops climbing into the sky for a while. The curtains swirl around her head, and her hair falls forward covering her face and hiding her glassy eyes. The mountain or the woman—all a matter of perspective.
* * * *
The sun is still low on the eastern horizon, shining through six handsome blue spruce trees dangling heavy boughs over both sides of the driveway. The last of the bags are in her burgeoning gray station wagon, and I use some cord to tie her mountain bike to the roof rack.
“This isn’t really goodbye,” she says, her arms wrapped behind my back. “I’ll see you in three months in Florida. And then we can go anywhere. I’ll go anywhere with you. Anywhere except … oh, Idaho. Anywhere except Idaho.”
“I’ll try to make it,” I say. “ I’ll try to make it.”
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you, too.” We kiss, and then she climbs into her car, backing out from beneath the canopy of thick blue spruce limbs. She drives by the turreted mansion for which the house I’ve shared for two years with three college friends was once the servant’s quarters. And she is gone.
I shuffle a foot in the driveway, take a deep breath and look to the east, wondering if Key West, Florida, is a place I’ll ever go, and I’m almost certain it is not. I climb the steps of the front porch and enter the expansive living room where my roommates have amassed an impressive array of rare beer bottles and display them on the towering book shelves on either side of the fireplace. I go into the kitchen and find Bryan making breakfast. I climb onto the curving brick stairs that lead to the second floor and sit on the fourth step.
“You alright?” he asks.
“Not really.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
“Maybe.”
He flips a pancake in a griddle on the stove.
“It’s a little strange,” I say. “Saying goodbye to someone with the idea that you’ll get back together and knowing you probably won’t. Jodi and I are never going to see each other again. Why’s it so depressing, Bryan? Why’s it hurt? I’m pretty sure we’re done, that I don’t want to deal with it anymore. So why’s it hurt so much?”
“It always hurts, man. You guys spent two years together. It’s not easy just walking away. Here.”
He grabs a bottle of whiskey from the shelf by the window and holds it in my direction.
“It’s nine in the morning, Bryan. Aren’t I supposed to wait until noon or something?”
He keeps his arm extended, and I take the bottle, removing the cap and enjoy a long, throat-burning swill. It takes mere seconds before it works through my empty stomach and blunts my sadness.
“Hey,” he says. “You’ve got an adventure coming up. She’s going east. You’re going west. And you never know, you know? Don’t beat yourself up. So what’s your plan?”
“I don’t know. Well, I mean, I know a little. My brother left yesterday, after our graduation, for Missoula. I’m gonna pack up a fly rod and camping gear and head that direction tomorrow. After that, who knows?”
“There’s some good fishing up there,” he says, and he would know. Bryan Smith has a magician’s touch on a fly rod. “The Bitterroot River’s got world-class fishing.”
“I hear the mountains are big, too,” I say and take another pull from the bottle. “Big, but different from the mountains around here.”
“I’m sure you can tell me about it when you get back.”
I take the bottle with me when I traipse back through the living room and toward the room I’ve called home for two years. I begin tossing things into a box, making sure to leave my fly rod, backpack and thermal underwear off to the side.
She’s going east; I’m going west–our brushes working to paint different skies. I have no idea what will happen or where I’m headed, but I’m almost certain that Key West, Florida is a place I never intend to go.
The cardboard box begins to swell with my belongings as I begin to feel the tug of the western horizon. I’m going west. I’m going west. And, for the time being, there’s not much else that matters.
© Greg Stahl
