A Walk for Chestnuts, continued

Aunt Merica led us on up through the woods, up the barely defined logging road. After some time we left the road and climbed the high but gently sloping hill, trees everywhere. The sun broke through in large bright spots, setting on fire the yellow, orange, rust and red fallen leaves. She paused beside one old oak, there on the sun-speckled hill. "Here is where Zed Philippi shot himself," she said to Mama. I looked down at the spot, at the bright leaves, at the gnarled roots spreading out from the black gray trunk, and I saw him sitting there. Transparent, but sitting, slumped, with his back against the tree and the long rifle lying underneath his hand on his left. He had his clothes on, and his shoes, but I saw right through to the yellow and red and brown and rust leaves covering the ground. I stood there staring at him and the spot. And the woods took on another meaning; their dark depths some awe.

We trudged on, up to the top of the hill to where the woods stopped and the rough pasture with the blackberry and dewberry vines set in. Down, far down this hill Reed Creek's clear water made its way to New River. How we wanted Daddy to take us fishing there, but he was no fisherman; the most he did was buy a bamboo pole and hang it up above the kitchen windows and say, "Huh! Not today."

We came around toward the east, the western side of the hill back petering out in our orchard and our yard. The chestnuts just weren't falling. We found a few overlooked chinquapins and I found lots of moss to make beds for my dolls; we put some in the setting-egg basket. But all the time, as we descended toward the old logging road, I kept thinking about that transparent man, sitting under that tree on the other side of the hill. It wouldn't do to ask Aunt Merica about him. Maybe she hadn't even seen him.

As we left the barnyard and walked past the turkey pen and the chicken house, I got to wondering, "Who would have fed the chickens and gathered the eggs if Aunt Merica had married?''

© Vivian S. Dixon, 2004