Epilogue #4
And so Miles wrote a letter to Norbert Rumphius, telling him how much they loved his home, and that they had decided to remain in Greensbury, and that they were interested in staying longer if it was possible.
They were even prepared to make an offer, if selling was something he would consider, including an offer for the furniture.
And Rumphius—who had several times tried to dump the house, only to find each offer fall through after inspection—Rumphius, sitting pantless in the finance minister’s flat in Porto, feeding olives to his dark-eyed lover while they looked out upon the deep-green Douro—Rumphius, not a religious man—wrote back, My God Yes Praise the Lord, before erasing it and typing, Yes, I might consider.
When, at last, a deal was hammered out, he even threw in the beanbags.
—
Which leaves the only member of the family not at William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
That night, as the ten Pucks of the Greensbury Elementary production stood on the stage and apologized to the audience for the offense of shadows, and linked hands with the twelve players, twelve fairies, eight lovers, and the newly married Duke and Queen; and the crowd rose to their feet in thundering applause; and the director leapt upon the stage, bowing extravagantly, before raising her beret toward the man at the top of the auditorium, who now stood, applauding back to her—while all this happened, six miles south, guarding the home on Farm Road, the dog known to human beings as Giuseppe, but to his brethren as a beguiling mixture of aromas, lay on a sumptuously shredded pillow, rank with the secrets of the fields its cotton had been culled from, the dark mills where it had been assembled, the hands of the toiling men and women who had assembled it, the oceans that had carried it to this country, the progression of creatures, human and otherwise, that had used it to rest their heads.
It had been a long day. He had only been outside once, but in that short time, he’d gathered from the winds a tale of roots and moles and worms, of ghosts hidden within the leaf-fall, of rats and springtails, mosses, snakes.
It had come down from the mountain through the trees where lumbermen had labored, through the scars torn deep into the earth, through dens of bear and fox and wolf and lion, down, down, through the paths that turned and twisted, through cities, seas, and silvered forests, before it rose again, into the corridors of pine and maple.
And meadows then, green with young spring grasses.
Past apple trees and hawthorns, trunks scarred by the secret scripts of sapsuckers, down past gall and wasp, and tumbling water, and dragonfly, and nymph.
The world trembled in his nostrils. Some of this was new, and some familiar.
Closing his eyes, he took it in, all in, and then he pricked his ears and stared into the darkness.
Something extraordinary was coming.
Skip Notes
* Specifically, he saw: Miranda, in a blue dress, who was sitting next to Clem “the Rat Man of Vermont,” and his wife, Opal, who was sitting next to Earl and Agnes Blossfeldt, the women hunched in postures of church gossip while the men leaned back and forth in awkward synchrony as they tried to talk over their wives.
And behind Earl, Miles saw Melvin Blevin the organic-oregano seller, his face and neck covered with tattoos of beloved family members and the letters RIP, while behind Melvin’s hulking six-foot-eight was Farm Candy, talking to Frank Howe, former proprietor of Shear Adventure Sheep Farm, who had come with his old high-school classmate Don Martel, grandfather of Harper (Puck 9), and Don’s new girlfriend, Bev—Bev, who, Miles had learned, on air, had won “Dinner with Don” at a public-radio fundraiser raffle, one thing leading to another, a love-at-first-sight, meant-for-each-other story that Bev just now—hypothesized Miles—was telling the mothers of Puck 3, Eleanor Jones and Vy Nguyen, chair of the English Department and proprietor of Eden Pick-Your-Own, respectively.
And two rows back, Miles spotted Andrei, hunched like a cormorant over Anna Karenina, and Paloma, who was talking to Lily Smith, the yoga teacher, whose dad, Bob, had been the scytheman in the field the fateful day Andrei was rescued from his melancholy—Bob, who, himself, was seated six rows back with his wife, Marilyn, now munching patiently on a bag of Flamin’ Hot Limón Cheetos she’d swiped from the gas station where she worked, savoring the delicious burn as she quietly awaited the commencement of her fourteenth Midsummer Night, eleven of which had starred one of her grandchildren.
And beside her was her daughter, Kathleen—Lily’s twin sister—whom Miles recognized from her job as the vet hospital receptionist—and Kathleen’s husband, Ted Vrooman, of Vrooman’s Small Engine Repair, the hunter who had threatened Miles and Giuseppe.
And Miles saw that these good people were talking to none other than Dr. Anita in the seat in front of them—Anita and her husband, Herb—the Parent Coach—who, Miles observed, was trying to suppress a smile, which, Miles suspected, was because Anita must have told Herb how Ted had come to see her following an encounter with a stag that April in a sunlit glen, a creature so powerful, so magnificent, drawn hypnotically to Ted’s presence by the Doe-in-Rut? that Ted had accidentally spilled on his jacket.
And he had stared at Ted from beneath his dark, mysterious, almost-human lashes, his muscular haunches quivering as their eyes met and Ted began to feel—and really Anita shouldn’t have told her husband this, really she shouldn’t have told Miranda, Kate, Eleanor, Vy, and Farnaz—Ted the hunter felt a certain frisson long absent from his relations with his wife, a frisson that both thrilled and terrified him, and for which Dr. Anita tried to perform rudimentary psychotherapy, laying him down upon the examining table and taking a seat near his head, not because she had any training in this, but because of the dearth of mental-health providers in rural America generally, and also out of prurient interest. And, speaking of Farnaz, Miles saw her toward the front with Charles Osgood of the eponymous tree service whom Miles had met at one of the Wylkesian meetings, before the fabled orchardist had stormed out muttering, “Ye loony bastards!”—Osgood, who, it should be said, was looking like a hippie pirate in his overalls tie-dyed with Chemical, but who, for all his many odors, seemed to have charmed Farnaz, now touching his arm as she laughed.
And why not flirt a little, for Darius, her husband, was home recovering from being run over by the Lawnosaur belonging to his buddy John, now two rows down, who was talking to Red Lidenbrock, Wylkesian, and Dolly Prendergast, another Wylkesian, who—Miles had learned—had been in love with Red since they were in seventh grade, sixty-six years ago, though Dolly still had not told him.
And these, Miles saw, were not the only Wylkesians there, for on the far left, down by the exit, he spotted Hugh and Emily Lamoreaux, talking to a young man Kate identified as Franz Kafka, who was sitting next to Yvette the vet (that’s her name, I’m not making this up), who was sitting with her son Kyle, the PA, and secretly reading over Kyle’s shoulder as he tried to compose a flirty reply to “VermontNausika” on Where’s the Beef, a rural hook-up app, which, to be fair, Kyle only used reluctantly, worried that he might meet one of his patients, but Greensbury, a beautiful place, a tranquil place, a magical place, was also a place where “sowing one’s oats” was a turn of phrase used literally, not figuratively.
And since we are on the topic of romance, absent was Snowflake Bentley, who’d met a pretty lady at the Co-op, when he’d gone to hunt for more examples of Delusional Nonsense in the nutraceutical aisle, but showed unexpected flexibility when he saw this lovely lady paying forty-seven dollars for organic wrinkle-cream, kept his truthful mouth shut, and now was home preparing a risotto for her, with the shiatsu at the ready should she want to kick back and watch a movie.
While present, just in front of Miles, was Margie, lonely Margie, lovelorn Margie, who, Miles saw, as the auditorium lights blinked twice to call the gathered people to their seats, had come, not by herself, but with an unknown gentleman.