From "It Takes a God" by J Hirtle
Abbey Goode stood silently. Only her eyes, stippled in blues and grays, searched the night sky. Any movement, she thought, would steal away a chance to hear him. She gazed past the moon, beyond the twinkling stars and into the
charcoal colored heavens, searching, listening. She wanted to hear him breathing. She
needed to hear him breathing! He had been a part of her, now he was gone. Listening…just
listening.
Twilight’s lull was
interrupted by the shrill of a snow owl hunting the game that scurries along
the shoreline, small innocent animals camouflaged by the dark night, unaware of
the predator’s pursuit. Abbey turned towards the sound… "Hush!" She whispered to the creature. The moon’s light catches the beautiful bird, wings
spread wide as it glides over Wharf Road, heading east moving towards the
sleeping ocean. Then, just as quickly the owl dips down below the light of the
moon, disappearing into the darkness. The cries of the owl gone; the silent night returns.
She stands there listening, seemingly incapable of movement. Every sinew frozen
in obedience to her desire to hear him breathing one more time.
Abbey Goode strains to hear that which she knows she will never hear again.
Abbey Goode strains to hear that which she knows she will never hear again.
She stands facing away from the double doors which open into
her father’s house. She knew she should turn and go back inside. Late night
winds would soon arrive. Coming off the inlet, their strength would turn the November
air frigid. Winter in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, is not marked by calendars but
instead by the unpredictable and dithering Mother Nature. This year the
perennial battle between the end of autumn and the arrival of Old Man Winter was
being won by the latter. Inside her childhood
home she would be warmed by the kindled blazes dancing in the fireplace. Inside is also where memories live. Memories that Abbey Goode did not want to
rekindle. Not tonight. Not ever again.
Her father would be
sitting at the long cherry oak table; where so many meals had been shared and
good memories shaped. He would be staring out the large bay window that peers
out towards the docks. Docks now vacant except for the Cape Islander christened
the “By Grace”; her father’s lobster
boat. All the other ships had left port early that morning, setting a course
for a longitude that would be rewarded when the ship’s crew hauled the prized
lobsters out of the depths of the sea. It was only the second time in almost
twenty years that her father’s boat had not lead the fleet out of the harbor on
dumping day, steering their prows eastward hours before the sun cast its golden
light upon the dark blue horizon. The image of the “By Grace” moored without companion was as dark and lonely as the
image of her father sitting at the long table. Abbey couldn’t bear to see her
father so… discarded. She had never witnessed her daddy, her hero, anything
other than filled with life.