Writen by Dennis Siluk
She noticed a dog following her, a mutt of some kind, but she smiled at it, she figured she could use the company. But why was it following her she didn't know, just a stray. Had she asked Tasma, she might have told her, dogs know about the cold in Minnesota, and they know humans in winter provide warm shelters, or can if they wish to. Oh they can't say it, but they sense it, instinct. Thus, the dog would follow in hope that when she got to her destination the human would give her shelter also. On the other hand, the dog was not a foolish animal, it knew enough to keep moving to keep its circulation going, its blood warm and in a constant flow.
In the course of the next hour she found the street she was looking for, she had actually passed it up and had to backtrack a few blocks. Each block brought more numbness to her face, her toes, her cheeks, nose and hands. She was but three blocks, at this instant, from her destination, it was taking an awful long time to walk these blocks she thought.
She lit a cigarette, but she could not hold it in her hands she had to leave it in her mouth, and put her hands back into her pockets, it was too cold to leave them out. She was now just starting to under- stand what cold was. Her nose, cheeks and ears were red and numb. Her toes tingled and she was loosing sensitivity in her fingers. She stomped up and down so she could feel her feet and toes, create some kind of warmth back into her limbs.
The dog kept moving, and watching her from a distance. He [he being: the dog] was white with brown speckles. Jill's eyes were now blurry from the cold. The dogs ears started to go back, and then frontward. Jill's eyes when the wind caught them, seemed to freeze her eye-lids shut for a moment, she was trying to squint without shutting them now.
—"Aw, there," she said to the dog, "There it is the address 135, 135, that's it." It was a two story building, with basement apartments. She went into the glass enclosure, some heat was seeping from under the inner glass door that lead to the hallway apartments, but it was a security building so she had to stay in the glass enclosure and find the right buzzer. She looked about, there were six apartments, but Johnny's name was not on any, but Jeff Landsman was. 'Yes, yes,' she said, looking at the dog hugging the door and all the heat that was trying to escape.
She hurriedly pressed the buzzer that read 'Jeff Landsman,' and hoped she'd hear Johnny's voice; it was possible he might be out celebrating the New Year though, she thought, it would be his style. She rang it again; a voice came over the speaker this time,
"Yaw, whose there?" said the voice.
"Is Johnny there," said Jill in an excited manner, still shivering from the cold, trying to rub out the numbness so as it to leave her body quicker, and it was becoming normal again, the little heat she needed was like a bonfire to her flesh. The dog was curled up with his tail flapping. Her blood somehow recoiled in her body, it was circulating in full force now, her lungs and voice was now clear.
"I'mmmum, Jill, Jo-johnny's girlfriend from Seattle."
"This is Jeff," said a voice.
"I want Johnny, is he there, tell him it's me." The voice over the speaker paused for a long moment, as if he may have went looking for Johnny, and so Jill just waited looking at the dog.
Then with a broken and hesitant voice, Jeff said, "Well, he, he, I hate to let you know like this: he should have told you, he was drafted in the, the Army, he's at Fort Bragg, North Carolina now; left about a week or so ago. I'm sorry he didn't let you know, I thought he did."
There was a dreadful silence now between the two speakers, the dog moved a bit, as if he could read danger on Jill's face, and she started kicking the door and slammed the phone speaker down, and every other word that came out of her mouth was swearing. The voice on the other side disappeared. She tried to phone Jeff back but he wouldn't answer.
"Hell with them all," she said, "Let's go…" she told the dog, but the dog didn't want to move, and she screamed,
"I said let's goOOO!" And he heeded her command.
It was her own fault she thought now, as she left the warm enclosure, '…I did not inform Johnny I was coming.' she told herself, 'and he did not inform me because he didn't know how to; it's just like Johnny; and Jeff, shit, I scared the shit out of him I suppose, who would answer the phone after such a display of anger, and I wouldn't listen to Tasma or the bus driver or even the boy at the gas station about the cold. Damn, what's the matter with me?'
Now she had to find her aunt's house, Tasma's house, she told herself. Or just go back to the bus station. She'd think about that on the bus, once she got back down to Arcade Street. It was—she had estimated, for her watch had stopped, it must be she figured, about 10:45 PM, she had an hour and fifteen minutes before the bus would come. Enough time to walk back the mile and a half, pick up her suitcase. She had warmed up in the glass enclosure for about twenty-minutes she estimated, long enough to last to get on a warm bus.
Jeff had no idea she was unprepared for Minnesota, everything was happening so fast, she was like a sailor in the middle of a hurricane without a life jacket, or even a ship.
As she walked several blocks in a rush, she had to stop and rest, her energy was zapped, her toes started to tingle, signals of sensation to parts of her face were felt, and her fingers started to numb up again. The dog was walking in circles.
'God, it's cold,' she told the dog, and had started to resent the dog for having a coat of fur, a homemade jacket on, one with no pours so it wouldn't absorb the cold so much—the wind so fast. The dog caught her jeer and kept her distance. Maybe Tasma was right she told herself, this Minnesota winter was bad, real bad. Could the dog talk, he would have told her to stay put in the glass cage they were in, it was better than out in the cold. It was all of 35 below, and the wind-chill was unthinkable. Her ears were frozen; she couldn't feel them anymore. She looked for taxies, but couldn't see even a car. She didn't realize in St. Paul, you had to call a taxi to a location by phone, you never flagged them down, it wasn't like Seattle, or a big city like New York City.
—She had found where she had laid her suitcase, but her body was not reacting properly and she had to leave it there, it was stiff and cold and had no feeling in her fingers, hands (she couldn't pick it up): she had to look to see if they—her fingers—were still on her, attached to her, as the snow and wind slapped her in the face making her cheeks and nose and ears raw. She hit her hands against the tree to wake them up from their numbness, then left the bag alone and started back walking to the bus stop again. Her jaw was tightening up, and her upper arm muscles were losing sensations, as if a large piece of meat was being frozen. But now she could see the bus stop, and she tried to walk faster, but she couldn't, she looked at her watch, but it had stopped. The dog was several feet from her, she looked at his fur—thus, she stopped for a moment: 'She-sheeee ggoottt a lot of fur,' she murmured in protest, in a shivering manner. But the dog kept his distance.
"Come, come, come here doggie…." she cried; but the dog only moved when she moved. She moved toward the dog, the dog moved away from her. Then she stomped her feet, it felt good, and so she did it again, she couldn't feel a thing, all the way up to her ankles.
She now had arrived at the bus stop, 'At last,' she mumbled to the dog, with a little jeering laugh: "No bus ride for you," she bellowed out from the bottom of her lungs deep in her chest, but it was not loud, it was hardly even heard by her, she had lost her energy, and her lungs were being frozen, she was being frozen alive. She sat down on the bus bench, and just shivered, and trembled.
The sight of the dog started to bother her, how content he seemed, warm in a cold way, warmer than her anyway. I mean, he wasn't shivering like her. The gas station was black inside, she almost felt like throwing a brick through the window and warming up as she stared half frozen at the gas station, but where was a brick? She'd waited a few more minutes for the bus; it should be close to midnight, so she told herself. The dog seemed always moving, she was just staring at it, and then lights caught her eyes they were from a truck she figured, west of her, about two blocks down. It had stopped. She turned her head, squinted her almost frozen eyelids:
"Damn!" she said in a horse's voice, "That's the bus," her lips couldn't move, the words just slurred out as she had seen the taillights, the break lights, lit up. She tried to stand back up, but she couldn't feel her feet, it was all of 40-below, with a wind-chill of at least double that if not more. She was now thinking Tasma was right, they were all right. Her hands were frozen in her pockets, the only thing moving now was her thoughts, and they were on Johnny; but she told herself not to panic: still looking at the tail lights of the bus, stopped, headed the opposite way, two blocks away. So close she thought, but so damn far, under these circumstances.
Jill thinking. (She was silent now, but had time to remember, even though bleak and half frozen were her thoughts). I have looked-after Tasma, as I had promised myself. (With a generosity so self-concealing that at the time only instinct or intuition, or scent of some kind had or could make it aware to her, but inside her frozen body now she smiled, for she couldn't move her lips. She then released her last breath. Unfortunately, Tasma could not offer her a hug a kiss or kind gesture, she was too far away, but it wasn't necessary.
—The dog now approached Jill, she was a picture of a frozen human, he could smell death, and jerked himself backward: remained there a moment, and then ran back to the apartment she was at before to see if he could get into the glass cage.
31 Clap of an Eye
[Seattle] Tasma had concluded she was in love, quicker than a clap of an eye, it came upon here; now that it had come: she wanted to kiss Tommy, felt it a reality; a reality that carried a disadvantage in the sense of: she felt hopeless and helpless of it all, but the cramps were there and she loved the feelings even though she was vulnerable, and what other test can there be, you have to allow it, she thought, allow it to happen, to be vulnerable to be able to find your soul mate; though her body, her spirit was melting into his secretly now. If anything they did click, and that was possibly the main thing, for who can judge simply by compatibility if one is right for the other, so she demised: for one day you are fine the next day you are ill, and will your sidekick, your husband, your half life be with you? So compatibility was not all it was made out to be, yet it was a fraction of a relationship; you had to click, that was the secret of love, and it clicked now, like a clap of an eye movement for her. And once you know, she finished: you know.
Tasma sat silent in her bedroom; Johnny had now gone, and Jill had taken off running after him to Minnesota, thus, she and Tommy were left with the Belmont's. (In Minnesota, officials were trying to identify a frozen body found on a bus-bench. And in Seattle no one really knew what was happening concerning Jill or Johnny.)
Tasma had learned more about herself, that being, once she took the first step, it normally was the decisive one, the rest would fall in place; although it took planning, will and courage (in particular in leaving home). At all events, it worked out. Had she stayed at home, she concluded (and had not taken, 'The Road Less Traveled,' as Robert Frost had wrote in his poem), she'd had never found that out. Habit, sentiment and convention would have lulled her into mediocre-unmet dreams. Nonetheless, the strings were now cut, and cut for good; yet still, Tasma retained that child's sixth sense of something wrong, which would help her in life's endeavors.
She didn't blame Jill for going, Johnny was gone, and it was hard for her (her being: Jill) to bridge the gulf of his absence. She missed Jill, and Jill had missed Johnny: that was why when Johnny left, she never made any critical statements about Him—she just missed him too much.
—As Tasma looked out her bedroom door, opening it up a foot or more, to her surprise Tommy was looking out his door silently also, a foot or so; thus, both in the flesh neither one self-assured. As she remained in her pose, her hands grew cold, the beat of her heart shook her diaphragm; in a like manner, Tommy's legs felt like lead, and he couldn't move or breathe properly—love was producing these cramps, and mysterious body functions in both individuals, and other trying ailments. She took some old thoughts she had of him, and gazed with them as if she was close to him, yet they were only twenty some feet away. She now noticed behind Tommy's door, was Mr. Belmont's door open a pinch, and was watching them two, watching with the minimum of effort, passively. It was as if both were absorbing each other, like sunbathing.
Asked Tommy with a smile, "Can I be domesticated?"
"I'm already—" was her answer.
For some strange reason, she became all of a sudden self-conscious of her lipstick color shade being the right one, and her powder being properly put on her face: again was it a normal shade as he stared at her from his room, or was it too corpse like [?] She wanted to check the mirror but she dare not lose the moment.
"Oh, hell," she said, and waved Tommy over. His shirt was off, he looked handsome with a nice physical-ness about him; not as physical or strong looking as Johnny, but then, she never did like all his muscles, they scared her.
As he, at this instant, stood in front of her, she lightly brushed her fingertips across his chest, there was smoothness to it, vitality within it; she whispered, incoherently something.
HE had on an old pair of faded slacks, and his hair was all combed back, she glanced over his shoulder to see if the old man was still watching—he wasn't, then looked in back of her out the window to see if anyone was looking, and oddly enough, she saw Mrs. Whitehead smiling out her second story window with a broom in her hands, she smiled back, and even waved, as she shut her curtain.
Tommy asked: "Do you love me?"
"Yes," was her answer, it seemed she thought, so easy to say that, unbelievable.
"I've saved $2000-dollars, no one knows about it, and will you marry me—?" asked Tommy. Tasma, did not move, she stood gazing at him, stone-still, then it burped out of her mouth: "If you love me."
"Oh yes, oh yes, very much, I love you very much."
'Tasma Thinking. It is important to see things as they are, not to arrange them around you, that way at the end of the day one can keep the moment, as it was meant to be, like now, for a good end. With Jill, Johnny, Mrs. Whitehead, the Belmont's, Tommy, I had taken a step from safe ground to the unknown, I'm happy to be here, and look at all the days that may lay ahead.'
She had learned from Jill and Tommy, or better put: discovered through them, during her visit in Seattle, how to accept the dark and odd side of life, as well as the bright side; for even in her she had found darkness with her instincts, not inbred morbidly, but rather difficult to resist at weak times of a person life. Again she had learned from dark comes light. In her diary she wrote:
Light from Darkness
A canopy of light and blue Translucent dew:— From darkness comes light!
Tasma Autumn Stanley
"Then I'll marry you," said Tasma, as Tommy looked in shock; he didn't know what to say for once, as if he was lost for words; somehow I think she liked this, and finalized it by saying, "Let's get going, how about New Orleans or San Francisco?"
"It is the world's one crime its young grow
old…" — V. Lindsey
32 "The Age of Light"
He said 'yes,' to her request, 'Let's get going,' but added, "How about you reading my story on the way, my epic poem?" And so as they caught the train to New Orleans, he read her, his story: his epic poetic poem, the one he had been working on during her stay at the Belmont's house: "The Age of Light," and now they are on the train, and he is reading it for her—for the first time, and he got it published soon after their arrival in New Orleans,…(and they lived happily ever after; with a few minor adjustments, and differences on the way; she became an accountant, and he, well, how about a counselor as he had planned, and a real estate tycoon which he didn't' plan on, and author which was a childhood dream, as you already know ((they had one child, one dog, one fish, one cat ,one God, one love, and one life all together—and no turtles)).
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