the walk

The Walk

In Memory of Hubert Thornberg

      He folded the handkerchief, put it in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, removed it, smoothed and refolded it before putting it back in and patting it twice slowly with his right hand. Surveying himself in the hallway mirror he said, to no one in particular, "I'm going for my walk."

      Singularly unremarkable in looks save for the defining handkerchief, which he insisted upon wearing even to buy milk at the corner market, Carlyle M. Arnold (the M didn't stand for anything that he knew of, it was just M) lived what some would call a quiet life. Apart from cursing the backyard moles or turning up his grammophone to listen to Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5 (the specific recording of Lorin Maazel directing the Vienna Philharmonic) it was relatively serene.

      A paradox, he held himself with the carriage and upbringing of royalty and yet was approachable by anyone. His tenure as head of the English Department had evolved from positions of power to those of more gradual influence now that he was living his encore years as he liked to phrase it. He was neither daft nor simple of mind and therefore had nothing to prove, finding he rather liked having time for reciting poetry to the cadence of his steps.

      Incidentally, he felt he finally embodied what he had taught from the text of t.s. eliot's "lovesong of j. alfred prufrock" for so many years; the questions "shall i part my hair behind or wear my trousers rolled? do i dare to eat a peach and thus disturb the universe?" Yes, as a man whose surname and first name could be interchanged with equal effectiveness, he found a certain ease with holding apparent opposites in tension. He knew that an action, no matter how small, could alter the world in unspeakable ways. He also knew, and felt in his bones, what comfort a healthy dose of insignificance could bring as he closed his newly whitewashed door and headed down the lane.

      Just shy of April, the sun played a near-constant game of hide and seek with the clouds as robins fed on worms brought out by the rains. Carlyle laughed through his teeth, which came out more like a low whistle, at what he must look like: another old man wandering off. He marveled at the amount of pilgrimages and books about people who walked. His daughter often emailed him The New York Times bestseller list and he couldn't help noticing it replete with stories of women walking the Pacific Crest Trail by themselves and spiritual seekers in Spain who braved El Camino; not to mention all the fiction novels about housewives who ran away from their perceived domestic drudgeries, another widowers tale of chasing after lost love or old men with dementia who escaped from care homes undetected. He was none of these. He was Carlyle The Bulb Man and he was walking.

     As he rounded the corner by the city park, he reached into his pocket for a bulb, grabbed a trowel from his other pocket and began to dig. Covering the tuber with dirt, he patted it down with the back of the trowel, "Daffodil, Narcissus", he whispered, as if not to disturb it, just before the mist turned to showers.

      Picking up his stride, his leather oxfords clapping on the sidewalk, he passed the library steps where a ruddy-faced boy sat reading Robinson Crusoe. It looked like the very same copy he had donated after their children had grown and moved away. "Good day," he said to the boy who only eyed him with suspicion as if to start, "I might talk to you if you weren't a stranger..." having no idea that the chocolate stain on page 34 was a direct result of Carlyle letting his son have ice cream in bed "just this once" back in 1987 (oh, how well he knew the secondary stories books could tell!)
     Just beyond the boy small daffodils were still in bloom. "Tete-a-tete", these were the fragrant kind, the French meaning "head to head" for when people are having a good conversation. Carlyle had planted those there because they reminded him of the ladies at rotary lunches who all talked at the same time, laughing themselves into hysteria while dabbing at their eyes with fashionable kleenex.

      Far from being annoyed by others' chatter, he was amused by it. It was the reason he could be content with such a solid and routine existence. He enjoyed living vicariously through the lives of young mothers, college students, businessmen and baristas, each with their own personal dramas and ruffled surface waters. Ducking beneath the awning of a local frame shop, his oxfords were nearly run over by the wheels of a stroller. Traveling up from his shoes to her face, his eyes noted it was the woman he and his wife had taken in, the one who had been homeless and was now making a life for herself working as a florist. He didn't often tell these stories, but Carlyle's life was replete with little things. The seemingly insignificant details that, like a one degree change, can alter the trajectory of a satellite orbit, a life.

      It wasn't all books, barbecues and bliss as he liked to say, in small town life. The owner of the hardware store still hadn't forgiven Carlyle for marrying Vivienne, though the jealousy sealed itself into a slow and steady--though still pressurized like peaches canned in summer but less sweet--understanding augmented by monosyllables (on the owner's part, Carlyle preferred to speak in complete sentences) over the occasional shared cups of black coffee.

      And there were the building zone wars as they watched fields and orchards turned into low-income housing. There was the time, he laughed to himself, that he wasn't above sneaking out at night to rescue an entire field of bulbs he had planted on subsequent walks over the years. There he had been, wearing black, head-lamp and all, digging them up surreptitiously before the bull dozers could only to replant them by moonlight several weeks later in front of new tenant's homes to give them hope. "All in a row—milagro!" exhuded one neighbor whom he knew to be an immigrant. He laughed the whistle through his teeth and waved. "Milagro!" shrugging his shoulders at the miracle as if he had no idea how the welcoming blooms came to be.

      The walk had variety depending on the season. Sometimes it was tulips or dahlias he carried in his pocket. Or hyacinths. Irises on special occasions. Other wind-beaten days he had to hold down his tweed jacket flaps to keep the acorns from flying out. (In the land use battles, he preferred the term conscientious objection over passive aggression, replanting one oak tree at a time. This, he declared, would be his act of civil disobedience.)

      Long-time residents knew to expect Carlyle. And he, them. (The pit-bull on Ash Street was a relatively new adventure.) Sometimes, if he timed his walk down Orchard Avenue just right, Mrs. Montgomery would have him in for fresh-made pie.  They all kept their rhythms like icons at Lent. (Not that he considered himself particularly religious about anything besides gardening, he just liked the analogy.) The bakery would often comp him a day-old sweet roll and in return he would keep them stocked with petals for cake tops before picking up some coffee "grounds for the garden" as the bags were labeled. "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons" he would say to them, quoting eliot again, before taking his leave. For all the beauty of their town, no one knew who spread and tended the bulbs.

      And so it was that upon reentering the white door of their the tidy house on the lane, Carlyle M. Arnold of singularly brilliant pedigree and near-daily anonymity, would hang his hat next to the framed painting of Frederick Walker's "The Plough" (Vivienne was partial to it) clean his trowel, set it by a vase of fresh flowers and contemplate his next walk.