Rear-View Mirrors by Paul Fleischman

Author:Paul Fleischman [Fleischman, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: cookie429, Kat, Extratorrents
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 1986-01-03T13:00:00+00:00

“. . . Remember you are born to die.

As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, so you shall be.

Prepare for death, and follow me.”

Leo’s voice was large, like my father’s, and he’d addressed this epitaph to the assemblage of tombstones as if he were a minister lecturing his flock. He turned toward me. “Preaching to the converted, I’m afraid.”

I smiled in reply. I heard my father’s ax in the distance and reread the inscription. “Remember you are born to die” was advice he’d certainly taken to heart. His death seemed to have cast its shadow over all his days—except for this one. When I’d come downstairs he was already up, zealously splitting wood, shouting to me that his heart would last a thousand years, fearlessly defying his demise.

“I’d forgotten about this little graveyard hidden away out here,” said Leo.

I studied the inscriptions on a cluster of stones. “Most of their last names seem to be Pyle. And most of them didn’t live very long.”

“Tempus fugit. Time flees. A strong argument against sleeping in late.” Leo stepped over the low stone wall. “Something a sluggard like me, with no wife or kids to wake him up, can use.”

“You must not have slept too late to have driven all the way here from Boston by nine.” I followed him over the wall and we continued our stroll through the woods behind the house.

“I got used to getting up early last semester. Had to teach an eight o’clock class.” He converted a branch to a walking stick. “Italian literature of the Renaissance. A subject that put many students back to sleep.”

We passed several gnarled apple trees, some bent-backed and dead, some with a few leaves, all looking misplaced among the pines.

“But tell me, Olivia—how are you finding rural life?” A chipmunk darted past us. “Fresh eggs. Clean air. No bookstores for miles. Mosquito bites. Giant leeches in the lakes. . . .”

A woodpecker’s drumming rang through the forest.

“It’s all right,” I replied. “Kind of boring, though.” I searched for something more to say, then noticed Leo had halted and was pointing with his walking stick.

“Haven’t seen that since I was a boy.”

We both angled left and found ourselves approaching a large, stone-lined pit.

“What is it?” I asked.

The hole was about four feet deep and rectangular. “An old cellar, I suspect.” He squatted at its edge. “Those rocks over there were probably part of the chimney—all that’s left of the house.”

I crouched. “When do you suppose it was lived in?” I realized I was speaking softly, as if we were intruding on its occupants.

“If those folks in the graveyard are the ones who built it, it might have been standing two hundred years back.”

A chill skittered up the length of my spine. I stared ahead blankly. My ears heard no sound. Then I jumped down into the pit, my feet disappearing beneath a foot of dead leaves, and discovered my mind repeating a line that my teacher had paused upon when we’d read King Lear last year: “Ripeness is all.

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