Life Goes On by Philip Gulley

Author:Philip Gulley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Fourteen

Desecration

We woke up the third Monday in October to a sunny, fall morning. It was my day off, a blank spot on the calendar with not one obligation.

“Do you want to do something today,” my wife asked at the breakfast table.

I have been married long enough to know that when my wife asks if I want to do something, she isn’t asking if I want to do something. She is letting me know she wants to do something.

But I was feeling feisty that morning and wanted to pester her a bit. “No, not really, but thanks for asking.”

She picked up her dishes, walked over to the sink, and set them down harder than necessary.

“You know,” she said after a while, “we don’t have to stay home all the time. There’s a great big world out there to see.”

I decided to push her a little further. “I thought maybe we’d stay home so you could get caught up on the housework.”

By now, the vein on her neck was standing out the way it does when she’s mad, but doesn’t speak for fear she’ll lose control and choke the life out of me.

“Or,” I said, “maybe we could see if my folks would watch the boys after school and you and I could drive over to McCormick’s Creek, eat lunch at the inn, and go for a hike.”

The vein in her neck began to throb less violently.

“Really?”

“Sure, why not. The laundry can wait until tonight.”

“You’re all heart, Sam.”

The boys were less pleased. When I’d phoned my parents, I’d volunteered them to help my father rake leaves after school.

My parents have twenty-six large trees on their property. If you don’t move quickly, it is entirely possible to be suffocated by falling leaves. My father has bought every leaf removal gadget known to humankind, without success. His life from mid-September to early November is one pitched battle after another. His yard resembles a battlefield, with the smoldering ruins of leaf piles and my father lying slumped against a tree, weary from combat. When not raking, he is peering frightfully out their parlor window, as a beaten general watches an approaching army, knowing his cause is lost but unwilling to surrender.

In contrast, I depend on the Lord for victory, letting my fallen leaves remain on the ground, trusting that God in his grace will send a wind that will blow them into my neighbor’s yard.

It took an hour to reach McCormick’s Creek. We went the back roads, striking out through the country in a northerly direction, through Greene County and up into Owen County, crossing the river at Freedom on the last ferry in Indiana, which runs in the spring and fall, saving the farmers from having to drive their equipment twenty miles around to the bridge in Spencer.

My wife has never been fond of water and, while on the ferry, sat in the car with the seat belt cinched tightly across her lap, gripping the dashboard with whitened knuckles. The ferryman stood outside her

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