She had made it all possible. She was the melody of his song. And ever she watched and waited for him, in a warm, yellow kitchen.
It is dark below. Raindrops clamor helplessly at the small window by his shoulder, driven in itinerant streaks across the glass by the travel of the airstream. The emptiness of the night absorbs his thoughts like blotted ink.
Somewhere close beneath, at last, is Memphis.
Memphis, 218 Waterford Road, and home. Listing for a time, the plane rolls left upon its wing and swings, then slowly levels. The engines surge, loaf momentarily, then surge again, gentling the Boeing into a landing descent. Alternately, the jet glides and stoops for the runway. Captive to its motion, he feels himself following in weightless stair steps.
Through bleary eyes, he glances at his watch. Two-twelve in the morning, Central.
Suddenly, the low, murky clouds lift and the earth rushes up.
In the near distance, a small city of lights queerly looms, and ahead the runway markers stretch away as regimentally as a march of militia. The wheels grab the asphalt and the fuselage shudders. Thunderously ,the engines reverse and roar, the brakes catch, and the forward force of the plane dies as if arrested by the retarding grasp of some great giant. Docilely now, the aircraft taxis to the terminal and brakes to a halt.
Outside, the rain beats a steady tattoo into the puddles on the tarmac. Baggage attendants and maintenance crew rush about the shadows in glistening slickers.
He sits absently, spending the last moments of the trip in introspect, acceding the trace of relief. He’s thankfully there and back again.
This time it was Cameroon and bongo. The time before, Alaska and Kings. Before that, Scotland and grouse.
For a spell, once more, the wildness has been satiated, the restlessness quieted. His longing now is for home.
Home and Stephy. The cabin speaker blared in a pinched monotone: “On behalf of Delta Airlines, we’d like to welcome you to Memphis International. Federal regulations require that you remain seated until the Captain has turned off the safety belt signs, and your flight is ready for deboarding. Thank you for choosing . . ..”
For all the many years, she has understood. From their first dates as high school sweethearts, long ago and far away, when the fish bit late or the puppy ignored sunset. And even later, as she learned that the terms of their endearment would forever hover around dusk, when the deer walked or the turkeys needed roosting and dawn, when the ducks flew. When, time and again, his implacable wanderlust compressed their precious few hours between the whims of some wild thing and her father’s 11 o’clock curfew.
There was an immense part of him that would never be contained or civilized, and would ever leave her waiting, and even knowing that, a few years afterward she had promised her life and love to him.
In the decades since, he had sometimes wondered why.
For he was ever prone to go, as surely as water is given to flow and there were times he had not been there for her.
Searching his reflection in the window glass earnestly for a moment, his features sobered.
He could not remember a time that she had not been there for him.
The deboarding signal thumped with a blunt chime.
He waited past the initial press of passengers and slipped into line, onto the aisleway and into the terminal. Pensively, he threaded his way through the staggered concourse toward the baggage claim.
In the early years, she had followed. That portion of their life together had passed more swiftly than he would have wished. Inevitably, perhaps, for it had much to do with the gentleness he so adored in her. Though she understood the intensity of his quest, she would never match it. She loved the adventure, but more, she cherished the constancy and grace of home and the easel of her small studio.
“Go,” she said, “I’ll keep the dogs fed and the covers warm.”
She had made it all possible. She was the melody of his song. And ever she watched and waited for him, in a warm, yellow kitchen.
He’d been comin’ home from somewhere or the other for 40 years, and the most comforting sight of all as he finally made the back porch was Stephy stirring around in the soft light of a warm, yellow kitchen. When she was younger, the back-lighting always put an alluring glimmer in her long brown hair. He would stand quietly in the shadows of the porch for several minutes sometimes, simply reveling in it. Listening to her humming in his mind, as she always did when she was happy. Supper had waited on a low burner many a night when he was a younger man. There was a son and daughter to prove it. And a grandson, who had killed his first deer the fall before, and who would soon go in search of wildness with him too, as Andy had. And the little girl with hair the color and texture of sun-kissed cornsilk, who beleaguered her “Granddunny” to keep every pup in the latest setter litter.
Stephy’s hair was silvered now with the striving, and, yes, perhaps the waiting. As was his. It no longer fell in the long fine tresses about her shoulders. Her face was tautened by caring and wrinkled with giving . . . and she was more lovely than ever she had been. And still she was his and still she waited for him.
“Thank God,” he whispered softly.
So it must always be. He wished to live one day longer than Stephy, and one day only.
He retrieved the considerable duffel, the rifle cases, slid them to a corner, found a cart and ferried it all to the loading station. A ticket attendant there consented to guard it. A chilly bluster of wind nudged him defiantly as he pushed past the door to the parking pavilion. Rain pelted his face it was black and dark. The struggling security lights wore faint silver halos in the fog.
Reaching the Discovery, he punched in the entry code, flung aside the door, clambered onto the seat. Slamming the door behind him, he recovered for a moment, safe and dry. Minutes later he was loaded and southbound on the freeway.
He wanted to hold her now. Feel her against him. Hear the ageless promise again.
The wipers slapped softly across the windshield. The road was empty and dreary.
She’d be in her blue velvet robe — have the coffee hot.
His ear bent to the tune on the radio. Unbelievably — Gary Morris — Wind Beneath My Wings. He’d never comprehend it — how Fate sometimes embellished the proper moment. If Fate it truly was.
Only a few more miles now, of the thousands. He pressured the accelerator pedal, watched the speedometer needle climb another five miles-per-hour.
He considered the things it had taken to make his existence complete. Forever he was incontent to compromise. Major interests in three profitable corporations. Enough rifles to fill Stoeger’s fall inventory, fly gear to mount any excursion between Bristol Bay and the Cays, a shotgun for every occasion. Three of London’s best.
Wealth and freedom. Every thing for every season.
Well and good, he thought, as he swung the wheel into the last turn. But the fortune of his life waited just ahead, as unpretentiously as it always had, in a warm yellow kitchen.
Life can be likened to ascending a mountain. The higher you climb, the more years you have beneath you, the farther you can see, the more unobstructed the view, the more you understand.
From A Higher Hill finds Mike Gaddis atop the enlightening vantage of almost eight decades. Looking back over the vast and enthralling sporting landscape of a life well lived. And ahead, to anticipate and savor whatever years are left to come. Buy Now
