The Scientist

The woods of Pennsylvania are not populated with castles, but deep in Beaver County, a shade West of Pittsburgh near the Ohio border, you can find a castle, as beautiful and as gothic as any you would ever find in Europe. If you know the right roads to take to get there, you could even visit it, but you would not be able to go inside. 

I drove to it last in 1988, down the long, gravel tongue of a lane. I stood at the mouth of the door and knocked like a salesman, but no one came. What was I even going to say? What did I have to sell? My curiosity? It was shut up tight, as though it had nothing to say to me anymore. Nothing to offer me. But I knew better. I was one of the hundreds of stone masons who had built it.

I am an old, retired Army pilot. I fly a dual-seat biplane over Beaver County and sometimes as far West as Steubenville, or East to State College. I have seen the castle thousands of times over the past fifty or so years from the air. I give tourists and people who just want to fly a view from above, and the castle is always a popular site, especially in the early summer when within the walls of a fortress of dark green pines that segregate it from the outside world, the violets are in full bloom. What must be a hundred acres of violets spread across a dozen miles, or so. It is almost uncomprehensible in scale. A purple sprawl unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. 

I flew dozens of combat missions in World War II and saw humanity at its worst. I flew over Dresden after the firebombing when it was reduced to a carpet of wicked flames, as violent red as that field of violets are peaceful purple. I tried not to think about the women and children our bombers had killed. Down in those flames. I still try not to think of them because my thoughts will do no good. 

I think I like to fly over that castle and to see those violets because it puts something into me that The War took out. And sometimes when I don’t have a paying customer, I will go by myself. Just to look down upon them, dipping my wing for a better view. 

At 80, my time on this Earth is surely almost over, and all I seem to do now is to tell tales to any listening ear, usually in the diner, stories that are of meaning to me and usually that relate to the history or life of Beaver County in one way or another. I never talk about Dresden, or The War at all. 

June of 2002, is how I begin writing about the castle. The present day. But June of 2002 looks back at me strangely from the page. I am sitting in the diner, drinking coffee, my daily stop. The town is planning the annual Fourth of July parade and I will march in it and wear my bomber jacket and veteran’s hat. That’s what I got to look forward to. A few waves from some beautiful children waving their flags. Like those in Dresden that I didn’t see wave. 

I have that and writing stories about various things that happen around town from time to time. I have written a dozen eulogies because I know everyone around here about as well as anyone can know them. And sometimes, people don’t feel they know how to write and it seems to me like someone should say something nice about the dead when they pass.

I guess as an old retired coot, whose wife passed twenty-two years ago in the winter of 1980, I got nothing better to do than to wonder about things. To observe them. To look in my cup of coffee and see things like they used to be. No one really talks about the castle anymore, maybe because they never see it and it is a matter of out-of-sight, out-of-mind. In fact, even when it was built in the summer of 1970, no one really talked about it then, other than a few “Christian” folk who said it was built by a Satanist and to be used for the occult. I knew differently, of course. I had met The Scientist, which is what I prefer to call him sometimes. And I had helped build his castle.

I am not a successful writer who makes a lot of money. I don't make any, in fact, though in my abundance of spare time I write a column for the town paper about flying and fishing and my view of the world. I took a night class at the community college in Creative Writing. That was two summers ago now in 2000. At 78, I was the oldest kid in the class. I got an A in the course, but I don’t know who didn’t. The instructor said he particularly liked my stories about aliens. He asked me to write about Dresden, but I didn’t want to see it again, so I wrote something about barn owls.

I scratch out the date, which seems irrelevant. Time seems irrelevant. It is hard for me to write stories that are reality rather than fiction because there seems to be some great moral obligation to tell them completely accurately, and to keep to the truth. But I feel there is an equally compelling obligation to tell this story from the facts as I know them. 

I look out the window of the diner and into the woods across the highway where logger trucks rumble now and then. It is as though my eyeballs become two dragonflies and fly through those woods to the castle, some twenty miles deep into a parcel of land with a twenty-mile perimeter in either direction. 

I miss my wife. She genuinely liked to hear me talk and I guess that is the surest indication that someone really loves you. That they keep an interest in how your brain works and they care to know what is in your heart. They don’t get annoyed by the thoughts in your head. And they forgive your flaws and love your for your quirks. She would have loved this story as she loved love stories, even tragic ones. I like to think she would have loved how I told it to her. Maybe on the porch swing in front of our house that is painfully vacant without her. Even after twenty-two years, I don't sit in it. She would smile and her eyes would light up when I told her a story. Pen and paper seem to be a poor substitute for her ears and eyes.

Dr. Benjamin Rush, direct descendant of the Founding Father of the same name, moved to Beaver County in May of '63 at age thirty. He was a man of science, everyone seemed to know, without knowing exactly how or what he did. I met him several times, indirectly, even before I was employed as one of the stone masons to build his castle. 

Before the castle was built, he lived downtown in an old gothic home that was once built and owned by a younger brother of Andrew Carnegie. I would see him walking down the sidewalk, always seemingly busy with thoughts raging in his head. Always in a tight black suit with little variation. He would not say hello, but he wasn’t at all rude in his silence. He’d nod if he passed you. His mind seemed always to be occupied. 

A few years later, I began to see him with a beautiful woman who was not native to our small town. She stood out like a beautiful sore thumb. She may have been the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, other than my Betty Mae, of course. She was thin and had fiery red hair, a milky white-washed complexion, thick lips, and green natural emerald eyes. I never formally met them then, but I called him The Scientist and for some reason, I called her Rio Red.

I stop writing. I put the pen down on my journal and look out the window again. More logger trucks pass and my eyes again become dragonflies that fly to that door. But this time, they go inside through a peephole. The castle is marvelous, even more so than I recall when we laid the last of the stones. It has been furnished, but it is cold and dark. And The Scientist has confined himself to one room. 

The waitress, who calls me Tipper, which is a long story, smiles and refills my mug. I smile at her and nod. 

“You writin’ a book?” she asks. “Or another of your newspaper things?”
 
I look at her pleasantly. “It's already been written, Jenny.”
I feel like a clumsy intruder. I will tell the story from right now before I get too old to do so. With what I know. I want to explain why there is a castle in the middle of the woods surrounded by a dozen miles of violets in case anyone is ever curious like me. That is all. 

But just as I begin, a car pulls up to the diner. A young man, tall and thin, steps out and looks around taking a deep breath of fresh air. He looks lost. I stare at him and he seems like a delusion to me and I wonder if I am losing my mind and if it is time for me to go to some old folk’s home. Put myself out to pasture, as they say. I cannot believe what, much less who, I am seeing. He comes inside and looks around. And I sit and stare at him until I can think of something to say.

After the castle was built, Dr. Rush and Ms. Rio Red, moved in and sold the Carnegie home to a banker and his family, who had no personality at all. Even their dog had no personality. I hoped I didn't have to write their eulogy. It seemed that the town lost a little life then. After they moved, it was only on rare occasions that anyone would see either of them. 

Occasionally, the couple would come to town in a black convertible. The fire of Ms. Red’s hair covered in some silk wrap tied below her delicate chin. Always in big black sunglasses, day or night, like a movie star, my wife laughed. Dr. Rush seemed to always smile with her. Little about him changed other than that smile. There was peace in him, rather than a preoccupation of thought. Same black suit and wild, wide eyes. His hair slicked back. Face cleanly shaved.  They came for a movie from time to time. Parked in front of the old Majestic Theater in that gorgeous black Cadillac, went inside, watched the movie, then went home. Maybe once a month or so for four years. 

They had a dozen servants who came to town for the necessaries of the castle. And when they did, they never spoke to anyone other than to ask for the things they needed. No one else in town seemed as curious as me. Not even my Betty Mae, who asked me often why I wonder about The Scientist so much? She once accused me of being in love with Rio Red, but she knew better and she laughed it off later in bed. A breeze blew through our open window and moved the drape like a ghost. She closed her eyes, but was still smiling.

Eighteen years ago, in 1984, four years after my wife passed, I had a curious visitor. A small Hispanic man who was employed as a gardener at the castle. He asked if I would come to the castle to do some mason work. I obliged and went to get into my car, but the man insisted I ride along with him in his old truck, which reminded me of one my daddy owned. An old Ford. Though feeling odd about it, I obliged. 

The gravel road that led to the castle was almost completely tarped by a variety of large trees. Elms, willows, oaks, chestnuts, and sycamores. It was as though we were driving down the throat of Mother Nature. As we passed her throat, we came out into a clearing and that is the first time I had ever seen those violets. I must have looked like a stupefied kid gazing out the window. My face and wide-eyes full of miles of those flowers that looked back at me like purple-faced children.

The gardener didn’t say anything to me, though I tried to converse with him during the ride. He only smiled back and shook his head when I said something. I began to wonder if he spoke English at all. And that if asking me to come in English were simply lines written for him that he learned well enough to say.

We parked in front of the castle where there were no other cars. A soft pea-gravel driveway that extended like a long, crooked arm out of those violets. There were immaculate rows of rosebushes and flowers unlike any I had ever seen. Bright red roses, even brighter than Rio Red’s hair. Buds the sizes of hearts. I wondered if I would get to see her again and how time might have aged her. It had been at least ten years since I had seen them. The last time they came to a movie was in 1974 when they came to see The Godfather II. I know because my wife and I were in the same theater and she nudged me several times during the movie as I stared at the backs of their heads, several rows down from us.

The Scientist never came out to greet me. Another servant, a tall, lean man who never seemed to smile and who didn’t seem to be from around here, told me the job and said they had the necessary tools, bricks, and mortar I would need to complete it. It was simple. They asked me to seal off a room.

I was still in awe being here as I began my work. The door had been removed from the hinges. I looked inside the room and it was immaculate. There was a perfectly made four-poster mahogany bed with a canopy. There was artwork on the walls and drapes on the windows. There was a flower vase full of violets, like the ones that were out in the field. The entire room was cast in purple, various shades of the color that played well against each other. All but the furniture and the hardwood floors were a harmonious shade of violet, it seemed. The walls were of a soft lilac hue. 

I don’t know why I was to close off the room. I didn’t bother to ask because I knew there would be no answer. They left me to do my work, alone. After about six hours, I was done. I started to clean up when the servant returned and told me not to bother. He gave me a check with Dr. Rush’s name on it for $1000 and asked if it was an agreeable amount. I said it was more than agreeable. 

As the servant walked me to the door, I saw Dr. Rush. He came down the grand stairs and he looked so old and frail I could hardly believe my eyes. It was because he contrasted so starkly with the man from my memory. 

“Thank you, Charles,” he said to me. 

He moved well for his looks and asked if I would like to have a drink before I went home. I said yes, of course. We sat behind the castle in a magnificent brick patio that was covered in tall arched canvas canopies which were strung across a framework of black iron. We sat at a black-iron table on cushioned chairs, a fancy patio set the likes of which I had never seen at any hardware or home improvement store. 

We drank brandy in short glasses on ice. Another servant brought them on a pewter tray and sat them on the table before us. He offered me an olive, but I declined. The Scientist ate them one after another from a dish, spearing them with a small plastic cocktail sword. They are practically all he eats, he said. 

There was a gloomy look upon his face as he looked out into the sprawling rectangular back lawn that was bordered in two long rows of well-manicured hedges. It looked like a vacant football field, the hedges for sidelines. I saw the man who brought me off in the distance with garden sheers trimming one of those distant hedges, 100 yards away, maybe more. His face was a blur. I wondered if I would see Rio Red, and I further wondered if I would ever know her actual name. 

I have never felt demure sitting next to anyone in my life. I had met generals in The War and stood toe-to-toe with them feeling as much a man as them. I met famous actors on the USO, entertainers, singers, and other hot-shot pilots. I had even met Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio once in New York after The War. I never felt less, or felt that I didn’t stack up as a man. But sitting next to Dr. Rush, I envied his brain and the unspoken thoughts in his head so much that I felt a different sort of way. Although I was older than him, I felt like a kid sitting next to his father. A sixty-year-old kid. 

“My Violet passed,” he said. “You were wondering why you were here to close off her room. She passed away in that room. I don’t ever want anyone in there again. I used to go to it, after she passed, ten years ago now, and I would stand there in the middle of it and I could smell her. I could feel her. Sometimes I would close my eyes and dance as though I were dancing with her. Sweeping across the rug. Of course, we shared a room, but that was her room for the sake of being her room. One that she decorated herself and filled with things from her childhood. One that she lived in, always, but never slept in.”
 
“I am sorry.”

“There is no use in being sorry, Charles. You lost your wife as well, I read in the paper. Did it do any good for someone to be sorry for you? No,” he said bitterly. “It does no good at all.”

I took a drink but didn’t speak. 

“I knew I had the capability to do something about it, so I did. I did something that you cannot possibly believe, much less understand. Just as I don’t understand your mason work, or how you fly, or how you flew a plane through antiaircraft fire in a war, you don’t understand my science.”

I was curious, but cautious. The way he spoke seemed to indicate that he was on the brink of shattering. And sometimes, if you want to hear a story, it is a good idea to just listen. 

“I did something. Mr. Alt.”

I felt horribly sad for him. He never disclosed what he did, and a few moments later, I finished my drink and he finished his and he promptly said he must return to his work and asked me to be so kind as to not disclose the nature of my work, or that Ms. Pierce had passed to anyone. Ms. Pierce, I thought in my head. Ms. Violet Pierce. That was her name. That explained the violets. The purple room. 

I agreed and he smiled and shook my hand. His hand felt cold in mine, though he had a firm shake. As I was walking out I heard the unusual sound of a baby’s cry. It was so unexpected in such a lifeless and cold place that it startled me. Then there was the voice of a woman who said “Shhh! Shhh!” softly, but loud enough that I could hear her. A door shut and I heard no more. I was promptly driven back by the gardener, who said nothing to me on the way home.


The young man comes into the diner, present day. June 2002. Eighteen years had passed since I had been in the castle and sealed the room. Fourteen years since I drove out to it, but only a few days since I flew above it last. I don’t know if The Scientist is still alive, but I presume so. 

The young man stands at the counter. I cannot believe my eyes, for the resemblance he bears to The Scientist is remarkable. I knew immediately he must be a relative of some kind. A grand-nephew, probably. I leave my table, my coffee, my upturned writing journal and pen to greet him. Certainly, in the story I wish to tell, the young man might be an integral figure that could possibly give me a version of events and a further elucidation of the mystery.

“Hello, I'm Charles Alt. I fly the biplane tour of the area. You might have seen the billboard coming into town.”

“I am not interested in a flight, sir. I am Dr. Benjamin Rush,” he says. “I am trying to find the castle of Dr. Rush.”

“Dr. Rush?”

“Yes,” he smiles. “That is me. My youth is deceiving. I graduated high school at age ten and went to medical school directly. Eight years later, yesterday, in fact, I became Dr. Rush. Something I could have done in four, if not for the complexities of my studies.”

“And what are your studies?”

“Genetics. Human genetics.”

“Oh. Congratulations! So you are kin to the other Dr. Rush?”

“I am,” he smiles.

“I can take you to the castle, if you like. I was one of the stone masons who built it. I have visited it a few times since.”

“That would be great,” he says eagerly. “It is strange that there is no address.”

“You’ll understand when you get there.”

Dr. Rush decides to leave his rental car and ride with me in my truck. He puts one large bags in the back. I try to make conversation on the way, but he looks out the passenger window and doesn’t say much of anything, only to be polite enough to an elder to say yes, sir, or no, sir, every now and then. His eyes light up when we get to the field of violets and his mouth falls open. I smile looking over at him, remembering my reaction as a sixty-year-old man. Even now, at eighty-two, I am still in awe.

“So where did you grow up?”

“In Boston, Massachusetts. Raised by very loving parents who fostered in me appreciation for my purpose. I have been raised for this moment in time. To be here right now. All my life,” he finished looking over at me.

I smile at him. I didn’t think of the new Dr. Rush as my golden ticket back into the castle, but that is exactly what he is. My golden ticket. Perhaps, to see The Scientist once more. To finally understand him. Or to understand what it was he did all those years ago. To find out if he is still alive. In the way he looked then, eighteen years is a long time to make any assumptions.  

We pull up to the castle and it is as remarkable as I recall it. The rosebushes, the hedgerows, the perfectly mowed lawn. Nothing has been neglected. A little age appears on exterior walls, which makes them even more attractive, if you ask me. Some verdigris in the cracks. The blackening and graying of random stones. 

She comes out of the door as we pull in. Risen from the dead and in the full beauty of youth. She is as gorgeous as I remember her when I saw her first. She is wearing a short white summer dress with red roses on it. We are barely out of the truck when she comes, and when she comes he walks directly towards her and takes her into his arms.

If I hadn’t seen it, I wouldn’t have believed it. The girl is Rio Red, and although her name is Violet Pierce, it will never be to me. In all the years I had called her Rio Red, she became her. She was a joke between my wife and I. When I did something romantic, or had been a little nicer to her than normal, it was, “Who you think I am, Rio Red?” Or when I expressed some dissatisfaction with her about anything, also, in a much different tone, “Who you think I am, Rio Red?” Her name burns in my mind. 

It always made me laugh. The young couple embraces and shares a kiss that takes me back to when I came home from The War. When my Rio Red was waiting for me in New York and the fires of Dresden were only drowned by the peace of her eyes. I grab Dr. Rush’s bags and carry them around to the door. The Scientist is darkening the doorway as I approach. 

“You’re too old to be carrying bags,” he calls out with a smile.

“I know my purpose.”

“As do I. Yours is not to carry bags,” he replies.

“Perhaps, not.” 

The young man greets the elder Dr. Rush with great enthusiasm like a student to a teacher. Like a young ballplayer to Babe Ruth if he came to life to offer some pointers on the art of hitting the long ball. Then he and the girl excitedly run off around the side of the house, straight for the hedgerows, like two children. 

The Scientist and I stand on the front lawn and watch them until they disappear and their laughter trails off and is swallowed by the sound of birds. 

“Perhaps, Mr. Alt, you are awaiting an explanation. I ask that if I give it, you never divulge it to another living soul as it would put me in a rather precarious position, legally, and it might jeopardize their future”

I promise. We take a walk together. Although we were a couple old coots, we both still are relatively nimble and neither of us require a walker, a scooter, or even a cane.

“Violet died in 1976,” he begins. “Cancer came to us on Christmas of ’74 and took her New Year’s Day of ’76. Nothing I could do about it, though I tried. I spent as much time with her as possible, and when she slept I worked on a cure for cancer. I failed her. We didn’t have enough time on this earth together, Charles. I knew I was not going to be with anyone else in my life, as I could not possibly replace her, or compromise myself to do that. So, in simple terms, I cloned her. It was 1984. When you walled in her room. 

“The original idea I had was that I would clone her and she and I would live happily ever after when she was of age. She would love me, despite my age. And that could have been. It could be me walking with her now out there through the hedgerows. Chasing her. Laughing the way we once did. But I suppose I knew it was a flawed thought to begin with, because I cloned myself as well. The very same year. 

“I sent my clone to be raised with every intellectual and economic advantage in Boston, where I had grown up myself. I paid a couple to foster this special child and through his eighteen years I have instructed him over the internet and through letters and materials I sent him to study. Very complex and difficult things that he as a child handled so easily. I put my brain, my years of knowledge and understanding into my new younger self. I didn’t have to put my heart into him. Such things are innate and out of the league of science. 

“They have been waiting to meet for three years. They discovered each other accidentally. Fate, I’d say, played her hand. I wasn’t going to tell one of the other until this meeting today. But they were drawn to each other and, well, I couldn’t keep the secret of them from each other. They have corresponded by hand-written letters for three years. I found them in Violet’s possession last year. A purple ribbon tied around the stack.” 

“It is too fantastic to even believe.”

“But you see it with your own eyes, Mr. Alt.”

“I do.” We stand in place on the back lawn and watch the young couple far down a ways from us chasing each other on that vacant football field, falling in the grass. 

“Her dress is going to be grass-stained,” The Scientist complains.

“You became her father.”

He smiles and takes a deep breath. “Yes. A different kind of love, entirely. What could a broken down old man give her? I tried to create a formula. A fountain-of-youth, if you will. Revert my age to that of a younger man, but I failed. It is impossible. What would have happened then, I wonder. Had I been successful. Me and my clone out there with his destiny ahead of him. We would we have crashed into each other. Killed each other, perhaps, for her love. I sometimes wonder.”
 
“It is better this way,” I assure him.

“It is. I love her so much that it doesn’t matter in what capacity I do so. All that matters is her happiness and for them to live the love story me and my Violet never got the chance to live. She is every bit of her mother’s daughter, which is how I view it. And I am every bit of young Benjamin’s father. 

“Benjamin will continue my work when I am gone. This castle will be theirs. And my love for my Violet, and hers for me, will live on. Maybe somewhere in this Heaven I am told about, I will see my Violet again. I never believed before I knew love. After then, I had no choice. Science is not love. God is love.”

I stay for dinner. After dinner, Dr. Rush asks me to stay because he has two requests of me for the next day. I agree. The next morning he tells me. One, is to remove the bricks from Violet’s room. I do so promptly, though the younger Dr. Rush has to swing the sledgehammer which he does much to the pleasure of a doting Violet. She takes her swings as well. And when the bricks are cleared, they have their capsulated room and they take to it like two bees to a hive. 

The second request is a little more curious. I drive the elder Dr. Rush to the airfield. Neither of us are as nimble as we once were, but we are nimble enough to get into my biplane with the help of a sturdy ladder. He asks me to fly him above the castle once or twice. I don’t say anything to him through the radio headset. I don’t think there is anything to say and I don’t want to take away from what he is seeing and why he wanted to see it. 

When we land, I can tell it made an impact upon him. His eyes are full of tears, which he wipes away. He tells me on the way back to the castle that he had planted those violets himself. Every single last acre and that is the greatest work he has ever done on this Earth, besides loving the beautiful woman of his dreams. Still loving the beautiful woman of his dreams, he clarifies.

The young Dr. Rush returned to Boston after the weekend. He would stay for a year and finish his studies in genetic engineering at MIT. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. I can attest that this is very true. Though it was just a meeting, the two were inseparable and their parting was not without much protesting and a downcast attitude that would fade only after they realize they are bound together by an eternal ribbon, like the letters. 

I cannot imagine of what the young Dr. Rush is and will be capable. I have seen the horrors that mankind is able to exert upon humanity in The War and it always comes in the name of righteousness. But everything in The War seemed absent what he has in abundance. And the capabilities of a man so intelligent and so in love and willingly in the palm of God is beyond human comprehension, as The Scientist proved to me. Science is an application of the mind, which is merely a servant of the soul. 

The following summer, he returns with his foster parents, who are very cordial and fine people. A group of Benjamin’s friends from Boston come as well, as do old acquaintances of the elder Dr. Rush, and friends of the young Violet. 

I meet Benjamin’s parents in the diner and we eat lunch. Then we all go to the castle for the weekend. The smell of freshly-cut grass so odorous and the redolence of those violets in bloom so overpowering that no other scent seems able to pervade their malodorous grip over the miles. They marry that weekend, on the back lawn on a Saturday. Dr. Rush spared no expense and there is an extravagant fireworks celebration that follows which awes the crowd, and lights in the young couples eyes like the marquee of the theater once lit they eyes of Dr. Rush and Rio Red.

I live up to my promise to The Scientist. I never publish this story in the paper. I only gave an account of the wedding, which I say I had the good fortune to attend. I wrote about Dr. Rush’s son and daughter-in-law being married, and the splendor of the castle, and the fireworks that followed. I wrote that genius is not a curse, and that even the most genius men can have an even greater heart to which they loyally serve. I was vague with my words. I didn’t describe the guests in any detail at all, nor their relations to the bride and groom. I left the castle where it was comfortable, shrouded in mystery.  That is where it belongs.

Dr. Rush sent me a letter soon thereafter. I sit and read it now in the diner as I look out the window as logger trucks rumble past. My china mug rattles on the porcelain dish. My eyes do not become curious dragonflies that fly through the woods to the castle. They remain where they are. The letter is an offer of employment. A generous offer of money I don’t need, but for a job I dearly want. He asks me to teach the young couple, his beloved son and daughter, how to fly. 

He says in the letter, “I don’t ever want them to have a small view of the world. I want them to always have the view from Heaven. I watched your plane buzz by my home thousands of times. I wondered what you were seeing and why you were looking. I now know. You have given thousands of people that view. Will you do this favor for an old friend? I have found faith in God. Odd for a man of science to know his knowledge is limited at best to the complexities of creation. There is, my friend, no scientific explanation for the parting of the soul, and for love and heartbreak.”

I wrote an account of Dresden and gave it to the newspaper to be published. The editor had long asked me for the story and though I had refused for decades, I was ready to recall it once and for all. It was clear to me, now, in my old age, that hate sometimes supplants the innate human desire to love. And, invariably, conflict ensues. There is no love in inhumanity, and there is no inhumanity in love.” 

I walk to my wife’s grave after I drop that letter off to the paper. It is a mile or so up Maple Street. It is surrounded by a black-iron fence. She is buried out in the middle and I pass dozens of headstones of people who were loved by others and who loved others across the spans of their lives, short or long. What potential to love lay in the ground with them, what regrets they might have had, I wonder. 

I carry a lawn chair with me. It’s a warm August Sunday. I come every Sunday. I bring my lawn chair and something to drink. I sit for hours. I tell her the amazing story of The Scientist and Rio Red. She probably laughs at me, and makes some joke about me being in love with Rio Red, but she listens. She always listened to me. And when I am done, I sit and smile. And a breeze blows through the old maple trees, and I listen to her.