The Wicker Swing

The Wicker Swing

I knew for sure that I was in love with my best friend, Lucas Williams, the year we turned eighteen. The day that I told him that I loved him was the last time I saw Lucas. I should have kept it to myself and hoped that it went away, but I didn’t. We were at the cemetery where Dusty, the coon dog that had been as much my dog as it was Lucas’, was buried. It was the last real time we would have together before both of us left for college. Mostly we would come here without a reason; sometimes he would pick me up in his blue pickup truck and just drive out, away from town, towards Highway 82, where the cemetery was and we would sit and talk or just sit on the concrete table and not say anything at all. But I haven’t seen or talked to him since then and I knew he wouldn’t be here today. I called Mama to make sure before I left Flagstaff that he wouldn’t be in Haleyville.

I left the town I grew up in, Haleyville, to attend Arizona State University on scholarship in Phoenix after graduation from Monroe County High. I went to work for the Flagstaff Daily News when they offered me a job after seeing the photograph of the wildfires on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon that I had taken and sold to the Phoenix Sun. Mickey Rossman, a guy I went out with twice in my junior journalism class, was a helicopter pilot for Grand Canyon Heli-Tours. He flew me over the North Rim so I could get some shots of the wildfires. I wasn’t a great photographer. I just happened to be in the right place where I could catch the wildfires at the right time. Although I loved photography, the freelance gig wasn’t my real job; at least not until last week when the Flagstaff Daily newspaper dropped my last check on my desk along with a nice note telling me that they no longer needed my services as a full-time photographer. I knew it was coming; a larger newspaper group had bought out the paper – the same that owned the Phoenix Sun and all of the photographers had speculated at the odds of us keeping our jobs. Out of the seven of us, the four who were asked to stay all had been at the paper for at least ten years.

I glanced in my rear view mirror held in place by a shred of duct tape on my navy ’89 Ford Bronco and adjusted the static on the radio for the fifth time that day. I smiled, embarrassed a little at the state my truck was in after a cross-country drive and seven states later. I had bought the Bronco my senior year at Arizona State, just after my first freelance photograph sold to the Phoenix Sun newspaper because it reminded me of the car my father once had. He used to drive it around our land in north Alabama to check on his tree stands and the salt blocks. I bought it on impulse, after seeing the For Sale by Owner tag plastered on the windshield.

I tuned the radio to 106.1, my favorite hometown station. Then I rolled the window down and released the clip from my hair, letting the weight of it fall down way past my shoulders. It was the same haircut I’d had since the 8th grade and truthfully, I was a little tired of the heat of it during the summer against my neck and back but I wasn’t going to cut it. Everyone had always liked my hair long. I turned up the radio and tapped my fingers in beat when an old Conway Twitty song came on. The small, weatherworn sign on the right hand side of the road was nearly invisible, made from the same bark of the pine tree that it was nailed to. It marked the entrance to the cemetery as it always has.

I dropped my backpack to the ground and from it withdrew my Canon digital camera. Instead of raising the camera, I looked at my surroundings with the critical eyes that so often looked at the world through a camera lens. The concrete table just ahead was dark with retained moisture; the fall leaves on the gravel crunched beneath my boots and disturbed the air with the finality of sound. I sat for a moment, looking around oak trees that stood strong on the edge of the wood. The fall leaves scattered on the ground in colors of green fading to reds and yellows. It always amazed me that time had stood still here for the past fifteen years when everything else around had moved rapidly along with age.

Mama wanted me to come by the house as soon as I got into town so I could meet Tom McKinnon. He owns a farm on the outskirts of Haleyville and had been dating my mother for three months and five days. Or so she told me excitedly when I talked to her yesterday, somewhere near the Oklahoma/Texas state line while she jabbered on like she was fourteen and completely enthralled with her first crush. But my mother is happy, probably for the first time in a long while. Mama still lived in the old Victorian on South Meadow Boulevard that my younger sister, Louise, and I grew up in. While I lived here we had fifty acres of land that belonged to the family. But then my father died in a motorcycle accident when I was fifteen and ever since then she had been selling the land off little by little until now all that was left was the half-acre that the house sat on, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she decided to sell that too. Tom had asked her to move in with him – the excitement in her voice when she told me kept reverberating in my head. My jaw had just completely fallen and I couldn’t help thinking that they had only been dating for three months. What on earth was she thinking?

The house looked the same as it always had when I drove by this afternoon; the gingerbread trim, wrap-around porch, and the white wicker swing where I spent most of my time, all in a desperate need for a paint job. I used to sit there with my dad at night in late spring and early fall when the weather wasn’t quite so boiling hot. We’d sit and stare at the stars above us and talk about things like heaven and God and how my sister ate peanut butter and banana sandwiches rolled up, mashing the ingredients together in a swirl of yellow and brown. That swing was where my mother told me of my father’s accident, where Louise said she was leaving Haleyville and not a one of us could stop her, and where Lucas sat with me after my father’s wake. It was also where I told Lucas that I didn’t think I could be friends with him anymore, where he held my hand after the funeral, and where he said goodbye to me for the last time. It was suspended from the chains that attached it to the ceiling, the formerly white paint peeling and cracked with age and time and I was surprised at how old it looked. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had expected it to stay the same as the cemetery had, constant and as concrete as when I was growing up.

Through the edge of the clearing is the actual gravestones and cemetery, away from the small gravel drive that leads back to the highway. The sun peeked through the trees and gave just enough light to the dirt and clay pathway between the pine and oak trees. The quiet that surrounded those trees and still branches became eerie in the falling light, with a little more than a half hour to sunset.

The cemetery was getting darker now. The golden hues of light stream through the trees, giving way to the purples and pinks of the sundown hour. I looked over my shoulder at where the gravel drive had gone to dirt and where my truck was parked. In the back of the cemetery, closest to the edge of the wood, is where Dusty was buried. Dusty had been Lucas’ dog since Lucas was barely a baby. And since we had been the best of friends ever since kindergarten that made Dusty mine too. Lucas and I met at Englewood Elementary and we were put next to each other because of our last names – Williams and Wilcox. That very first day of school, I stole his crayon and wouldn’t give it back so he pulled my hair in retaliation. At recess, in full sight of the playground monitor, we fought it out. My mother switched my hide with the birch rod she kept by the stove and made me bring him a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies the next morning and apologize to both him and his mother. Between the two of them they came up with a pretty good punishment: play dates with each other. Every Saturday he would come to my house, or I would go to his. I refused to play with him for the first week and a half, choosing instead to sit by myself and then in the typical world of a five-year old, it was forgotten. We were best friends ever since. Out of my back pocket I pulled a photograph of the three of us: Dusty in the middle, lying on his stomach, looking out from underneath those large soulful eyes framed by tan and black. Lucas on one side, me on the other, our arms hooked about each other’s shoulders, grinning. I peered closer at the image and noticed that we were both missing our bottom front teeth. The date is written on the back: June 1989, the year we turned six. We would have two more years with Dusty after that photo was taken. The photograph itself, I noticed, was tattered at the edges, torn on one side and worn almost through in spots, a testament to how many accidental and repeated washings it had gone through, forgotten in the pocket of my blue jeans.

I put my hand to the necklace that Lucas had given to me on the night of my eighteenth birthday. He came over to the house after midnight. Mama and Louise were asleep but I was sitting on the porch swing, my feet rocking the swing back and forth. Out of his pocket Lucas handed me a small velvet jewelry box and when I opened it, I saw lying there was his grandmother’s antique oval filigree locket. He smiled at me wryly, took the necklace out, and when he fastened it around my neck, his fingers brushed at the skin on my nape. Then he put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around, kissing my forehead as a brother would. I haven’t taken the necklace off ever since the day Lucas had put it there. It was my talisman, my protection whenever I felt like the world was chaotic around me, and I was moving in slow motion.

I couldn’t stand it anymore; the feelings I had for him were so pure and innocent that I felt like screaming through town that I loved Lucas Williams. I had loved him all of my life, though I didn’t realize it until that summer. We had gone to every homecoming, Sadie Hawkins, and prom together and still never dated or had any kind of a romantic relationship, aside from the one and only time he kissed me, in the parking lot of our high school one fall night. He decided that we didn’t need to jeopardize our friendship by having a romantic relationship and I went along with him, because at the time I thought that was what I wanted.

He wasn’t like the other boys in my class; he was different. I saw him for the person he really was; his tendency to be stubborn as hell, hardheaded and then genuinely sweet at the same time. He gave me plenty of fits during our friendship, sometimes mean on purpose in an attempt to help me grow a backbone but he always came back and apologized. Usually at 3am I’d hear a pinging sound, then see him appear in my window. He’d climb through, sit with me there on my bed and tell me how sorry he was. I was still sensitive back then and usually would wind up crying, which he hated. There wasn’t ever anything untoward about our friendship, even in those early morning hours when he would sneak in and sit with me. How many times did he see me in my underwear and pajama’s? There never was anything impure about our friendship.

We met at the cemetery that day – it was the last time we would be there together – and suddenly the words were rolling across my tongue and out of my mouth before I could stop them. I had imagined, dreamed, and planned for that moment for months – hours – on end, fantasizing how Lucas would gather me in his arms and we would be together forever. But that was the fantasy. The reality was that Lucas ignored me. For a few minutes everything around us was quiet and still. Not a breeze dared to blow, or a chipmunk to dart through the woods. I finally gave into the temptation and asked “Lucas, did you hear me? I said that I love you!” And then he smiled, touched my cheek, and said, “I know.” That was it.

He came by the house again later that night. I was sitting in the same spot he found me the night before, knees tucked in close to my body, arms looped around them tight. I had one of those moments where everything is suddenly clear and you wish that there were a hole big enough for you to crawl into. When he spoke, I didn’t even look at him, just kept right on staring at the stars as if, if I stared long enough, the past seven hours could float away and I could forget about everything that happened. I don’t even remember what he said at first. When Lucas saw a problem, the innate instinct in him said to fix it. His brain was telling him that I was a problem, even though I never intended to be. I wiped a tear from my cheek, hoping that he didn’t notice. I knew he hated it when I cried. But he did notice and he sat down next to me and put his arm along the back of the swing careful to not touch me at all which only made everything a thousand times worse. He never would have hesitated yesterday in resting his hand on my shoulder, touching my arm, brushing a bang from my face. I hated that I had changed all of that and in that specific moment I regretted what I had said. I can still see the two of us sitting there in the moonlight when I think about that swing. And I can still hear the accusations that I hurled at him that night in my dreams. We were sixteen before I noticed how the other girls in our classes would stare at Lucas when he walked down the hallway, how they would whisper when he put his arm around my shoulders and glare daggers at me when they didn’t think I was looking. I got worried one time when he dated Katie Chambers. They started dating right after Homecoming our senior year and I had had the uncontrollable urge to mark my territory, in the same way that Dusty would have. And I made him promise that we would always be friends no matter who he was involved with. He just smiled in that secret way of his, took out his buck knife, and right there in the cemetery, carved our initials and the date into the tree directly in front of Dusty’s headstone. They’re still there, untouched by age and time. I raised the camera to my eye and focused in on them.

There was a slight breeze in the air, raising goose bumps along the flesh of my arms and shaking the fall leaves from their trees. One floated to a stop on Dusty’s headstone and without hesitation I rose and stepped three paces away from the gravesite. Brown, gold and red leaves had now covered the bed of dry grass and I tried not to disturb them as the camera whirred and clicked. Then, I pressed my fingertips to my mouth and then to the photograph where Lucas smiled back at me.

I walked quickly back to my truck because dark had fallen and I wasn’t going stay at the cemetery at night. I flicked my bright lights in my truck, watching for the deer and foxes that played chicken with the vehicles on the highway. Before I arrived at my mother’s house, I passed the turn for the Williams’ house on Old Seale Road. I tried to drive past but the legacy of that house and the history that was so ingrained in me took over and before I realized what I was doing, I had slammed the breaks and whipped the wheel to the left, turning the tires back towards their road. Lucas’ house was set way back on their land, a good bit away from the road, although visible from both directions. His parents still live there and had every light burning, even the driveway lights that followed the dirt road from the highway.

The Williams home didn’t have the quiet charm of the Victorian I remembered of my childhood, but it wasn’t a cold house either. I turned onto their road, driving just a foot inside the gate and stepped out of the truck, camera in tow. Out of the back of my truck I pulled out my professional flash and began to set up my equipment. I wasn’t sure that the exposure would turn out, but suddenly I had to capture that image of the Williams house, lit up brighter than Christmas, in the digital viewfinder of the camera.

Down the road nearly a mile and a quarter was my house. The lights were all off except for the lantern that hung from the hook near the front door. It cast a circle of light underneath it and for a while I just stared at the structure I had known all of my life. It looked different in the moonlight. There wasn’t a car in the driveway so I assumed my mother was with Tom at his ranch. I let myself in the front door without using the key – of course it was unlocked. My mother hadn’t locked the door since my father died, except only when we went to visit my grandparents in Kissimmee, Florida. The interior was the same. My mother had the same couch since 1973 – brown, gold, and orange. It was the ugliest couch I’d ever seen, but I know I’d miss it if she ever got rid of the thing.

The kitchen was as outdated as the couch was – the refrigerator, a strange yellow color that you would never see in a contemporary home. There was a picture of Casey, my sister’s daughter, held in place by a Goofy magnet and an announcement for the Haleyville Baptist Women’s Association monthly meeting. There was a note in the center of the table, and a newspaper clipped to it with a paper clip. I looked closer and noticed a very familiar smile, then read my mother’s note. “Julie – did you see that your old friend Lucas was gettin’ married?! Isn’t that just wonderful? Your sister called. She’ll call you tomorrow. Am over at Tom’s – see you in the morning!”

I sighed heavily and took the engagement announcement to the wicker swing on the porch. As I sat there in the dark, my legs curled up underneath me, I read the announcement over and over. Lucas was getting married. And my mother was now involved with a man named Tom McKinnon.

I slowly got up off the swing and walked over to my truck, pausing to look up at the Alabama sky. The sky was full of stars – clearer than any other night I had seen in a long while. They were beautiful. I had forgotten how much I loved looking at the stars. I opened the car door, clipped the newspaper announcement to the sun visor, cranked the car and then slowly backed out of the driveway and into the road, and headed away from Haleyville and back towards the open road.

c. 2007, JBB