April 21, 2008
EPILOGUE: INDEED, THEY ARE ONE
| BERRIEN C. HENDERSON |
Saturday morning had come as though Friday evening had passed in some slippery mystery. Art hadn’t thought he’d been so tired yesterday after getting back from his dealings in town. He couldn’t say he even recalled coming home—and him sober on top of it all. After a quick breakfast and a half-pot of coffee in his mug, he went outside and fiddled and fought with the tractor and getting the augur bit hooked up to the tractor. He saw at the shed where James had dropped off all those pecan saplings, and there were a helluva lot of them needing plenty of holes put in the dirt. Not a bad Saturday project and small way to celebrate the place actually being his. It would be good work, if a bit tedious, and that would help him think and compose in his head. He could even work on writing tonight. Maybe call Vera. He climbed on the tractor, fired it up, and pulled out onto the back field.
At the edge of the road, he saw somebody walking along the shoulder and turn onto his property and wave at him. He waved back to C.V. and thought, Well, he doesn’t have my tools, but at least he showed.
As Art heaved a sigh, the land sighed with him and seemed, for a moment, satisfied as he returned to auguring the field in preparation of planting the pecan tree saplings. Wind gusted against the field and the broomsage, nodding like a congregation of wizened Pentecostals, and he thought he heard Eva at the treeline singing:
Bot, of alle that here bult, of Bretagyne kynges
Ay was Arthur the hendest, as I haf herde telle.
(Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, l. 25-26)
Berrien C. Henderson lives with his wife and children in southeast Georgia. He teaches high school and enjoys studying the martial arts and writes, as time allows, on the side.