Winter Killed

 

The fig trees in the back yard are growing old. Last winter the tallest of the trees died during the ice storms and this summer the leafing of the others is thinning. My farming neighbor tells me my trees have been winter killed.

 

I remember when I would tie tiny presents to the tree branches for Cora to find. A lot of water has run under the wooden bridge of the brook since the gift trees. The stony shores of the lake where Cora and I swam have been paved for the launching of boats, but the unending pattern of seasons through our rural farming community continues to comfort me.

 

In the early seventies there was one theater, one Laundromat, and one gas station in Lavonia Georgia. Every couple of years the town lost, as though careless or indifferent, family owned businesses till there were very few enterprises left. So, the inhabitants set their sights on one another. And in the fall of 1972, Cora and I became the object of everyone’s attention. 

 

Cora Baudelaire was sixty-seven when I fell in love with her. She was in appearance tiny, wispy and sinewy, and her countenance was full of mischief. Members of the local Woman’s Missionary Union commented often on her wardrobe, which is the kind that might have been used as costumes in a stage play. She wore purple, long necklaces, feathers, and gave the impression of a great actress of silent film. 

 

Having dared to live free, Cora was not like the town’s folk, unconsciously imprisoned by the commonplace. To be in her presence was to have the sense that it was your birthday and to want adventure and to do things that can’t be done. Even Reverend Guster was rumored to have said, “Ms. Baudelaire’s company is better than a month of Sundays.”

 

I first saw Cora in my backyard plucking figs from the lowest branches. She was naked. I watched her move from one limb to another as if dancing – something in her gestures moved me profoundly. I remember she was singing “la ling, la ling, rosa ling a ling” as I approached her.

 

“What are doing?”

 

“I happen to love figs,” she replied. And in that moment, I was the only living boy in Lavonia.     

 

“Join me?” she asked extending her arm, a fig held loosely in her fingertips. I shed my cloths and swallowed the pulp of the fig, smelling its sweetness on my own breath. Smiles were in our eyes and we played at Adam and Eve. 

 

Looking back, our first meeting seems preposterous, perhaps even lewd, but in that moment it was as if an unreasonable happiness sprang up in me making all things possible. I became the freest version of myself, dizzy with creativity and confidence. I felt as if I wanted to express myself, not with my mouth, but with my arms and legs and my body. 

 

Cora did precisely what made her happy: she ate figs naked in my backyard, danced with the breeze-blown shirts on the clothesline, skinny-dipped in the freezing intoxication of the lake, and loved me – a twenty-six year old boy. We spent the fall of ‘72 under heaven’s awning, the stars full of mythology and the firmament full of the gods. During the day we watched the ludicrous shapes of clouds pass silently. We lashed our days and nights to adoration and made every moment a honeymoon.

 

Our love was discovered the last day of September by Timmy Buskin, a fat fourteen year old scamp who peeked in my windows and pinched spiders, smearing their innards on the glass. He spied us in the gazebo by the brook one evening pulling leaves from raspberries and kissing the juice off one another’s fingers. It was dark and the candle between us flickered, was extinguished by its own wax. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the Buskin boy peering at us from behind the trunk of a tree. I gasped. The boy ran. Cora laughed.

 

Members of the Woman’s Missionary Union were scandalized by the news of a clandestine relationship between a young man and a woman forty-one years his senior. The widow Etta May Boffard was the first to share the news.

 

“Let us pray for Ms. Baudelaire and the boy who lives on the Dunton estate; I’ve just learned there’s been an ‘indiscretion.’ Timmy Buskin put the matter beyond doubt.”

 

“I thought as much,” declared Mrs. Warner, “Cora is insanely happy.” 

 

“‘Insanity’ is incurable” replied the widow Boffard. 

 

“So is sanity,” quipped Mrs. Podhaskie the church organist.

 

“It’s a shame to joke about such matters” replied the widow Boffard with a generous urgency. 

 

The fresh eruption of the town’s atmosphere had thrown everyone off balance. Citizens of Lavonia tripped on sidewalk cracks and collided with conspicuous corners when passing us, but Cora didn’t notice. I, however, saw every dark look hiding behind beige faces and lacquered smiles. And it infuriated me. Once, I sent an empty claret bottle flying, a wheel of glass, into the street where, in the profound afternoon silence, every inhabitant of Lavonia could hear it shatter on the tarmac. 

 

October brought its one day when people said that it felt like winter. The sky was ragged grey and the town’s streets breathed a faint odor of decay. I woke and Cora had gone leaving a simple note on an empty, opened envelope:

 

“The fig trees are dying – winter killed. Cora.”

 

Today, I sit in the gazebo among my dead and dying fig trees, reflecting. I’ve long since stopped feeling guilty about spending so much time here. In fact, I’ve stopped feeling guilty about a number of things, including my love for Cora. I learned when I was a young boy that our eyes see upside-down, and then our brain has to turn things right-side-up, maybe there’s a message in that. And now that I’m sixty-three and Cora is gone, I remind myself that no one has been able to make a camera that doesn’t see upside-down.

Reviews

[An Ordinary Woman]

I don't know why but this reminded me of of another story written by someone famous but whose name I can't recall.

I laughed out loud a few times, the fat boy in the window smashing spiders and a few other places. This little delight just goes to show ya that age doesn't contain love, or is it the other way around? This was a treat because I have to go to work now and this just gives me a great start. Thank Eric, for the beautiful words.