Magic Days

Monday

I met him officially around this same time last year, but the weather that day was much different. As I'm writing now, it's dreary outside. The sky is a ceiling of gray, tumbling clouds; no sustained showers yet, just intermittent drizzling, which I don't like. I want it to either rain or not rain; to have the sun shine or not shine. This present world is something dismally in-between: overcast, bleak, and sad.

But the day I first spoke with Vernon Hudspeth was absolutely beautiful. I woke up early that Monday morning, a good half-hour before dawn, and got out of bed quietly so as not to wake my wife, Amber. Normally I would have stayed under the covers, trying to rest a little longer, but for some reason I wasn't as drowsy as I normally am in the morning. The moment I opened my eyes, I was fully awake. And I didn't even want to go back to sleep. Taking great care not to disturb Amber, I rose, performed my morning routine, and dressed. Then I went downstairs, unlocked the back door, and stepped out onto the deck of our small house, to sit in my lawn chair and welcome the dawn. Amber and I each have our designated lawn chairs on the deck, sort of like Archie and Edith Bunker...well, just like Archie and Edith actually. And it's to this much-favored chair that I often go to sit, to think, to try to make sense of work and play and love and life itself.

The cool air was moving fast, its currents ebbing and flowing, sweetened by occasional notes of birdsong. I breathed deeply this fine air, let it out again. With my hands behind my head, I watched the first shafts of sunlight begin peeking through the trees. I was in much too good a mood for this to be Monday. It made me wonder what would go wrong.

***

Breakfast for Amber and me consisted of some microwave waffles. That was our normal fare. We had tried alternating cooking breakfast before and it just hadn't worked: one of us always had an excuse to get out of our turn. So eventually we gave up and threw our stomachs on the mercy of the Winn-Dixie freezer section.

"You were up early," Amber remarked, pouring a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter while I drank a cup of my own at the table.

"Yeah, I just felt like getting up for some reason," I said. "I don't know why. Did I wake you up?"

"No. I just woke up and saw you weren't there."

"Did you look to see if my suitcase was gone?"

She glowered at me. "Don't joke about that."

"Gee, I'm sorry." I shook my head. "It was just a joke."

"You make those kinds of jokes a lot, though. I don't like it."

I sighed. "Okay, I'll try not to do it anymore."

Lately there had been some tension in our relationship. It was seldom at the forefront; rather, it lurked in the dark corners of the conversations we had with one another, a crouching, ugly thing ready to spring at the slightest provocation. We had long been told we were a beautiful couple, and when I looked at our wedding photographs, I could almost believe it: both of us twenty-three years old, with Amber petite and blond; me, darker, taller. But I don't think it was just physical attractiveness that made people say so (though I hardly minded if it was); no, I think it was the way we lit each other up in those good early days, an effect so powerful it was noticed even by those around us. But something had changed recently. Arguments are a part of any relationship, but I had preferred it when ours were fierce and brief; now it seemed that, while we might still have a quick skirmish, what followed was not a passionate makeup, but a lengthy, hostile ceasefire. It worried me. It worried me a lot.

***

I exited the front door of my house at eight-thirty, walked out into a day in which all the elements seemed in perfect balance. There was a breeze rising in the southeast, cool and brisk, strong enough to tousle your hair without messing it up, crisp enough to sweep your skin clean without stinging it. Even this early, the sun was powerful, bright. Its rays had blended into the wind, rushing with it through the moss-draped branches of live oaks, swirling about the tops of pine trees, soaring over azaleas blooming pink and white. The world today was all breath and light and color, and I thought it a shame that, because there were bills to pay, I would only get is a little taste of it: now, during my lunch hour, and tonight when I left work. But at least I had a job. I supposed, given the state of the economy, I should just be grateful for that.