Fence Posts

The loneliness that blows in on a winter wind is comforting in a way. The depth of its darkness, the bite of its chill, the stultifying silence are all old friends, telling the same story over and over again. No surprises. Of course these thoughts were not formed so much as felt by Carl Odegaard the night he left the farm late, entirely too late, to check on that one fence post. The one near the southeast corner of his cow pasture that leaned no matter what he tried, dragging its neighbors down with it.

“Ain’t that the way,” he thought.

He had read the story of Indra’s web, although he couldn’t remember where. It wasn’t like him to read about such things, but at the same time he can’t remember ever not knowing it. How every being is part of an intricate web, each positioned to reflect the beauty and imperfections of the other, all connected.

Like fence posts, Carl imagined.

He had a brandy or two after supper, which warmed him and encouraged him to take up the issue of the fence post at such an hour. Putting on his hat and boots, slipping into the wool coat that smelled of sweat and sweet hay, he set foot into the night, steam rising from his body. Contracted from the cold, the screen door slammed behind him as an exclamation point.

He liked the crunch of the snow under foot, the freshness of the air, and the peace of mind he felt simply in noticing these things. An observer.

“I’m just going out to see,” he muttered to himself, or more accurately to no one in particular, upon starting his old truck.

The headlights were dim, but good enough. Bright enough to coax a little sparkle from the undulating drifts of snow lining his drive. And certainly bright enough to follow the fence he put in years ago, with his father’s help of course. The two of them chucking field stones, digging post holes, stringing barbed wire.

It was a good thing to have done this work together, erecting a sort of functional and lasting memorial to their lives. Hard lives. Lives spent in service, never to themselves, but to the land and the animals and their neighbors and even to each other. The Odegaards are not selfish people after all.

“Should last long after I’m gone, son,” his father said, “but not without the upkeep.”

And with a customary nod, Carl issued his hearty agreement with this assessment and made a promise to himself to always, as long as he lived, stay on top of the upkeep. To avoid the seduction of neglect.

So as soon as he spotted the sagging post, Carl swung his truck wide on the empty road, pulling over such that the high beams illuminated the culprit. Searchlights zeroed in on the guilty party.

“There you are,” Carl chuckled, as if he expected it, after countless attempts, to have finally unmoored itself and taken leave once and for all.

Appreciating his wit and the steadiness of his own footfall equally, Carl trudged through the culvert. It was hard going and, truth be told, more work than he had hoped for during this undeniably fanciful excursion. But when he stopped to catch his breath, he noticed something: a gentle flapping ahead. Something trembling in the near constant wind that rides along the surface of the snow. Something at the base of the offending fence post.

“What in the heck?”

Carl squinted, struggling against the haze of the brandy and the yellowed headlights to make out what it could possibly be. “More pages than a discarded church bulletin and fewer than a phone book,” he thought. It was a puzzling surprise that may have even caused the corners of his mouth to curl up in an unfamiliar way. He was not used to surprises, especially in winter.

Approaching curiously, Carl tugged gently at a corner, pulling a black notebook from its would-be final resting place. A rescue! Closing it to stop the frantic trembling of the frozen pages, he admired the cover. Even in the bitter cold, it felt soft as compared to his own leathery hands.

“Who throws something like this out?” Carl wondered, looking around as if to a room full of suspects.

He jammed the notebook into his coat pocket, did his best to right the post and took the long way home, savoring the lingering moments of this unusual night. Even the moonlight seemed more beautiful to him now that a dark and mysterious stranger rode close by him, warming in the soft depths of his pocket.

Back home, by the light of the wood stove, Carl flipped through the pages, front to back and back to front, several times. The only markings in the notebook were coordinates: 35.7595° N, 5.8340° W, written in bold black ink. There was no name inscribed, no address, no telephone number to call if the notebook were lost. There was not a single identifying mark that would lead one to guess the whereabouts or identity of the owner.

For a moment, Carl was sad. The aching of this orphaned notebook reflected back, one being to another.

“All alone, ain’t you?” Which was more of a commentary than a question, but one that nevertheless got Carl thinking. He decided right then and there to take responsibility for this stray, to write his name carefully inside it.

“Carl J. Odegaard,” he wrote with a grimy pen from the feed store he kept on the kitchen table. The “J” standing for John, his father, his lifelong companion and only friend. A single letter, a familiar inscription that sparked their deep connection anew, even going on three years after John died of a heart attack in the upstairs bathroom.

“That does it,” Carl announced, admiring his penmanship.

He didn’t need to write his phone number or his address. Anyone who might find this notebook, should it ever wander away again, knows where Carl lives. Everyone in a 50 mile radius knows he’ll be at the early service on Sunday, the South Fork café counter on Wednesday morning at 6:30 for black coffee and a bran muffin and Friday afternoon at the Wooden Nickel for a beer and a bump.

He flipped again to the coordinates written on the very first line of the very first page: 35.7595° N, 5.8340° W.

“Seems odd, don’t it?”

Unwilling to conclude the night’s adventure, he plodded into the darkened TV room where he kept an oversized atlas tucked under the sofa. It was a high school graduation gift that he had never once cracked open. He never had a need. He had no trips planned, no dreams of far-off, exotic locales, no wanderlust. His father had lived within the boundaries of Pierce County, just like his father before, and so did Carl. If it was good enough for a few generations of Odegaards, it was good enough for Carl.

He pulled reading glasses from his front shirt pocket, scuffing them on the flannel as a half-hearted attempt to clean the lenses, and prepared to study. Opening first, by chance, to Asia, reacquainting himself with the longitude and latitude markings. Shenzen, China at 22.5431° N, 114.0579° E. Such precise and immovable identifiers. He recalled the last time he’d even seen such Earthly angles identified: he’d sold about two and a half acres of his property to his neighbor’s daughter to start an organic microgreens plot. He had no idea what that even meant, but he commended her pluck. He liked being part of something new, from a distance.

Fifteen minutes or so into this geographic exercise, he found it: Tangier, Morocco.

“Ain’t that a helluva note?”

Tangier, on the northern tip of Africa, on the Strait of Gibraltar, about a four hour drive from Casablanca, where they filmed that famous movie. “What’s it like there?” Carl wondered aloud. Are there guys in Tangier, just like him, who mourn their fathers, who live a monastic life not by choice but in the name of tradition, whose lives have been washed over by a dull gray hue for so long that they no longer enjoy the company of others? Who are so sad and forlorn that they wonder how others, those nearest to them in the web, fail to see and feel their desperate reflection? Are their lights so dimmed that no one even notices them anymore?

This is how, in a moment of unbearable heartache, Carl decided he should go to Tangier. No matter that he didn’t have a passport, he’d ask about that at the airport. No matter that he didn’t speak Moroccan, he rarely spoke to begin with. And no matter that his only short sleeved shirts were bought in packages of 10, stained with sweat and threadbare, he’d go to the store first thing upon landing at the Tangier airport.

He’d have to take a few things, he admitted to himself. He couldn’t be so reckless as to not bring along a few changes of underwear and his toothbrush and, of course, his new notebook. For these items, he needed a suitcase. And then he remembered his father’s suitcase—a valise, more like it—leather and sturdy and compact, just like John. A purchase made at the Ben Franklin in May of 1957 for the honeymoon he would never take.

The river flooded that year, threatening the farm, so Carl’s father and his new bride cancelled their honeymoon to stay home. Secretly they were both relieved to have Mother Nature remove any expectation of excitement from the beginning of their married life. The grandiosity of a trip to St. Louis would have been a tough act to follow.

Carl poured another glass of brandy to steady his nerve and went into his father’s bedroom. The buttercream coverlet his mother hand-stitched still lay neatly across the bed. Their wedding photo still sat on his father’s bedside table, his mother smiling and his father content. It was a museum to their happiness and a gauntlet of memories that Carl wasn’t entirely prepared to face. He did, however, and took satisfaction his own new-found confidence to do so.

Pulling the valise from under the bed, Carl flopped it on top, anxious for a minute that the dust might dirty the bedspread. He relented that he’d just have to deal with that when he came back from Tangier. “Maybe I’ll even get them a new one while I’m there,” he thought.

Carl popped both latches and tossed the valise open and much to his surprise, the case was filled with hundred dollar bills. Wads and wads of them rolled up and secured with rubber bands.

“What in the hell?”

Carl sat on the edge of the bed, panting with excitement and wondering if his heart could take so many surprises in one night. He clutched his chest and held a few thousand dollars in his hands just to confirm their existence.

“God in heaven,” Carl sighed.

He rummaged through the wads of bills, unbelieving, until he saw a note from his father:

“Dear Son, You’re reading this so that means your mother and I are long gone. What you see here is all that we could scrimp and save to finally take the honeymoon we never had. Your mother wanted to go to Europe. She was always so fancy, weren’t she? Anyway, as you know, that didn’t happen so this $20,000, give or take, is yours. Live your life, Carl. Don’t be like me and Ma. Take the trip. Don’t fear destruction, because we both know that the biggest storms water even the most tender shoots.”

Carl sobbed.

For a good long time, he cried and heaved and let out all the pain he’d carried with him for so long. And when the soft pink dawn began to light the room, he got up and packed his father’s valise for Tangier.