The Dogs Watched

T

Crushed soapstone greeted her tires as she turned down the wooded drive. The bleached rock clashed harshly against the foliage of the forest like an oil slick in a blue-green ocean and she thought it strange in this setting; oaks, pine and a periodic hickory densely covered the North Carolina property only miles from the Atlantic coastline and the sheer white of the drive seemed in such stark contrast to the coastal forest. A unique name made finding him effortless even after five years spent apart. Many search engines still gave his whereabouts somewhere in the midwest; she remembered him talking about his grandfather’s Kansas homestead and thought maybe he’d gone back to his deeper Jayhawk roots. With time and persistence, however, a deeper investigation placed him near the coast where she now found herself seeking out a shadow of a lead. Residing very near the address the world wide web offered, she decided to take a chance and begin her search there.

After his father’s unfortunate accident and subsequent death, he had become solemn and distant. Love for her was still strong inside him she could tell, but his passion had been deeply muddied by a jarring event on the road of life he’d not been able to easily conquer. Finally, it came to goodbye. She continued down the path she’d traveler for years while he disappeared into the mists of the world. They’d developed mutual friendships during their relationship, and on rare occasion his name rose in conversation. All that was known; he was alive, not much else. Becoming as the myth of Loch Ness, his existence unknown and mysterious.

Yet, longing for his deep passion and pure love continued far below in her nucleus, kept hidden in the deep recesses of her soul for only her to hold. For years he had stood as close as her world would allow, giving his love freely a safe distance from the thorns of reality. Having him absent in her life had struck her harder than she ever believed it could. The kindness, the passion, the true and untarnished love he offered was a gift resulting in a completeness she had not found with another. Since his departure there came days when the cavern his touch had left on her heart tore at her like the talons of an eagle, deep and penetrating.

Now the winds of change had guided her in a new direction and she found herself searching for the man who yet held her heart. The snow-coloured path continued through the trees and, as she slowly rolled down the trail, her mind wandered to the feel of his touch and the taste of his lips. He had loved her with a fierceness she’d never known; in his eyes she had been the world and he had treated her as such, extinguishing any doubts of his feelings. He held nothing but loyalty and devotion to her only. Their time together completed each other in only a way two soul mates in love could. From their first meeting in the airport terminal until the moment he answered the call that crushed his very being, his love only grew, day after day. His flame grew to a raging bonfire and his aqua eyes never strayed from their laser focus upon her aura. Remembering the fierceness he once showed her, she now wondered if the vibration of the car’s motor or the thought of their lovemaking presently caused the excitement in her she had somewhere forgotten.

Along the milky path, the rock had occasionally fractured into the brush and trees at ninety- degree angles, frosted deviations having no earthly explanation. As she passed, she could see the white rock curling and dancing into the woods. It was only as she neared the end of the drive could she see the reason behind the chaos; the rock arced away from center and continued perpendicular to the drive, often falling back in the direction of the entrance. Spots of white littered the woods and she realized she had been driving down the stone trunk of a great chalk tree and was now nearing its canopy. Hundreds of feet in every direction white branches and leaves curled and cobbled through the woods making a magnificent design through the Carolina forest. Imagining what the work must have looked like from the air brought awe to her heart. She then felt as though this majestic work of earthen art should not have been tread upon, feeling a twinge of guilt for having entered this sacred monument. Countless hours spent transporting stone; endless days setting and placing each rock. This enormous task, this fantastic endeavor for what reason she knew not. The intrusive feeling in her soon passed as it must have for all who may have noticed the grand sketch upon understanding all had been made, in the end, to be a great white parking lot.

She slowed to a stop before the log cabin which sat upon the tree’s crown. Stepping from her car to the frosted talc, the waxy sheen making her stance uneasy, she saw an open garage to her right, also crafted from cut log. Long and deep, she could make out at least four vehicles though there was room for many more; the shadows strove to hide their identities, but the sunlight gently covered them from windows in the rear of the garage. A ‘62 Corvette sat quietly beside its younger brother; a split window ‘63 was a rarity of the classic car world and yet here sat just such a diamond. Next, the vehicle he’d dreamt of as a child; the light kissed a forest green ‘69 Chevelle with a single offset rally stripe, tan. Power and beauty together combined to create this beast he had spoken of with such passion. Finally, the vehicle which stood above its grandfathers and the very one she expected fully to sight; a cobalt- blue Duramax in all its virile glory. She smiled; always the truck guy.

She faced the cabin. Pine built, one would not call it mighty but it had a presence before her, much like he had always had when holding her. Solid in its construction and built upon a foundation of stone and concrete, it stood amongst the brethren who’d sacrificed themselves for its timbers. Smelling the still fresh-cut lawn, she walked up the oak steps and knocked on the door. The echo from a wood she didn’t recognized filled the air, but there was no response. She walked down the steps, intending to return another day, when she sensed activity from behind the home. A soft clop which reminded her of a horse's hoofbeat against dirt, she couldn’t quite place the sound. She followed the sound around the edge of the cabin, walking through the still slightly damp grass that surrounded the structure. Sliding through the Kentucky bluegrass, she looked down to notice the dew form on her shoes as their wake cut through the pasture.

Rounding the cabin’s rear fringe, she saw him for the first time in over a half-decade. With axe over bare shoulder ready to crest and descend upon a section of firewood, he stood. She froze. His skin was dark from the Carolina sun. He wore only boots and cut-off jeans and she saw he had lost a considerable amount of weight. His body began to twist and the iron beneath his skin flexed and exploded as the axe swung over his head, crashing through the cowering wood. The sun glistened on his head and its beams pushed lazily though his snow-white beard as he reached down to grasp the next piece of wood, his obliques rippling across his side as he leaned over. Every muscle in his forearms seemed as though singular steel cables screaming for their own space amongst their brethren. He gripped the next log and, as he began to lose grip, briskly tossed it over head and snatched it from the air, placing it on the waiting block.

She gasped; he was beautiful. The memories came flooding back and, for a moment, she lost herself in their past; until the moment she heard the growl. Turning to her right, she saw the source of the sound; a German shepherd and a massive Malamute husky stared at her, teeth born. The shepherd let out an angry bark, and another. The husky stood fast and watched her as the shepherd began to approach her. Alerted by the dogs, he turned to them. “Dubb!” The dog continued to move towards her and he, realizing there was someone in his backyard, yelled again at the dog. “Dubb! Sit!” Immediately, the German shepherd sat in place and the husky followed suit. “Ma’am,” his voice stern and threatening yet with the gentle and concerned touch of a kind man she’d heard so many times before, “is there something I can help you with?” He didn’t recognize her and she saw the flex in his forearm as he unconsciously tightened his grip on the axe handle.

She said his name. A look of disbelief washed over his face and he paused, stunned in place. The husky came to him, licking his hand and his consciousness pushed him back into reality. “Sarah?”

“Hi.”

His eyes widening as the moment overtook him; his features slowly shifted; his face becoming hard and stoic. The sun was above him, but she could still see his eyes; a steel grey she’d not seen before looked back at her. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs from his mind. “What, umm, what are you doing here?”

“I was looking for you. I’d...heard you were living in the area.”

“Yeah,” his head still swimming from the realization that the woman who he’d said goodbye five years prior was standing before him, more beautiful than he had remembered. “Umm, yeah. I didn’t know I was on the map. You know, thought I was off life’s radar a bit.”

“You weren’t too hard to find. The internet knows everything, you know?”

A still shielded look on his face, “Yeah, yeah I suppose so.” He looked towards the ground and she thought she heard a crack in his voice. “What, what brings you ‘round these parts?”

“I already said. I was looking for you.”

“Yeah,” still looking down he turned towards the waiting log, leaned forward and repositioned it across the block. Though his back turned towards her, still she saw him wipe something from his face. He turned back to her and she could see the glisten of dew in his eye. Both eyes sparkled now as the morning sun rising over the Atlantic; still steel grey and hard but now blanketing a soft beauty. “Yeah, but why?”

She saw the ring on his left hand; titanium ribbons folded in on each other. Her heart fell. “Should I not be here? Would your wife...”

“My wife,” He raised an eyebrow in confusion. He saw where her gaze had wandered, looked down and quickly pulled the ring off his finger, shoving it in a pocket. “No, I’m not married.”

She didn’t understand why he wore a ring if he wasn’t married. “Umm, ok. Anyway, can we maybe talk?”

She could see the ashamed recognition on his face, realizing his error. “Yeah. Of course. Sorry. Come inside if you’d like. I can make some tea and we can sit out front, out of the sun.”

“Ok.” She smiled and, without pause, saw his walls begin to lower. As they ascended to the back porch she asked, “what have you been up to?”

“Not much.” She could see he wasn’t going to open up so easily after all this time and wondered if she’d made a mistake coming here. “Just livin’ out in the sticks with the boys.”

‘The boys?’ she thought. He noticed a twinge of confusion and clarified. “The dogs.”

“Oh. Dubb and...”

He smiled. The first smile she’d seen in five years. The smile that tore all her walls away so long ago. She was weak for just a moment. “No, Dubb’s short for Wisconsin.” He again saw the look that meant she didn’t quite understand. “W, for Wisconsin. Dubb.” He looked back as he opened the door of the cabin. “Kodiak! Whiskey! Come!” As she froze for a moment from the mention of those names the dogs hurled themselves into the cabin; the husky, Kodiak, crashing into him and knocking him to the floor. He landed with a grunt, flipped the massive dog on its back and stood again. “Gotchu’, mutt. Sorry about that, they can get a little rambunctious.”

“Whiskey and Kodiak?” she questioned.

He paused on the hardwood floor, processing the simple question, trying to find an excuse for the names. “Well, Wisconsin, yeah. Good names, dontcha think?”

Her thoughts were void for a moment. The past came screaming back as she remembered one of the first stories he’d written her; a story of his fantasy's future. “Yeah. Good names.”

He moved on. “Would you like the grand tour? Ain’t much to her, but she suites my needs.”

She stood in an open room; a high ceiling revealed several skylights facing all directions of the compass. A larger area than she’d expected from the outside; wood, steel and glass filled the great room. Antiques from the corners of the nation stood as artwork in his living room. Long since forgotten farm implements, dozens of glass fishing buoys of every size, the occasional steel sign announcing a once relevant motor oil or gasoline product; items from a bygone era in history set upon finely crafted stands of wood of every type. No TV, no electronics of any kind that she could see; only a chair in the corner next to a bookcase that traversed the whole of one wall; on it, hundreds of hardbound books on subjects she was sure she couldn’t guess. Next to his chair sat a solitary book in a wooden pedestal. She started towards it, curious what tome he found so dear as to keep it alone on its own stand.

“This is the living room,” he had turned away from her and didn’t notice until it was too late where her footsteps took her. “Sarah, wait...” She picked up the book, bound in blue with silver typeface. It read ‘A story of Us,’ and in diminutive cursive below the title, ‘for Sarah, forever.’ Struck by a spectral wrecking ball deep in her soul, her fingers lost feeling and the leather-bound work slipped from her grip, crashing to the ground. “Hey!” He crossed the room and salvaged the writing from the wood floor. “Easy, that’s the first book we printed.”

She looked at him. “The first book?”

He lifted his hand to the back of his head, rubbing it as if to help him think of a response. “Yeah, umm, I wrote a... well, I guess you could call it a novel.”

“It has my name on it,” she said in an expectant tone. Her heart began to beat faster as she looked at him. The man she had loved for so long was standing before her, holding a book obviously crafted from the stories he’d written her many years before, trying to explain why he had recorded their love in such a way. The fact this novel existed told her everything of their time together and apart, from the moment she heard his voice that first day until this very moment, standing before him in all his passionate glory.

“Well, I took all the letters I wrote to you; all the ones before I left and after...”

“After?!” The word shocked her.

“Yeah, well, after we fell apart, I kept writing you, almost every day for a couple years I guess.” She saw the softness he was trying to hide behind those steel eyes, saw the single tear gather in the corner of his eye and witnessed again the broken voice she heard in his backyard. “I still had a lot to say.” Again, he shook the tear away. “Anyway, I decided to try and put it all together, sent it to a publisher, they liked it and for a little while they sold quite a few. I was actually on the New York best sellers for a couple months. Under a pen name, of course. I’ve always liked my privacy” He lifted his chin and torqued his neck as she heard his neck crack. Knowing him long enough to know this was the tell he gave when he was uncomfortable and, even with so many questions and feelings rising up inside her, she decided to let the subject go.

“Ok, well what else is there?”

“Well,” he pointed to a door near the front of the cabin, a look of relief on his face. “That’s my room over there.” He walked over, opening a glass door covered in a language she recognized; long extinct Latin filled the glass and she wondered if it had meaning. Realizing her error in the moment, she gently chided herself; of course the words had meaning. Everything on this property she’d witnessed so far had underlying thought behind it and this door was no different. Wanting to ask but deciding that the answer, like so many answers already presented, may be uncomfortable she again moved on. His room was much like its larger twin. Steel and glass hung from the walls, engulfing a double bed made of mahogany. “Like the bed? I made it myself.”

“Yeah, it’s nice. I didn’t know you were so good with your hands.”

The atmosphere must have been a little too serious for him. “Well,” he smiled not thinking she could see, “I’ve always been good with my hands, only in other ways.” She wanted so badly to respond to his small flirtation, but still wasn’t sure how to take everything around her. Realizing his joke may have not been taken well, he moved on. “I built the cabin and most of the furniture. It kind of became a hobby of mine.”

“I see. Well, looks like you do good work.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement on the other side of the great room. What looked to be an antique barn door swung softly from cast iron rollers; built of reclaimed wood and magnificent. From inside, one of the dogs, the husky she thought, pushed its nose against the door and it rolled open faintly. In the sunlight she could see another room beyond the door. “What’s in there,” she said, pointing towards the door.

He was caught off guard and she could hear it in his voice. All the small details of his character hadn’t changed in five years, and she realized they may never. As solid as the day they had met, he gave himself away to her as if it had been yesterday and her heart filled as she saw that he was still the same good man she’d said goodbye to years before. “No! I mean, umm, that’s just a room where extra stuff I'm working on goes. What about that tea,” he tried in futile to distract her.

“No,” the curiosity already reached a level not to be denied. He was hiding something. “I want to see what you’re working on.” She sprinted across the room and began to roll the giant door aside just as he reached out with a powerful hand and stopped the door dead. She pushed against it, but he was far stronger than she remembered and wouldn’t let it budge. There was enough of a crack between door and post that she could glimpse into the room and, as she gazed upon its contents, her breathe presently exited her body.

A cherry wood bed frame sat in the middle of the room against the far wall; towers on each corner lifted to a silk canopy, the mattress covered by a gorgeous blue and purple antique quilt. Knowing that she needed to see more, she blindsided him with a strong shove. Having not expected the action he crashed to the floor and she thrust the door open. She froze, unable to move. The scene overtook her as her mind reeled to understand what lay before her. A wooden trim placed five feet from the floor wrapped the room in a dark wood she couldn’t recognize and, on that trim, sat words made of sheet metal; words she recognized. ‘Breathe.’ ‘Heads Carolina.’ ‘Beautiful Crazy.’ ‘Austin.’ The four songs he’d sung to her on their first date, one sitting on each wall. And below each song hung a shelf. She couldn’t make out was under the glass domes on each ledge; she found her strength and moved to the nearest shelf. The first contained sheet paper with cursive strewn gently across the page; at the top read ‘breathe,’ and, inscribed at the bottom of the page was a signature...’Faith Hill.’ She began to tremble as she noticed the picture; a simple polaroid laying face up on the wooden mantel. A picture of him posing with the flaxen-haired singer, the two shaking hands.

“I met her when I was on my book tour...” He now stood in the doorway, his voice subdued and unsure.

“Just...stop.” She looked at him, his chin sunk down.

Each wall was the same. Luke Combs. Jo Dee Messina. Blake Shelton. All their autographs at the base of sheet music, written in the words of the songs he’d sung to her that February day, and with each a picture of him shaking hands with the artist. “Who wrote these lyrics?”

He was obstinate even in this moment. “I don’t know. Some guy in an office somewhere, I guess. You know how these companies are.”

“Damnit! On this paper! Ink to paper, Will! Who wrote them?”

He whispered, “they did.”

She looked at the last wall displaying a picture of him with his arm around Blake Shelton. The picture was clean and she realized now she hadn’t noticed any dust at all in the room. The room was cleaned regularly, it was obvious. She looked at him. “What is this?”

He stood there, looking at the floor. This beast of a man reduced to a mouse before her. He said something, too low for her to understand.

She walked to him, shoving him in the chest; her hands struck stone filled muscle, catching her off guard for a moment. “Answer me!”

A soft whisper came from his lips. “This room is yours. I built it for you.”

His words made no sense to her. “Built it for me? What are you talking about?”

His gaze rolled from the floor ascending until they were eye to eye. Tears began to roll down his face; she saw all the beauty and vulnerability in his eyes she recalled from years before. All the love, all the passion, all the faith; it all laid out before her as she looked into his eyes.

“This room is for you, if you ever came to find me.” He’d loved her all this time. She didn’t believe it. This was impossible. How could it be that he’d waited for her all these long years? “I told you forever.”

Her stomach filled with the ache she knew from so long ago. This man, this creature standing before her loved her. Loved her then, loved her now and, obviously, would love her forever. It was more than she could take for another moment. She took hold of his forearm, felling the rock that had replaced his muscles. Pulling him closer, she kissed him. Without hesitation or reservation, he took her by the waist, lifted her and took her to the bed.

They made love once again and, having never witnessed this before, the dogs watched.