the visitor

The wind blew softly into the opening where the roof had stoved in, torn shingles piled haphazardly around a collapsed and ruined joist. A cat, her teats dragging across the attic flooring, slunk by in a sort of crawl run and I wondered whether she had already delivered or was returning to her hide after an unproductive hunt.

I listened for some time for tell-tale mewling once she disappeared into the surrounding rubbish but heard only the rustling of the leaves on the live oak in front of the house. The space stunk pungently of must, rot and ammonia laced urine.

The last of the afternoon light illuminated a long a narrow patch of the attic but would not for much longer. The sun low on the autumn horizon, the sky would soon begin to darken when the time for me to depart would arrive.

I had daydreamed about doing this for years. I had last visited my great grandfather's farm as a ten-year-old and was greatly disheartened when my car bumped through the hard clay ruts of the drive and I witnessed the wretched state of the barn and ancient clapboard farmhouse where he and my great grandmother raised my grandmother and her six siblings, all long dead.

An old door, its screen frayed and hanging in strips from its opening softly banged against its warped frame in the breeze. I'm not sure what I expected to see when I stepped cautiously through it into the settin' room but found only heaps of dirt and acorn caps and shells from the oak scattered across the floor. The rocking chair where my great grandfather once held court had disappeared.

Walking past the kitchen I stepped out the back door to see if the old well pump still worked and pushed and pulled at its handle, listening to the sounds of air clattering within the old pipe till muddy water began to splutter from its spout. After a minute or so more of additional frantic pumping, the water turned sparkling and I took a deep drink from it for the first time in almost sixty years.

Returning back inside refreshed, I wandered through the bedrooms finding more disarray. But the walls were bare save for light patches where pictures had once hung like ghostly memories of a life that had departed and might only be recorded on the mossy head stones at the old Sardis cemetery where most of them lie buried.

I noticed the attic pull cord hanging from the ceiling when I headed back to the settin' room and gingerly pulled it down. Since the steps still seemed sound, I climbed up to the attic opening and used the light from my mobile to illuminate the musty flooring.

I knew only a fool would enter an attic in a home as old as this one, but a distant memory compelled me to enter on my hands and knees while waving my light around to hunt for funnel spider webs. The last thing I wanted to disturb was a black widow or brown recluse and I had to greatly resist the fully rational temptation to back out of the attic onto the ladder and return to safety.

That's when I saw the light entering the space from the hole in the roof and I encountered a siege of melancholia that began with the sighting of the feral queen and increased severalfold with the slowly vanishing light and tickle of distant memory.

I saw in my mind's eye his lips softly moving in the shadow of my memory as my uncle quietly spoke of treasure hidden in this same attic. But it was not gold or rubies red; it was neither ancient coin nor rare artifact. It was something far richer than either mammon or keepsakes. I pressed him for more at the time, but he simply took a deep pull on his pipe and shook his head. There are no words, he finally murmured.

I sat on the only piece of furniture in the attic, an old wicker chair with sufficient weave remaining on the seat to support my weight and drearily looked about the ruins. I spotted an old fiddle lying on its side, the strings gone. I sat in meditation for a long time as the light slowly crept toward the opening till it disappeared and the attic was filled with gloom.

And yet I remained waiting for what I knew not. There are no words, my uncle had whispered. I wanted to doubt him even though I knew in my heart that he had found something that had impossibly filled a man who loved to talk with the silence of awe. The air cooling, I shivered as with sudden realization. And yet I still remained.

I do not know how long I waited, never once checking the time as it slowly passed. But I know this. The room was ablur in the darkening gloom when I saw him. He stared balefully at me as I stared wide-eyed back.

He was barely more than a shadow at first. But as his features slowly articulated I noted a sweeping mustache and goatee, a small cowboy hat sitting at a jaunty angle atop his head. I knew without him speaking a word that he was my great, great grandfather, Commodore Farris.

He held a mandolin that hung vertically from his left hand as if he routinely carried it with him wherever he traveled. But he spoke never a word, rather smiling warmly and winking. Then he slowly faded away without imparting either wisdom or warning, the riches he offered no more than a friendly grin.

Tears welling in my eyes, I whispered Thank you and finally understood my uncle's meaning. This was treasure indeed. There truly were no words.

When I left the house in the last glimmer of the evening twilight, I cut some mums that still somehow grew in the weed choked remains of the front garden and then drove away with them sitting beside me on the front seat.

When I arrived at the Sardis cemetery, I lit my pathway with my phone till I found Commodore's and my uncle's headstones, side by side, and placed the mums between them.

I bowed my head in the silence of the night and enjoyed the cool breeze as it softly caressed my cheek. Then I apologized for interrupting their rest and returned to my car to begin the long drive home.