Two Fallen Leaves

The first thing I noticed was the deafening silence. What happened to the sound of the birds chirping? The sounds of the woodland creatures rustling through the blanket of freshly fallen leaves? The crunch of those leaves underfoot as I hastened my approach? Where was the wind that sent whistling crescendos through the creaking canopy of intertwined branches, or the soft whir of the reds and oranges and yellows as they made their slow, lackadaisical descent to the forest floor? Where was my breath, which had been audibly evident in short, steady bursts of rhythmic huffs and puffs as I hiked along through the crisp autumn air? … Was I still breathing?

I stepped the rest of the way into the clearing and as the vast thickness of the woods abruptly dissipated around me, I felt unexpectedly and increasingly unburdened, like a great weight was being lifted from my incessantly stooped shoulders. I felt so very excited about having reached my destination, the anticipation growing in my belly like a child discovering a heaping pile of presents left under the tree by Santa on Christmas morning. I hesitated, allowing my eyes to adjust to the change in light, momentarily puzzling through the glare over the curious sight before me. What could possibly be the meaning behind all this?

It was just yesterday that I had found the notebook. I had been walking home from the bank, downtrodden and exhausted after yet another long, miserable day. Soaked through to the bone, cursing my forgotten umbrella, which was presumably all cozy and dry in its antiqued bronze stand in my foyer, I sploshed through puddle after puddle on the uneven slabs of sidewalk. Deeply lost in my troubled thoughts, I barely noticed the public transit bus whizzing past me, that is until it kicked up a spray of pooled rainwater that might as well have been a tsunami for the way in which it drenched me from head to toe. Arms lifted to shield my face from the cold blast, I stumbled from the sheer surprise of it, ultimately losing my balance and toppling sideways onto the hard concrete. I winced from the immediate, throbbing wave of pain that radiated down my leg to the tips of my toes, and up through my back, spreading around and throughout my chest, burning and coiling.

It was then that I saw it. The notebook. It lay slightly askew to my left, as if accidentally discarded in someone’s mad dash from storefront to cab in the pouring rain. What struck me immediately was its lack of luster. I mean, it isn’t that I’d expect a plain, black, hard covered notebook to shine or shimmer, but lying in the middle of a wet sidewalk, with the heavens unleashing a torrent of glistening tears, it lacked even the droplet dimpled, slightly reflective sheen it should have had, simply by existing within the current environment. Instead, it seemed to be dry, but more than dry. It seemed to be a dark, rectangular void, like a black hole swallowing up surrounding starlight, thoroughly inconsistent with the rest of the gloom cast by the grey and dismal storm laden afternoon.

I was mesmerized. My searing pain forgotten, I reached out and laid a hand across the surface of the notebook, palm flat and fingers splayed, as if to test with my sense of touch whether my eyes were playing tricks on me. Not only was I now positive the notebook was confoundedly dry, but just as inexplicably, the moment my skin made contact with it, a profound sense of warm comfort washed over me. I felt as if I was sitting next to a roaring hearth fire, a cup of Earl Grey with a splash of milk cradled in my hands, all in stark contrast to the damp chill that had permeated me only moments ago. My eyes darting to the left and right to make sure I wasn’t being watched, not because of my embarrassing topple, but rather because I felt almost akin to a child being caught red handed opening up the cookie jar, I quickly grabbed the notebook and slipped it into my jacket pocket for later, more thorough inspection.

I hurried home, no longer taking any notice of the falling rain, or the splashing water beneath my feet, or anything for that matter. There were peripheral whirs of familiar sights: the old corner bakery that signaled the turn onto my street, the lopsided iron railing that lined the steps leading up to my building, the series of metallic mailboxes stacked along the wall in the entryway, the worn, brownish carpet with its faded lattice print trailing up the hallway, and finally, my nondescript apartment door with its minute, fish eyed peephole glaring back at me. I entered, quickly shutting the door closed behind me with a firm shoulder nudge, while simultaneously kicking off my soggy shoes. Only after first taking the time to carefully remove the notebook from its temporary hiding spot, I slipped out of my drenched jacket, letting it fall to the floor in a sopping wet, discarded heap alongside my shoes.

I stared down at the notebook, now clutched in both hands and held out in front of me at waist level. The eagerness to see what, if anything, might be written inside it flooded over me, but for some reason I paused, taking a slow, deep inhale. My eyes flicked to the framed photo on my credenza of a delicate woman with a softly curved smile, her long golden hair slightly streaked with grey, and permanent laughter lines edging the most breathtakingly brilliant blue eyes that my own had ever beheld. My beautiful Mildred. Oh, how I missed her with every passing moment of every passing day. Well, this is it, Millie. I thought toward her picture. Shall we see what’s inside?

With a half-formed, heavy-hearted smile, doing my best to match hers, I returned my attention to the notebook and carefully lifted open the front cover. In neatly scrawled cursive, artistically ebbing and flowing, as if written by a stylish hand donning a calligraphy pen, the inside cover bore the old, oft astute adage: The pen is mightier than the sword. Below that, centered near the bottom edge of the page, was a small, concisely printed series of numbers that caught my perplexed gaze for a long moment, until I realized with smug satisfaction that they were a set of geographical coordinates. Perhaps a lifetime of collecting odd bits of seemingly useless trivia actually paid off from time to time. Glancing to the right, I saw that every line of the first page of the notebook contained what appeared to be the unrecognizable names of many different people, each crossed out with a horizontal strikethrough:

Catherine Wells

Thomas Janezil

Norbert Smith

And so on and so forth, the list went on, page after page, which I leafed through in a maddeningly quickening pace, until about three quarters of the way through when the nonsystematic manifest of monikers stopped abruptly with a final printed name. Unlike the thousands of others that had come before it, the last name on the list was not crossed out, and therefore stood out like a beacon cutting through dense fog to guide wayward ships to shore. I stood frozen, a sudden chill passing through me, making each of the tiny hairs along the nape of my neck stand on end. The temporary delirium I had felt sharply vanished and I became hyperaware of the droplets of water trailing from my forehead, down the bridge of my nose, and recurrently dripping onto the notebook paper in soft, rippled halos that slightly blurred the ink, a mixture of water from my rain soaked mop of hair and cold sweat. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in a sharp exhalation and continued to stare confoundedly at the final, uniquely unintersected name on the page. That particular name was familiar. That particular name was mine.

And so it was that the next day found me trekking through the woods, in search of the X that marked the spot. I had spent a sleepless night eternally pondering the significance behind the notebook, its contents, and my having found it. What was the connection? Who could have known that I, the holder of the most recent name on the list, would have been the one to have serendipitously stumbled upon it in its arbitrary station on the sidewalk?

By the time I found the clearing, I had started to worry greatly that the GPS on my phone would cease to function, the coordinate location being lost beyond recovery, floating about indiscriminately in the scattered airwaves, as reception grew continuously spottier the further I traveled away from civilization. However, grossly defying all logic and reason, the signal strength that had been fading in and out in increasing increments with every passing step somehow became stronger as I closed in on the last few dozen meters of my journey.

Now, what had taken a mere 24 hours to both be sown and come to full fruition stood before me in all of its awe inspiring, triumphant glory. In the center of the otherwise vacant clearing, surrounded in either direction by a 10 foot radius of grass the color of sun kissed hay, stood a wooden pedestal, about four feet tall and intricately carved from the thick trunk of a tree which had once grown in its place. The clouds overhead shifted and parted just so that a single beam of sunlight was allowed to shine brightly upon it, illuminating the gilded pen with its curved, wispy quill that stood upright in its quiver atop the pedestal. Specks of particulates danced in the shaft of light, dressing the air within it in a sparkling, radiant gown. It reminded me unmistakably of the sword in the stone of Arthurian legend that I had seen depicted similarly in countless illustrations, with some otherworldly force directing the rays of the sun to somehow light it up from within, giving it an aura of divine potential.

No longer feeling my feet upon the ground, I crossed the gap between the pedestal and myself, almost as if being pulled forward in a smooth, hovering motion by an invisible magnetic force. Setting the notebook upon the exposed rings of the cross section of wood that was once a tree and now a cornice, I lifted the front cover and it immediately opened to the finger creased page with my unobstructed name written above a series of blank lines, the binding apparently having remembered the ferocity of my grip during yesterday’s initial examination. In a tranquil state, experiencing the first true sense of peace I had felt since losing Millie, and in fact, feeling her with me in every sense, as if she was a part of my actual being rather than simply standing next to me, I picked up the pen from its base. I lowered it to the page. I crossed out my name.

********************************************************************

The paramedics stood gathered around the man’s body in their rain slickers, getting ready to hoist him up onto a stretcher and drape a rain sodden sheet over his calm face. Resuscitation efforts had failed, but despite the sheer violence of the repeated chest compressions, nothing had erased the smile that had settled into his death mask. As they lifted him, a black notebook slipped from his jacket pocket onto the wet sidewalk below, a black notebook containing the $20,000 he had just emptied from his savings account. Whoever might find the notebook will undoubtedly find themselves in good fortune, but they might also choose to fulfill the handwritten list inside, entitled ”Millie’s Bucket List,” which begins with a walk through the woods on a crisp, autumn day, in a far off part of the world that sees the colors of the leaves changing inevitably along with the seasons.