Walking Alone

By Don Noel

Although the trail still looked wet, Henry thought, it would no longer be called muddy. He paused to look behind, to be sure he wasn’t scarring the path with heelprints. Some of his neighbors on the Trails Committee would have fits: they had all spent hours last fall raking and levelling to minimize the risk that elderly feet might stumble.

If Trudy were still here she’d have resisted this walk: “Too early,” she’d have said. “If you want exercise, go down to the Fitness Center and work out on one of your machines!” But she’d have known it wasn’t about exercise. He’d have led her out on their little patio, where he had this noon heard the first peepers, and had her hear them for herself. Then she might even have come along.

Letting that imagined conversation play through his head was like slicing an onion: He felt his eyes welling up. In their 65 years of marriage, the last decade here at Harmony Acres stood out among fond memories.

The retirement community was built next to a flood-control reservoir. In the postwar decades the state built diked areas to hold back heavy rainfalls, releasing water slowly to minimize flooding in urban areas downstream. Heavy rains or hurricanes created a network of small ponds, but those soon drained away, leaving a wide swath of woods and meadows that people called the Wildwood. Dry most of the year, the area invited wildlife habitation – and contemplative walkers.

Contemplation. He said the word aloud, letting the syllables roll off his tongue. In the three years since Trudy’s death he had often contemplated the joys of their life together, and tried to shrug off loneliness by immersing himself in community activities. But he had avoided until now coming out to the Wildwood, where they had so often come together.

He – and Trudy, while she still could – had done their share of maintaining and grooming trails through this reservoir/forest, with rudimentary bridges over areas most subject to flooding, and a dozen simple benches where walkers could take a break. That was a different kind of woods-visit, communal: a clutter of friends working together, chatting amiably, sometimes adding a power tool’s whine to the clamor.

When it was just the two of them, they’d mostly walked in silence, sitting on one of those benches to tune in nature’s sounds. This afternoon he found a bench that had been her favorite, next to a tall shagbark hickory, sunlight slanting through its still-bare branches. It was chillier than he’d expected, and he wished he’d brought a scarf; but he sat to listen to the peepers’ one-note chorus.

No, wait! A few were higher-pitched. Name? Henry wracked his brain, wishing her beside him, prompting. She’d had a better ear, hearing birdsong when he heard just chirping. A cardinal’s cheer-cheer was easy, but telling a song sparrow from a fox sparrow was beyond him.

Tree frog! That was the high-pitched one, wasn’t it? He grinned to himself; not too old yet to dredge his wife’s counsel out of memory.

Still, it would be nice to have someone with him in the flesh, sharing the moment. He might say “Tree frog!” aloud, and she might say “Yes!” or “Thank you!” and then lapse back into listening. They might chat, on the way back, about which birds they’d heard, which trees they’d seen fattening their buds.

Finding someone to come for a walk with him shouldn’t be hard: There were twice as many widows as widowers here – true, he’d been told, in most retirement communities. Just ask one of them; should be easy.

But in ten years, he’d never invited anyone to anything. While Trudy was able, she’d managed a busy social life, mostly inviting folks to join them for dinner, so he had at least a passing acquaintance with almost everyone here. He still joined people for dinner now and then, but he always waited to be invited.

Your timidity, he told himself, is foolishness. Trudy’s been gone long enough that inviting someone to join me for dinner, or for a walk, wouldn’t raise any eyebrows.

Then, as if whispered in his ear, an idea. Email! Harmony Acres had a kind of universal email to which folks posted everything imaginable: an earring lost or found, reminders of various meetings, changes in dining room menus, notice of musical performances – things that in the old days might have been notes tacked on a cork bulletin board that everyone could see. There’d been a lot of spring-is-coming comment the last few days.

He got out his smartphone to refresh his memory: Muriel Jones heard “harbingers of summer” in those tree frogs; Harriet Smythe welcomed the first pussywillows. Some were downright poetic: Phoebe Lee couldn’t wait for “daffodils to open their yellow bonnets”; Mary Jane Williams gushed about “tiny maple tree flowers spreading a faint smear of color over bare grey branches”; Alyce Evans said the male redwings were “checking out the real estate for possible nesting. Their wives will come later. Listen for a trilling burr.”

Trudy would have applauded them; might have offered a few words of her own. And he could applaud them, too, by golly! His fingers were clumsy, pecking at the tiny keyboard, but he could do it. He’d start with the more eloquent of them. “I’m out on a Wildwood bench enjoying the day, and enjoyed your image of yellow bonnets,” he wrote to Phoebe. Send. “. . . enjoyed your smear of color image,” he wrote to Mary Jane. Send.

He was so intent on pecking out the same note to Alyce Evans that he didn’t hear the approaching footsteps.

“Hello!” a voice said. “Look who’s out searching for spring!”

He turned. “Alyce Evans! I was just sending you an email.”

“Why, Henry Perkins, I don’t think you’ve ever emailed me before.”

“Nothing special,” he said. “Just saying I liked your image of the male redwings looking for nesting sites.”

“Well, that’s what they do. Mind if I sit down?”

Did he mind? “Please!” He scrunched over.

“You and Trudy used to come out here together, if I recall.”

“Yes.”

“She’d regale us at book club with all the birds she’d heard. She was absolutely the best at knowing them by their songs.”

“She was. I couldn’t keep up with her.”

“You must miss her still.”

The damned sliced-onion again. He tried to blink back the tears.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “My Will is gone four years now, and I still have moments when I miss him terribly. Mostly when I want to share something, like ‘Did you hear that redwing?’”

“No,” Henry said. “I didn’t.”

“Sorry, that was just a f’rinstance. They’re out in the meadow, of course, not here in the woods. Let’s just listen a bit, though; might hear some others.”

Henry was glad for the silence: He could collect his thoughts. He and Will Evans had served together on Trails Committee, he remembered; friendly, pitch-in kind of guy. He didn’t recall much about Alyce, but she seemed now a very nice person; about Trudy’s slim build, bobbed white hair just like Trudy’s.

The hand on his shoulder had felt good, too. Unexpected, but not unwelcome.

His musing was interrupted by a cawing sound. A bit distant, but penetrating; like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Those crows!” Alyce said. “They don’t fly south like so many songbirds; they’re like us, just tough out the winter.” She gave him a smile that seemed radiant. “You tough?”

“Not very,” he smiled back at her. “To be honest, this bench is beginning to feel downright cold.”

“Me too. I’m glad you said it first. Numbing our buns. Shall we start back?”

He surprised himself by getting to his feet quickly and reaching to give her a hand up. “Numb buns? I do like your way with words.”

“Thanks. But words won’t warm us. I have some sherry that will. In my apartment, and there’s a little sitting parlor just outside my door, with big windows facing west. We could toast the sunset, when it comes, and then maybe go up to the dining room.”

“What a good idea!” he found himself saying. “And we might come out to the Wildwood again when it’s warmed up a bit more.”

 

-End-

Published in the Summer 1965 Chautauqua Anthology