CHAPTER FOUR: STELLA 1943

Stella would be on her font porch, waiting on for T.J. as usual. Clouds drifted overhead and T.J ambled unaware, with no presentiment of the disaster that would transport him to another world.



She sensed no premonition of his impending fate, nor of the terrible event that would sweep T.J. out of this life, flushing him down life’s drain spout like a leaf in a rain gutter. Adrift in that unknown sea of “death.” Some call it a preamble to real death … real death supposedly being that final state, which some men (of the type more religious than scientific) have also called “the second death.”

Likewise Stella waited joyously on the front porch, her feet clinging to a cold redwood deck, her hands resting lightly on the porch handrails, and as she looked beyond the wooden steps that led to a gravel driveway, watching for T.J. to appear, she enjoyed the day’s last rays of sunshine until the sky suddenly darkened and the first drops of rain descended from heaven. Stella hoped the storm would pass quickly. To her, the eternal optimist, the breeze seemed friendly, detaching brown, red, and yellow leaves from the trees. Those leaves joined the millions that composed the random artwork of decomposition, the fallen foliage that makes forest soil so soft and spongy.

All Paradise Pointe homes, including Stella’s cabin, seemed like dwarf-houses, the tiny people-boxes, like bird-nests-on-the ground amongst towering redwood trees. As she waited, the winds picked up, nudging branches which in turn scratched the roof with rough caresses. Within two hours, however, the storm would hit full force, pounding, scourging and punishing the attic’s eve. The wind, emitting moans like the callings of spirits, would blow away all other thoughts but that the house was to be destroyed. But that would be an empty threat, at least for the time being. On this night. Branches would fall, crushing other cabins’ roofs with a sound like the crunching of wooden ships which were breaking apart in a storm at sea. But morning would come and sun would shine, more brightly than usual in contrast to the squall of the preceding night.

At last, from her perch on the porch, Stella saw T.J. coming up the hill, the wind whipping his coattails, his hand holding onto his hat to keep it from blowing away. He mounted the stairs and They embraced, enjoying contrast between cool surrounding air and the warmth of each others bodies. She then grabbed his arm, pulling him into the house, out of the wind, just as the first few drops of rain pelted them and wetted porch.

Some time after midnight T.J. was awakened by dreams of his seagoing days. The nauseated feeling that his ship was going down would gradually dissipate as his eyes adjusted to the light and he recognized ghostly but familiar outlines, the shadows of the structures of Stella’s room: The carefully-oiled, oak, chest-of-drawers, the freshly-pressed white doilies of hand-stitched lace. The family portraits, hanging neatly. A decently framed imitation of Edward Hugh’s painting, “Heart of Snow,” and the fluffy, white comforters that billowed around himself and Stella, asleep beside him.

Then he remembered the letter he had received from Elizabeth. Such glowing, early-morning awakenings would be happening no more. Life had not been going well for Elizabeth. The house payment she could no longer make. Poor health prevented her from working even if she could have found a job, and doctor bills had mounted. She had nowhere to turn but to her ex-husband, who was actually not her ex but her husband, because they had never divorced

The letter presented a dilemma for T.J.. Once Elizabeth arrived, T.J. would have to sleep only in his own cabin -- with his own wife. The wife of his youth would demand her rights. Certainly, he could move in with Stella, but that was almost heard of in those days, and especially so in Paradise Pointe. Besides, if he did leave his cabin and move in with Stella, Elizabeth would expose him to the Park Association, would raise a fuss. If she could prove that he had been sleeping with Stella, she might even succeed in having him booted out of the park, for Paradise Pointe was something like of a religious fraternity, even though it was not restricted to any one denomination.

Yes, Elizabeth’s arrival would doom his relationship with Stella. Instead of opening his eyes each morning to view the minor luxuries of Stella’s dainty world, his dreary eyes would be forced to squint to the blurry sight of his own, splintery chest-of-drawers. The rattling brass bars at the footboard of his too-narrow bed would jingle every time he moved. A single mirror would continue hanging lopsidedly on the wall, giving him the same distorted view of himself it had always had. His socks, and Elizabeth’s leg-wrappings strewn about the floor, would complement the dreary picture of the “new” life to which he would be awakening.

Stella and T.J. had become such happy neighbors. They had been “just friends” for a couple of years untill, one sunny day, Stella had arrived to find T.J. in his cabin, seated amongst piles of hand-picked mushrooms and not a few toadstools; he had been drinking black and orange English pekoe tea at his small table, and he had offered her a cupful. His kitchen furniture was but a rickety pine table and two chairs. The green-and-white, lead-laden paint had flaked off in places, leaving the bare, exposed wood to turn gray in the misty mountain air. They visited. Upon leaving, Stella had kissed T.J. for the first time, though only on the forehead, a light friendship kiss. The next week the kiss had moved to the cheek, and the week after that, they had kissed on the mouth. Unknown to them, even while they kissed, beneath their feet, tremendous pressure had built up as to two continental plates vied to occupy the same space. Geologists have since come to define the area as a “strike-slip fault,” for Paradise Pointe occupied an area along that treacherous boundary where the Pacific and North American plates continually grind past each other, the cause of numerous earthquakes. Inevitable and unknown, an earthquake was in the making. On the other hand, the earthquake that Elizabeth would cause was all too evident.

They simply could not process it mentally: No more visual caresses, no warm, loving embraces with Stella, no more Canasta-and-wine alone. No more sitting on her porch and listening to the hoot-hooting of the owl, for Elizabeth, was plotting, planning to return; she was intent on moving back in with T.J.. And knowing him as only an ex-wife can know her man, she was certain that after initial protests and misgivings he would give in, and would allow her to stay. Stella saw it coming, too. Knew the outcome before it happened. T.J.’s morals, his ethics and his conscience would win in the end. If anything, Stella was the more spiritually aware of the three of them. She told herself sadly, “The relationship has been against my own values too.” Feeling upset at the thought, she excused herself to T.J. and went to the bathroom to be alone. “I had no business getting involved with a married man,” she thought, and she cried, sniffling quietly so as not to alarm T.J. “According to my own bible, the relationship was wrong from the start,” she thought, and in the privacy of the bathroom she wept silently.

As much as she loved T.J., she realized the relationship was, after all, against one of her core beliefs, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.“ She was not repentant, but she knew when she was beat. “There is nothing I can do now but savor these last few hours.” The real pain would come later. So she went back to the bedroom where T.J. was already buried beneath the covers. There they cuddled up beneath her fluffy quilts for one last time and said no more about the future. Instead, Stella read to him from the bible. The book “Song of Solomon,” the sole book in the bible speaking of romantic love. “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him but I found him not.” And as she read, she suddenly could not stop her tears from streaking those graphically penned pages, and T.J. was not able to console her. They both knew. “It’s all over, isn’t it,?” T.J. admitted, and they clung to each other like two tender, albeit naughty, children. Long after midnight they finally went to sleep in each other’s arms.

***
Author's Note: The above was a chapter from an experimental novel by F. Ellsworth Lockwood.


The book incorporates adventure, romance, and spirituality in the saga of a boy named T.J., who runs away from home at age fourteen in search of freedom and self determination. T.J. navigates a transition from wooden sailing ships to steamships and locomotives, yet the end of his life is more surprising (and more adventuresome) than his first boyhood prank, in which he jumped aboard a rag barge only to fall into the hands of a cantankerous “rag lady” and her skinny daughter.

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