The Deer (an excerpt from a forthcoming novel)

What of the deer, Pacific?  Remember when we drew them?  The drawings are in that clothbound book.  The deer just held there like they were made of paper.  Perhaps their instincts tell them to be afraid and their hearts tell them something else.

     Now I watch them, write of them.  I turn the page; they look at each other, the sound of the paper having startled them.  The big one turns his back on me, now lopes away.

     Earlier, I approached them.  I held out my arms and spoke to them and tossed them apples.  They looked at the apples on the grass and would not go near them.  I inched towards the deer, with arms outstretched, and got within ten feet before they fled.

     Now I sit here in the amphitheater of my home, in the open back door.  The gray is lovely, tinted yellow.  A dissolving fog rinses the treetops.  Two crows soar across the screen.  Language goes back and forth between the black birds.

     I wish you were here, Pacific.  We would wait for the deer to gain courage and we would draw them again and try to feed them apples.

     Rain, fog, our wet world adds detail to the day.  The incessant wisp of tires keeps time moving forward.  The rain starts, it stops, never predictable.  Someday you will understand, my son, you will understand how little you know, and your perception will change.

     Where are the deer, Pacific?  How long should we wait?  Should we go find them?

     One time we snuck up on them and got so close we could have hugged them.  When they finally tripped, we were right beside them.  Pacific, they were not as afraid of you as they were of me.  You could have kissed them.  Remember when we got that picture of the fauns kissing?  Were they kissing, or sharing a flower?

     Would you like to live like them, to sleep under a bush, to eat plants out of gardens, to always be on guard, always ready to flee?

      Perhaps they relax when they believe they are alone, and that is why they can be startled so.  We shock them.  Their memories are poor.

     They are right to be afraid.  Their meat is as peculiar in its taste as the animal is beautiful, with its white tail, with its bowed legs, because of its big bulging black eyes.  And the deer can run faster than us and better bear the cold.  The deer is pure in its silent relationship with creation.  The deer belongs in heaven, I think.  Its blood is purple and in a legend was sifted for gold.  Someday, Pacific, I hope to bless with you a meal of venison.

     But never would I harm these deer, for I know them.  In that, in knowing them as neighbors and therefore respecting their existence, I fear lies a terrible truth.  A deer somewhere else, in some hunting forest, seen from afar, that deer I could kill. 

     I knew these deer when they were fawns.  Their white spots betrayed them as they rested under a fir tree.  Kirsten pointed them out to me.  Sunlight was around them, their spots reflecting the light.  It seemed as though they were imagined.  I felt certain they were possessed by angels or saints or children.

 

Upon a Chariot

Asks my little boy, "Can I read your words?"
"Yes."  He does not know how to read.  Old notebooks, journals, on the floor.  He carries them under his arm, hands one to my wife.  I say, "That was my first journal."
     "It's cute."  She flips to the middle.  Quiet for a moment.  Now, "You should put this poem on your blog."
     "Which one?"
     "Here."
     "I wrote that six years ago."
     "And?"

Upon a chariot,
I ride there,
The Place of Eternal Spring,
On the outskirts of the City
Of New Ideas,
Closer to the Creator.

Upon a chariot,
Commanded by Angels,
I ride there,
The Place of Infinite Relation,
In earshot of the Temple
Of Contemplation,
Closer to the Giver of Life.

Upon a chariot,
Commanded by Angels,
To the Seventh Dimension,
I ride there,
The Place devoid of time and question,
Down the river from where
Moses and Elijah drink,
Closer to Perfection.

Upon a chariot,
I ride to Elysian Fields.

An Open Window

(Jake was built like a boy—his long body thin but untrained—and Jake had the hair of a boy—light brown and full, an easy wave to the side. His cheeks showed gracefully the scars of adolescence and his smile was broad and warm, and there were no lines around his eyes. Jake was thirty-two and could pass for twenty, and it was his youthfulness he believed was holding him back. Jake yearned for gray, for wrinkles, for age in some manner to manifest—even just a pot belly would help or black bags under the eyes or jowls or baldness. Then he might get somewhere! Then he might get some respect! Eight years he had been with the hospital, in administration—eight years: perhaps a tenth of his life—and he was still at the bottom.

     Wretched youthfulness! What other explanation for his stagnation? There was none. Jake was motivated and kind and smart. And it was not that no one was advancing. For sure, he had watched with concealed pain and feigned glee as peers moved up. It had been with misery that he noted the mark on each of them: that one a permanent furrow with receding hairline, there a burgeoning buxom with newly onset diabetes…. Jake too was ready to give something to the hospital, ready to sacrifice some vitality. Yet youth—life—clung cruelly.)

The corridor was dark and underground, a foot-tunnel for staff connecting the buildings. The thirty-two-year-old Jake felt comfortable running here, because there were no patients and it mattered not that he looked unprofessional. As he ran along his tie flapped over his shoulder and his hospital identification card swung loosely on the nylon lanyard. Jake was thinking what he often thought, of how he wished he was a doctor. Badly he wished it. Then no petty hierarchy could hold him back. Then he would actually be helping people. Now, instead of running to a meeting, he would be running to save a patient. But the dream of being a doctor was hopeless. Jake had a huge number of children—three (to think he had once wanted six!)—and Jake had already spent six years at college. No, sadly Jake’s course was set and well underway. Now, if only the lines would draw quickly down his cheeks. If only his hair would go gray or down the drain. Then he might get a raise.

     At the far end of the corridor Jake came to an elevator and double-tapped the “up” button. He shook impatiently, slapping his thighs like they were drums.  Today he had meetings scheduled back-to-back-to-back-to-back, four straight hours of them, with no breaks between. It was as if someone wanted him to run late.

     He was still waiting for the elevator. Again and again he pushed the button. He ripped his phone out of his shirt-pocket and fumbled it. It exploded in three pieces on the floor. The elevator arrived and the doors opened. He knelt and hurriedly gathered the pieces. The doors started to close. He slipped inside. Bracing the pieces of the phone to his chest, he kneed the button for the fourth floor, but missed it. Number three illuminated; he didn’t notice. He played the game with the battery, made it fit, and then slammed on the back of the phone. Now Jake was really sweating. He powered up the phone: he was not wearing a watch and he wanted to check the time. But why check it? He knew he was late. And what was the meeting even about? All he had was a location.

     The elevator stopped and the doors opened. He rushed off, looked left, right, and hurried down the hall. He was looking for conference room 408. The first door he passed said 313, and he realized the error. O, he didn’t have time for this! Even the elevator was against him! Back at the elevator, he pushed the “up” button. The doors opened. On board was an elderly woman in a wheelchair. She looked painfully at him. He deliberately pushed the button for the fourth floor.

     Jake was too good for this madness. He had a Master’s Degree in Hospital Administration, from a good school. He knew a lot about running a hospital. He knew how to implement a program and perform a cost analysis. He could tell you a thing or two about networks and patient needs. But no one listened to him. It seemed his coworkers did not want to make the hospital any better. Six months Jake had spent preparing his last presentation, and what had come of it? Nothing. Now meeting after meeting haunted him.

     The doors opened on flour four and Jake checked his lunge, for a couple of drug-reps—by the look of them, by their big fake smiles and gleaming foreheads and shiny shoes—were in just as much of a rush to get on as he was to get off. They yielded to Jake, as they yielded to everyone in the hospital, with their stressed-out, sweaty smiles. Jake thanked them and hurried to the conference room.

     The rest of the team was waiting for him and turned to him when he burst in through the door. It was a combination of looks he received: judgmental frowns and satisfied grins. The middle-aged woman to present said arrogantly, “Now that we are all here.…” And then something turned off in Jake. He could not hear her voice, nor could he see her. There was a window open and he took a seat across from it so he could look out the window. It was windy outside and the sun was shining. It had been cloudy on the drive in early that morning. Jake had come in early to work on some emails regarding the possible preparation of a presentation about the implementation of a program. But why dwell on that? It was sunny and wind was blowing and a tree reached up past the window and spread its branches across it. And the wind was taking the white leaves and spinning them so that it looked like flurries of snow. Jake remembered when he had seen something like this before….

I pulled up to the entrance to the school and noticed something in the air. It looked like snow. But it was May and warm and it was not snow but the white flowerings of some cherry trees twirling on the wind. I rolled down the window and felt the spring wind and smelled the leaves. I reached out and grabbed a fistful. My girls came out with their teacher Mr. Poulton. Mr. Poulton must have seen the emotion on my face and my fistful of little white blooms, because he smiled and shook his head and it seemed he was made happier by my happiness. “How beautiful!” I shouted, and I could have cried….

Sitting there in the meeting facing the open window with the shedding tree: it was the high-point of his day. Jake could see past the tree all the way to the building across the street, and looking up Jake could see the yellow and blue sky. And it was hard on the eyes to stare at the sky. The air came cool and fresh into the conference room, and Jake held it in his lungs.

     “Will someone close that window?” said the woman presenting. “Is anyone else chilly?”

     Jake could hear her again and see her. He said, “I kind of like it.”

     “Well, Jake, I’m cold. Your young blood can handle it. I’m chilly. Do you mind?”

     Yes he minded! It was the high-point of his week! Couldn’t she bear it? No, of course she couldn’t. “I’ll close it,” said Jake.

‘“I’ll close it,’ you said with your stupid self-deprecating smile, and you closed it gently and returned to your seat happily and your act was believable, but on the inside you felt raped of an innocence." Now was a few days later. Jake was talking to himself. “You were like a child that doesn’t know the names of things. You knew it felt good and was pleasing. You knew you wanted to be outside with the good feeling all round you, to look up, down, forward, back, and have that pleasant feeling go right into you. You were a child, an infant, staring at the outside world.” Jake whispered aloud to himself, “Why build buildings and work in them?” He was crossing the tunnel—he spent a lot of time here, underground—on target for another meeting. “But tomorrow is Saturday,” he said, “and you can spend the whole day outside with the kids. And you can show them and tell them about what really matters.” Jake sighed, fatigued, sick of hurrying. “How absurd,” he thought out loud, then silently, “But it’s how I make a living—I make a living—that has to count for something. I’m just done pretending. I mean, I’ll keep acting, but there’ll be no more lying to myself. You’re thirty-two years old. It’s time you have some self respect.”

Mount Si

Where my foot needed to go was snow-covered and there was no way to tell if it would hold. But that was where my foot had to go. “I think I see it,” I said.

     He was above on a perch clinging to a bush. He smiled warily. “Careful. Go slow.”    

     If I slipped my job was to keep my body into the cliff, to tuck my feet into my butt and press my forehead into the rock. We were a hundred feet up without a rope. It was stupid.

     My foot held.

     The next move was a big downward step. I said, “One more tough one and the rest is easy.”

     You could see the fear on him, surely as you could see it on me. Regardless, we stayed calm. I looked down.

     It was exhilarating to look at. It was a perverse feeling. I was not seeking death, instead seeing if I was ready.

     I eased down. My foot held. I blindly reached over flaky rock and found a finger-hold. Quickly I made another move, and the tough part was over. I said, “Do you see where you have to go?”

     He lowered himself onto the vertical section, facing the peak. I slid over in the fall-path. If he slipped, either I arrested the slide or we went as one. I asked him, “Do you see it?”

     “No.”

     “Take your time.”

     His leg shook. It was part of him I had never seen before. He had a wonderful ability to push through pain. He never exuded weakness. I thought the shaking must be uncontrollable, for he kept his composure. I said, “If you slip lean into the rock.”

     The leg trembled as if it was separate from the rest of his body. Then he peered down and his face was stern, and the leg stopped. It was another taste, not long awaited, of his indestructibility.

     I braced myself against the incline. It felt unstable, that my feet might slip at any time. “Do you see it?”

     “I think so.”

     I was ready to catch him but then he made it look easy.

      

It was nice to be on the flat of the plateau. Gray cloud curled over us. I told him good job. He replied, “I was dizzy for a second. I took codeine this morning. I shouldn’t’ve been up there.”

     We ate lunch on a buttress of black stone. The wren ate out of our hands. We lobbed globs of bread into the abyss and watched the little gray birds dive after them, swooping underneath the bread and gobbling it out of the air.

    

A week later the snow lay thin and fresh on the slope. I watched light flutter down on dust-like snow. The sky was changing and blue was coming through.

     On the trail, the conifers were populous and rose straight up off the terrain. The trunks were thin and gray and limbless at eye-level. We had been at it an hour, he and I.  “Pretty isn’t it?” I said. 

     “Yeah.” He was stalking the trail. I knew he hurt. He had to hurt. The trail turned and steepened. I felt bad for talking. For spoiling it. I tried not to think about him, but I could not help it.  Why was he going so hard?

    

When I came up on him he was retching. His head was hung over his knees. The snow at his feet was red. I asked if he was alright though I knew how he would answer. 

     “Yeah.” He kicked dirt and snow over the blood and resumed. I thought he probably liked the pain in his lungs and legs, for it was distraction.

     It was not long before I had lost him again. When I found him he was resting on a jut. He was peering at the freeway in the valley. I stood next to him. You could hear the traffic. Watching the succession of cars made me feel lousy. I hated being a part of it. Turning away he said, “We drove two hours to get here.”

    

We struggled.

     It was good to be where it was quiet. The soul might fix itself out here. A man can howl and bark at clouds and cry and argue with himself.

     What was he thinking now as we came out of the woods and upon the mounds of granite black and slick and piled as if it was a quarry? Was he wondering if he had been dumped from above? Does it matter what I do? You know the one and she is gone and there is nothing you can do. Craving escape, to be present. It will be too late when you finally make it.

     I smelled scarf. I was warm inside a sweater and fir-lined corduroy coat and acrylic socks. I asked him how he felt. He was more comfortable than last time. He wore a small yellow backpack now and had tissue in the nose of his boots.

     We climbed over pillars of rock leaning like great growths of crystal. Clean snow lay like drapery in the creases. We wanted to look at the haystack.

     Getting close I asked why. I thought that it was you heap up a bunch of responsibilities and then have to prove to yourself you are still free. You need to know you have not slid into cowardice with all you have to lose.

     “I don’t want to die in a hospital,” I said to my friend.

     “I know,” he said.

     “I feel I could die right now and be okay with it,” and I stopped myself from saying I had lived a full life, for that belief will bring out the coward too.

     “I am not ready to die,” he said. “That’s what I figured out last time. I am not ready and don’t want to. Dying is selfish.”

     We crowned the mountain. The sky was all blue, and the sun was soothing. We paused just a moment and then found our way to the haystack.

     “It doesn’t look that scary from down here,” he said. “Should we try it?”

     I laughed. We returned to the same projection of rock and spent time with the birds.

     “Look at the city,” he said. It was like looking at Seattle in a glass ball. It looked quaint, unobtrusive, there in the flat environed by the biome.

     “Are you ready to be a dad again?” he asked me.

     “Now I am,” I said.

     “You needed what happened last time.”

     “I think so.”

     “Me too,” he said.

Halfway down we rested. We lay back on the snow above the trail. It felt wonderful to recline. I thought of what I had read in some Vedic text about Krishna admiring men who live well.

     We broke once more near the bottom of Mount Si. We trudged off trail and knelt beside a creek and lapped water over our faces. I swished some and it was cold and delicious.

     We sat away from each other on decaying logs, and we talked about never wanting to leave.
 

The Thought-Catcher

The table was well lit by the morning light that came through the doors. The man was looking out the doors at the grass which was frost-tipped and brittle-looking in the cold.  The plate before him was full. His wife was done eating and was feeding their eleven-month-old son. At the far end of the table the four-year-old daughter said, “May I be excused?”
     "A couple more bites," said the woman.
     "But I'm full."
     "Fine," and the woman ignored the girl as she slid away.  The man turned to his wife and said, “I had a bad dream.” The woman was silent. At last she said, “Are you going to tell me about it?”
     “I want to.”
     “I think you should.”
     “I might blather.”
     “You won’t. But if you don’t want to tell me about it I understand.”

They were at the table.  The man was watching the afternoon like lava spread over the lawn. The woman said to him, “I wish you would tell me about your dream.” And the man thought, I have caught a butterfly and have pressed it and now am ready to share it. He said, “I dreamed I was pushing a wheelbarrow full of body parts, arms and hands, fingers, feet. I dump the limbs in a ditch and bury them....”
      Finally she said, “What a horrible dream.”
     “I know.”
     “It’s probably something you saw on TV.”
     “I don’t think so.”
     She stared at him.
     He said, “Walt Whitman wrote a poem titled The Wound-Dresser. I read it this morning. I had been carrying the dream thinking it was a memory from a past life or something crazy like that. Now I think I know better.” Peeking over at her he thought she was examining him like he was a rare insect. He went on, “I think our thoughts give off a signal, that our thoughts are broadcast on an invisible wavelength into the universe.”
      “Interesting,” the woman said, staring at her husband, blindly guiding a bite in the direction of the baby and missing his mouth. 
     The man said, “Walt Whitman was in his early twenties during the Civil War, and worked in the tents as a nurse-aid.” He leaned back. “I think I caught some of the stress he sent off during the war. Like it is all floating up there, and somehow I breathed some in.” He looked at his wife. She stared back at him. In her eyes was a searching. The boy said, “More,” and tapped his fingers, and without looking she guided a bite of fish into his mouth.             

Loving Scarlet

The island on the far side of the passage was thickly wooded and dark in the night save the glow in the windows of the houses along the shoreline.  It was late in August.  There was a light westerly wind and the clouds that had plagued the day were long gone.  Beside him on the balcony overlooking the water the girl kept her hands tucked under her arms.  He said to her, “See how the sun shines on the moon and then from the moon on the water?” and he took a long sip of wine thinking You fool.  Why must you always teach? 
     “Yes,” she said, “on the ripples.  How many do you think there are?”
     “Ripples?”
     “Yes, that we can see.”
     “Millions.”
     “Not billions?”
     “Probably billions.”  He looked at her wineglass on the balustrade.  The glass looked in danger in the wind.  You have no idea, he said to himself.  You don’t talk to her in how many years and now you are with her and there is an uneasiness and you think it is something.  He looked over at her not moving his head and it suddenly struck him she was a woman of nearly thirty years and not the girl of sixteen.  He saw her eyes were on the water and the play of the rippled light was on her eyes.  He said quietly, “Scarlet.”
     “James.”
     “I thought about you, all these years.  I think about you.”
     “I’ve thought about you too,” she said lightheartedly and her eyes stayed on the water. 
     “Everyday.”
     “Please don’t.”
     “Don’t what?”
     “Say things that are not true,” and her eyes had not moved.  But it is true, he thought.  I never embellish.  The only lies I tell are understatements.  He said, “Your birthday is April first.  Your favorite color is yellow, because it reminds you of summer.”
     She laughed.  “How do you remember that?”
     “I just do.  I remember a lot.”
     “Your birthday is November …”
     “December fifteenth,” he said and wondered if this meant she did not love him.
     “December fifteenth,” she repeated passively.  She was standing to his right and she turned to the right and looking inside at the party said, “I’m pretty chilly.”

Alone on the balcony he peered down at the wide river of water moving through the passage.  The moon glimmer on the water acted as a charm and he saw Scarlet spread across the water as he had seen her spread across his bed on a night years ago.  When you were eighteen, sixteen seemed old enough, he told himself.  Now you see her out there as a girl and you feel ashamed looking at her.  But you will die with this.  He took up the wineglass she had abandoned on the balustrade and he tilted it to his mouth and tasted the cool glass and bitter drops.

What is it, man?” said an old friend.  They were at the table with the food and the punch and the bottles of wine.  James kept peeking at Scarlet on the far side of the room.  The man she was talking with touched her elbow.  She was smiling.  “I’m sorry,” James said.
     “You look lost,” his friend said.
     “I think I am.”
     “You know it happens all the time.”
     “What’s that?” asked James.
     “I mean, it’s boring—you not being over Scarlet.  How long were you guys a couple, like two months or something?”
     “Excuse me.”  James got up.  In the bathroom he washed his hands and then dabbed his face.  Scarlet was at the door when he opened it.  Their eyes met for a blink.  “I have to go,” she said.  “It was nice to see you.”
     “You too.”
     “Walk me to my car?”

Out by her car she said, “I should be in bed and asleep.  My flight leaves really early.”
     “I'm sorry.”
     “It’s my fault.  It was good to see everyone.”  He went to open her door.  She touched his hand.  “James, if what you said is true, if you’ve really thought about me over the years, what have you thought?”
     “That I wished I knew you," he said.  "Every day I regret what did not happen between us.”
     “You took my virginity.  What else did you want?”
     I love you, he thought.  I love you.  Let me kiss you.  Let me tell you.
     “Goodnight,” she said and opened the door.  She got in.  He stood there feeling a calm like still air. 

The long driveway was narrow and tunnel-dark under the tall evergreen trees that leaned over it.  She drove fast up it and onto the road.  You are a liar, she thought.  Have I thought about you?  Of course.  Ten thousand times.  But you hurt me once.  No man will ever hurt me more than that.  Who are you, James?  She wanted to go back and ask.  Yet she had to get to bed.  Her flight departed incredibly early.  “And we never really knew each other,” she said softly to herself.  “What I feel cannot be love.”                  

    

Yosemite, an Entry

     Then we were out of the car and I was better.  The air was rich with sage and the grass tall and the sage all around us.  I broke off a bloom of sage and held the buds to my nose.  I clutched the branch as if to have it forever.  I lost it that night.  But the sun was warm in the valley.  We trod on a wooden walkway over the grass and over the sage and mulberry that grows thick in the heart of the valley.  El Capitan thrusted up over us like a testament.  The granite was streaked with black and vertical gashes cached with minerals knifed down the walls.  The valley went on and on.  River flows plunged over sharp ledges spraying finales of snowmelt far down into mist.
     I felt good of a sudden.  Maybe it was he was behaving or my back feeling better or leading on foot or being out of the machine and gawking at it all or everything and it an accumulation.  Adventure I said to him.  It smells good.  Hold the sage to your nose.  Smell it and smell the leaning tower of rock like an ancient achievement and not chaos who is the giver of beauty in nature even if there is no God.
     No God.  Look at this valley I said to the boy who was happy too out of the car and running through the grass until it was too tall to run.  Walking and then the thick hairs of the earth rashing his face and she saying we better go back the grass too tall and we better get going if we are going to see it all or even a lot of it we have to go now.
     Go now fine back in the car and he did not fight.  Adventure cartwheeling in his head soft and curly and you are a good hiker good job Daddy.  The sign.  Read it.  Mountain lion habitat keep children close and we kept him close alright I held his hand and the rocks were covered in moss and behind any of them we did not know and I said it is like the book you know the part I will fear no evil for thou art with me yes and we struggled through it and he said good job my Mommy good job Daddy.  The old path our great grandparents walked was cobblestone up through the trees like the streets on the islands of Greece she said.  We had no fear of the mountain lion though he handed me rocks he wanted to take home and I held them thinking a primitive weapon to smash the skull of an attacking beast.
      At the mirror lake the naked back of half dome was ineffable.  Its massiveness and tallness was like something I do not know but the boy saw it Amazing so cool he said and yes it is good to have words to say just or close to what you feel and he will be okay I thought.
     By the time we made it back to the car the day was I guess over.  He had hiked two or even three miles and good for the little boy.  He will be better than me.  Yes better.  Love nature more truly.  Have memories more fully of things I never knew as a toddler or ever even now for you can only experience some things that wondrous way if you are a child and if you missed it you did and better move on and spin it to be a positive because you can make things better for your children.
     I have trouble with the name of the big waterfall we looked at before driving back to Fresno.  I was more worried about keeping the boy safe not falling off the bridge and there were a lot of people and the bridge for picture taking did not seem safe for children who all like to get close to the edge.
     At one point when I was up at mirror lake I thought it would be nice to be alone up here with my notebook so I could capture it in words and not try to recreate it later like now.  I think it was good though to hold the hand of the boy who will know more than I know and to keep or try to keep the woman with child happy for I felt my ancestors did in the forests and hills of Germany and maybe the natives here in America this sort of thing where you walk in the midst of cliffs and thunderous falls through the trees and mossy rocks and up the slippery rock slopes to the supine lake shallow to cross barefooted with the child in your arms and the woman saying wait wait I am going to take a picture.
     I saw the smell of sage standing there with my fingers to my nose in the wild tall grass in the heart of the valley of the gods.  I tasted the black streaks down the granite walls and heard the rock hardening and condensing under the weight of the universe.  I felt the twisting tree trunks screwing upward off the steep hillsides.  I saw the wind how it moved the clouds in the afternoon so on the far slope towns of trees were dark green and others light green and the white in the sunlight on the pine needles and the shadow how it clarified the peaks of the trees.  Even the buses and the people more interested in Oh who am I to say what except I was happy when we got there and on our feet and the grass curious against our legs.  He fell once and cried I fell on purpose and pretended to cry and he said you okay Daddy.  Just get up.  I got up and we went on through the woods with the rock in my hand.  I held him all the way down to the car.  My muscles are older than I am.  I just locked him in my arms and clopped down the road that most people take to the lake of words cannot describe beauty.