A Briefness

Two acquaintances of mine have died within the past week. One of them died of the China virus, according to the doctors. The other one was killed when he misjudged and turned into the path of an oncoming car. Not wearing a seatbelt, he was ejected from his vehicle and thrown against the unforgiving surface of a suburban street, and he died enroute to hospital. The alleged covidtality and I spoke on the phone a week before his death. His final words to me were, “Goddammit, SK, I don’t understand it. They tell me I’ve got the Covid, but I had both of those damn shots. How in hell can I have the Covid if I took their vaccinations?”

“Rob, that’s a very good question,” I said. “If I were you, I’d be asking my doctors that very question.” A couple of days later, he developed pneumonia and refused to be intubated. He was dead two days later, and his question clatters around in my head even at this hour.

I sat on the side of a cemetery knoll this evening and thought about these deaths, these lives, these bruises in my abdomen. Jinx sat next to me, his sturdy body pressed against mine as is his custom, and he said, We are all a briefness here.

“A briefness?” I asked.

Don’t distract me, he said. We are here like a gleam, then the light changes and we are gone. You, the men, you erode yourselves with worry. This is why your faces are cut like river rocks. A lively walk and a dish of cool, clean water and an uninterrupted nap — these are the essentials. Small things are good things.

And think of your garden and the trees you’ve planted and the buildings you’ve placed here…really, now…deep down inside…don’t you want to see that the land will reclaim these things, to erase your mark? Don’t you know that the vines and the saplings — the small things — are more permanent than what you’ve put your hand to?

I would not speak a lie into those caramel eyes. I nodded at the spotted dog, wondering what other secrets he knew.

Tell you something else, the dog went on. You keep asking God to reveal Himself to you. You don’t believe He will, but you keep asking. Because you hope. You keep hoping that He’s like one of those parents who pretends that he didn’t or couldn’t get his son the Red Ryder BB rifle, who almost enjoys the child’s downcast face, and then finally relents and bids the son to go look between the desk and the wall, to go check it out…

You ask while disbelieving, but you hope He’ll surprise you with the purity of joy. You’re waiting for Him to tell you to go look behind the desk.

I didn’t answer him. I stared across the road at the field, at the cows dotted like croquet widgets along the slopes, at the not-so-distant mountains. I sat for a while longer, then pushed myself onto my feet and hitched a breath and gave Jinx a treat from my pocket, and we walked back to the place where we rest, the place where we hope and want and wait to be interrupted.

~ S.K. Orr