The Write Place

Under The Fruiting Tree: Chapter 26 – The Write Place
Under the Fruiting Tree: Novella Table of Contents – The Write Place

Winter had come to the valley.  The bare trees stood like skeletons in the midst of the gray light.  Patches of snow dotted the valley.  Robert’s breath was visible in the cold air as it flowed from his lips and nostrils.  He wiped tears from his eyes with gloved hands.  His face was red, both by the cold and the stress worn upon his face.  He tensely pulled up tight the old army jacket he was wearing with his gloved hands.

“What in the world did we get ourselves into, Sharon?” Robert said as he bowed his head, brushing his long hair out of his eyes. “What the Devil did we get into.  Any of it, all of it,” he finished raising his head.

Sharon sat on the bench in blue jeans and boots turning her face away.  She pulled her jacket closer to cover her blouse.  “We knew what we were doing.  Why be upset about it. . . it,  it doesn’t matter really,” Sharon said in a low resigned voice, unable to face Robert as she spoke.

“Did we really know?  We really only knew the idea, but it ain’t real.  Good grief, how many were you with?” said Robert, his tense, rapid body language showing the depth of confusion and hurt.  He both wanted to know, and to not even know it could be. Sharon looked at him with pain contorting her face.

“How many did you Robert?  We both did this.  Free love for everyone, that’s what you believed too,” Sharon said with barbed words.  Roberts’ shoulders sank.  His eyes sealed tight.  Bitter tears seeped out of his tightly shut eyes.

“I remember all their faces, you do too.  The emptiness of it all. Free love, yeah right. Did we ask what love is first?  Or what loves there are?” Robert asked the airy expanse of the valley before them.  “You can pretend it’s nothing. That doesn’t make it true.  Rejecting one box for another.  That’s what we did. So much for sticking it to the man.” 

“There’s got to be meaning somewhere.  It wasn’t in sex.  Or in drugs.  I can tell you that.  The thought of all of them, either of us,” Robert said as he sat down.  Sharon shifted her body away from him, unable to hide the tears.  Robert read what she was saying with the speech in her body.  He looked at Sharon, her face turned the other way to avoid his gaze.  His entire body sank in response to the sight of her miseries.

“I stopped counting Robert, you did too,” Sharon said in a strained voice with clenched teeth.  Her body tensed but not from the cold.  She wrapped her arms around herself, closed off from the world around her.

“You aren’t more guilty than me.  That’s not what I’m saying,” Robert pleaded. The frustration of things he couldn’t change, and the aggression of her words knotted his stomach. Resolution, even stability in his own thoughts and emotions seemed like mist he could not touch.  Setting his hands down roughly on his knees, he looked towards her in realization.  “You feel just as bad about this as I do, don’t you?  You don’t want to face it either,” Robert inquired, leaning his head closer.

“Of course I don’t!” Sharon answered, whipping her head back to face Robert. “Yet, what is there to face?  This is just all there is,” Sharon’s said. Her head sank with her body at the words.  “Apathy.   Apathy is the only way forward.  It’s all a game, all nothing, all there is.  Just accept that!”

“You know that’s not true.  You can feel it but more than that, you know it,” said Robert.  “You know there’s something, some meaning, some greater truth.  What is love Sharon? What is love?” 

“You can feel it.  You can,” Sharon said, looking at her feet in discomfort before raising her head to look at the park at the bottom of the hill. Anywhere but at the man next to her.

“Maybe, but people feel differently,” Robert responded.  “About many things, don’t they?  And feelings change,” he added, shaking his head as he looked at the houses dotting the hills.  The houses were visible through the many barren trees before them.  The deadness of winter pierced body and soul.  “Love . .   We love different things differently.  What we are looking for, it isn’t here.  Not in this.  You can feel that, you know that,” Robert said with his eyes meeting Sharon’s.

“I just don’t know,” Sharon said. The honesty felt like a heavy weight lifting from he soul. And yet, she still felt only emptied.  Their pleading eyes met for a moment of eternity.

“All those movements we joined, you’re still in,” Robert said, shaking his head at the memories.

“The free speech movement seems different.  More than telling off the man, there’s meaning there’s purpose there.  There’s purpose, making the world better.  We don’t have to conform to what’s been expected of us,” Sharon replied quietly as the tears flowed down her face.  

“Don’t conform?  We’re conforming to that too. What I want to know is; to what and why?  The Free Speech movement went. . .  Communist.  You look closer and you see it can’t work.  They can’t really answer anything.  What is the good?  How do you know it?” Robert said, casting an inquiring look to the sky. “Good grief.  What is goodness even?  Who gets to say it?  I’m tired of just being a sheep.  Especially when the flock thinks they aren’t one and we have sheep leading sheep.”

“I don’t know what to believe, where to go.  I’ll admit it, I don’t know what love is,” Sharon finished, defeat weighed her voice and her body.

“Neither do I.  Neither do I,” Robert replied with a heavy sigh.  “Until we know. . .  with all this.  How can we have anything?  How could we be together?” Robert’s and Sharon’s pleading eyes locked.

“I don’t know that either.  I guess we can’t,” said Sharon burying her head in her hands as her tears drenched her fingers.

“No I guess not,” Robert agreed.  Sharon sat on the far side of the bench crying.  Robert raised a cautious hand, resting it upon her shoulder.  He looked off into the valley, certain only in the uncertainty of the world he inhabited.