Taking Leave: A Short Story
The last person I ever wanted to see walking back up the driveway was Gulliver Wilks. But there he was, swaggering our way, crunching gravel with that aw-shucks grin and his hands in his pockets like the favorite son after breaking a vase.
“Nice evening,” he called as soon as he was close enough to be heard, just past the magnolia where we’d carved our initials.
“Link,” I said, “Pass me that shotgun.” Link obliged, and the double barrels were warm from a day in the southern sun. I stood, and the front porch planks sang their frog song of creaks as I stepped the seven feet from the chair to the railing.
The sun was behind the house, but even in shadow, I knew Gulliver wouldn’t be able to miss the sight of me leveling the gun at where his heart should have been.
“Did you miss me?” he sang out, slowing to a stop, his hands slightly raised.
“I did,” I called as I sighted down the barrels, “but I’m all done now. Won’t be missing you anymore.”
A swallow flew low between us like an interceding angel. But it would take more than a bird from heaven before I let Gulliver anywhere near this house.
“Link, isn’t that you I see up there? I’d know that bucket hat a mile away.”
“It’s me, Gulliver!”
“How’ve you been, Link? How are your tomatoes?”
“Finally figured out how to get ’em to grow the right way up!”
“That’s great. Say, Caroline Bee, do you think we could just — ”
“No,” I said, “I don’t think we could just. I think you could just turn your tail around and skedaddle back to whatever hole you slithered from. We were enjoying the sunset before you showed up.”
“Watching the shadows drink the mountains?”
That got me to fire my first warning shot, scattering gravel to his left. He should have known better than to bring up old sing-songs from when the sun was low and the gin had settled in.
“Hey — !”
“I’m not joking, Gulliver Wilks. You get your trotters off our family land. We don’t allow pigs to wander free in the driveway, so unless you want to be bacon and two tiny scrambled eggs, you better clear out.”
He backed up a couple steps. “Now, now, Caroline, I’m not coming any closer. I’ll go. But it’d be rude to depart without taking my proper leave.”
“You’ve taken enough! Now leave!”
“Let’s see, who else is up there in the shadow? The sun’s just dipping behind the roofline and I’m starting to get a glimpse… oh, mercy, is that little Pepper Ann?”
I could feel Pepper Ann’s eyes on the back of my neck, asking for permission or instruction. I tightened my jaw and my grip on the shotgun. “She’s not gonna talk to you, Gulliver,” I called out.
“Now, don’t be like that, Caroline. You and I had our trouble but me and Pepper Ann always got along like honey and lemon. Pepper Ann, you still got that doll we worked on? Is it any uglier?”
Pepper Ann hugged her doll tight. I hated that thing, but she loved it, and I hadn’t known it was one of Gulliver’s little games. If I had, it would have gone on the fire with everything else. Of course it had been Gulliver’s idea — now that I thought about it, it was exactly the sort of thing he’d come up with. Let’s make the ugliest doll we possibly can and love it to death. And my sister, who never heard an idea she didn’t take as the gospel truth, followed it to the letter. That doll (who had later been named Laurice, for some reason), never left her side.
Pepper Ann wasn’t saying anything. I knew she wanted to, but I also knew she’d never take a step past my wishes. At least not for a few more years.
“Might have known that doll was your doing,” I called out. “Thanks so much for that. She won’t ever put it down. Makes dressing her for church a real treat.”
Gulliver laughed. “I bet the pastor loses his place in the passage when he locks eyes with that thing.”
Pepper Ann giggled. I glared, and tapped the railing with the shotgun.
“Gulliver, it’s me and Link and Pepper Ann and Wallace Hobbs up here. You don’t know Mr. Hobbs, and we’ll keep it that way. Now you’ve said hello to everyone you know. Time for you to turn about and never come back.”
Gulliver’s shoulders slumped a little. We were all in shadow now, and I could see him — his rolled-up sleeves, his dusty vest, his curls and poet eyes. “Wallace Hobbs… not the Mr. Wallace Hobbs from Whitelawn College?”
“The same,” called out Wallace. He could tell I disapproved, but he was inordinately proud of his name, and wasn’t about to not answer. We’d fight it out later.
“Why, sir, I am a great admirer of your paper on heavenly entanglements!”
“You’ve read it?”
“Sure haven’t! I tried three times and bounced off the first paragraph on each occasion. Then I got a running start — a bright fellow at the post office gave me the gist — and I got as far as the second page before sliding off it like a glass castle. But sir, you’ve got a remarkable theory there and I admire it all the more because I can’t make heads or tails out of it!”
This pretty well stumped Wallace. He didn’t approve of not understanding things, but he was mighty susceptible to flattery. “Well, sir, any attempt at self-improvement is worthwhile. Now, I believe my friend Miss Bee asked you to — ”
“ — haul my no-good off her bit-o’-earth. I heard. And you’re right, Mr. Wallace Hobbs. And, of course, Caroline, you’re right too. I’ll go. I’d hoped to stop in a spell, see the old place, make some amends. But I see that’s asking an acre or two too much. I’ll get to getting, but there’s something I need to deliver.” He paused to dig in his vest pocket and held up something that glimmered slightly in the twilight air. I caught my breath. “I’ll just leave it on the Goodbye Paver here.” He set it on the stone with a little tink I could hear from the porch.
“Is that — ?”
“It is. And listen, I hadn’t wanted to shout this across the yard, but Caroline, I’m sorry. I sure didn’t mean for any of what happened to happen. I know you know that. Regardless of my meaning, it did happen, and now it crouches at my door like a cougar I gotta wrestle just to get out of my house every day. I know I don’t have any right to say how hard it is for me, given y’all’s loss. But I’m truly sorry, and I wish we could at least go back to being sentimental strangers.”
I tried to answer but my throat caught. Link took advantage of my weakness to yell, “We miss you, Gulliver!”
“Sure do!” peeped Pepper Ann.
“I miss you folks. I’d spent a long time thinking about how good it’d be when we could all get back together, but — ” he let that hang in the air a little too long. I’d regained my composure.
“All right, you’ve said all your nice words and left what you’ve brought. Time to disappear.”
“There’s one more thing,” he aid. “And then I really will go. I’d like to pay my respects, if I can, to Mrs. Bee. I heard where the headstone is, and I’d take the long route in and the long route out, up by the road. You wouldn’t even know I’d been or left. But she was always kind to me, and — well — there’s nobody I owe a deeper apology.”
This was too much. I clicked the safety on the shotgun and leaned it against the rail. I needed both arms to hold myself together.
“Don’t cry, Caroline Bee,” he called softly.
“Don’t cry,” I laughed through saltwater, “he says don’t cry when that’s all I been doing for a year.”
“I just wanted to see you.”
“You knew Mama was frail. You knew it. I told you. But you kept climbing the trellis, kept slipping into my room with your honey tongue and your it’s okay baby I ain’t been anywhere look I’m decontaminating I wore the mask and gloves all day baby let’s just talk how you doing how’s your little sister how’s your Ma — ” I broke off sharply, voice soaring.
There was silence on the porch and in the yard.
“Guess it ain’t fair,” he said finally. It was properly dark now, and I could only see his feet from the porchlight, and the bottle he’d left on the stone. His voice was gone of grinning, come-calling sweetness. It was empty as a coffee can and rattled. “It ain’t fair me asking you for forgiveness that I haven’t given myself. I thought I was clean when I came to your window those nights. I really did. But I never should have gambled with her life. Not even to see you, Caroline Bee.”
There it was.
“I don’t know what more there is to say,” I called.
“Maybe just goodbye.”
“Been waiting for that a long time.”
He turned, and I heard the gravel scatter under his walkaway feet. Wallace put his hand on my shoulder.
“Goodbye, Gulliver Wilks!” called out Pepper Ann.
“Bye Gulliver!” shouted Link.
“Goodnight, Bees!” I couldn’t remember how many times he’d sung that after endless hours up on the porch.
I handed the shotgun back to Link, and after a measure of time, slipped out from Wallace’s arm and walked down to the Goodbye Paver.
I picked up the cure and turned it over in my hands. We’d waited so long. The news had come out to watch for delivery men. One small bottle held enough for a whole household, they said. We could finally leave the property after this. I’d just never expected our delivery man to be…
“Gulliver Wilks,” I called. I couldn’t see him at all.
“Caroline Bee.” His voice came back like a memory.
“You know you never walked down this driveway in the good times without taking your leave of Mama. I guess she’d be real mad to hear you slipped away without seeing her.”
A long pause.
“I’ll just give Mrs. Bee my regards before I go, then,” he said. His voice sounded closer than I thought.
“Need a lamp?”
“I can find the way. There’s a moon rising.”
🌖
