Picking Stones Chapter 2
"Too Early"
Table of Contents
Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3 & 4; Chapter 5; Chapter 6 & 7; Chapter 8; Chapter 9; Chapter 10; Chapter 11; Chapter 12 & 13; Chapter 14, 15, & 16; Chapter 17 & 18; Chapter 19; Chapter 20; Chapter 21; Chapter 22; Chapter 23 & 24; Chapter 25 & 26; Chapter 27; Chapter 28; Chapter 29; Chapter 30; Chapter 31 (Final Chapter)
Too Early
Sunlight was peeking through paper blinds. They had a crease in them; I always told Beth not to lean her stuff against the window. She never listened. Neck and back pain shot through me. My phone was ringing, somewhere.
Where the hell was it? A million thoughts billowed into my brain all at once as I slowly adjusted to the dread of being alive. What caused the latest issue? The night before, the inescapable exhaustion, the tingling in my spine, the whereabouts of my phone? I wanted to scream but found no voice, so I settled for a few grunts.
When I finally saw my phone, I tried to get my brain to send signals to my hand to grab it. Nothing. I read Phil’s name on the caller ID. I knew that he was outside waiting for me, and I was already ten minutes late.
Looking into my dead eyes while I brushed my teeth, I tried to remember if I had had any dreams. Nope. Just that terrifying inky blackness. The thought of which always forced my eyes wide open just as sleep was about to come.
Phil’s car jerked to nauseating stops at every light on Austin Street. Rock was blaring from the speakers. With each screeching halt he turned his head with a wry smile and peered at me through his sunglasses. Nausea came over me then and as I write this. Sorry if I inflicted any on you, too.
“I wouldn’t be rushing if we had left when we were supposed to,” he said as he pulled his hat snug over his curly brown hair. I had postponed our departure by twenty minutes. Too sick to answer, I remained silent. In response to my lack of one, he cranked up the music and swerved onto the Grand Central.
I tried to sleep but couldn’t and finally gave up on trying to when the sun started blinking through the suspension cables of the Whitestone Bridge. The GPS showed just under an hour to Cold Spring. The boots on my feet felt snug. A slight frost was melting off the windows. That morning was the first day of October to feel cold. I should have dressed warmer.
The further north we drove, the more the scenery changed. Little by little, the beauty Phil had sworn we’d see was revealing itself to us. Everything that happened yesterday was barely registering in my brain. It was bizarre. My head slowly sunk further back into the hard headrest.
Everything around me seemed to fade and a fog enveloped my mind. Phil had asked me to join him on a hike for years, and the one time I agreed would be the day after Beth left me. For some reason, my brain was trying to draw a connection between the two. Maybe there was.
Nope. I shook off the thought. It wasn’t like me, thinking like that. Straightening myself in the passenger seat, I dragged myself out of whatever came over me and re-acclimated with the real world. Phil was singing along to a song that was blasting through the speakers.
A minute later the Hudson River came into view. Mountains stretched far behind the swirling blue with houses tucked between them. We crossed over a small bridge and veered right up the road before cutting through a village tucked at the base of a mountain.
Washburn Trailhead was etched into the sign that stood at the entrance to a parking lot. Phil turned to me and saw the look on my face. “Wait till we get up top.”
Four feet trudged up a gravel path. It was a steep incline with nothing to see. A sweat broke on my forehead. I was thankful to have under dressed.
A cold wind whipped around us. I shivered. The hair raised on my neck. That feeling again. Not from the cold, but from being watched.
The trail was ten feet wide with no end in sight. Thick green trees loomed above us on both sides. The leaves didn’t turn in this part of New York until later in October.
“I was expecting something a bit more scenic,” I said.
“Just wait on it,” Phil said. “It’ll be worth it.”
It already was. There was a peaceful silence, even with the crunching of the gravel beneath our feet. Before the hike, I had never experienced being out in nature. Never having gone camping or anything like it. Being out there that morning, it was kind of therapeutic.
But like all therapy, it made a few bad memories boil up to the surface. Well, not bad, just painful. Making me remember things that were gone, things that I missed.
The trail faded, my breath got lighter, I was sent somewhere else. The leaves shaking in the wind were replaced with the hum of an air conditioner. There was a book in my hands that was pretty beat up. The Westing Game.
It was the middle of the summer; I couldn’t have been older than eleven. The last page turned. Book closed. I could see myself placing the book on the old dresser next to the couch, where my grandfather’s old cash register from his old business sat. My grandparents had kept it as a memory of a passed time.
The sound of a frying pan came sizzling to life. I could almost smell whatever it was my grandmother was cooking. The next was the jingle of the door opening, my grandfather home from the park. He retired when I was three, and the two of them had spent their golden years babysitting the grandkids.
Before he had a chance to think, I was begging him to take me to the library. He knew it would be a two-hour endeavor of waiting in the car for me as I scoured the shelves. In the part of Queens where I grew up, there was never parking. At least the car had air conditioning.
My grandmother wouldn’t give him a choice—not that he’d say no to me—and we’d be off in his silver Chevy Impala. Fast forward ten minutes and I was lost in the library, hunting down any title that caught my eye. Hours later I’d jump into the car carrying a pile of books. The rest of the day was spent sitting next to my grandfather as I read and thought up my own stories until my parents came home from work and picked us up.
He was gone now. The rest of his life spent watching us grow up and become uninterested in him as he and my grandmother scorned vacations and going out into the world just to watch ungrateful grandkids ready to jump out of the house at the first opportunity.
Was it worth it? I wondered if he’d be disappointed about how I turned out. All those rides to the library, the stacks of books lining his house that I’d read, the stories and articles I had written. All that just to end up taking the safe route and drop it all like some bad and distant memory. Of course he was disappointed—er, would be disappointed. It’s not like he could see now. I guess it’s better off that way. Right?
The trail blurred back into view. Then it ended. We stood in front of a huge quarry. Tan rock and sand were cut into the side of the mountain. It was massive, but not very pretty. Squinting my eyes, I could make out a lining of trees all the way at the top.
Phil could read the disappointment on my face. He tapped my shoulder. “Read the sign, bro.” My eyes followed the direction his finger pointed to see a wooden sign with the word “Trail” painted in white. Next to the sign was a little opening in the trees and a gray rocky trail that disappeared behind a curve.
“Great,” I said. “I was hoping the hike was over.”
Phil groaned and led us through the trees and onto the trail.
“If one desires to find inner peace, one must first learn to let go of their natural instincts,” he said.
“Where’s that from?” I asked.
“It’s from me just now,” he said with a laugh. “It means chill out and don’t make me regret bringing you with me today.”
He was starting to break me, as usual. I laughed and tried to keep up with him. Phil and I had been friends since grammar school. He was a wedding photographer and seemed to have the life. As much as I hated to admit it, I envied him in a lot of ways.
The two of us had been inseparable as kids and ended up going to college together. Our timelines split after we graduated. Phil had tried talking me into a “life-changing” Europe trip post-graduation. He almost convinced me, too, until I got the call. It was an internship opportunity that started the week after graduation with the company I still worked for. I had to cancel on Europe and opted for a weekend trip to the Jersey Shore pounding beer and funnel cakes while he went off to Prauge and found “enlightenment.”
According to Phil, his “true self” had come home, while the carcass of his former self had been left lying in a hostel bed somewhere. His ego had been shed in some life altering experience. When he got back home, he decided that he needed to pursue his passion for photography. Now he’s got his own business and, like I said, the life.
It’s hard for Phil to understand that we live in different worlds. He had the time to sit around and think about his feelings and wantedt me to do the same. It’d been six years of him blathering about me needing to start living the life I wanted, and six years of him still not understanding that not everyone got that chance.
We hoisted ourselves up two large boulders and I caught sight of the parking lot far below us. A hawk soared overhead, and I followed it until it got lost over the river. My mind was busy juggling the pros and cons of telling him about Beth leaving me. I tried to focus on whatever Phil was saying, which wasn’t easy. It was something about a singing bowl he had just bought.
“I’m telling you, Will. You need a singing bowl. I feel like half of your problems will disappear just from the stress release. It’s only a couple hundred bucks, and it gets LOUD. After a couple minutes of using it, you’ll see yourself suddenly letting go of everything. It’s great.”
Whenever he got me alone, he always tried giving me advice on how I could be happy. Next he’d bring up—.
“I’ve been meaning to ask, have you tried writing again?”
My temples were tight. I shut my eyes and sucked in air. He wanted the best for me but couldn’t help but bring that up. He thought he knew what I needed better than I did. I scrambled up another boulder and took a break to catch my breath. Looking at his face, I knew he was just about ready to get into how much happier I’d be if I had pursued writing and the whole spiel. I didn’t feel like fighting with him—not yet at least. There were another two hours before we finished the hike. I needed to change the topic.
The river was churning. Behind it stood another mountain, Butter Mountain. Named on account of it looking like a big lump of butter, or so the Dutch thought. Looking down past the rocks at my feet, I saw we were at the top of the quarry. A freight train rolled along the river and wrapped itself against the lump of butter. I took in a gulp of air.
“Beth and I broke up.”
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You could even buy me a coffee. It’s cheaper than therapy.
So enjoyable and relatable, too.
Beautiful story John. Real Life! I appreciate how you realize how wonderful and unselfish some of our grandparents were.