Time moves forward

CHESTER'S FIELD

 

Chester liked the sound of her voice. He imagined its softness, its lilt, touching his ear. How he longed to feel her lying beside him, his taking her clothes off little by little. Hurrying would spoil the moment, the future. He stood on his toes, tried to peep in the window but regretted his childish action, turned and walked home.

 

The sun was playing tag with scudding gray clouds. The wind was picking up. Nancy McPherson was out on the small plot of land her father had left her. Red Delicious apples were starting to fall off the trees. She had to pick them up, put them in baskets before they rotted on the ground. Chester waved to her but she didn't wave back. His last glance at her was a godsend. He tripped on a broken branch. Laying on the sidewalk he yelled loud enough for Nancy to hear him, 'Damn, damn.' Nancy didn't turn his way as the wind must have carried it east. Her head down, eyes on the apples and the three steps into her house, she was gobbled up in October's beginning.

 

Chester inherited the  large, empty, lonely house when his Dad passed a year ago. His Mom had re-decorated it from attic to club room just 10 years ago. Never did Mr. Field Sr.  think his wife would be run over by a tractor, squashed to blood and guts. He pined for her, pined himself into just about starving  to death. When his Dad told Chester Dr. Coolahan found the reason he wasn't eating was because he had the fourth stage of stomach cancer, he refused surgery, refused chemo and just wanted to go meet his wife wherever she was. Chester goes to church almost every Sunday, has been sitting alone in the last row talking to his parents for close to two years and can't stand the lonli-ness, the quiet, much longer.

 

Nancy looked prettier and prettier to him every single day. At night she may become an angel wearing a diaphanous silver dress. Her hair is long, yellow as fresh shucked corn. Dr. Coolahan gave him a single shot of testosterone three weeks in a row. Chester's mind, his body woke up. He went to call on Nancy in the way his folks used to call 'courtin'. Boldly for him, he picked violets for her, deep, grape luscious violets, cut a hole in one of his mother's paper doilies and tied a pink satin ribbon around the stems. The new man  wore a new navy blue blazer with well-fitted grey trousers, knocked on Nancy's door. Nancy knew why he came to see her. His feelings were quite visible.

 

It took an entire month before Chester felt her softness beside him. Had her whisper in his ear. The little plot of land she had for her apple trees is now a field of wheat.

 

Chester does not allow her to go near the tractor.