Michael's Corner

The following is the first chapter of a novel I hope to complete before 2027. Because it can stand alone, I thought why not post it.

A BALLAD FOR WINTER AND SPRING

  As a passenger train chugs its way northbound from Memphis into the night, a girl, perhaps too young to travel alone, sits fretfully in a darkened car. Her soul longs for home, but her curious and intelligent eyes crave a companion.

     “If you allow yourself to fall asleep, before you know it, the sun will rise and greet you,” a voice assures the girl. “It’ll break through the window and nudge you awake just as it always has.”

     The young traveler is startled by an intonation close to her ear and a gentle hand caressing her shoulder. Noticing April’s kind face, the young traveler replies, “I like that. I always feel much better when the sun is shining.”

      “Me too,” April readily chirps. Then, deciding the young traveler could stand some grandmotherly friendship until she drifts off into a slumber, April sits beside her.

Seldom at a loss for words and adept at conversation, April begins in the fashion of a yarn. “Since we’re on the subject of the sun,” she says, “some believe we’ve been circling that big old ball of fire in the sky for some four and a half billion years, give or take a few Christmases. And that’s an awful long time, especially when you consider how long one measly ol’ winter can seem. And if you lived most of your life in upstate New York and Canada after being raised in what long ago was known during the days of the Civil War as a ‘border state,’ which was precisely the case concerning myself and my traveling companion—he’s the fellow who piped those beautiful notes on his trumpet; perhaps you heard of Jesse Bolden? —winter can seem plenty long, like it might never end.” 

“I’m from Baltimore,” the girl chirps to April. “Our winters are nothing like Canadian winters, I’m sure, but still, they drag terribly.”

      April alleges, “Winter is like a stubborn old coot with too many maladies kept alive by a strong ticker. Worse, it just can’t bear the thought of surrendering to the spring. Perhaps it’s unmindful that ‘we ladies’ prefer clusters of roses to frozen sidewalks.” April succeeds in bringing laughter to the young traveler. “Anyway,” she says, “if someone doubts the stubbornness of a season known to chill old bones and shorten days, all they need to do is ask a farmer or ballplayer; either would set them straight.”

      The girl brightens and chirps, “You know ballplayers?” She is very excited to broach the subject with April, but April must confess to not having been in the company of any “current-day ballplayers,” but gushes over those she knew of a bygone era. April smiles at the young traveler as one might when reminded of youthful days. Her mind’s eye is flung backward through the decades until it rests on a pigtailed child sitting in the sundrenched bleachers of Eclipse Park, cheering on the Louisville Colonels and her girlhood hero and heart throb, Pete Browning, a man known to thousands in the region as “The Louisville Slugger.” The young girl and old memories are glaring reminders that April is in the winter of her years. Sighing, she says, “It seems unimaginable that the sun has seen four and a half billion winters come and go.” It was more to herself that April reflectively added, “I hope to see many more myself.” 

April’s moment of melancholy shatters when the young girl asks, “Why do you live in Canada if you don’t care for winter?”

April’s eyes shift across the way to Jesse Bolden, who has just finished polishing his trumpet and is returning it to its case. A gleam appears in the eyes of the young traveler; she seems to understand that the mocha-skinned man, who held captive the souls of every passenger in the car with the notes he piped on his trumpet, is more than April’s valet or traveling companion. Slyly, the girl winks at April. April returns the wink and then tells the young traveler, “We’ve lived most of our years in Canada, but grew up where the sun shines the brightest: in the good ol’ Bluegrass of Kentucky. And amen to that!”

      The girl asks April, “What was the name of the song the man played?”

     “Did you like it?” April is keen to know.

     “Very much,” the girl replies brightly.

“He composed it himself, did Jesse Bolden,” April said. “He calls it April’s Flower.”

With an upturned gaze and curiosity beaming in her intelligent eyes, the girl whispers, “Are you April?”

April tousles the girl’s bangs and says, “Something tells me you’re a young lady too intuitive for her own good.”  

     Time passes. April feels warmth on her shoulder; it is the young traveler’s head in repose. The confidence of this journeying youth is an unexpected delight; it stirs April to take a caressing hand to the girl’s cheek and then smile. From across the car, Jesse Bolden, too, smiles. Next, April and Jesse bring their gazes together.

     So many years, so many loves, so many losses; the moments of their lives are but puffs of air buoyantly floating past their helpless gazes and drifting further away. April and Jesse have journeyed miles on a road few had dared tread, striving for a horizon they prayed would not forsake them. And there were miles yet to travel, reaching for the promised land, climbing to a place where the sun never fails to dazzle, where a cerulean sky cherishes all below who seek peace, where, at last, they can lay their head upon the shoulder of Humanity’s Conscience and cry, Dear Lord, we’ve come home.