by Robert Earle
He discovered that on the west edge of town a mountain rose above a lake, and on the side of the mountain a cantilevered tier of stone terraces was wedged into the walls of a gorge at points where basins once had caught waterfalls, creating a stairway to the summit. These terraces served as social spaces reached by a path along the rim of the gorge so that people could picnic or read, or paint, or in one case practice the clarinet, and in another case play badminton. A blue canopy on the lowest terrace sheltered a restaurant whose food was cooked on an open fire grill. Apparently he had landed in a town that was better than he realized.
He ordered a hamburger with a side of sautéed vegetables and studied the terracing. After he ate he would climb the pathway leading to the higher terraces, maybe as far as the small terrace near the summit, a place where someone could keep lookout. He thought about that, whether he would stay in this town, not move on, and be the watchman, and stop thinking about what he had been thinking about his entire life, moving someplace else, someplace that totally clicked for him, a place like this place, a place he was born with inside or had seen so early in life that he had forgotten it, but here it was at last, this escalade of terraces narrowing the higher you went, until that final terrace at the summit, no longer lashed by rains that etched the gorge into the mountain eons ago.
He would climb to the summit, and when he scrambled down and still had empty hours to fill—too many empty hours to fill, retirement itself was full of them, hollow and still—he would stroll back along West Main Street, which had been revitalized, its brick storefronts repointed, its sidewalks dotted with bins of fruits and tables of used books and flower stands whose shelves echoed the rising terraces. Why hadn’t he known about this when he moved? No one mentioned it. They talked about the university, but the university wasn’t it. This was it. He could hear the clarinet at times. He saw an errant shuttlecock flutter through the air. He looked at the relaxed folks at the other tables and the waitstaff slipping among them with trays balanced on one hand above their shoulders, another echo of the terraces. All right, he thought, I can make it up to the summit if I take my time. If not, there’s tomorrow. Lots of tomorrows now, tomorrows arrayed like an endless row of dominos, one clicking against the other, going on forever.
Then he felt a chill in the air and saw a cloud bank darkening the western sky and noticed that there were ripples shivering across the lake. Watch out, he thought. Rain would be dangerous for everyone. The gorge might fill up, the terraces might become pools again and then overflow and yield avalanches of water. But he didn’t know if he should cry out a warning. He had just arrived. He wasn’t responsible. He didn’t own the place the way he always had wanted to own a place so that he and the place were one and the same. He wanted to sit there enjoying his fine mood and looking at everyone else enjoying theirs. They still seemed so easy and settled. They might know it wasn’t going to rain, and there wasn’t going to be a storm, or like him, they might think that this was a place so good that you wouldn’t leave no matter what happened.
The cloud bank was closer and darker now. Down on West Main Street the shopkeepers were bringing in their things and shuttering their windows. Above him he saw the picknickers and clarinetist and badminton players leaving their terraces. Everyone in the restaurant was departing. The waitstaff left without bussing the tables. Windblown napkins began fluttering above his head. Knives and forks began sliding and clattering. His table began to tremble and rock. He couldn’t hold onto it. It blew away. He fell off his chair. He thought this was it. He watched the cloud bank marching straight toward the mountain and then, at the last moment, skirt around it, trailing the fringes of its violent winds over the terraces, blowing the blue canopy above him up into the sky, but dropping no rain.
After this close call, everything changed back to the way it had been. The canopy was recovered and put in place. Tables and chairs were set up. Customers returned. People began climbing up to the terraces with their picnic baskets and blankets and books and easels. A waiter brought him his hamburger and sautéed vegetables. He looked down at the shopkeepers removing their shutters and putting out their wares. He saw people paddling canoes and kayaks on the lake. Everything seemed fine except for one thing. No one was headed for the last terrace at the summit to keep lookout. That concerned him. He knew he was too old to make it there himself.
Robert Earle’s short fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including The Common, Eclectica, Baltimore Review, Florida English, Cagibi, Parhelion, Mississippi Review, Typishly, and others. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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