The Swing

No Theme Thursday short story for 9/12/24

This short story is for my fellow blogger Kevin’s No Theme Thursday for 9/12/24. Every week, Kevin puts up an amazing assortment of digital art for this event. Please check it out!

As I got into the car, the realtor spoke. “I’ve got one more to show you. It’s an older home, built in 1938. It needs a little work, but it’s got an oversized lot and a lot of privacy.” He started the car.

I didn’t really care; over the past week, we’d looked at over two dozen houses, but none seemed right. My mind wandered as we drove.

###

I was moving to a little town—Nag’s Head—on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. A fresh start, a new beginning after the disaster I was leaving behind in Cleveland.

I’m a writer, but my last book was a dud. I knew it was garbage. My editor didn’t like it, nor did the publisher, but we went ahead anyway. I guess trying to write in the midst of a divorce is not a recipe for success. The critics panned it, the book signings were dismal, bookstores gave it four inches of shelf space. 

I decided to chuck it all and Nag’s Head, population 2,800, seemed like just the right place to get my groove back. At 29, I had time to recover. 

The realtor pulled up in front of a tired looking bungalow. The front lawn was knee-high weeds. A fence ran along the left side of the property. The realtor fumbled with the lockbox, but I felt drawn, somehow, to the side yard, the fence. I walked slowly past the carport and around the back. It all seemed so familiar.

As the realtor had said, it was an oversized lot that stretched back to a dark pine forest. It was dominated by a massive live oak that had to be over 200 years old. Attached to the tree was a rope swing; it looked ancient, but sturdy enough to bear my weight. I sat, listening to the birds and the droning of insects.

I can’t really describe what happened next, but it was though I fell out of time and space. Everything became gauzy, indistinct; I didn’t know what was happening, but I wasn’t frightened. It all seemed so right somehow, like I was meant to be there, like this place was calling to me. 

The visage of a woman gradually appeared. She looked like she was from the 1940s; she had that style of hair and clothes from movies I’d seen. She was beautiful; she smiled at me.

“Oh, THERE you are,” the realtor boomed behind me. My reverie was broken, the woman vanished, things became clear again. “C’mon, let me show you the inside.”

“No need,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

###

After that afternoon, things moved swiftly and as I moved the last of my things out of my car into the house, I reflected. Normally, I am not the type to make snap decisions, but it was the right one.

The bungalow was in remarkably good shape; cedar clapboard siding, a wood burning fireplace, hardwood floors, the original gas stove. A cast-iron claw foot bathtub and a dormer in the master bedroom.  The realtor had mentioned a renovation, but I liked it the way it was. I didn’t want to change anything. I even left the lawn untouched.

Across the street were some dunes and beyond them, the Atlantic. I sat on the dunes with a glass of wine, an odd contentment, and a subdued sense of anticipation. I pondered some ideas for stories; this place seemed to stir my imagination.

###

But of all the attractions of my new home, the one that drew me most was the swing. I remembered my trance-like state that first day, the feeling of warmth and rightness, the woman.

I sat on the swing several times after that, but nothing happened. 

Until the following Saturday afternoon. 

I sat, relaxed, hands on the ropes, feet just above the ground, barely moving. As before, things quieted; the buzz of insects ceased, the boom of the waves across the street faded, things became foggy, opaque. Something appeared in front of me, unclear at first, but gradually coming into focus. The woman.

I looked at her carefully. Perhaps mid 20s, blonde, wide-set blue eyes, an upturned nose, full lips. She was stunning. She smiled faintly as I gawped. She opened her mouth but no sound came out; rather, it was a voice in my head.

Hello

I was startled. I thought hello yourself 

I’m glad you bought this place. I knew it was for you.

Who— who are you? What’s going on here?

She smiled again and held a finger to her lips. As she began to fade, I heard You’ll see. 

###

After that, my trips to the swing became a daily event. Sometimes she appeared, other times it was just the trill of the insects and the wind in the branches.

Gradually, over weeks, I learned her name was Julie; she was born in 1918, her husband had built this house for her as a wedding present in 1939. In 1940, he had put up the swing; in 1943 he was killed while fighting in the Pacific. 

She had married young, pressured by her parents; it was a good match, they had stressed; he came from a fine family and they had money. He was handsome and could offer her a good future.

There was only one problem; she didn’t love him.  She had gone through with it out if a sense of obligation, of duty. 

When he was killed, she mourned. He was a good man, decent, wealthy and respectable. She was sorry that he had died. But she was OK; she just wondered where to now?

One day the next year, she went for a swim, hoping for clarity. She swam past the sandbar, into deeper water, even though it was late in the day and the lifeguards had gone. She turned her face skyward and entreated the heavens to show her the way., She was caught in a riptide and swept out to sea. The last thing she remembered was the sun setting behind the far-off dunes, the rosy sky, the waves slapping at her face, teasingly, giving her intermittent glimpses of the distant shore. And as she finally sank and drifted from all memory into the depths where pirates once sailed, she wondered what it was all about.

###

Our mental conversations deepened. I told her about my unfaithful wife, my divorce, me wanting to start over again. How…while I was shattered by her betrayal with my best friend…it really wasn’t that bad. I too had married young, had my misgivings, never really felt connected to Kim as I thought I should. I never felt grounded with her. I felt like there was someone out there, someone I had never met, who would understand me, love me unconditionally, share my dreams and be my friend. She listened and nodded in all the right places. She extended a comforting hand to my face, but it was wispy, fog-like; it felt like the slightest touch of a silk handkerchief.

Our relationship deepened. Although we had never touched, never spoken, I felt a connection that grew with each passing day. I couldn’t wait to sit on the swing and be with her. I saved up things to tell her, let her know how my book was coming. I memorized her face; it appeared to me at night in dreams. I visualized us walking along the shore together, holding hands, laughing as the eastern horizon grew darker with the coming of evening. I was in love with someone who perished 80 years ago. But she was my world.

There was a footlocker in the attic. It was about four feet long and two feet wide. It was reinforced with steel plating along the edges and secured with a lock. I had looked all over for the key, without luck. I inquired about it and she smiled.

I wondered how long until you asked me about that. Look at the base of this tree for little metal box. I buried it about 6” deep. 

I got a garden shovel and tried digging in a few places. On my fourth try, my shovel hit something hard; it was a cough drop box, rusty, with old fashioned lettering. I shook it and something rattled. Inside was a key; I knew what it opened.

###

On the top were newspapers from 1943. The tide was turning in both the European and Pacific theaters. In the Pacific, the fighting was particularly brutal; it was during the battle of Tarawa that her husband was killed.

Below the papers, a telegraph from the Secretary of War informing her with sorrow that her husband had been killed. 

The further I dug, the more personal the items became. His uniform, neatly folded. Stacks of letters, mostly from him. Pictures of their wedding. I saw her in the flesh for the first time and she was more beautiful than I could have imagined. And at the very bottom, a small paper bag. I shook it and their weddings rings, tucked away for 81 years, fell into my palm.

###

The next day I sat on the swing. It was a glorious Spring day as you can only experience in the Outer Banks: The jasmine in bloom, the clean ocean breezes, the periwinkles and lily pads in the ponds.

I sat, closed my eyes and waited. Julie finally appeared…as ever, wraithlike, ethereal. 

Hi, Glenn.

Hi. Got something for you. For me. For us.

I reached in my pocket and produced the rings. I heard Julie gasp in my mind.

I don’t know how this all works… what’s going on here… but I know we were made for each other. We were just born almost a century apart.

Julie looked at me; it was several emotions wrapped into one…excitement, sorrow, joy, love.

I held out the woman’s ring. Julie, I thought. I know you on a level I’ve never experienced with anyone before. I want to be with you, be it this world or any another. Will you be my wife? I held out the ring. 

Weeping, laughing, she nodded her assent. I took the ring from my palm and as I moved it toward the tip of her finger, something remarkable…otherworldly…happened. As I slid the ring over her translucent finger, it changed. She changed. Her fingernail first; then her finger. Then, slowly, her hand… her arm…they took on color, became warm, real. It was as though she was metamorphosing. Her arm, her shoulder, her body became flesh and bone and when it was through, she stood before me…no longer a ghost, but the living Julie from 1944. Julie in a bride’s outfit… my Julie, my love.

“Quick,” she said. It was the first time I’d heard her voice, it was husky, Southern. “Hand me your ring.”

She slipped it on my finger…and I cannot explain the kaleidoscope of thoughts and emotions: Newspaper headlines from the intervening decades, snatches of radio and TV shows, historical events, movies, music, news, everything from 1944 until 2024 compressed into a few split seconds with a cacophony of unintelligible background voices. It was intense, I winced. And then it was over…and again, it was just Julie. But I understood. I shook my head and looked at her.

“Well, Mr. Sondersen…” she grinned. “It appears we’re finally together.” She looked at me with such tenderness that I felt a lump form in my throat. I took her in my arms and slowly and thankfully kissed her as the wind sighed above us in the live oak.

###

To say we had a make-up honeymoon that night in the master bedroom would be failing to hint of the level of hunger, lust, love, of unrestrained passion…the giving ourselves to each other…that ensued. Minutes went by like hours. I don’t think I’ve ever been as exhausted in my life, physically or emotionally.

Late that night we wandered into the back yard and sat on the swing as the waning three-quarter moon sank…spent, sated, bonded. The perfume of night-blooming jasmine enveloped us and I gratefully held her as the swing creaked.

She leaned back into me. “I always knew, you know,” she said.

“Knew what?”

“That you’d come.” I started to speak but she continued.

“As I was sinking down off the beach that day 80 years ago, I had a vision. Of this house. Of you. Of us.” She turned and kissed my cheek. “I just had to be patient.”

Patience, I thought.

I looked up in time to see a shooting star blaze across the lightening sky. I wondered how many eons it had been traveling in space to enter our sky at that precise moment.

Some things are worth waiting for.

Patience, indeed.

© My little corner of the world 2024