Book Excerpts discussion

Excerpt: Part 1, Chapter 3: Stone Walls
Author: Michael Robert Dyet

BRYAN drove north of the city toward Orangeville remembering the first time he passed this way. In those first dark and desperate days after Sarah was gone when Grace first pulled away from him and he lived within a torment that drove him mad. He remembered simply pointing the car north and driving blindly trying to outrace the pain. Turning right, then left, then right again as if the pain was a wild animal he had to shake himself loose from.

The pages of his memory scrapbook opened now in chronological order beginning with the self-conscious child and evolving page by page through the adolescent years when her character was formed. The way she gained confidence almost overnight suddenly pushing boundaries and testing herself. He could see now, in the bitter clarity of hindsight, that going to the Rave was part of that quiet rebellion. As he passed through Grand Valley he arrived at the last moment he saw her when she walked out the door that night on false pretenses. Such an ordinary night it seemed but one that ended in such an extraordinary and terrible way. From that he learned, too late, the folly of taking his blessings for granted.

Bryan pulled off onto the shoulder at the dead-end corner where Concession Road 10-11 met County Road 14. He slid out of the car recalling the first time he had looked upon that broken gate. Again he wondered, with little hope of an answer, what had possessed him to stop here that day? Random chance? The hands of fate? Neither of those explanations could encompass the improbability.

He squeezed through the gate and started down the track. On his left was the swamp pond that he hardly noticed the first time. He imagined it looking precisely the same all those years. The skeleton trees and the hummocks of earth rising out of the sluggish water. He watched a muskrat glide along the surface, dive for a minute and then surface again. It moved in the same direction as he walked as if leading him on.

At the turn in the path he felt that catch in his heart that always preceded his first view of the place. The remnant of a stone house built by hand countless years ago on a plot of land hewn out of the woods but now overgrown and returning to nature. A labour of love by strong arms and skilled hands. The roof, doors and windows were gone. Taken by scavengers perhaps or, he preferred to think, by the hands that built it. Taking away what could be salvaged when circumstances forced the family that lived there to abandon it.

Inside the four walls was the detritus of the family that once called this place home. Rusted bed springs, chunks of wood, scrap metal, cans and rocks. But it was not these things that captured his wonder. It was the four stone walls which stood fully intact like a monument to pride and human endurance. Neither the passage of time nor the forces of nature weakened them. Not a single stone had crumbled. None of the mortar that bound one stone to another had cracked or fallen away. In the midst of decay and broken dreams the four walls stood defiant.

In his first experience of this place he found the personification of his grief reflecting back to him the shell of a man he had become. Flesh, blood and bones without the passion and the dreams that once made him human. That first time he sat on the steps to the door and poured out his grief in tears and vilifications of those who let Sarah die. The stone and mortar heard his anguish and echoed it back to him. In those echoes were intertwined the distant mournings of the family that inhabited this place and left it brokenhearted but not defeated. As he sounded the depths of his despair those cries from across the decades pierced the loneliness he felt. A bond was formed with hearts and souls he could not touch but entered into communion with. He found he was no longer alone in his grief. It did not hurt less but the burden of his pain and their pain was now shared.

Bryan rose from the stone steps and made his way across what once was the yard stepping over the stone foundation of another smaller building which had not survived the ravages of time. In the corner of the yard, beside the woods now encroaching upon it, he located the small wooden cross and the stone in front of it. He pulled away the weeds that covered it and read the inscription again.

Our Precious Sarah
1911 – 1915
Into God’s hands with
grieving hearts we give thee

He closed his eyes and felt the presence of both children encircle him. Grief welled up like water rising around him. But then he heard Sarah’s laugh and saw her leading her namesake by the hand into that stone house which stood complete again. Voices drifted to him from within those walls which he knew would protect her.

He uttered a silent prayer of thanks for this improbable gift. Four stone walls that stood as his monument to hope. The hope that joy would come again and that the undecipherable something behind those simmering eyes was a lover’s moon rising at the solstice of grief. That renewal of hope gave him the strength to do what he felt called to do today.

Visit www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog to view the on-line companion to this Internet-enhanced novel. It is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.ca. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com to learn more about the author.