Maid Marion ironed to the rhythm of spirituals which burst forth with praise from the curvaceous and graceful radio of a less troubled time, an interlude following the exhaustion of World War II. 

The vacuum tube based mechanism intimated an earlier means of communion.  The shape of emptiness common to the emptying of lungs in song is what made possible the blend of the human spirit.  Sprung from emptiness, then and now were in league, if not inseparable and the same; despite age, of which we all bore a common age in all that exists from a common beginning.

The tentative beachhead of happiness formed in the soothing breath of spirituals to balance the fire breathing tribulations of war. The inalienable freedom to breathe the simple refreshing breath of happiness was tentatively restored to a level. After an interminable depression and pursuant world war, there appeared a suspicion of peace and prosperity where the super human ambitions of men lay exhausted in their inevitable futility. The gravity of gravity prevails.

There was the simple but effective specter of happiness in the listless contemplation of sheets and towels drying like animated puppets in the wind and sun.  There was even a healthy excitement in the sudden shower, a mischievous ambush from heaven to remind us that happiness is fleeting if held hostage to merciless judgement. To blame God or the weatherman, to praise sun over cloud was a futile prerogative of the self-defeated superhuman of merciless judgment. Graceful acceptance, a blend with nature, was not a prerogative but an imperative of happiness in the Virginia summertime.  

"Let it rain," was the silent thanks and salient responsory of true Virginians.

The oppressive humidity and suffocating, steamy heat bore down ruthlessly until the building tension collapsed in a torrential downpour.  The collective breath eased in relief and became more than a man or woman or race or even species or any abstraction at all, but perhaps soup in a terra cotta bowl that is Virginia. The sociopaths of Europe were once again at bay and America could breath in the cleansing simplicity of rain.

The rain was not observed as much as absorbed, soaked, and mingled with father heaven and mother earth as the rain restored worldly balance with lightning singed air, incense of sacrifice to heavenly dominion in the Old Dominion. With the clothes gathered in,

Marion and Eunice watched entranced as the rain traced coherent maps of wonder on windowpanes.  Then the spirituals and lights abruptly ceased with a splutter and a pop.  "Oh dear!" exclaimed Eunice.  There was not a hint of a curse or despair. Little things did not defeat a combat hardened nurse, a farm raised child of the Depression.

Baskets of wet clothing waited uncomfortably in the true spirit of wet clothes, contorted with impatience to dry, to be folded respectfully and placed ritually in a cozy sanctuary to rest. They waited anxiously for sacred purpose in the patterns of life to call them forth to exercise their vestment duties. 

The children watched the rain and listened as only children could listen from around corners to weavings of a wicker clothesbasket and intertwined clothes, "Ah, to be blowing in the wind and free in the glory of the sun!  Sing the song of flaps and taps in the early morning fun.  Raise the spirit of the gold ball and encourage its return to The Source.  Sacrifice our moisture and the hands of work that serve us to the Lord of the Sky.  We share the reason for living, so we remember Columbus and do not cry.  The wicker basket is alive with a tune of weaving for you and I.  But I forget who is 'I' and who is 'you', I do not lie if no one tries!"

"Columbus passed on. It was in the morning paper," Eunice whispered to fill the deep, accepting silence of the storm.  It was not breathed so much to a particular person or from a particular person, but as if the storm was the Columbus, a man of the outdoors, they each knew in the storm.

Columbus was the itinerant yardman, drunk, and light of wonder to children.  He was a light because he appeared to be an adult, but he smiled a quick, infectious, and toothless smile like a child.  He played tricks with a toy cricket.  He sang and played the mouth harp without pretense or forethought.   He made his own world of children, yard work, and the humble libation of a weak mortal.

Columbus served the leaves and the autumn tree spirits that sang homage to The Source.  The sacrificial incense of burning leaves rose and mingled with the neighbors less godly fires.  "From ashes to ashes and dust to dust," chanted the chorus of trees and man, yet it was sung in a sullen silence of humility and honor and unquestioning subservience.

The trees observed the offering, the return on investment that simply fulfilled the pattern, which remained, even when the trees, with a significantly expanded sense of time, did not.

In the life of a child, it was the passing of Columbus that was the first known death of someone who blended and weaved and attached with fondness.  He was the first to pray for. The children prayed that he be carried to heaven and The Source, his true home, for how could his body be anything but temporary?  How could someone killed over a pack of cigarettes consider this home, when his neighbor tore body from soul with a knife?

Columbus left behind questions for the children to ask. "Did he just not understand the man who demanded the cigarettes? Who would ask for a pack of cigarettes someone just bought? Did we measure our happiness in cigarettes? Did the war bring us security/sanity? What kind of person would do it in front of a drug store in broad daylight?"

The children found Columbus one day after he had drunk a pint of turpentine for lack of anything else. They ran for Dr. Rusty, who they dragged urgently from his back porch as he held a gin and tonic. Russ was unwinding on one of those long Virginia evenings, when the sun stopped motionless and timeless on the horizon; its golden head propped on tired elbows; meditating leisurely on the mystery of the oncoming night prefigured in the dance of lightning bugs and the moist incense of fresh mown grass, honey suckle, lilac, magnolia, and crepe myrtle. There was relief, balance, and fragility in the air that filtered through the great oaks and maples. Then there was the tranquil rhythm of innumerable crickets, cicada, and toads. It was a sweet and complex symphony beyond any comprehension and composed over millenniums by a ruthless composer in which poor instrumentalists were not only cut from the band, but any descendents were summarily denied tryouts.

In the midst of this tranquility, which hung prolonged and impregnable, the children of the neighborhood awkwardly pulled and pushed Dr. Rusty with drink in hand from the back porch. The children jabbered all at once and in urgent tones about some desperate situation, which he couldn’t quite make out. He thought it must be an injury to one of the children, and all he could make out for sure was the injured lay unconscious in the outfield of the Westhampton School baseball field.

The urgency of the children infected him and projected his awareness into sharp focus. He poured a libation of the remainder of his gin and tonic onto the thirsty earth. The slight and brief alleviation of a mind abruptly ended as it often did at all hours in a war that didn't end for him with the end of his military service. Night or day it was the doctor's duty to serve in unquestioned sacrifice. He bridged a Remagen Bridge of Knowledge day after day to mitigate pain and assist healing, which knew no timetable.

As he was prodded along, he thought that perhaps he should have saved the alcohol to treat a wound. One always had to make do with what one had. To free his hands for running, he left his empty glass on a tree stump. As he ran, his tie flapped over his shoulder. The uniform of a simple suit was the norm. It was not worn to be the same or special but to be a soldier in the service of the community.

The children fell behind so the good doctor didn’t see the children cross the freshly paved Paterson Avenue. Their bare feet burned with the hellish heat. The "road crew", some of them prisoners, laughed like devils at the sight of the children hopping on the hot asphalt and shouting.

To the children, the hot asphalt was unwarranted hostility and harshness, and a worrisome sign of new barriers to their freedom. To them, it was a visceral warning of a border closing, of a busyness and harshness that would crisscross their world and confine and separate them. With this introduction to the world of asphalt, they could feel the hostility of roads to those who did not belong to them. The children enjoyed the primitive connection of feet and earth which was to be lost to generations of the future.

Dr. Rusty left the hopping children behind to find not a child in distress, but a drunkard who had drunk a pint of turpentine and passed out in the hot afternoon sun. An ambulance arrived only a few minutes behind the good doctor. Eunice had the common sense to call on the phone for help.

Russell - Eunice knew what to do. What was I going to do? Carry the victim to the hospital?

After conferring with the medic from the hospital, a cold-press was applied to Columbus’s forehead and smelling salts applied to his nose.

Columbus’s eyes opened wide and bloodshot as he swept the smelling salts away. Dr. Rusty held a water bottle with a straw to Columbus’s parched lips. Columbus drained the bottle quickly. Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he managed to say, "I’m okay, doc. That turpentine bit me bad. Thank you, doc. He took Dr. Rusty’s hand and shook it without letting go. "It must have been my good friend the sun that saved me. It must have sweat that poison out. Squeezed and wrung it out of me like an old towel. It was the devil that made me do it. I could have been dead and he would have snatched my soul for sure."

"I don’t know about that, but you would be well preserved."

Russell did not judge; was too used to death and suffering in all manner of mankind to feel superior. His thoughts were of history and the understanding and far seeing that comes with seeing further into the past. The far sightedness was then colored, enlivened, and humanized with poetry.

Russell - Like the Confederate soldiers, who drank coffee made from acorns, the tannic acid embalmed them for the sacrificial death. The Union soldiers left a stink from putrefied flesh. Not very considerate except to the ravens who cawed, "Anymore? Or was it Nevermore as some would have it" The Celtic goddess of war took the form of a raven, which favored champions of blood lust and cannily feasted on the victims of their victories. Chuchulain, a warrior not very impressive in stature, changed into a ferocious beast when the raven baited his anger.

Thank God for the healing touch of Jesus and the "bread of life," the divine food in which we share divinity, what the Taoists, and Haiku poets knew as emptying ourselves of ourselves so we could be full of the gifts, the graces, gravy, not outside, but inside and Hopkins' inscape. He came to show us mercy and not to judge us. Anger and agitation will make one sick as the Taoists would understand it.

"I’ll be alright. The sun healed me. I don’t need an ambulance."

Russell - Sun or Son? One and the same, sound, sun, son, evening, children. ‘Bring the children onto me.’ Columbus takes the ship of the ambulance to the new world of medicine, the great wall between here and there, but never impregnable.