Dimetre is faced with the reality of death and fears his lonliness will never end.
This is a possible introduction to my next book. It is actually a reflection back to the previous novel, Too Many Tears.
Introduction:
Beginnings
The morning sun still slept when Dimetre opened the door of his large home. Dimetre buckled his coat against the cold winter breeze that blew as he walked to the barn. The two horses nickered a greeting when Dimetre walked up to them. Quietly and quickly Dimetre connected the horses to the heavily burdened cart. He took the reins and led the horses out of the barn. He looked towards the east and noticed the color of the rising sun. Though he had wasted no time that morning, time was already escaping him. He sighed deeply and then headed towards the main road.
Dimetre lived in the outskirts of town. His farm was farther from town than any of the others. Therefore the walk into town gave him plenty of time to think. At first, his thoughts were benign. Trading thoughts filled his mind. He totaled the needed stocks in his thoughts. The cart jostled and Dimetre looked back at the goods. As he looked, he mentally tagged each bag, barrel and bushel for its purpose. Dimetre tried to make his thoughts return to the deeds of that day but an errant thought kept coming back. As hard as he tried, the thought of his loneliness continued to return.
Like all people, Dimetre wanted someone to share his life with. But things that he would not, or perhaps could not, explain complicated his life. Dimetre had spent many years alone and not because of a lack of offers. The ladies in town vied for his attentions. Fathers of unattached daughters offered hefty dowries for their daughters’ hands in marriage. Each offer he rejected. The offers were only because he was a wealthy man. His farm had prospered well in the years that he had been in the New World. He employed many of the poorer men in the area during the planting seasons. Now that the winter season was upon him, Dimetre needed to re-stock for the winter. He dreaded these trips into town. Only the thought that it would be too early for many of the women to be around when he arrived made his trip bearable. He was so lost in his thoughts that he almost didn’t hear the sound that came from ahead of him.
Dimetre quickened his pace when he heard a second pained moan. As he turned the corner in the road, the morning sun blinded him from its mid-morning position. Suddenly the sight before him came clearly into view. He paled as he saw the broken cart lying on the side of the road. The hitch that held the horses had broken off and the horses were nowhere to be seen. It had once been heading west but it had flipped end over end. One side of the cart had been ripped off and was lying several feet away. Dimetre scanned the wreckage in disbelief.
His eyes landed on the body of a man. Thinking that the man was the source of the moans, he hurried to his side. When he turned the man over, he met a familiar blank stare. Dimetre closed the man’s eyes and held back his grief. That man had worked on his farm. It was only yesterday that Dimetre had sent him home for the last time this season. Dimetre searched his memory until he found the man’s name.
Dimetre spoke his name, “Sean Morris.”
If Dimetre remembered correctly, he had had a wife and a child.
A woman’s pained cry pierced the air behind him. “Help me.”
“Where are you?” Dimetre asked as he turned to look for her.
“Here,” her voice was fragile.
Dimetre saw a form under the front of the cart. He hoped that it was not the woman for whom he searched. As he moved closer, his hope was shattered. Dimetre held his breathe at the tragedy before him. The woman lay under the twisted and broken cart. Her body from the shoulders down was pinned by the cart. He could see that blood was pooled around her body. Dimetre rushed to her side. Only her quivering lips betrayed her death-like appearance. Her eyes remained closed as a trickle of blood flowed from her mouth as she moved her lips to speak.
“Don’t try to speak.” Dimetre tried to convince her not to speak. “I will go to town and get the doctor.” Dimetre started to walk away.
“No, don’t leave.” Her voice was nothing more than a whisper. “I must say something.”
“It can wait until I return with the doctor.”
“No!” She mustered her strength for that one word. Her voice was quieter as she continued, “I must speak now, for I might not have another chance. Sean and I left our daughter. I believe what you see before you is God’s punishment for that act. We deserted our duties to our daughter because it was just too hard.” She stopped and opened her eyes. Her bloodshot eyes locked with Dimetre’s in a searching stare. “I need to ask you to do something for me. Please find my daughter. If you can’t take care of her, find a family that can.”
“Of course, I will look for her.” Dimetre said.
“Take the pendant from my neck. It has been in my family for many generations and by her birthright it belongs to her.” Dimetre took the pendant from the woman. “Please I beg of you, I failed my child. Someday when she is older and perhaps can understand, give her that pendant and tell her that her mother loved her. We lived only a short way from town. There is a small path to the right about a mile outside of town. Follow the path until it ends and you will find our cabin. My daughter’s name is Alishia Constance Marie Morris.”
The woman’s eyes closed and her breath settled in a ragged moan. Frantically, Dimetre felt the woman’s chest. After a few startling moments, he felt it move in a shallow breath. He rushed to the cart an unhooked the nearest horse. As he rode away, he yelled out to the woman.
“I will return quickly.”
It was only mid-morning when Dimetre left for town but the was above the noon position when he finally convinced the doctor to follow him. Dimetre barely allowed the horse to stop before he jumped down. He ran to the woman, but her body remained still. Regardless of how long Dimetre stared at her chest, the signs of life were gone. The doctor checked the man first and then slowly walked towards the woman. He announced the obvious. She was dead.
Dimetre agreed absently to watch over the scene while the doctor returned to town for help. The doctor left at a slower pace then they arrived. Dimetre watched the doctor until he was out of sight. It was then that he turned and surveyed the tragedy before him. He could only look for a moment before he turned away. Sitting on the side of the road, he watched as the sun moved into an early evening position. He tormented himself for his earlier petty thoughts. That couple had so many troubles that they thought the only way to conquer the fear was to run away form it. Dimetre thanked the lord for his blessing and waited for the sounds of approaching people. He was rewarded with the arrival of people near sunset.
The doctor arranged the townsfolk to take the bodies back to town. However, the doctor saw the sorrow in Dimetre’s lonely eyes. He thanked Dimetre for his concern and time. Then sent him home. Dimetre hitched the horses to the cart and headed for his farm. As he reached the turn in the road he, He turned and looked a final time. The pale light from the lanterns cast an eerie glow on the deathbed of the couple. He tore his eyes from the sight before him and walked home with a determined mind. His determination was to keep the sorrow from his heart. He knew that it was a dangerous time to travel in this world. It was a time of useless deaths, and that was what this was. He accepted the deaths that way and walked the rest of the way home with a lighter heart. By the time he settled the horses in the barn, he had cleared his mind of the burden of their death.
There was no trace of the sun when Dimetre left the barn. Dimetre’s house was cold and dark when he entered. He rushed to the fireplace to stroke the embers into flame. While the flame grew, he poured a cup of coffee from the kettle that had sat in the warm ashes during the day. Dimetre left his coat on until the warmth from the fire dispersed the coldest air. As he unbuckled his coat, he put his hand in his pocket. When felt something cold touch his fingers, he withdrew the pendant from his pocket. Suddenly he remembered his promise to the dying woman. Quickly he banked the newly lit fire. He raced back to the barn and mounted the horse that he had not ridden that day. He left the barn at a fast clip and was quickly to the site of the accident. He slowed and hoped that someone remained there, but all that remained was the broken cart on the side of the road. The thoughts that he had been able to push out of his mind, returned at the site of the recent tragedy. Determined to fulfill his promise, he raced on.
Dimetre missed the road on his first pass. When he reached town, he made a disgusted sound. Sighing deeply to control his emotions, he turned away and went back down the road at a slower pace. He almost missed the narrow path a second but noticed it at the last second. He turned down the unknown well-beaten path. At the end of the path, he saw the hard outlines of a small cabin. Something bothered him about the cabin on his first glance. As he got closer to the cabin, he realized what was bothered him. The front door was wide open. He jumped down from the horse and entered the dark cabin carefully. Calling out the child’s name, he walked towards the fireplace. The fire was cold, not even the embers remained hot. Dimetre found the flint stones to the right of the fireplace and expertly throw a spark on the logs. When the flame was large enough, he looked around the cabin.
There was a small sleeping area that was divided into two. A larger bed was unmade as if left in a hurry. A heavy curtain separated a smaller bed that was neatly made. Dimetre noticed that the area around the little bed had a certain pattern. The pattern was unsettling but Dimetre couldn’t understand why. Interested, he walked towards the smaller bed. The shutters were open. Dimetre looked out on the dense forest that surrounded the cabin. He looked around the area for some clue of where the child could have gone. When finding nothing, he turned back to the main living area. The house was bare except for a multi-use table and three chairs. As Dimetre moved his eyes across the room, he caught a glimpse of something metallic near the fire. He walked towards the object and saw that it was a necklace. When he picked it up, the horseshoe charm slipped through his fingers. Thinking it might mean something; he placed it in his pocket with the pendant.
It was obvious that he child wasn’t in the house. Dimetre made a torch form an extra log and went outside the cabin to look for the child. He called out to her as he circled the house and looked for any outbuildings. He searched for an hour before he headed back to the house. It was then that he noticed a small footpath to the west of the cabin. He followed it to the edge of the dense forest. Dismissing the thought, he started to turn back to the house. Then he noticed a small piece of torn cloth on a branch. Dimetre stared into the dense forest and laughed aloud.
“She is a brave soul.”
He took the piece of cloth and twirled it in his hands as he debated what to do next. Dimetre realized that he had two choices. It would be easier to search for the girl when the sun came out, but he worried about the child’s health during the night. He didn’t think that she could have gotten far. After weighing the choices, he decided to go back to the house and get more wood for torches. He put out the fire and closed the door as he left. Dimetre tied his horse to the house where it could graze freely and he walked into the woods in search of the unknown child. The trail was harder to follow than Dimetre would have thought. There was no rhyme or reason to the path before him. Sometimes the path was straight through the roughest parts of the woods when a cleared path was in plain sight. Several times Dimetre lost the trail and had to back track to pick it up again. By morning he was too exhausted to continue. He needed to sleep. Finally he found a tree that had a morning shade, and he passed into a much-needed rest.
The heat of the afternoon roused him. In a better mindset from the few hours rest, Dimetre stood and resumed his search. He noticed something that he couldn’t have seen in the dark. There was blood on the trail. A renewed sense of urgency coursed through his veins. While the sight of blood frightened him, it made he trail much easier to follow. When he hadn’t found her by nightfall, a chill ran through him. With the amount of blood on the ground, Dimetre knew she wouldn’t survive another night out in the forest. He lost her trail in the late evening. Cursing under his breath he retraced his steps back to where he was. No matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find a continuation of the trail. It had stopped at a large tree with a thick base of leaves. Dimetre had all but given up, when he saw a moment beneath the leaves. Carefully he bent down and bushed the top layer of leaves away.
The girl lay before him. Her skin had a bluish tinge in the night. Dimetre couldn’t see her chest move, so he laid a careful hand on her chest. Finally he felt a ragged movement of her chest and heard a ragged breath. Quickly he wrapped her in his coat and rubbed her limbs to create some heat. When her body began to shiver, Dimetre rushed back to his horse. They rushed back to his farm at speeds that Dimetre had never traveled before. He jumped off the horse and ran into the house. The girl’s body shivered in his arms. He rushed to the front room and laid her on the sofa while he started a fire in the main room. When the room was lit, he looked over the girl. Her legs were covered in cuts and some were deep gashes. With heated water from the kitchen fire, he cleaned and bandaged her legs. Dimetre sat back and sighed. His activities over the past two days had tired him beyond his body. Exhausted he fell into a deep sleep for a few hours.
When he woke, he looked at the girl for the first time. She was younger than he imagined when he started this journey. Her rust-colored hair would have flowed down her back to her waist, but her adventures caused it to be a mess of tangles. But it was her face that captured him. The innocence of youth, that most children have, was lost. There were stress lines around her eyes and mouth that caused the girl’s true age to be deceiving. Though the skin color was returning, it was obvious that she had a naturally pale complexion. It seemed that he stared at her for hours, though it was only a few minutes later that she began to stir. She opened her eyes. It was clear to him why her parents felt such a hardship with her. Her eyes were glossy with blindness. They spoke briefly and Dimetre watched her eyes. At first, her eyes sparkled like emeralds with an intent interest. But when Dimetre mentioned her parents, her eyes changed. The color deepened in turbulent sea of torment. He supposed that it was that moment that he decided to take her into his home permanently.
That once unknown and miraculous child became Dimetre’s world. She led him through the pain and love of being a parent. He often wondered how he could have been blessed to have her in his life. Dimetre failed time and time again to protect her from the pain of life’s trials. He was always surprised that she still turned to him for support. It was a wondrous thing to watch her grow from a young child into a beautiful woman. He never questioned his love for her in those first years of change and hurt. But there came a time when he did begin to question his feeling for her. His love for her grew from that of a father to a daughter to a new and questionable emotion. It was that time that had to consider his choices. The road that her life had followed led to her to be alone. Dimetre wanted to hold her and give her the love that she desired and needed. But he held those feelings deep inside himself. For he knew that the choice to tell her could lead to him losing more than a lover, but perhaps the only person in the world that he needed more than life itself.
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