The Sign on the Fence

It was obvious he had come from thetracks. Most of our visitors did, for if you set your eyes upon the trees long enough to actually notice details or oddities, you would see the old brick of our house and our white door from the trains. Like so many others who traveled by hopping cars on the train and searching for work or money or food or purpose, he smelled of steam and engine grease with an underlying tinge of stagnant air. His clothes appeared to be the same clothes he’d worn the day before and the week before and most likely the month before that. The shirt was brown, but only because it had been in every corner of Georgia and taken a memory from each in the form of some dirty mark. His pants had become a part of him; they could be his and his alone. If another tried to put them on, the garment would come alive and bite their ankles and tie the legs into knots. Their sturdiness and few holes were true loyalty. His shoes were not quite as faithful.

I paused a moment from dropping my sack of unread student book reports to the floor and removing my coat at the door, when I saw him sitting in a particular chair at our table, inhabiting it like a ghost. He was not the first stranger to sit in our kitchen, but only the first in a while. He was by no means a small man, and despite the disarray of his appearance, he seemed as though he could have been a member of the house or a distant relative coming to visit like he did every other winter when it got too cold in his poorly insulated New York flat. His only company at the table were sunflowers whose petals were darkening and curly at the ends and six open seats.

I greeted him simply and began to untie my boots to set by the door. He did not respond and when I looked at him again, I noticed that only his eyes had moved as they continued to scan the fallen yellows on the center of the table and the few pictures on the walls. He did not turn, because he did not know I was talking to him.

“How do you do, sir?” I thought he must be used to people’s voices walking past his left and his right, but never down at him and especially not up. It was a sad thought, and I hated to think it.

This time his head jolted a bit as it landed on me. He only looked to my eyes and when he saw mine were at his, he did not remove them. Many moments flitted by before he spoke, and when he did I was surprised by the pleasant pitch of his voice. A quiet confidence flowed from his words, which were surprisingly soft, and I felt myself wondering if he came out of the womb with an immediate understanding of soothing language.He gave me the sense that he could calm a child quite easily by telling a fanciful story of pirates and dancers or convince a businessman to trust him with every penny he had to his name and to his friends’ names too. His words were not hard or throaty, but seemed chosen twenty years ago for this particular interaction. “Well, I trusted the message on your fence as one must trust in such things and now here I am, sitting in a sturdy chair in a warm home and smelling what I presume is chicken and I think collard greens. So I cannot help but say I do very well, better than I have in some time. Funny, is it not, how quickly one’s view on the world can change?”

I laughed, “Funny indeed.” I looked to the picture that held his attention previously. A small bubble of grief hit me when I did, and as I looked at the smiling faces of my four siblings and my parents, anxiety captured and held me there. We had lost him but three months ago to tuberculosis. I can still smell the metallic scent of his bloodied handkerchiefs that he coughed desperately into. “What message do you mean?” After silence and still being at the mercy of the picture, I further clarified, “You mentioned a message on our fence. I have walked by that fence every day of my life and cannot say I know of any words on it.”

“I really should not say.”

I felt some release from my gaze and looked to his face that carriedage far greater than he had experienced. “Should not say? Well now I am a hundred times more intrigued.”

His eyes shone brighter when he saw I was beginning to feel mischievous. “It is somewhat like another language, you see. An exclusive language that comes only when someone has experienced very specific things.”

“Things that I assume you have experienced.”

“Yes.”

“What types of things?”

“That’s no matter. It is hardly in our control anyways.”

“Manda, finally! I cannot wait any longer; I am ravenous.” My older brother, Benjamin, gave me a firm grasp on the shoulder as he passed me on his way to the kitchen. I imagined him rolling with the horses and laying in the coop because of his specific, sneeze-inducing odor and the straw stuck to his back. He was five years younger than me at 17 and Julius’s twin.

Dinner was chicken, cornbread, and he was right, collards.With our guest here, a typically lively, yet hectic dinner turned into a light-hearted, joyful one. His presence had everyone lighter, distracted from their day’s work and focusing on someone outside of the family. I felt full not only in health, but in heart too. Every seat was filled. Every seat was speaking.

Amidst debate over whether the ending of the mystery book Father had finished reading aloud by the hearth the night before was surprising or not, Julius went to the kitchen and surprised everyone with a peach pie he had picked up from a neighbor on his way from work. “Ben, there is just no way!” Sarah, the youngest sibling at 15, argued. I simply cannot believe you knew where Miss Christie was going in her book with the final reveal. You have never known a thing was coming until it tapped you on the shoulder and introduced itself.” She stopped her passionate speech when the sweet fruit and spice scent filled the room. Benjamin let out his high-pitched, legendary bark of a laugh at the sight of Julius bestowing the table with such a prize.

Our guest let out a low whistle and sat forward in his seat. “Now that is a beautiful sight.”

“Oh my, that it is.” Sarah had already returned with a knife and was so intensely focused on each cut of the treat one would think she was performing surgery on it.

“How much did this cost you, Julius?” Mother said in a hushed tone to my brother concealed by a small pip of a sound let out by Sarah as a wet peach fell to her lap. He held up a finger and fought to seem serious as he fed mother a hearty portion off his plate. Before she could scold Julius for spoiling everyone and frivolously using the money from his dark, loud hours of work in the textile factory, he surprised her with another bite. After this one, I saw her cheeks quiver from the early onset of a smile fighting to take over her body. It finally did when Father beat his fist on the table and remarked uncharacteristically loudly, “This pie, my Lord, it is the best darn thing I have ever tasted! Aside from anything of yours of course, my dear.” An attempted wink was thrown Mother’s way.

The humble visitor besideme was in obvious agreement with Father, concurring, “Pie. Sent from the Heavens.” Through a full smacking mouth, I asked the mysterious gentleman to share some stories of his life.

Setting his fork down, he took on the stature of a grandfather preparing to share a bedtime story or two. “Something all my friends should know about me is that I am an animal whisperer. Plain and simple. God Almighty gave me the gift himself, and when God gives you a gift you accept it.” He spoke with a hushed tone as if disclosing a secret, and despite the corners of his lips being upturned, I think he may have been serious. “Throughout my life I had noticed a certain skill I had with my pets, but it wasn’t until I was camping in the woods and met a bear rummaging through my jerky that I truly knew that I understood the beasts. Close call, that was, but the little ditty I sang him saved my life and calmed him down right quick.” That story turned into the opening of a book of forty more. The time he was in a hot air ballon and the operator had failed to mention the fever he was harboring. Above the buildings and ant-humans, he found himself dealing with the increasing severity of an ill man while trying to follow his convoluted instructions on how to deter crashing the air vehicle or floating up, up, up into the atmosphere. The time he took a round-about way to work after missing his bus and found the skeleton of a man uncovered beneath a fallen pine. He stole the flask from the bone fingers. The time the wind changed by the sea, and the ashes of his wife flew back into his face as he was spreading them.

As he told his stories, his words reminded me why I had always wanted to be a writer. I taught the basics of most fundamental subjects—mathematics, history, science, and English—to the kids around Blue Ridge, but I always spent the most time on English, imagining that one day students might read my stories in the classroom and aloud to their parents at home. The meager, but steady income of teaching these last two years was what kept me from fully committing to the dream.

As the gentleman spoke, painting vivid images of his journeys before my eyes, passion for life began to stir in me, like a captured bee buzzing almost violently under a glass jar, fighting to break the glass and be free to the flowers again. I felt real and true laughter bursting out of me. Belly laughter that awoke the old remnants of bronchitis with bits of wheezing in my breath. An urgency came over me to feel everything, to not hide from old memories or pain or the false notion of better times. I found myself speaking of memories like being reprimanded for sneaking into Emmaline Rosette’s yard to tip her cows with Thomas five years ago. Thomas was only 7 then and was already showing signs of a weak constitution, but that didn’t stop my younger brother from running faster than I had ever seen and leaping over fences when the Rosette’s porch light came on. As I shared, anxiety did not even knock on me. I laughed as I recalled it all. I let my eyes leak a few tears as I recalled it all. The feeling of many things crept into me. It was as if joy started with sneaking steps and hushed whispers as it tried to ambush my heart, and when I flipped on my own lights to illuminate the feeling, the freedom for loneliness and hurt walked in too. They were greeted with a small, sad smile, but open arms.

After the words had calmed and the empty dishes cleaned, it was just the two of us again. “I should get to bed. Will you be here in the morning?”

“I think I better keep moving, Amanda.” His voice was the slowest when he said those words.

I did not say anything at first, but then, “I am glad you came. Seems a mighty blessing from such a small coincidence.” I placed my hand lightly on his shoulder, “Please know our door is always open to you.” He placed his hand on mine and squeezed. After a pause, I stood and walked towards the stairs.

“It was a cat, you know.”

“A cat?”

“There is a cat drawn on your fence, just by the cherry blossom.” I had no idea what he meant. I knew no cat. “Us traveling folk, we have a language that warns and guides. Cat means ‘Kind, Will Feed.’ When I saw it outside, I knew I could trust y’all to be generous people.”

“A picture of a cat told you all that?”

“Well, I probably could have guessed it just from the smoke coming from your chimney and the wreath on your door, but yes, a cat told me.” He chuckled a deep, rumbling thing. “Now that is a comical sentence to say out loud in seriousness.”

We only talked a little more after that before I was wrapped in an embrace by my sheets and off to sleep, dreaming of drawings and strangers. When the early sun kissed me good morning, I raced out of bed, hoping to catch him before he left. It only took me a few rooms to realize he was gone, a traveling man traveling.

My toes adjusted to the coolness of the grass as I left the door open, running outside to look at the same fence I had looked at my whole life. And just like he said, there on the farthest left peg was a simple drawing of a cat. It struck me that it was new. It had come in recent months, and it had come after Thomas stopped walking on cool grass and gathering sunflowers and eating pies.

I gazed forward and strained my eyes through the trees and onto the metallic rail lines beyond. I felt deep within the hope that he would be there, just before the woods or on the edge of the track waiting. His eyes would meet mine, unwavering and personal even from some distance away. He would not wave but he might give the faintest of nods — the type that makes you question if a fly had just flown by and the buzz of it produced an involuntarily shiver. But he was not there, and I could not look up at him. He was some miles away by now.

Afamiliar sense of mourning hit me, quickening my heartbeat as sadness took the place of my blood and drove throughout my body. He was gone, and I knew it was for good.

Our guest had sat in Thomas’s chair like he had known from the beginning. No one had the courage to tell him not to. He took the seat before anyone else had even approached the table, almost like the cat outside had told him it was one of the many things in the house that was cold with loneliness and needed a warm stranger’s attention. My parents, Julius and Ben, Sarah, and I were each driven to a sudden silence when we saw the emptiness at each meal. We had all longed to see the seat at the table filled again.