In the Fading Afternoon

Nick Lopez

The afternoon sun continued on its westward descent over the South Carolinian hills. Beaming over the cream colored clouds, it’s warm rays provided light for the two children heading quickly down the dirt path into a glen of oak trees. As they hurried along, the shadows of dust kicked up from their shoes lingered slowly behind them.
Once underneath the trees, they slowed their pace down to calculated, cautious, steps. The light sifted down through the filter of leaves like thin threads of string, allowing the calls and scuttling noises of creatures to melt into the surroundings. The children held each other’s hands.
Catherine felt her stomach tighten slightly as her eyes tried to adjust in the scattered light. Something other than a leaf crunched under her heel. She ground her teeth together in order to keep from shouting out in fear. It was her persistence at Tommy’s chickendom after all that brought the two of them here in the first place, even though she had only said these words in order to get her hopeful sweetheart to spend time with her.
As they tiptoed along, Catherine felt Tommy’s hand with her own. Calluses from carrying slop pails and other light farmhand tasks that a father would ask his ten-year-old son to do gave Tommy’s hand texture. Catherine wondered if they would inherit his father’s farm if they ever got married. She smiled a little as she glanced over at him.
They came across a split in the dusty trail. Tommy tossed a twig he had been carrying high in the air—through the shafts of light it spun gracefully in the stagnant heat, before gravity inevitably pulled it down; it pointed right. The light snapping of fallen branches and leaves softly echoed as they moved further on into the depths. Catherine stopped looking at Tommy and focused her attention straight ahead, brushing her hair away from her eyes—the areas devoid of light swung back and forth like a pendulum as the trees began to sway in the gentle breeze.
“Tommy, Tommy. I can’t see well at all. Can you?”
“No Cathy, I can’t see nothing.”
Catherine refrained from blinking and stuck out her neck. Her eyes were finally beginning to make sense of her surroundings and she could just barely make out light further down the path. Tommy, seemingly preoccupied with the sounds of little creatures now scuffling overhead, gazed up at the branches above with clenched fists. Catherine pulled on his shirtsleeve, “Tommy, this way,” and they ran towards what they perceived to be the way out with uncontrolled steps.
But it was in fact a patch of grass in the middle of the glen, an opening from the otherwise solid blanket of leafy shade. As Tommy and Catherine made their way out into the round patch of light, they found themselves in front of a large rock—as they moved closer, they found that it was in fact a rock with writing delicately chipped into it. Tommy and Catherine both stooped over for inspection. The crusty face of the rock, plagued with cracks, read:

Walter Leone
1842-1861
Lost his life for his beliefs
and his family.

“Wow,” Tommy whispered, “a grave.”
“Tommy don’t get too close.” Catherine, scared, took a couple steps away from the makeshift tombstone.
With quivering fingers, Tommy reached out and brushed the rock, getting a light coating of dust on his fingertips.
Catherine felt her temples pulse. She had wanted to have an adventure with Tommy, but graves were too much for her. She thought of her older cousin Samuel, who had died of pneumonia a year back, just days shy of his eleventh birthday. She had seen his coffin put down at the cemetery. She was almost ten and a half now.
Preoccupied, neither child heard the sounds of footsteps coming from within the glen, which is why they both gave a start when an unfamiliar hoarse and baritone voice said, “What are you kids doing around here for?”
Catherine felt her heart drop into her stomach as she wheeled around to see an elderly man emerge from the shadows at the other side of the opening. In the light, she instantly took note of his dingy clothes, and when he approached them she let out a quick, sharp, scream.
The man pulled back and held up his hands, palms open.
“Children are getting stranger and stranger,” he mumbled as he then proceeded to scratch his bare head. However, regaining his composure, he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But what are you kids doing around here for?”
“We came looking for adventure, and we thought we would check out these woods cause we heard it was haunted,” Catherine said as she looked over at Tommy. He still seemed to be processing what was going on.
“I see”. The old man fiddled with his coat jacket; Catherine couldn’t place her finger on its color, it was either a sooty gray or a faded muddied yellow depending on the way the sunlight hit it.
“Where are you kids from?”
“Westbury,” Catherine said. She wondered if Tommy had noticed the odd coloring of the coat jacket himself. However, her musings were put on hold as the man began to walk towards Tommy and addressed him directly.
“You kids are a long way from Westbury. Do they know that you’re here?”
The silence that followed spoke for itself.
“Well, no need to be shy. I’m James Leone. That’s my son Walter,” the man said, pointing his finger at the solid rock, and after a soft breath, he looked straight at Tommy.
Catherine began to swat at the gnats that were swarming over her head.
The old man clutched his tearing lapels. “Boy, that man right there, my son, my best friend, fought in the war, and not only that, he helped the Union, though he didn’t enlist or nothing.”
Tommy sat down on the grass, and Catherine saw the left side of his mouth curl up high, as if trying to reach all the way up to his nose—it was a look that she herself had never seen him make before, and she was surprised when he spoke up and said, “How’d he die?”
“A knife to the gut,” The man kicked the grass in front of him, turning away from the grave, “I say it was so cause it was done right in front of my eyes.”
“Why were you there?” Catherine interjected.
“Well I didn’t know I was gonna be there, but he just did it right in front of me,” the man grabbed at his head and from where Catherine was, she thought that his eyes appeared to shine.
“They said that the cadets fired on the Star of the West, and in doing so prevented it from supplying Fort Sumter where the Union guys were going to starve to death. And—” he turned away from the children, “—and my boy decided that it was his duty to get them food. Felt like it was just the right thing to do. But before he even picked up sack of corn meal to bring to em’, word had already spread like wildfire, and everybody knew.”
Catherine watched Tommy. He was looking straight at the old man, with seeming interest rather than the usual distracted preoccupied look she was used to, and his eyes, at least from where she was standing, seemed to glisten with an intrigue that soaked in even the warm muted colors of the fading afternoon. His eyes never looked that way when she talked to him. Catherine scowled.
“Quick as a match, my boy was wanted for treason against the seceded states.”
The tears that quietly rolled down the old man’s face seemed to cause his baritone’s diminuendo, but he still continued in a soft whisper, “He was set to hang that next day, but he ran, and a mob chased after him. He fled town and went into hiding, and though he didn’t stay in hiding very long, I went with him, to this very spot, and right there” he pointed to the rock, “he took his life into his own hands. He died with the hope that someday the world would change—a real martyr he was, not like the generals I saw glorified by the papers and in the adventure stories—a real hero.” The man wiped his nose with his coat sleeve.
Catherine found her right foot tapping involuntarily on the grass; the sun was going down and she didn’t want to waste the last bits of her day with Tommy by getting a history lesson. “Why are you here now?” she asked.
“I live here,” the man replied. “I tried living back at my old home, but somehow the rest of the world and I fell out of sorts with one another. Only place that made sense was here.”
He paused, and his eyes were locked in with Catherine’s. She now found his homelessness uncomfortable, and considered it as another reason to dislike the man.
“Even though the right men won, the world hasn’t changed, and I think I will just wait here with my boy until it does,” he said as he patted the tombstone, “and then I can rest my old bones in peace.”
“Well, we ought to be going. Tommy, come on,” Catherine said curtly as she pulled at the neck of Tommy’s shirt. Tommy looked at her sharply for a second, but got up and moved away with her.
“Oh.” The old man seemed startled at Catherine’s abrupt decision to leave. “Well, it was nice talking to you kids. You know the way back now?” He didn’t wait for a response. “Best way to get out is through this here path,” he pointed to a particular trail at the edge of the enclosure. “I haven’t seen nobody around here in a long time, and it was nice talking to you two. So you children run along now and be safe for me okay. It’s getting dark.”
Marching along to the distant chirps of the crickets, Catherine left the tombstone and the old man and wondered if there was enough time to try and catch frogs with Tommy before having to get back home. She kicked a rock off the trail—this afternoon with Tommy had not gone as she had wanted. In fact, she thought, it had been quite annoying. Tommy had been so interested in that old man and his story that he never paid any attention to her. But catching frogs would make things better she thought, although they would have to hurry in order to make it back home before it got too dark. She tried to remember what her mother was cooking for dinner.
Catherine turned to look at Tommy and realized that he wasn’t alongside her. She whipped around and saw him a few paces back, leaning onto a tree and looking back in the direction of the enclosure. Catherine ran back to him, grabbed him by the wrist, and dragged him out of the forest being careful to stay on the path.
“Ow. Cathy don’t pull my wrist so hard,” Tommy whined.
“Come on. Let’s go catch some frogs.”
Tommy stopped in his tracks and pulled his hand back. “No, I want to keep checking out that grave. Why’d we have to leave so quick? Why were you so rude to Mr. Leone?”
Catherine moved the hair from over her eyes. She wanted him to see she was upset.
“Never mind, Tommy,” she said quickly, her voice getting shrill. “And forget about the frogs, I don’t want to go anymore.” Catherine clapped a mosquito with her hands. She took in a deep breath and sighed as she brushed the little corpse off onto the ground. “Anyways, the sun’s pretty much set now and it must be getting close to suppertime. I don’t want my mother to worry about where I am so walk me home.”
Tommy slumped his shoulders. “Oh, okay Cathy,” he said quietly. And without another word, they both began to walk along the trail that would take them back to Westbury.
As they moved further away from the grave and the woods, going past the familiar landmarks that had been illuminated by the sunlight earlier, Catherine refused to hold onto Tommy’s hand. Instead, she spent her time adding to the ever-growing list of chores she hoped he had to do around the farm before he got any dinner.