My Childhood Friend

When I wrote to my childhood friend to tell him of my plight, he took great pity on me. His immediate response invited me to visit him at his country house, atop a cliff near the sea. He said the sound of the pounding surf would soothe my embattled mind, ease my fatigued heart, and calm my tormented soul.

It was, of course, an invitation I could not decline. I made ready at once to be received, though the journey of many days would prove a strain on me in my current state. Never mind, I bade myself, the reward shall offset the effort tenfold. I departed in haste.

The coach jolted and jounced over roads infrequent of use, and my very bones ached in my flesh by the time we arrived at the final trestle which arced in a gentle convexity across a great ravine. In its depths lay the rapids of a white river rushing to the sea, and its sheer sides and jagged outcroppings gave me shivers. I dared not look out the coach window, for the acrophobic responses it triggered in me, but rather lay back into the soft velvet seat of my compartment and let the clip-clop, clip-clop of the horses’ hooves lull my eyes closed. The almost imperceptible swaying of the bridge beneath the weight of beasts and carriage wrung sweat from my pores. When the rocking subsided, and the coach found solid purchase on the far side of the ravine, on terra firma once more, I exhaled a sharp breath I did not know I held. I forced my fingers open from their death-grip on the edge of the velveteen seat, and daubed perspiration from my brow with my kerchief.

Through the sharp ascent of the hills the road strolled, around larger rocky protrusions and through lazy valleys. White tree trunks shot arrow straight into the forest canopy spread over the road in an arch, leaves of brown, gold, red, orange and silver spilling from its recesses to tumble and skitter over the deepening bed of them across the road, rutted and overgrown from lack of traverse. In the distance the sun faded and blurred beneath the gray haze of flat, featureless clouds oppressing the forest, devouring the tops of the trees, and swirling into a heavy mist. The miniscule droplets spattered along the clattering carriage window glass and coated the world in a glaze of light moisture, never raining and never ending, as if we rolled through a heavy-laden cloud fallen from the heavens.

The grayness descended with the sun, and soon obscured all but the nearest of trees, now dark silhouettes against the flat silvery backdrop, wafting like wraiths in and out of the haze. I leaned from the cabin window, and smelled the salty tint of the fog, felt it fresh and cold and wet on my face, removed my hat to allow the cool caress upon forehead and face and neck, and breathed the deepest breaths possible, to soak the ocean into me.

I sat back into the plush luxury of my seat again, leaving the coach windows open to allow the briny scent of the mist to fill the cabin, when the horses cried, trepidation and nervousness flicking their heads up and down, feet stamping in place, both animals dancing upon the hassocks, refusing to move. Their sudden halt jolted the carriage, and which forced me to steady myself against being hurled forth into the opposing seat and thence into the cabin wall beyond. When at last I found my equilibrium, my ire tempered with shock.

I leaned out the window and shouted over the horses to the driver.

“What’s the problem there?”

He looked back around the coach, hands wrapped with reins, his voice wavered. “I don’t know, sir! The horses — they won’t go on!”

“Well, whip them, man! We’re nearly there! I must arrive before dark if possible!”

The driver cursed loud, the profanities falling flat against the dense misty air. “I have whipped ‘em, sir! ‘S no good! They won’t go! I danno what’s wrong with ‘em! Never seen ‘em act this way before!”

I sighed in irritation, and racked my brain for an alternative to the beating. “What can be done, then? I must get through!”

The driver turned to me with a half-hearted shake of his head, his facial expression clear: nothing could be done. The horses would not pass.

“Danno what’s got ‘em so spooked,” he muttered, but his voice carried over the agitated whinnying of the skittish beasts. I heard the crop flail, the whip snap, and the driver curse the ancestry of the horses. The coach edged backward, and no amount of beating made them move ahead.

A sudden whoosh ripped through the still mist, and the cloud swished and swirled as if stirred by a mighty wind, though the trees neither moaned, whistled, or even fluttered their flame colored foliage. A final cry and rearing from the horses, and they composed, calm in the middle of the road, huffed snorts of air through moist nostrils and blew wet flapping lips together around their bits. They pranced at the ready. The driver muttered again.

“What happened? What’s the matter now?” I called.

He leaned around the carriage side again, his face a stubbled, lined mask of confusion beneath his salt-and-pepper bristle-brush of hair. His arched bushy brows perched just below the brim of his hat, tipped aside by his fingers to dig in wonder at his scalp.

“I danno! That blow went through an’ now they’re dandy again! I never saw the like!”

“Are we able to proceed, then?”

“I’ll try, sir, and double-quick to make up for the stall!” He snapped the crop and the horses jerked forward, trotting faster through the tunnel of trees over the irregular, choppy road surface.

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