Story: A Native’s Story

This was a story I wrote some time ago for Discovery Christian Church, for a Christmas season service that focused on storytelling and art. The story was printed into a little booklet and sold after the service. The money went to a charity, I think. The art was done by one Kevin Rupert. One of the pastors recorded a reading of it, for use in the service, but that was decided against. The audio of the reading is embedded down below the story.

This was written so long ago that there’s so much I’d do differently now, especially some of the wordiness. Some of the sentences here I had no idea what I was trying to really get at; maybe I didn’t really know at the time. I took some liberties with the time period. I doubt that betrothed couples would kiss out in the open like that, maybe even after they were married. Or even if they had cradles like we do today. The actual particulars of the history wasn’t important. In any case, it’s an interesting look back at some very old writing.

She waited for him at the end of his road. The anticipation and the cold of a snowless midwinter rattled her nerves to her fingertips. Night was approaching and people rushed with weary faces along the town’s main artery road to finish their duties. For distraction she tallied a running ratio of beards-to-baskets: one, one, two, three, two, three, four, four. She lost count when a family acquaintance, a boy her own age, broke out of the stream of villagers and stopped to arouse idle chatter with her. They spoke of her recent return to the area and their mutual workaday chores but summoned away by his father’s bellow across the heads of the townspeople. Alone again. After a series of silent, ejaculatory prayers, she spied the group of two dozen workers appearing from around the curve of the road. Their huddled, masculine bravado cut a path before them and swelled the dust under their feet, even after the hour’s walk from the worksite a city over. It was easy for her to pick him out of the lot, with his lopsided gait and the clutch of tool satchel in front of him. On the more productive days he would hug the leather bag close to him like he did tonight, as if to hold in their good fortune. He was tired but soon he would savor the night of a man who enjoyed a day filled with his life’s pleasure: to mold and build by his own hand and energies, to create and enjoy claim to that creation.

He saw her from far off and rushed over, greeting her with a chaste kiss. She told him about her cousin and the rest of her family as they walked down his road. Her anxiety slurred and trembled her words. She disguised the impediment as excitement over her cousin’s new child and by laying offhand blame on the stifling weather. He ducked into his house. She remained outside his front door as he prepared tea with the fire she had lit for him earlier. His minutes-long absence was an agonizing delay as she was in the full view of the villagers that shared the courtyard. It was that unsettling company of persons who were seen but not close enough for polite conversation. Her scandal was not yet visible but she imagined they could sense her caution and could gossip in the safety of quiet words. She seethed to end the situation, to let him know of the impossibility that had just began to grow inside of her. She was at the mercy of the process of steeping leaves now. At last he emerged with two steaming cups. She took one small sip. “I have something to tell you.” The heat from the tea sparked a terrifying waterfall of hasty words, all at once. She told him all about the visitation of glory and the irresistible message and the singular child she now carried—a child that she knew would become both a blessing and curse upon her earthly life. He said nothing and returned inside his house. He left the door open and she could hear him tending to his sack of tools, then fall into silence. She leaned her back against the wall, next to the door, listening, though he never spoke when he was angry and she was near. Her ears sought out any reassuring sign from him that, though her future life with him was all but over, he was still there and would be there in seasons to come. She wanted him to live on and find a way to extract a surrogate life through the work of his hands. Behind her head there was a loud crash of pottery smashing against the wall. Its pieces clinked when they fell to the dirt floor. She slapped a palm over her mouth to throttle a sob from escaping but it trickled out the corners of her eyes. It would now take another miracle, she was sure, to restore to full life what was now dead between them.

Her parents and immediate family soon received notice of his intent to call the marriage off. They were informed that he desired to keep the separation quiet, and she was grateful that he had chosen not to subject her to the public shame that she was sure to endure as her pregnancy would eventually not escape notice. She didn’t see or hear from him again until months later, in the early spring, after a performance at the newly-finished theater. She was in town with her sister running errands when she found him outside the theater speaking with other workmen and admiring their finished project. When he saw her she balked and ran away as gently as she could to protect the weight at her navel, ignoring the call from her sister and melting into the crowd of scattering theater-goers. A hand grabbed her wrist and turned her around. It was him and the traces of shame and anger she expected to be creased on his brow were not there. “I have something to show you.” He led her to one of the theater’s antechambers and pulled a cloth off of a small piece of furniture sitting atop a table. It was a wooden cradle made of plain pine, with flecks of sawdust remaining on one of its simple arches. He turned it over and showed her the figure of his name and the name of another, carved on the beige expanse of its underside. He revealed his own story of a night, a dream, and a visitation, one not unlike hers, that changed the whole course of his life and demanded he reconcile with her. She knew him to be sincere because he would have to share in her disgrace, and joining her would imply his approval of her situation. He would never arrange to drag her through such worry and heartache unless moved by an undeniable presence, and now that presence had shown itself in both of their lives. Despite their rekindled relationship’s the threat of future toil called out like a shadowy messenger on the horizon.

She gave birth that autumn in an off-room at her relatives house in a far village. It was as ordinary as births of natural means are known to pass, yet shared among the three of them was a sense of relief and completion. They had become vessels to realize an absurdity made palpable. Awaking during the night of her child’s first day on earth, she bundled up and escaped onto the flat roof of the room in which her husband and new child stayed. An unseasonable storm had passed through at dusk and dropped a freight of white on the hard ground all around the city. The dread of things to come that seized upon her last spring, when he uncovered the cradle in the theater, returned to her. In sight of the scene before her the dread vanished, dissipating into the air behind her. It was the mysterious breadth of moon, the slash of wind, the black of sky, the deathly quiet sheets of snow, the glint of stars behind drab clouds, the dying lights and faded signs of life in other houses. The darkened, hostile side of nature that night was redeemed, made sacred by her child’s birth and a simple turn of perception. The moon slid behind a dark puff of cloud then reemerged, brighter, surrounded by a glow of light. There would be more to learn and more answers to uncover, but this landscape, deftly formed by the conspiring fingers of creation, was enough for now.