Ever since Mr. Stiles passed on, few knocked upon Gertie's door. Mainly fools wearing rumpled hats pushed way back, stretching broad, artificial grins over gaunt faces. Salesmen. Gertie hadn't the time and pleasured in watching their jaws sag and the fire in their eyes snuffed out before they disappeared altogether behind the slamming of her door.

Right after Mr. Stiles died, there was a flurry of folks, most paying their respects for the old man. None cared one jot for her, she reckoned. They'd leave a pie, maybe a loaf of freshly baked bread, and once a whole ham, then kindly ask if there was anything she needed. Everyone knew she didn't need a damn thing. Then they all kind of fell away, naturally, like your teens, then your twenties, and you sit back and notice it... accept it, but it gnaws at you anyway.

But the truth be told, she did need a little something. She needed to know that she'd always keep her head about her and never forget.

Never forget the way everyone called him Mr. Stiles. How they'd cross a busy street just to shake his hand and ask about his health or what he thought about this or that. Never forget how he'd say, "Gertie, Can't never could." No sir, he was a doer, and he did, and by God, things got done. Never forget how he'd speak grandly with his chin rising above an imaginary crowd of thousands, yet it be only a single soul who'd lean in close and nod, then beam like they had been touched with divine knowledge, and for nothing - NOTHING! There hadn't been enough of him to go around.

Mr. Stiles. It sounded impressive in her mind. So much so she took to calling him that herself.

"Good Lord, Gertie, I'm your husband," he'd say, shaking his head and chuckling. She knew he liked it though and kept it up.

So now, her door stayed shut and silent and she didn't mind.

But the phone had hushed, too. She'd watch it from the corner of her eye as she made breakfast each morning, slowly buttering her toast then grinding her coffee beans by hand because she had nothing but time. There were moments she'd stare at it, with her heart edging up near her throat, waiting for it to ring, knowing she'd jump like a child at the spring of a jack-in-the-box if it did. She had been waiting for over a year now.

Lily called only once after her daddy died, and that was two weeks after the funeral. Gertie had left a message on Lily's fancy new answering machine, her voice wild and frantic, saying Mr. Stiles was slipping away and blood was collecting in his lungs and his eyes had dulled. She said for once in her life that she needed her daughter; needed Lily to see something important through for a change. After hanging up, she had felt like a jackass going off crazy into a machine.

When Lily finally called, she explained they had all gone to the Smokies. Lily's voice was cool, like time had tempered any real emotion. Gertie was too put out to call her liar.

Gone to the Smokies... Bullcorn!

But Gertie had pretty much calmed down by the time Lily called, and there was little left to say - there never had been between mother and daughter. Their conversation drifted in circles, sprinkled along taut stretches of silence after Lily delivered her few words of comfort. Her iciness infuriated Gertie for she knew Lily had worshiped her father. So, they both hung on the phone, waiting for the other to give, locked in some sort of contest to determine who had hurt the other the most, and whoever spoke first would be declared the loser.

"You'll call me regularly, won't you?" Gertie finally asked. She, the loser, had to beg.

"Sure Momma, but your phone dials out too, you know." Gertie didn't tell Lily she was sick and tired of leaving messages.

And that's how it was between them.

Lily once overheard her mama say all she ever wanted was a little boy. Gertie let that slip one day while chatting with a deacon's wife after a Sunday sermon. Lily was only four, but something like that rises above the buzz of adult voices and sticks. As Lily grew older, they had to work their way around a giant wedge to get to one another. After awhile, it got to be too much and Lily just gave up. Now she had three boys of her own and she'd punish Gertie by not letting her ever see them. Four hundred miles away - it might as well have been the dark side of the moon.

She had lost everything. Lost Lily a long time ago. Folks whittled away until there was nothing left of her Mr. Stiles. All she had now was her solitude. She held it close so others would know it and see it and say, "That's Gertie, alright." But she didn't particularly care for it, you see. It was just a visitor, like a distant relative that had arrived without an invitation and never left.

One fine morning in early March, the dawn sky had that kind of quality that tended to improve Gertie's mood. Periwinkle clouds wafted on a pretty pink horizon, waiting for the sun to bubble on up. Nearby, a dove cooed. Gertie decided to open a window for some fresh air.

A chilly wind swept in, but right on its heels, a warmer, pleasant breeze pushed past too, carrying the scent of honeysuckle. That set Gertie's eyes to roving across the back lawn and to the side, where Mr. Stiles' garden had once flourished.

"Oh, my!" Her hand went to her breast. There were tears. It was as if he had known the precise moment to return and stir her most deeply.

She gazed upon it. Beautiful, lush clusters of white blooms all over. From the lowest to the highest branches it glistened, like tiny angels had lit upon it and were preening their wings.

He had planted the Mexican Plum five years ago. "Happy Birthday, Gertie. Thisyer tree'll be the pride of the neighborhood. Make Steuben's sycamores look downright dreary, I tell you what." But it had never bloomed, and she had all but forgotten about it.

Another breeze fluttered the blooms, and she waited patiently for a fragrance to arrive. When it did, her eyes shut and she breathed, letting all of him in.

She sighed and opened her eyes, and there, another surprise. From the clotted soil of his garden rose a green shoot, alone and conspicuous, not unlike her. All about it lay scraps of the past: tomato vines, leafy lettuce and melon husks left unharvested, decayed and abandoned.

She turned and made for her breakfast. Most days, she'd work through it slowly, reading the paper and turning each page like it was an old, tattered Bible. But today, she ate quickly and gulped down her coffee. The dishes were thrown in the sink. It was only eight o'clock, but she felt if she didn't hurry, the day would slip right past just like all the rest had, waiting for the phone to ring.

She found a ratty pair of work jeans stuffed in the old cedar chest at the back of her closet. Above the chest hung several of Mr. Stiles' denim shirts. They were to go to Goodwill someday, but she hadn't gotten around to it. And how fortunate now because these were the very shirts he had gardened in. She tried one on. A bit blousy, but better when tucked in.

His tools had remained in the garage, neatly arranged on pegboards and hooks. She had vowed they'd never see the shelves at Goodwill. It felt odd wandering near them now. She remembered the way he'd tolerate her presence when he was sharpening a blade or mixing soil, knowing he'd rather be alone. It was the only time he had to himself, everyone always after him and whatnot. None of that mattered when it was just he and his garden.

So, she'd tread quietly now, letting her eyes kind of run lazy-like over the relics. A slow hand tickled a handsaw then slid along the handle of a pitchfork.

"Tendin' the soil, Gertie my dear!" he'd chime when she'd bring him a cold glass of lemonade in the heat of the afternoon. "You gotta work it," he'd say, "and God will show you a miracle." Then he'd drive the pitchfork into the soil with a twist and a grunt. She didn't believe in miracles, but she believed in her Mr. Stiles.

Gertie looked at her hands. Were they up to it? The skin gathered in discolored folds over delicate bones. She flexed, deciding her weakness wouldn't be her hands or her body. If she were to fail, it would be her spirit flagging. Yet now, it soared.

"Ha!" she huffed, clasping hold of the pitchfork and marching right out to the garden.

The sun had risen directly above the Mexican Plum, having chased all the clouds away. It shone arrogantly. She turned her back to it and imagined its mystery as her husband's face, peeking over the top of his creation to observe. His warm eyes spurred the muscles in her back and she plunged the pitchfork into the starving soil.

She had the morning to herself, commanding the earth, sun, and song of a garden bird. The steady meter of her labored breathing kept time with the crunch and swirl of the soil she worked. It was something serene and perfect to behold.

When she thought her body might wilt, her hurried heart would send a rush of blood to her tired back or an aching joint. She caught stride and gathered strength with each square of soil that rolled from gray to chocolate with a twist of the pitchfork.

Then, two unexpected intrusions.

The phone rang and she straightened. Her head jerked toward the door, her eyes narrowing to slits. It rang again, loud and brassy. Her hands loosened their grip, and the pitchfork swung wide from her body. For a brief moment she thought it some cruel hoax, conceived from the mind of a spiteful daughter hundreds of miles away. Then just as quickly that thought vanished with a cold shudder.

A third, then a fourth ring. It was as if Gertie's feet had taken root in the garden. Three more rings before the intruder relented. Gertie drew her pitchfork close and cast her eyes heavenward. Though the sun still shone, she thought the air heavier and more forbidding.

In the next instant, there came the low rumble of a car and the birds ceased their calls. The vehicle's approach was glacial. Gertie stood at the blind end of a wide, crookneck cul-de-sac, unable to see past a sharp bend. She strode to the curb's edge, peeved and somewhat wary because few ventured into the cove these days.

Shielding her eyes from the arching sun, she waited for it to emerge from around a hedgerow, gliding like a lazy, engorged serpent, vulgar and terrifying. The sun, with which she had had an alliance, betrayed her and splashed its fickle brilliance off the surface of the foul imposter - a dark, emerald Lincoln Town Car with chrome bumpers that gleamed fantastic.

She slid behind a mound of jasmine that clumped at the curb. Light exploded off the car. Her heart had all but stopped. The car coasted along the circumference of the cove, hissing right past her. The shadow of a large oak spilled upon it, affording a brief, startling view of the occupant inside.

Gertie caught her breath. She couldn't believe it. She bobbed and weaved, hoping for another look, but the car had already angled away.

"The absolute nerve of those people." Her eyes darkened, absent of anything wholesome. She moved from behind the shrub and bent to retrieve her pitchfork, then rose and held it imperially, with equal measures of wrath and piety, like the staff of a chosen one.

The Town Car half-circled to the opposite end of the cul-de-sac with Gertie's eyes fastened to it. She'd stare it down and banish it. But when it slowed and turned to begin its ascent up the driveway of the old Steuben place, the cruel vagaries of a lifetime of events jolted her.

How had she not noticed? Her eyes scoured the grounds of the Steuben lot. All of the accumulated undergrowth had been removed - cut back as far as the wooded area behind the house. Three garden beds, bordered neatly by heavy timbers, terraced down the sloping front yard. She took a few steps aside and craned to see an ornate stone-carved birdbath along the side of the house, enclosed within an arched arbor of vines covered with red trumpet blooms.

The three towering sycamores in front had been sculpted and all of their dead branches removed, exposing much of the once hidden two-story house. It had been repainted yellow - a bright, bright sunshiny yellow with ruby-red trim along the eaves and shutters. The green Town Car in contrast to the garish house was at once the most striking and horrifying sight Gertie had ever seen.

The companion sun ducked behind a solitary cloud, leaving her to face the blasphemy alone.

The woman that climbed from the car was lean, erect and imposing, and fittingly, colorfully attired: a flowing dress of gold fabric laced with Nubian and geometric designs. She wore a chartreuse scarf about her head from which tumbled long, dark cords of intricately braided hair veined with occasional streaks of gray. She turned to face Gertie from across the way. The eyes were hidden behind large, violet-tinged sunglasses, but the rest of the face told Gertie everything: smooth, prominent cheekbones balanced perfectly aside a broad, noble nose whose tapered curvature accentuated the mouth stretched into a serious line of purpose.

Gertie turned and trembled with fury. Her gaze came to rest upon her garden, the soil rather pathetic and barren. Suddenly, it all seemed futile.

"Gertie!" The voice was authoritative and unexpectedly refined, without the dialectical inflection Gertie had expected from one of color.

"Gertie Stiles!"

High heels clicked on the warming asphalt. Gertie glanced up at the door, and a thought flashed to make a run for it. Ridiculous! Was she to hide forever? No. She'd stand and let it be.

The pace of the approaching woman slowed as she neared. Gertie spun awkwardly to face her visitor, almost losing her balance.

"Well, I'll be. It is Gertie Stiles." One side of the woman's mouth crept upward into a half-smile. The woman had stopped just short of stepping up on the curb. She canted a hip as her posture took on a relaxed sort of familiarity.

Gertie just stood, wide-eyed and speechless. She genuinely had no idea who this woman was. Whoever she was, Gertie was appalled at her effrontery. Appalled, too, at the ugly thoughts that surfaced in her mind. She blamed this woman for those thoughts: it was high-handed niggers like this that agitated society and kept Christian women off-balanced... and afraid.

She remembered her daddy's workers on the farm - soft-spoken colored men who always smiled and seemed to glide, like everything was well or the way it should be no matter how bad things really were. They never judged and you never felt compelled to judge in return. This woman here had her eyes running up one side and down another, taking inventory. Gertie felt naked. Her eyes misted with hot tears.

The woman removed her glasses. The eyes were huge and bright like polished bronze, with a haughty intelligence that further fueled Gertie's wrath.

"You don't know who I am, do you?"

Gertie began to open her mouth, but tasted the foul words ready to roll from her tongue. So, she swallowed and shook her head.

"Renny Gaines. You remember... widow of Horace Gaines. Your husband Garland and Horace were associates, of sorts."

Gertie's lips drew a thin line. The notion that this woman had any connection at all to her was incredible. Then to hear someone of color use her husband's first name so matter-of-factly... well, it was too much. And, Mr. Stiles! Why hadn't he said a word?

Gertie's head rolled to avoid the indignity. She paused to wipe her eyes dry, and upon reopening them, she looked to the Mexican Plum for guidance. But, it had shed its morning sheen, its blossoms having dulled to a pale, ordinary yellow.

"Well, I see...," Renny said, barely above a whisper.

Gertie's head dropped and turned instinctively to her garden's work. Renny's eyes followed.

"That's tired soil, Gertie. It could do with some help, mmm-hmm."

Gertie said nothing.

"No ma'am. Barely any life in it a'tall," and Renny stepped up onto the lawn and passed within several feet of Gertie on her way to the bed.

"Just where do you think you're going?" Gertie aimed her rising voice directly at the back of the woman, yet it cracked at its peak.

Renny stepped to the edge of the bed, unheeding, then swept her arm across the length of the garden until it came upon the solitary green shoot. She pointed with a long, finely manicured nail extended and brightly painted red. Gertie looked down at her own chipped and broken nails then shoved her free hand into a pocket.

"An onion! Fighting it's way up and out. It's strong, but Lord Jesus look at it suffer... and needlessly."

Then a move that arrested Gertie's breathing altogether. Renny took up her skirt and knelt slowly, as if in evening prayer. She lifted aside her long drape of braids and let it come to rest on her opposite shoulder, revealing the profile of this enigmatic woman. At this angle, Gertie saw the subtle frailties: tiny lines at the corners of the eye that deepened as the woman's concern grew more pronounced. Renny then picked up a handful of the desiccated soil, tracing a slow circle in it with her thumb.

"God Almighty, it's so tired. You'll let me fix it, won't you, Gertie?"

"Now lookie here..."

Renny motioned for silence. "I have a tea I can make up. A little of this and that. It'll condition this soil... make it what it used to be."

"Mr. Stiles did just fine without any fancy treatments or conditioners."

"I ain't talking about nothing some charlatan's selling on TV. This is the Truth!" With her right hand, Renny reached over and wrestled the onion from the ground. "Onions the size of grapefruits, Gertie! Cantaloupes, I swear, you'll need a team of mules to haul 'em," and she flung the withered scallion aside.

Gertie had had enough.

"Why you..." Gertie steeled her jaw. "You don't know me! You don't know me!" Her voice rose an octave. "It's sinful what you're doing. This is hallowed ground you're desecrating." All of her resolve and defiance ran red in her face.

Renny struggled to her feet without saying a word, then turned to face Gertie, but her eyes were unfixed, looking beyond Gertie as if she hadn't heard a thing said.

"You march right up here and start in. The absolute nerve!" Gertie positioned the pitchfork in a diagonal across her body, unsure what the intruder might do next. Gertie wasn't through.

"You people, always edging in and tearing down what honorable men have built. Why can't you do for yourselves? Build your ownselves up without climbing on the backs of others."

Renny's eyes continued to scan in the distance, over and across the Stiles' homestead and beyond... judging eyes that alternately widened and narrowed.

"You can't even look at me. How dare you? You haven't any idea... none whatsoever. Look at me! Look at me, damn you!" And that's precisely when Gertie discovered the depths of her own despair. How far she had sunk and how pitiful to now endure the deliverance of this merciless decree from such an unlikely messenger. All of her grief flooded her face, breaking it into pieces. She screamed, as if having felt the lash of a whip.

Renny's unmoored eyes floated gently and came to a rest upon Gertie's anguish. They were sad, knowing eyes. The kind of eyes that had seen everything, like those of an old country doctor at the bedside of a dying invalid.

The sun had now disappeared entirely. In this short interim, dark clouds had congregated and rumbled their discontent. The sharp odor of ozone harbingered rain.

Then the phone rang, shrill and demanding. Gertie shrieked. The elements were making a mockery of her agony. It rang again. Tears rained down Gertie's face.

"Yes, ma'am... mmm-hmm. I'm gonna help you, Gertie. Women like us, we haven't any choice."

The phone rang and rang again. Gertie stood paralyzed, bawling and her head shaking violently.

"Leave me be! Oh, God Almighty!" she thundered and finally tore herself free, letting drop the pitchfork. She ran as fast as her weakened legs would carry her. At the door, the stray tabby she had taken lately to feeding froze on it haunches, then bolted as Gertie staggered toward the door. The phone was still ringing.

"I'm coming, baby. I'm coming," Gertie kept saying. She fumbled with the knob before flinging the door open. The phone seemed to be glowing red hot on the kitchen counter. Her legs were beginning to fail, like in a bad dream, and she stumbled forth to fall against the counter.

In her mind, she quickly calculated the interval of time since the last ring and suddenly panicked. Her arm shot out and knocked the phone off the hook.

"Lily!" She chased the receiver over the slick counter surface. "Lily, sweetie... my darling, it's me." Finally, she grabbed hold of the receiver and brought it to her ear. She was sobbing hysterically by now.

"Lily... Lily... Lily?" she repeated into the drone of the dial tone.

It rained steadily into the evening and past midnight. For many hours, Gertie lay curled upon her bed, listening to the rain and searching for some simple truth. Everything that had happened that day had been impossible to fathom. It was as if some alien force had shoved her into another world turned inside out, where what had been pleasant before was now marred, what had been understood was now muddied, and what had been the truth was now lies.

At some point very late into the night, Gertie found herself wandering the house, through his private study where she had left everything virtually intact. Faint traces of the odor of his pipe persisted. But the objects looked foreign, like artifacts in a small town museum. She felt the same sensation examining his closet. All of his business suits neatly arranged and pressed, remnants of a past life Gertie suddenly realized was closed to her.

She was exhausted. Buried just under the surface of her exhaustion lay the terror, and if revealed, it would have the power to destroy her. She would keep it buried, she vowed, as she shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee.

While filling the coffee pot, she happened to glance outside the window above the sink. The rain had ceased and a fluorescent light from the moon played out across the backyard.

From the edge of her field of vision, there came a movement. She turned off the light and peered from the window. There! She pressed her face closer to window.

A dim, ebon figure skulked in the garden. The moonlight, stippled by the dispersing clouds, made it difficult to discern the entity. A wave of exhaustion rolled over her, and the atmosphere sort of swam. All of it seemed unreal. The figure hopped and danced, then once stooped and bent close to the ground for many minutes.

Gertie stood silent and waited and watched. Her vision clouded further as the specter swirled in vast eddies of her mind. She was meant to bear witness, but not understand. There are events that occur that are meant to change lives. Some jar the consciousness so profoundly that they cannot ever be forgotten. Many, however, roll past like a freak summer storm, merely bewildering their subjects for a short moment of time. Gerties decided she must rest. So at length, she set the coffee pot aside and returned to bed, harkening to the distant hoot of an owl in the hours preceding dawn.

In the days and weeks that followed, Gertie observed how the garden sprang to life. In a short time, it teemed with vines that bore fruit, and vegetables of all varieties dotted the bed. She contented herself with doing nothing. She would wait for some manifestation of reason. The tomatoes plumped and ripened. The eggplants swelled in purple majesty. Yet, she harvested nothing.

Across the cove, the foliage from the terraced gardens towered in festoons of radiant color. The old Steuben place abounded with wildlife. There was the family of raccoons that bathed in the grotto pond, an egret that stalked the grounds in the early morning, and a herd of deer that lay in the cool grass at dusk under the shade of the sycamores. There was beauty; there was life.

Renny's presence, however, became a mystery. Her movements were shrouded in secrecy despite Gertie's vigilant eye. Gertie would pause in her daily surveillance to allow herself a daily shower, only to return and find the Lincoln gone, and gone for many hours, outlasting her until she finally fell asleep in her recliner next to the window, reading the scriptures.

It was Gertie's infrequent trips to the market that provided any clues to Renny's coming and goings. On any occasion there would always be ladies from the church gathered near the cashier or produce stand, clucking and braying in not-so-discreet voices about the latest scandal or impropriety.

Gertie had always made it a point to hover near these cabals. She would gauge public sentiment, hoping in vain that some fond remembrance of her Mr. Stiles might be voiced, or hoping that she had not become the object of private scorn and ridicule. But neither she nor Mr. Stiles were ever mentioned. The conversation always steered toward the trivial and banal, as if people's lives hadn't any substance at all and the dead and forgotten were of no account.

Then, by degrees, there arose a murmur of growing alarm. It had been reported an unbidden woman had arrived.

"Just showed up out of the blue, 'bout two months ago at Saint Mark's, inappropriately attired, I might add," Mrs. Kirschbaum informed the ladies. "Didn't say a word to a soul. Just sat herself down right in front... the second row! Had on a wide, floppy hat she did, an ugly mustard color. She wears it inside at all times, except for the duration of the service, that is, which any person of decency would know to remove."

Mrs. Potts and the widow Hyde tutted.

"You'da thought the first time a freak incident, but she's been back ever since, dressing even trashier than before. The way she struts about... well, someone should do something. And you know how them people sing. I just don't even bother anymore."

"They have their own place of worship," said Mrs. Potts. "It's a sign of the times, I suppose. The government's done thrown up its hands. It ain't any good for them or us."

They all nodded.

"It's a shame what became of her. Horace Gaines was a respectable man. A heap more tolerable than most white men I've known. Built himself up without looking for an extended hand. Now look at her... tainting his good name. A widow should carry a good name to her grave... not drag it around through the mud."

"Take a pillow to my face if'n I ruin my Orlen's good name," rasped the widow Hyde. "Surely, your deacons have met," she added. "Lord Jesus, I thought I'd make it to a hunnerd 'fore seein' a niggra set foot in a west side church."

Gertie stood with her back to them, staring at the label of a soup can. Her face had grown hot with shame, and the words on the label blurred. The air was foul and oppressive. She breathed a heavy sigh then calmly walked away from her half-filled basket and out of the market.

Gertie took to counting the hours as the warm August days waned to cooler nights with September's approach. She had all but forgotten about the outside world beyond the cove. Everything that meant anything was happening right here.

Since that day at the market, things began falling apart. The phone would ring and she'd let it. Sometimes for a very long time before she'd shuffle over slowly, then lift the receiver with a vague expression of dread, and always the same - an incessant dial tone. She knew the number to dial, but wouldn't. What was there to say? Ultimately, she unplugged the phone.

Outside her window, the real story was being written.

August usually boded well for a healthy garden. Instead, the tendriled vines quit growing and curled inward. The tomatoes turned and dropped to the ground in a mushy heaps. The eggplants collapsed and the cantaloupes swelled to no larger than her fist.

More horrifying was what occurred at the Steuben place. The terraced gardens became a graveyard of death and decay. All the flowers had died and lay in blackened mounds of refuse. The floral shrubs were bare-wooded skeletons, as if a mid-winter storm had ravaged them. A gaping wound severed almost the entire the trunk of one of the sycamores, and all had dropped the majority of their leaves. The raccoons had moved on, and the deer were to never return.

Each night, a solitary candle burned in the windowsill of the attic loft of the Steuben house. Gertie stood watch, waiting for any trace of a shadow to pass and inspirit her, but one never did.

Was it the full the moon that emboldened her? Perhaps. Her headstone would read that she died on September 13th, 1975. But on September 12th, she was very much alive, and decided she would visit the Steuben place. It was twilight and the ochre moon loomed gigantic behind the upper branches of the now barren sycamores.

As she stepped from her curb to cross the cove, a plume of dark smoke billowed from the exhaust pipe of the Lincoln. The engine roared to life. Gertie froze as a good portion of her courage petitioned to take flight.

The car began to slowly back down the driveway. Gertie swore she heard her phone start ringing though she knew it to be unplugged. Any chance she had came down to stopping that car. She moved quickly to intercept it.

"Renny Gaines!" she squawked. "You stop and listen, you heah?" Gertie closed in, both hands motioning to stop.

"I got something to say... to ask you."

The Lincoln's windows were tinted. Gertie caught her own reflection in the driver's window as she approached. Her countenance was afire and her hair sprang wildly about without any breeze to excite it.

"Please roll down that window."

With deliberateness, Renny did roll down that window. The sight of Renny for the first time since the day she had arrived had the exact same effect: Gertie couldn't speak. This woman's power diminished everything. It was almost too regal, and no force of will or desperation would deter it.

"There's nothing here for me, Gertie. Only a fool would think otherwise. I'm moving on. I'm sorry." Renny had her eyes trained straight ahead, in a direction that would lead her out of the cove forever.

Voiceless, Gertie's palsied jaw trembled.

"Ain't nothing to say, Gertie. The thoughts... they run 'round and 'round inside your head, day and night, but it's all a circle until you make yourself draw a straight line, mmm-hmm. Now let me be and find your own way," and Renny began rolling up the window.

Gertie placed a frail hand on top of the window in a futile gesture. The window kept rising with Gertie's hand cupped over it. Her reflection in the glass came into view to reveal now, a woman broken and defeated. Her hair still flaired, but it wasn't in defiance, only in pitiful disarray. She withdrew her hand and the window shut tight.

The Lincoln lurched and rolled on and out of existence, as if it really never had existed at all. Gertie looked up at the moon. There were no tears.

She finally turned and shambled back to her yard. She walked on over to the garden. There wasn't much left of it. The incipient night advanced and the moon crested the sycamores. There in the back of the garden, a plot of earth remained unoccupied by any littered remains.

She circled on around and stepped into the center of the spot. She then removed her shoes and allowed her toes to dig into the soil. It was cool and comfortable. An invitation was issued, so she knelt and steadied herself with a hand before lying full upon the ground.

The earth seemed to swallow her whole. She nestled further, the desolate soil becoming cold as steel against her. She waited for it to warm against her body, but it wouldn't. Most of her now lay submerged, but overhead, she could still see the moon. It had shrunk in size and now shone diamond white, chilling the night air and hardening the soil that pressed in all around her.

She tried to imagine the face of Mr. Stiles, but nothing came to her, only the face of the ancient moon - cold, remote and the only one to be counted among the bereaved.

        Jefre Schmitz's day job is Technical Manager of the automated financial systems for a large state agency in Austin, Texas...spectacularly uninteresting, he says, but "it puts vittles on the table." In the summer of 2001, he developed an itch to start scribbling some words on paper after having read the entire works of Cormac McCarthy and Flannery O'Connor. His aspirations are not to attain the lofty heights of these two authors, but rather to pay homage by practicing an art they perfected and "have a damn good time in the process."

Image: "Penitent Magdalene," Caravaggio, 1596

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