The Way Home
W. Randy Rice

This is a true story. I swear.

If you’re anything like me, you have a hard time tearing yourself away from the creek. On the way back from the reunion this year, I thought I found a way to make it last just a little bit longer. I’m not a big antique person, but every once in a while I’ll stop in an interesting looking antique store. We came across one on the way back in through Clendenin. Somewhere before we got all the way into town, close to the old ice cream place, on the right, was a weathered barn that had been converted into an antique store. I had to stop.

I walked in the door and it had that same musky, dusty, creosote kind of smell of camp. The floor creaked with every step, and fresh cobwebs stretched across my face more than once. The place was dark, and crowded with relics of every imaginable vintage. Trinkets and tools mostly, though there was a fair amount of furniture. Nothing fancy – all very utilitarian. Hard working people had owned these treasures. They were worn, but well cared for. A table of knives showed grips worn smooth, but blades as sharp and shiny as if they’d been sharpened yesterday. Dozen’s of brass miner’s lamps were dull with a grayish patina, but all the knobs and lids still turned easily. Amazing.

I wandered an aisle or two, toward the back of the store, and then toward the front where a glass case was crowded with an unorganized assortment of buttons, combs, and lipstick cases. If she hadn’t moved, I never would have noticed her. An old woman, in a wheelchair, sitting behind the counter. She had to be more ancient than anything in the store. Despite the heat, she was wrapped in several crochet quilts: a black one around her legs, and a bright yellow and orange one around her shoulders. She sipped steaming coffee or tea from a ceramic cup she held on a saucer. But for lifting the cup to her lips, she moved not at all. Her head was tilted to one side and down toward the floor. Her hand trembled only slightly with the weight of the cup – or the buzz of the caffeine. She didn’t seem to be aware of my presence at all.

The demented old lady made me sad, and I turned to lose my thoughts in the surprises to be found down the next aisle. I’d only just turned when a voice, thick with the accent of southern West Virginia asked, “Can I help you find anything, sir.” Her arms were crossed and she seemed vaguely suspicious. Between her body language and the formality of calling me “sir”, I got the impression she wasn’t used to “strangers” stopping by. “No, thank you” I said, trying to conjure any association that might help put her at ease. “We’re just coming back from out on Blue Creek – I used to go to the Carbide Camps out there – and I thought I’d stop in and look around.”

It was like someone recognizing a long lost and particularly favored relative they hadn’t seen in enough time to know who they were at first. She smiled warmly, and tilted her head as she folded her hands and held them in front of her. I swear, I thought she was going to hug me. At precisely the same time, the head of the old lady slowly raised so that she was looking directly at me. Her eyes were as alive and vibrant as those of a child. She smiled, and she began swirling her coffee cup. Instead of spilling whatever it held, the cup jingled with the sound of something small and metal inside. I would have expected her to have a raspy, croaking voice, but she spoke brightly and said, “Come here boy, and give me what you got you in your pocket.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. I didn’t even know which pocket she meant. I was wearing those camping shorts with about six different pockets (yes, . . . still). The first pocket I checked though held one of the .22 casings we’d picked up at the rifle range. “Bring it over here, and sweeten my cup honey,” the old lady beckoned with the swirling, jingling cup. In that instant, I recognized the cup she held was one of the old US Navy surplus cups from camp. The thick, ivory colored ceramic cups with the light green line close to the rim. She swirled it steadily, and held it out for me like a street person begging spare change.

The younger lady, still holding her affectionate pose, stepped sideways so I could pass, and the old lady nodded, smiling. I closed the distance between us with only a few steps, not certain it was a particularly good idea, but eager to see what would happen next. I stepped close enough to see a footlocker key rolling in the cup and making the steady jingling sound. She was swirling it fast, but I could see every turn of the key. It’s hard to describe, but it was like slow motion in real time, if that makes any sense. I couldn’t take my eyes off the little metal key rolling against the deep ivory background. It seemed, . . . hypnotizing I guess is the best way to put it. “Go ahead honey, drop that right in here.”

My hand seemed remarkably steady for how I was feeling. I took the rusty .22 casing and held it about three inches over the cup. She looked from the cup, up to me, smiled, and nodded reassuringly. I dropped the casing and watched it fall into the cup. I could hear it falling with a rushing sound entirely disproportionate to the time or space around us. It took forever to fall to the bottom of the cup and, immediately I felt, . . . not dizzy but, like that feeling you get in your ears when you’re going up or down a big hill in a car. In an instant, everything became totally dark, completely silent, and entirely still.

I don’t remember closing my eyes, and when I opened them I still couldn’t see that well. I was in a room, but it was dark, and close. I wasn’t frightened, but I definitely felt the need to find a way out. I lifted my arm to feel my way through the dark, and right in front of me there was a wooden door. The doorknob was about where I thought it should be, and I turned it. I pushed to find that the door opened inward instead, and took a step back to make room. As I pulled the door back a different kind of light than I’d ever seen before spilled into the closet. It was like the light after a storm, but bluer, and denser. It seemed almost like being under water. I stepped through the doorway, and I was in the boy’s Castle. No shit.

I staggered with the surprise, but quickly found my feet and walked to the very center of the big old room. Things I’d long forgotten were right there. All the honor camper pictures and plaques; the rattlesnake hides; the anvil over the fireplace, and the coolers that held the special hamburgers the counselors saved for themselves. The chairs were all turned upside down on the tables, and the floor was immaculately clean. The salt, pepper, and sugar shakers were all lined up on the shelf between the dining area and the kitchen. All the doors were shut, and all the windows were closed. I walked to the front, turned a knob and pulled – half afraid that this simple disruption may interrupt whatever dream or delusion I was allowing. But the door opened easily and before me stood the courtyard of Camelot. And the oddest thought crossed my mind: Now that I was “back”, would I ever want to leave? In that moment it occurred to me I was alone, and yes, I very much wanted to leave. But not until after I’d taken one last, long, good look around.

I turned to my right, walking down the steps of the Castle and through the breezeway leading to wings 5 and 6, the craft house, and the kybo. The old mechanical wringer was still there, and even seemed to be freshly damp. I walked up the stairs and turned toward the craft house, remembering the garden hose that hung at the foot of the stairs, and reminding to look, and find, the old fire hose over toward the vespers bridge. I walked up the stone sidewalk, taking inventory of everything I’d forgotten, and up toward the archery and rifle ranges. The metal quivers still stood, and the gray picnic table revealed initials, names, and relationships. I fairly ran to the rifle range, afraid at any moment all this would evaporate and I’d miss the opportunity of another memory too long past.

The rifle range was just as we left it. My feet scraped across the same pile of brass from which I’d retrieved the casing, now jingling with the key in the old lady’s cup, the day before. The only difference being, this brass shone brightly. I picked up a piece and, probably as much out of habit as nostalgia, I put it to my lips and blew across it to make that high pitched whistling sound. This is where the story gets weird.

It made a sound louder than a train whistle. The piercing sound echoed through the hollows and rang in my head so loud that I dropped the brass and covered my ears. And as soon as I took my hands away, I heard the sound of voices. A crowd of children’s voices from back toward camp. Down at the pool!

I jogged at first, and then I ran . . . straight down the field between wings 5 and 6, up and over the Castle stairs and out onto the basketball courts and, there it was. The pool was full of people. Towels hung off the fences and the smell of chlorine hung in the air. Kids splashed, and jumped, and dived. The sound of the diving board came rushing back just exactly as I’d forgotten it.

I didn’t blink. I didn’t dare. If anyone had been watching I’d probably have looked like a zombie walking across the field. (What’s funny though is, I jumped over the bank when I got to it!). I walked straight up to the gate, and was ready to go through the shower, no matter how cold it was, when I was stopped.

You ever get two magnets close together and turn them so that they repel each other instead of attracting? That’s the feeling I got as soon as I tried to step through the gate. I tried two or three times, and I just couldn’t get through. And then I noticed that nobody seemed to see me. And it dawned on me that, in my excitement, I’d not really seen any of them.

I took a step back, and walked along the fence. Everyone looked familiar, but I didn’t really “recognize” anyone. And then a ball bounced out of the pool, and a skinny kid jumped out of the water in plaid swimming shorts, chasing it before it went in the grass. “Get it Bob” someone shouted about the time he put his hands around it, and looked straight through me. It was Bob Lilley. I swear! And as he turned and ran back to the pool a girl shouted from the lifeguard stand for him not to run, and it was Kay. And the closer I looked the more it dawned on me that everyone playing in the pool was the people who were at the reunion that weekend. Tom Moriarty in his Marshall shirt, Jack Mallory with a bandana, . . . Kay, Beth, Barbie, . . . they were all there. They all played, unencumbered by anything but the desire to make the summer last, just one day longer.

The wind blew, and a familiar jingling sound distracted me from the pool. Someone had hung a footlocker key necklace over the fence, and the breeze rattled it against the metal pole. The breeze died down long enough for me to hear the whistle blow three times, and everyone started climbing out of the pool. They shivered as the wind picked up again, and the key rattled harder, more consistently, jingling, and I was standing looking into the swirling cup of the old lady, watching the footlocker key go round and round.

My jaws ached, and there was a lump in my throat. The old lady’s wrist relaxed and the cup hung on her finger. She rested back in her chair and looked up at me, smiling. She seemed tired, but immensely pleased. The whole store brightened and my daughter came through the front door. “Daaaaa-aaad, can we pah-leeeze go now?”

That was it. It was done, and I was back.