THE CAVERN OF DEEP HARMONY

PART SEVEN:

Eden simply sat there and stared at Marshall as Martha bustled in, making a fuss over him.  How could she have possibly been so blasted oblivious?  "Dumb as a dodo," she muttered under her breath. She'd gotten so distracted trying to follow Wadsworth that she'd just completely stopped thinking about what the harness could be for. Then when she saw Marshall almost entombed in the mud, all her concentration had been on getting him free, getting him out, getting him help. By the time the EMTs arrived, she was so exhausted her brain was fried. But...still.

She watched him greet Martha,  and felt like sinking beneath the cushions of the couch. But his voice captured her, held her up. It was very deep, though he was speaking softly.  It was the

first time she'd heard it and it just...fit.

She saw Wadsworth looking at her, his tail wagging slightly, but he was in harness and remained steady at Marshall's side.  Marshall was explaining to Martha and Harold that it was really awkward for both him and Wadsworth right now because a guide dog was trained always to walk on his person's left, but with his left arm in a sling, he couldn't hold the harness, so they were having to make do with the right side. "It's amazing what a difference it makes," he said.

Martha looked over at Eden and then back to Marshall. "She's here, you know."

"She?"

"Eden. The one who got you out of the gully."

"I'd like very much to meet her, Martha, tell her how grateful I am."

Martha signaled for Eden to come join them.  Eden bit her lower lip. On his feet, dressed as

he was, he was a whole different ballgame from the mud-coated man of yesterday.  "Come on," Martha urged, so she got to her feet and walked across the room to stand beside the older woman.

"Marshall, this is Eden McLaughlin."

He extended a large hand in her direction, waiting for her to take it. She'd held it before, there in the gully, but she stared at it a few seconds before lifting her own. "Hello," she said.

"Mrs. McLaughlin," he replied, his lips curving in a smile. "There are no words adequate to

tell you...."

"Eden," she interrupted.  "Please...call me Eden."

"Eden," he repeated. "Thank you. I mean that with my whole heart."

She had no idea what to say. He was several inches taller than she was, seemed taller somehow today than yesterday as he stood in front of her. Some sense of what...presence?...radiated from him.  Yesterday it had been coated in mud and pain. Today the intensity of it took her somewhat aback.  Miles had been nothing like this.  If one were to make a statue of Miles, one would mold it from wet red clay.  There was a roundedness to Miles. Not that he was at all plump, but his face was round, his eyes were round and blue, his laugh, even his voice was round. Marshall had been chiseled from granite...or marble. He wasn't round, not at all.

She'd left her hand in his and was studying his face now that she knew he was not staring back

at her. What was it she was feeling as she looked at him?  She had no experience of blindness other than a sort of vague horror of the thought of it. He was so handsome, so...vital. How could he be blind? It seemed somehow like a terrible waste.  She found herself wondering how long he'd been blind, how it had happened to him. It had to have been utterly traumatic, changing everything, limiting everything. She felt a great sense of disappointment for his sake rising in her.

"I'm sorry," she said, the words slipping out before she thought.

"Sorry? What are you sorry for, Eden?"

Good Lord! Had she said that out loud? "For...for not being able to get you out more quickly.

It, um, seemed to take me a long time."

He smiled again. "I wasn't doing a very good job of getting myself out, I fear. So however long

it took you is quite all right by me."

"Your arm was really stuck under that branch...and the mud kept rising. It was...."

"It sounds perfectly dreadful," Martha said. "I'm just amazed you were able to do what you

did, Eden."  She clucked her tongue a couple of times for emphasis. "But now I've got a nice supper all fixed." She laughed. "I know it's a bed and breakfast, but today we're doing supper, too. It'll just be the two of you, I'm afraid. Mr. and Mrs. Simpson and their daughter checked out just before lunch and we don't have any other guests coming in until the weekend."

She led the way to the dining room.  The oval mahogany table was set for two. "Aren't you and Harold eating?" Eden asked.

"Oh, we'll be eating in the kitchen. We always like to let our guests dine on their own. Come

on, have a seat. This way, Marshall." She pulled out a chair with its back to the fireplace. 

"Got a nice fire going to keep you warm."

Marshall sat down and Wadsworth settled on the floor just at his side. Eden took the chair on the opposite side of the table facing him.  "Thank you, Martha," Marshall said, sliding his

chair in. "The fire feels really good."

He heard Eden slide her own chair in.  She was sitting quietly, not saying anything. He'd not expected somehow to be dining alone this evening with his rescuer.  "I'm glad," he said, "to

have this chance to thank you again. I'd like to hear more about Wadsworth, what he did to

get you there."

She smiled, then remembered he couldn't see her smile. This was hard...his blindness...and she didn't know quite what to do around him now that she was aware of it.  No wonder he didn't really need to open his muddy eyes yesterday.  Then it dawned on her that his ears had been clogged with mud, too. How had that been for him, that world with no sight and no sound? She remembered reading a book about Helen Keller when she'd been a girl, had even done a report on it, but somehow it had never been real to her. Well, it was real enough to him, now wasn't

it?

"Wadsworth is amazing," she finally answered. "I'm not used to dogs that, um, do things."

He chuckled. "Yes, Wadsworth does a lot of things." He leaned a bit, patting the dog's neck. "Don't you, boy?"

"Have you had him long?"

"Three years now. We're together just about all the time."

Three years. Well, then he'd been blind for at least that long. "I heard you teach. Does he go to school with you?"  For the life of  her, she couldn't quite imagine how he taught a college class

of sighted students.

"He does.  He's a great hit with the kids, in fact. They love to hear stories about the things he's done. Which leads me back to what he did yesterday. Just what did he do?"

She almost snorted at the memory of their meeting. "I thought he was a bear."

"A bear?"  He chuckled again.

"I was fairly far into the woods, where the path starts to narrow, had my hands full of leaves when he came crashing out of the underbrush. Scared me to death until I realized he was a

dog.  Then he was most insistent I follow him. Tugged on my jacket even. He just wouldn't
give up." 

Marshall's lips curved into a fond smile.

"You really love him, don't you?" she observed.

"There's a saying about guide dogs that goes 'My eyes have a wet nose.'   That's him, but he's

a whole lot more than that, too. Yes, I love him very much." As if in response, Wadsworth's tail thumped the floor happily.

"What happened next?" he asked.

"Well, we got to the edge of the gully where it had crumbled away and he found a way down. I just sort of followed him. You were almost entirely covered in the mud.  Waddy kept licking

you. Got his tongue all muddy."

"Waddy?"

"Um, well, I just sort of started calling him that. I saw his tag so I knew his name. We kinda became friends trying to get you out of there."

His smile broadened, showing even white teeth. "I rather like that. Waddy. He's named after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow."

"Ah, the daffodil guy."  Damn, she didn't like the really black dark glasses. She wanted to be sitting across from him, knowing he was looking at her. It wasn't...right...not at all, that he couldn't. 

Marshall controlled his smile. "Not quite the daffodil guy.  You're thinking of Wordsworth, not Wadsworth.  Longfellow was the Hiawatha guy. But I'm very interested in Wordsworth, too. In fact, next spring I'm hoping to go to the Lake District, Wadsworth and I, in time for the daffodils. It's something I've always wanted to do, walk there beside the lakes in spring."

He was serious. He was actually serious. What could he possibly get out of being in the midst

of acres of daffodils he couldn't see?  But, "That sounds nice," was what she said. 

However, he'd caught the nuance in her voice. "It doesn't make sense to you?"

"What?"  Good Lord, how did he know what she was thinking?

"That I would want to walk there."

"No, I didn't mean...well...it's just...I don't understand. How would you know the daffodils were...there?"  Damn! She couldn't believe she'd actually asked the man that!

"Because I know a single daffodil. I've held one in my hands and touched all its parts."  The fingers of his right hand moved gracefully as he spoke.  "When you get on intimate terms with one flower and then trail your hand over a row of them, it becomes easy to take that and multiply that. And then you add the breeze that blows there in the early spring and the soft sounds they make rubbing against one another, the lapping of the water at the edges of the lake.  You add the birds you know who live in the area, probably the bleating of some spring lambs, the rustle of the branches with their leaves just coming out. Spring has its own wonderful scent, the plowed earth, the water itself, the flowers. And then you put in the knowledge that you're there, right there in the place where the poet walked, the place that inspired his words and it just...comes together."

She paused, her fork halfway to her lips, looking at him, realizing he knew more about daffodils than she'd ever taken the time to find out.  She knew they were yellow mostly and had little trumpet-thingies, but she'd never run her fingers over one, never gotten to know a single daffodil, how had he put it, ...intimately. 

She cleared her throat.  "You...you teach literature, right?"

"I do. I think I've loved words all my life.  But you must, too. You work for a newspaper, don't you?"

"The Tribune-Review, yes. I write for the entertainment section. Museum openings, concerts, that sort of thing. Movie reviews, too."

"Ah, I like movies."

"You do?"

"I usually go the DVD route. I had a colleague at Duquesne who'd watch them with me. He was wonderful at describing what happened between the moments of dialogue.  He took a position

in Florida this fall, though. It's hard to find someone really good at that."

Gads, he liked movies. That was a new thought for her. She studied him a moment more, mentally trying to remove his glasses so she could see his whole face as she had there in the rain and when he was sleeping in the hospital. "Have you se...um...are you familiar with one called
Gladiator?"  Never in a million years would she admit why she asked that.

"Yes, indeed. George, my former colleague, really enjoyed describing that one.  In fact, he got quite a charge out of telling me I reminded him of the General in it.  He even got a cheap copy

of a gladius off eBay and left it on my desk shortly after that. I still have it hanging on my office wall."

She smiled. Ok, it wasn't just her, then. "You do, you know, look quite a lot like him.  He even had a dog...in the beginning for a while...that was kind of like Waddy."

"Wadsworth here has never been in battle, though, never bitten a single barbarian."

"I think you may be wrong there. He was in quite a battle just yesterday, for your life."

He dipped his head in agreement. "Good point."

There he was sitting across the table from her, carrying on a conversation with her, yet he couldn't seem to get a handle on just who she was. There was something a bit guarded about

her. From her voice and manner, she didn't seem as old as he'd thought. Harold had said she was widowed.  Perhaps that was why she was guarded?  She obviously was unfamiliar with things relating to blindness. But he was used to that, finding it to be the case more often than not.  So it was her fingers he remembered touching his face, his eyes? Somehow he was having

a hard time relating that to the person he was dining with.  In his memory, the touch had been soft, almost intimate, but the woman across from him maintained a certain stiffness that didn't fit. But then, just because she had saved his life didn't necessarily mean she had to feel comfortable around him.

"Are you here for long?" he tried.

"I'm not sure yet. Just sort of playing it by ear. And you?"

"I'm rather of a long-termer. At least I was.  I'm on Sabbatical and writing a book. But with

my left arm all laid up for a while, I'm not sure just how much writing I'll be doing."

"That does make it awkward, doesn't it."

"Very," he nodded.

"Perhaps I could help?"

His eyebrows went up. "You mean...?"

"I could type...or whatever it is you use...what you dictate. I'm not really working on anything

of my own right now."

"I have a special keyboard attachment for the computer. Works better for me than the old brailler, and my secretary ...," he paused, leaning forward. "You'd actually do that?"

"My pleasure. Could be interesting. Might even inspire me to attempt something of my own.

I've always kinda wanted to do something more than just the newspaper."

"First you save me and then you save my book. You're an amazing woman, Mrs. McLaughlin."

"Eden."

"Right...Eden. As in 'garden of'."

"Hardly!" she laughed. "More of a weed patch."

"Somehow I doubt that."

And though she wasn't so sure herself that she was wrong, she was somehow very pleased that

he doubted it.

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