Tuesday evening
Late
As the months pass, as troubles increase, I hunt for moments from yesterday, moments that may strengthen me, moments that may prove I was once young. There is my Ann Rutledge. I see her auburn hair, blue eyes and delicate face—more than ephemera. My love for her is real, apart, unrelated to the man I am, yet remembered—a contradiction. Although it is a lie I feel that Ann is alive.
I allowed my burden of debts to turn me away from marriage. I believed that frontier hardships were to remain my lot; I could not see harnessing her to a life of animal drudgery. Debts...they were like bars in a gate; I peered through those bars at her beautiful face.
We buried her among currant bushes, in the wind, in the sun. I left the cemetery to wander through hungry woodlands, woodlands I never saw again, that extended...I don’t know how far they extended. Hunger and sorrow...they were mine.
All that remains of our brief relationship is the memory of her voice, as she spoke, as she sang. She loved to sing hymns and frontier songs—her voice so feminine.
The touch of her hand, the touch of her voice...in the midst of war, under desperate commitments.
Evening