Quarantina
By: Robert Long
Tags: Memories, Lovestory, Aging, Parenting, Life Lessons

William “Bill” Sutton walked to the old pickup, placed the groceries in the bed and climbed into the cab. His weekly grocery run had gone as planned, enough to feed the two of them and, a little more, to make sure. Bill liked to eat. He started the Ford and backed out of the slot, turned right onto Breedmore and then drove fifteen miles out Hwy 35 to Sutton Road. There had once been three good-sized farms on this road, now, Bill’s was the last one left. The rest of the land had been parceled out to developers over the years and there were a lot of new homes, and new faces.

The weather was deceptively warm for late February and Bill prayed that it would hold a while longer. He never planted much anymore, scarcely what was needed for he and Caroline, but, he did not want a snap freeze to ruin the potential if he decided to plant some sorghum this spring. Pulling into the yard, he saw Caroline sitting on the porch waiting for him, her walker and her oxygen tank right there at her side, like two faithful pets. He smiled tiredly and bellowed his customary greeting to her, “Hey there little lady. You lost?” Caroline waved her hand feebly and smiled broadly. She still got a chuckle out of that, even after all these years.

An hour later, they sat side by side on the porch, rockers moving in synchronicity and holding hands like they had when they first started dating more than sixty years earlier. The warm late-winter day, the comfort of having her there and Bill was stirred with memories of past winters, past times of comfort, difficulty, happiness and tears. The memories flooded back unbidden, and he stared at the horizon as they washed over him.

He remembered the winter of ’06, he and Caroline married a year and the birth of William Junior, “Billy”, the look of concern on old Doc Hapscomb’s face when the baby didn’t respond right away, the fear, even momentary in Caroline’s eyes and the relief they all felt when he started squalling to beat the band. That winter in ’12 when James, their third child, had gotten the flu and nearly died. Again old Doc Hapscomb tending to the family and telling them that there was a new disease coming back with the soldiers from France. Elizabeth, their only daughter, crying in her wedding dress in the winter of ’32, happiness that would last for more than forty years.

All these thoughts and more, the year his brother Michael had fallen from the barn drunk and landed on a pitchfork, Caroline’s folks passing, both in the summer of 1940; his own parents long gone by then. Billy’s son Brian, nearly drowning down in the pond the summer the Nazi’s invaded Poland, Caroline’s prize winning peach cobbler at the county fair in ‘42.

Then the memories of the children, steadily moving away after the war. First, Billy with that job in St. Louis working for that brewery. Elizabeth’s husband taking the job in California with the Governor’s office. James, still single and off to travel the world, always the adventurous one their James. He ended up in India, teaching villagers how to grow crops. He remembered the visits, grandchildren and then, great-grandchildren visiting from out of state, spending the summers in the boat on the lake, driving them around in the tractor and teaching them how to make cages for lightening bugs.

The year they got the news that Elizabeth had cancer and their first and only plane flight to be with her at the end. The funeral, on a cold, rainy Sacramento winter day. Caroline, inconsolable at the loss and Bill, becoming even more distanced from the rest of the world. The news from James that he was moving to Cambodia to teach farming techniques to the locals, then word that he had been killed by members of the Khmer Rouge. The report from the Army that William Sutton III was listed as MIA in Vietnam in ’69, then officially listed KIA in 74 on what would have been his 22nd birthday.

Caroline reached a frail, birdlike hand and laid it gently on his arm, as if, she too were recalling all these events and commiserating with him. Faintly she spoke, “I know Bill, I miss them too. You have always been a good husband, a good father, a good man and I love you so much. I’m feeling a little tired, could you help me inside?” Bill rose, helped her from the rocker and then embraced her, her soft hair resting on his chest. The two stood for a moment, totally connected, and then he helped her to bed.