Persimmon Odyssey

“You’re going to emotionally disembowel yourself like a Samurai,” my wife said, staring me down from the passenger side of our car. “I’m coming with you.” 

           “No!” My tone caught me off guard. I sucked in a long, deep breath. The couple of feet between us was suddenly fractured with tension. I exhaled slowly. “I’m sorry. I meant…I want to do this alone, ok?” 

“Just remember something,” she said, rubbing my shoulder with her free hand, “You’re forgiven.” She let the words hang in the stale air of the car for a few seconds. “And, another thing, it’s about to rain and we have to be in FL in three hours.”

“I won’t take long. Promise.”

It was crazy all this – dragging my wife on a country detour on our anniversary trip to the gulf coast just so I could face some silly demons. Whatever comfort I was looking for would be short-lived. The darkening sky told me that in the time that it takes to make a U-turn, a squall could come up and turn the dusty, stretch of red clay into slick hellhole that would stare back me pitiless.

 I got out of the car and walked a few yards down the rutted dirt road where Mason and I had once roamed shirtless under a persecuting, summer heat. Both of us, adrift and bored, were buoyed only by our friendship and our determination to escape bad things in our home lives. Mason was running from an abusive father. I was running from the din of combat that was our kitchen when dad came home drunk. I looked up to Mason like a big brother. He was sociable, confidant, and always popular with the tiny band of girls we hung out with. I was timid, skinny, and gullible and, because of this, Mason took a special amount of pride in playing tricks on me. His crowning achievement was peeing under the rear of my old truck, and convincing me that the small stain in the dirt was a leaking gas tank. I got down on all fours, smelling it to make sure, while Mason cried laughing. Our differences carried on into adulthood. There was little hope that Megs, GA would be anything other than a tiny outpost on the Chattahoochee River, so after high school, I left country life behind, and chased my dreams of being a pilot. I eventually swapped my seat in a tractor for one in a 737 flying for a major airline. Mason stayed home, bought a Kenworth, and started hauling pulpwood for the papermill.

In 20 years, little had changed. My old driveway, nearly a mile long, was still just a logging road that led into the woods, shielding a farm house that my father had converted from a hay barn. On my left, there were still acres and acres of fields, thick with broom sage, that were now morphing and swirling like a brown ocean in the October gusts.

I turned to my right and quickly marched over to the one spot that had repeatedly shown up in my dreams. A lone persimmon tree. It stood like a stubborn sentry, flanked by a giant stand of poplar, white oak, and slash pine—the vast forest that taught us so many lessons. From its limbs, hanging like small, tawny colored Christmas ornaments, were bite-sized wonders, each one packing a trance-inducing lusciousness. Persimmons weren’t just a symbol of Fall. They were Fall. They were dog fennel and rabbit tobacco. They were huckleberries and apple cider. They were a million feelings that would pull on my heartstrings when I ate one and there they were, hanging from the lower branches, seducing me. I grabbed one, closed my eyes, and plopped it into my mouth. Instantly, my eyes and ears became jealous of my tastebuds, which sent my city mind packing. It liquified as I crushed it between my teeth - the soul-tugging, mango-cinnamon juices coating my tongue like warm butter. I spit out the seeds and swallowed. Slowly, I opened my eyes, and as I did, I noticed that some invisible switch had been thrown. I staggered, and reached out for the tree to steady myself. The aroma of chimney smoke rushed around me like the comforting arm of a friend. I ate another, and another, going in and out of semi-consciousness. I could hear the distant sounds of harrow discs, their clanking echoes decaying into the thick woods like soft piano notes. The pinch of strained muscles nibbled at me.  I was amazed at how fast the environment swallowed my previous life, a life I gave up the moment I ate the persimmons. I was cleaved in half by not only the sounds and smells, but by a thought that was chasing me, its intensity ratcheted up by my exchange with my wife back in the car.

You’re forgiven.

It was under this tree that Mason told me he was going to marry Irene and build his dream home next to Bear Creek. All the boys in Megs chased Irene. She was beyond beautiful. She lived on a horse farm a few miles down the road, and went to a private school across the river in Alabama. That meant that she was off-limits to most of us farm boys that wreaked of diesel fuel and grease. I never told Mason about my secret crush on Irene. When I saw the two of them holding hands at the Fall fair in the parking lot of Wilson’s Fish Camp, I knew my fantasies about Irene were just that. Fantasies. Afterall, Mason had swagger. I didn’t.

“Don’t never call her Irene Kaye. She hates that,” Mason told me one day.

You’re forgiven.

 It was Fall, in my last year at Emory Riddel Aeronautical University, when I got the call from Mason’s mother. He’d rolled his log truck over on County Rd 49, the only blacktop leading out of Megs. Some say he swerved to miss a dear. Others say he was reckless—an accident waiting to happen. Either way, I was done. The only man I’d ever loved like a brother was gone. We had barley spoken in the three years after I left Megs, and I was guilt-ridden for not answering his many letters checking up on me. For years after the funeral, no one heard from Irene. She had simply vanished.

Would Mason approve of me flying? Probably not. Would he approve of me moving to the big city and leaving Megs in my wake? I needed a sign. Anything.

“Dan! Dan!”

The words were coming from a deep well, it seemed.

“Dan!”

I awoke flat on my back, my wife slapping me in the face.

“Are you ok? You’ve been gone a half hour. Lucky for you, I followed your footprints.”

Small raindrops were splattering my face. I felt groggy as she helped me to my feet and we made our way to the car. “I’m fine,” I said, still woozy.  

As I opened the driver’s side door, something caught my attention on the ground under the car. I was a small stain, near the gas tank. I flashed a big grin as I looked back at the persimmon tree. The words came as a whisper, through watery eyes: “Thanks, big guy.”

“Who are you talking to,” my wife said, as I sat down behind the wheel. “Are you sure you’re ok? You’re acting weird.”

“Irene Kaye!”

She cut her eyes at me.

“I’m forgiven. Let’s get out of here.”