The Huddle

The GPS coverage was starting to get patchy. Arnold slowed down to a crawl and squinted through the windshield at the trees. If any of the blotchy shapes blurred by the weight of the rain resembled three ancient oaks standing in line, with two others facing them, that meant he had arrived. Martin had described the location for him so many times and in such detail that Arnold almost thought of it as a childhood memory. It was a curious feeling, pulling up to a remote location in a region of the country he had never visited and finding the landscape familiar.

He parked on a short gravel track leading down the hill. The rain had hammered down ever since he had left home four hours ago and showed no sign of abating, so he jammed his hat down over his ears and stepped out into the downpour. He tried to summon any of his favorite memories of Martin to accompany him on this pilgrimage, but he could not scrub the uncomfortable, foreign images from his head: Martin’s elastic, bony frame decorated in the trappings of a suit. His absent face resting on the pillow of his coffin like a placeholder. The eulogy from people who knew only the surface veneer of the man. Above all, Arnold was troubled by the realization that Martin had never told him why The Huddle was so important. He had carried out his own research, of course, but that had failed to yield anything constructive. The site was venerated by Wiccans and certain other pagan gatherings but nothing in the writings he had found had hinted at any sort of meaning.

The ground under his feet was treacherous, melting more into slurry with every passing minute. He clung onto passing trees and stumpy outcrops as he made way down to the clearing. There was a palpable change in the energy as Arnold trod uncertainly onto the stage framed by the trees. The only way he could think of to describe it was as a concentration in the heaviness of existence. There was some frequency of power here, although Arnold could not tap into it, read it or even comprehend it. He turned to his left to look at the dry-stone wall that he had passed on his way down and that threaded its way through the meadows like a keloid snake. He blinked, and a smudge of color came into view. If he wiped the rain from his eyes and peered keenly, the shape looked conveniently familiar: it was Martin’s pipe cleaner frame, draped in the olive-green oilskin that he used to don when roving off on his week-long hikes along the coastline. Arnold had offered to come with him once but had been hopelessly outpaced by the man’s stilt-like strides; he had sat on a rain-worn bench and watched him pace out over the cliffs, flinging his arms wide and summoning some silent magic from the elements. This, then, must be Martin’s final prank: a will sacrificed in favor of a scarecrow with some withering note pinned to its chest. Arnold quickened his pace and made straight for the figure tilting slowly from side to side with the pressure of the storm. He got to within a dozen feet of it and could start to see the petrochemical rainbows of the oilskin’s wax when the figure stood up and walked off.

Arnold’s knees momentarily softened and he felt himself keel forward with a wash of nausea. He caught himself on one of the wall’s jagged stones and breathed with such artificial violence that he almost felt light-headed again. The figure was moving at a determined pace toward what looked to be a hide or a lookout shelter in the middle distance. Arnold felt his temples and the tips of his fingers vibrating and his vision clouded over for a moment. When he felt that the swarming in his brain had subsided enough to allow rational thoughts to return, he could not conclude anything other than that this was some sort of message Martin was trying to send him. It would be a disservice to his friend’s memory not to go after this eldritch harbinger. He hugged his already buttoned coat closer to his chest and set off down the path to the shelter.

The air under the slanted timber roof was quiet and cold, laden with the spray of the rainfall and a whispered breath of mildew. Arnold had been so gnawed by the need to understand that he had broken into a virtual run on the final slope up to the threshold steps. He stood in the darkness for a few moments to catch his breath and saw the skeletal figure in its oilskin standing at the other end of the shelter, peering out across the wilds. It seemed to weigh his presence for a moment before turning and revealing Martin’s peculiar triangular jaw and the shine of his green eyes. It took him in for a moment, then swiveled back and stared out through the torrent. Arnold felt his entire consciousness pool into a small, swirling ball in the pit of his stomach, motionless and struck dumb until he finally heard his own distant voice say: “I don’t understand.”

The figure turned to face him again, this time with a wry, mournful smile on its face. “I wish I could explain it to you; I really do. The truth is, I don’t really understand it myself. I just knew you would be here one day.”

“What is this place? Why is it so important?”

“I don’t know, Arnold. All I can tell you is that this is the place to which I have always returned. This is where all my dreams meet. It is the backdrop to everything.” He sat on the low wall at the front of the shelter and looked at Arnold, the gleam of his eyes catching the pockets of light in the shadows. “Do you know why you’re here now?”

Arnold felt stripped of any ability to comfort. “We buried you last week.” Martin clasped his hands together then flung them wide with a shrug of his shoulders, kneading his face and eventually coming to rest with a rueful grin.

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“Martin, why did you bring me here?”

“I wanted you to see this place, at last. But it had to be when you were ready to see it. Ready to understand.”

“Understand what? I don’t understand any of this”, Arnold felt his inner self flail and lash out at the emotions that were vying for space, the fresh grief and the anger and now the fear at this ghoulish dummy of his friend borrowing his friend’s voice.

“Sorry…it makes more sense, somehow, when you don’t have to worry about the before and after. You remember Alice? That girl at my last birthday party with the quiet, smoky voice who brought the home-made whiskey truffles? She’s going to find you out and offer her condolences. I know you don’t think she even knew me very well, but the truth is that she and I go way back. Deeper than I’d ever share with you. I’m telling you this because she’s going to reach out to you and try to make you happy, and if you hadn’t come today, you would have pushed her away and called her a fraud. But she’s not a fraud; she’s a beautiful soul, and she can make you very happy. I guess that’s why I brought you here. You’re bolted to time, but I’m n…or I never…I mean I didn’t know…I don’t really have the words to explain it. I’ve always seen myself in this place. I’ve never been here…and I’ve always been here. And I want you to be happy. Promise me you’ll give Alice a chance.”

Arnold slumped down on the wall next to him and swallowed down the wave of bile before bursting out in an absurd bark of bitter laughter. “If any of that is true, then you know whether Alice and I end up happy together. I guess I’ll take this as a gentle kick in the right direction.” There was an extended, heavy silence, marked only by a distant clap of thunder. “Do you know if you and I will see each other again? Can you tell me that?”

Martin seemed caught off-guard by the question. “It’s…it’s hard to say. I’ve already seen you again many times, of course, but I can’t tell you what has to happen for you to…be there.”

Although Arnold felt no closer to understanding anything that was happening to him, he felt that the pressure of the encounter was easing. He felt that he had accomplished his purpose in coming here, and he started to think about Alice and her gorgeous velvet silence and whether her mystery would blossom into the balm that would paper over his solitude. He felt an animal thirst for another beer with his friend.

“What are you going to do now?”, he blurted out.

 Martin flung out his arms expansively for want of a better answer, and scrunched up his face. “I’m clinging onto ‘now’, you know? Trying to remember the sense of it. But it’s not easy. I think…it’s easier for you if you think about closure. Stop thinking about what might have been, and think about what might be if you go after it. You can’t move between the was and the is and the will be.”

“So, I’m just supposed to wander through life randomly in the hope that circumstances will bring us together again?”

“No, Arnold. Feel the chill on your skin, and the rain soaking through the wool of your coat. Feel the hunger in the pit of your stomach and the ache of fatigue in your thighs. Tune into the immediacy of these things, and remember that there is a woman close to you who will be nourished by the heat of your life and the charge of your presence. Your future has a direction, and you should feel fortunate for that.”

Arnold squeezed his eyeballs under the pressure of his forefinger and thumb until he felt they would burst. He stumbled over to the corner of the shelter and slumped down against the wall, hoping to bury himself in the bubble of silence holding off the rain. When he opened his eyes again, he could make out an oilskin-clad figure striding off down the hillside at an athletic and almost dangerous pace. He felt his chest tightening as if every breath yanked on a ratchet around his ribs. There was a dull vibration from the pocket of his coat and he fumbled around to summon any residual feeling in his fingers. His cellphone clattered out of his pocket and onto the floor.

The light of the display seemed unnaturally bright in the gloomy shelter. Arnold could make out the name “Alice”, and thumbed the message into view.

“Hey. I know this is a really hard time for you, but I just hope you’re OK. Let me know if you want to get coffee and talk about it.”

Arnold closed his eyes and let the thought of coffee and compassion spread its quiet flame through the ice water flowing through his heart. His fingers were already moving in rehearsal of his reply.