The Lilies and the Cardinals

“You can’t get lost in the woods,” the old man drawled out. He had a whiskey in one hand and a hatchet in the other. If not for the small and sharp implement, Tom would have ignored him; there’s something quite attention grabbing about a man with an axe.

“Just like you can’t fall off a mountain!” the man screeched out, laughing as if he had said the funniest thing in the world.

“That’s Kerouac, right?” Tom asked. “You can’t fall off a mountain?”

“No, no, no, old Jack stole that one from me! I coined it myself!” the man yelled out, laughing some more. Tom thought there was no way this man knew Jack Kerouac, but the axe and whiskey continued to act as a deterrent for any conversation or points that would play in opposition to him. No one else in the bar paid the exchange any mind; the bartender mentioned when the man walked in that he was the local mountain man, so Tom tried to tell himself that things would be okay and that he was just the unfortunate soul who had to entertain the crazy old coot on that particular night.

“Look at me in the eyes,” the old man said in a more serious tone. There was a slight smile on his lips, and he put down his whiskey, placing his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “You can’t get lost in the woods,” he said quietly. There was a glint of something in his eyes, and he made the comment with a strange clarity of speech for someone so inebriated.

Tom shivered, unsure whether it was because a drunk with an axe had his hand on his shoulder or the ominous words.

“I see,” Tom said, shrugging the man’s hand by grabbing his own drink. “I’ll do my best not to get lost tomorrow I suppose.”

Tom slept in his car outside the bar that night. He was in a town in the Pacific Northwest called Concrete; it was the last town until hundreds of miles of woods into the Cascade Mountain range. The bar was the last building until the road out into the forest.

You can’t get lost in the woods, Tom thought. What a stupid thing to say. He drifted off late that night, unable to get the feeling of the man’s hand on his shoulder out of his mind.

The next day, bright and early, Tom set out on his mission. The road from the bar went another fifteen miles and at the end there was a small gravel lot that had numerous wooded paths attached; none of these were marked.

“When you get there,” his wife Sally had said, “take the path furthest to the left. If you follow it for about two hours, you’ll find the river.”

At the lot, Tom opened the trunk and retrieved a box; it was just small enough to put in the larger part of his hiking pack. He tucked it away carefully, and closed the trunk, sighing as he did. He rested his head on the car’s cool metal for a moment, eyes closed just listening to the birds.

“Almost there,” he said softly. With a stretch of his back, Tom got up and set out on the path furthest to the left. The trees in the woods outside Concrete were skyscrapers. As he walked along, Tom tried to pick out the birds he heard—Sally loved birds—but they were so high up they might as well have been on some upper plane of existence inaccessible to him. Only their songs rained down.

“I don’t even get to try and look for any red birds,” Tom remarked as he walked along. Of all of the birds Sally loved those with red feathers were her favorite. In the Pacific Northwest, the only reddish birds were finches and crossbills, and neither of those were pure red, always with grey or black streaks. However, upon seeing a true red bird on their honeymoon years ago, a Northern Cardinal of the more eastern United States, Sally was determined to find one closer to home. Tom would often remark to her on the many bird watching excursions he’d accompany, that,

“You know, it’d be a miracle if you saw one.” Bird watching days were Sunday, and since he’d also get dragged to church, he figured he’d make the best of both outings by at least poking fun at their silliness. “What!” he’d laugh, as she would pinch his arm, “I’m just killing two birds with one stone!” His smile, thinking on the memory, did not last.

“I should have brought your binoculars,” Tom muttered, continuing his walk.

About an hour in, he stopped at a brook to rest. The path was at a slight incline, but it was not quite a hike. Despite the thick undergrowth around the giant evergreens, the trail itself was clear.

I guess it would be hard to get lost in these woods, Tom thought. Stay on the trail, and you can’t go wrong. The birds continued singing from on high. Tom felt a twinge of anger. Sally always stayed on right path. Look where it got her. Bitter, he got up and continued to walk.

When he reached the river, he found the largest boulder he could sit on—about nine feet tall—and climbed atop, setting his pack down at its height. Stretching again, he looked around. The river was nothing large or grand; it was broken by countless rocks and boulders like the one he stood on. But he knew that Sally liked it for that very reason.

“It’s all the same water and it’s all going all the same way,” she had said when they stood at a similar river the year prior. “Some of it takes longer, some of it might get caught in a pool for a bit, but it all goes downstream eventually. Isn’t that just grand? If you ask me, those big shot rivers that flow in a single stream are less impressive than these guys.”

Tom began to cry, tears streaking down the boulder forming their own river streams as they went. After the first two weeks, these moments hit him a lot more randomly—before that they were constant. Sally had been sick for the majority of their marriage, but Tom never believed the illness would take her from him so early. He had always imagined old age together—rocking chairs, grandchildren, and gardens.

“I’m just going down stream a little bit faster than you, that’s all,” she had said to him near the end. “I get to see what’s there before you do,” she said, joking. She was cheerful until the very end. Frustrated, Tom wiped the tears from his face. They had always argued about belief, Tom with an agnostic bent and Sally with a believing one. Now Tom was convinced.

Looking up to the sky, he yelled, “Are you happy now? Huh! Are you happy! You took her from me! You took her! You, you-,” Tom stopped and sat back down on the rock weeping again softly.

“Who am I kidding,” he whispered into his knees. “You aren’t there.”

“Ho!” a voiced cried out in greeting. Startled, Tom looked up, grasping the box next to him as he did. On a separate boulder, there sat the mountain man from the night before. “How you doing there fellow?”

“Um,” Tom began. He was not in an emotional state to process exactly what was happening. “I’m okay. How, how are you?”

“I’m dandy, I’m dandy, but sonny, you don’t look so good. Heck, your tears are gonna make the river rise,” he responded. Tom winced at the mention of his tears.

“Look, I’m not really in the mood to talk right now,” Tom said, shaking himself back to the task at hand.

“You lost or something?” the man asked concerned. Tom narrowed his eyes.

“Weren’t you the one who said you can’t get lost in the woods?” he shot at him, mimicking the man’s drawl.

“I said that?” the man asked widening his eyes in surprise.

“Ugh, I don’t have time for this,” Tom said shaking his head. “You said it last night at the bar. Would you just give me some peace and quiet?”

“Oh, sure sonny, sure, I’ll leave you alone.” The old man slid of his boulder and splashed his way to the other side of the stream, stroking his long beard and muttering, “You can’t get lost in the woods? What the hell was I talking about?”

Tom shook his head. He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. He didn’t like being mean, but the loss of Sally made him feel like he lost himself too. He glanced down at the box sat next to him.

It’s time, he thought. Opening it, he retrieved the small urn it carried, padded by cushioning on all sides; Sally had requested her ashes be taken to the river near her hometown and spread into the water. Her other request was that Tom say a prayer as he gave her to the waters. He did not feel like praying to a God he felt was not real—in a way, for Tom, it would be worse if a God did exist. As he had yelled before, that was a God that took Sally from him. After wrestling with the request, Tom decided to just say the Lord’s Prayer as he poured the ashes. He figured he had said it enough times without much meaning in church with Sally—what was one more time?

He stood up slowly, taking the urn and removing its top. The tears were dropping in before he even had time to stop them. He smiled. Sally, he thought, would be okay with that. With a deep breath, Tom began to pour her ashes.

“Our Father who-”

“Ho!” a voiced rung out. Tom, startled again, spilled out the ashes all at once. He watched as they flew down upon the water, sitting atop it and beginning to flow down the endless paths Sally liked so much. Later, Tom realized that Sally’s spirit must have stopped him from strangling the old man.

“Sir! I asked you to leave me alone and now you’ve-”

“I remember what I meant!” the man cried. He hadn’t heard Tom. “Pardon the intrusion, I just thought you should know,” he yelled cheerily. “You can’t get lost in the woods!” he cried triumphantly. “I wasn’t talking about the physical, see, I was talking about the metaphysical!” Tom was dumbfounded by the man’s lack of self-awareness and stupefied by the fact metaphysical was in the man’s vocabulary.

“What, what do you mean?” he asked the old man. His anger was still present, but the question spilled out of him before he could think further.

“Well, look around you! You can’t get lost from the way out here, now, could you?” the old man cried out. “What with all this beauty and life.”

“I beg to differ,” Tom said coldly.

“Well, beggin’s got nothing to do with it sonny, the Great Spirit, the Presence, God, whatever you call it, this is where it lives! This is its house! Look at these flowers,” he said, leaning down and plucking some lilies. “If they’re alright every springtime, heck, we ought to be too! And look at these wonderful trees! And do you hear them birds? Gracious, and how about them-”

“Yeah, and how about my wife’s ashes here? Real beautiful huh?” Tom yelled at the man, anger finally overtaking him. In a moment, the man’s face changed; the many joyful wrinkles at his eyes’ corners moved to his brow in concern.

“That’s your wife there?” he asked, nodding to the urn.

“Yes sir, it was,” Tom said gruffly.

“I see,” the man said nodding. “I’m so sorry to have interrupted you.” As he said this, he looked down at the water; the last bit of her ashes were floating on.

“God is not here,” Tom said. “He’s not anywhere.” He then got back down on his knees and started crying again. If Tom had looked up, he’d have seen the old man’s bright eyes shining with tears of his own.

“Death does mark us huh,” the old man said softly. He looked down at his lilies and noticed some dust from the ashes had floated down on them before they were plucked. Slowly, he bent down to the water and dipped the flowers, only laying them down upon the stream when he was certain all the ash was washed away. Tom, though, didn’t hear or see him through his tears. The old man walked on.

Tom awoke from a bad dream; he had fallen asleep on the rock. He looked to the sky and he could tell it was almost sunset. Quickly, he gathered up his things, slid down the rock, and began walking back toward the path home. When he arrived at the tree line, there were two trails in front of him; he could not remember which led back. Concerned about the growing darkness, he picked the left path and began to travel down.

About an hour in, and the last of the light was peaking through the leaves; at some point, the trail had grown rough and the path before and behind him began to look the same. With every step, he cared less and less.

“What kind of house is this,” he muttered to himself. “You can’t even keep it lit up.” The darkness grew around him and the sun’s light climbed further up the trees. Tom stopped. This time, instead of tears, his voice was the only thing that escaped from his head.

“Sally’s gone,” he whispered. “Couldn’t you have at least comforted me? You comforted her until the end. What about me?” Tom looked around. He was completely in the undergrowth now. “Lost in the woods,” he said, almost laughing with defeat.

“Tweet, tweet!”

Tom lifted his eyes to the trees. On a low branch, a branch hanging down from the heights, there sat a cardinal.

“Tweet, tweet!” it chirped out again. It flew to another branch nearby. It was looking at Tom.

When it had leapt to a third branch, he began to follow, never taking his eyes off the bird; the creature was rising with the light of the sun, so although it flew to higher branches, the light kept it illuminated. For his part, Tom kept up, pushing through the undergrowth and keeping constant watch; the bird played crimson in the sun’s final rays, as it flashed between branches.

Finally, Tom lost sight of the bird, the light waning. For the briefest moment, he felt panic, suddenly alone again, without Sally. But as he pushed through more of the undergrowth toward where he last saw the bird, he tripped and stumbled back onto a path, this one much more kept than the last.

“Ho!” a familiar voice cried out next to him. Turning, Tom saw the mountain man again. “Did you see that cardinal? Downright miracle, that bird being in this neck of the woods.”

“Miracle?” Tom asked. The old man offered a hand to him. Tom took it and he was gently pulled up.

“I was wrong, before, and I’m sorry,” the old man apologized. “See, sometimes, I stay out here too long and I forget the trees and the flowers can’t cure everything.”

Convicted, Tom suddenly said, “No, sir, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, I don’t even know you.”

“Oh, sonny, don’t worry about that.” They stood awkwardly for a moment, in the twilight. “You know, what drove me out here in the first place was the death of my daughter. She was just a kid, you know, and it kind of broke my mind. I only ever go into town on her birthday. But you know what?”

“What?” Tom asked.

“She sure loved lilies. And I think… I think she’s what I meant by, ‘you can’t get lost in the woods.’” He smiled, the same smile in the bar the night before. “She’s out here always, with the lilies and the trees and with that cardinal too. And with them around, well, I guess I believe I’ll be okay.”

“Sally would have liked that,” Tom said. The old man nodded.

“Anyways sonny, the way back is this way, we best get on so as not to get lost.”