Every Breath(85)
I nodded.
“After some time, he finally asked me what was the hardest thing I ever did. I said I didn’t know, life is full of hard things. Why did he want to know? He said that he knew the hardest thing he had to do, and that nothing would ever be greater than that.”
Romy let out a wheezy breath before going on. “It wasn’t the words…it was how he said it. There was so much sadness, so much pain, like those termites had eaten his soul. And then he told me about that trip to America…and the woman. Hope.”
Romy turned to face me.
“I’ve loved some women in my life,” he said with a grin. But then the grin faded. “When he talked, I knew I never loved anyone that way. And when he told me how he said goodbye…” Romy stared at the ground. “He cried, like a person broken. And I felt his heart aching inside me, too.” He shook his head. “After that, whenever I saw him I would think, he’s still feeling pain, just hiding it.”
Romy grew quiet, and for a while we just sat together and watched twilight descend over the village. “He never talked about it no more. I retired then, and I didn’t see Tru for a long time, not until he had the big accident. I went to see him at the hospital. Did you know about that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“He looked terrible, so terrible. But the doctors said he was a lot better than before! He was mixing up his words a lot of the time, so I did a lot of talking. And I was trying to be cheerful, to make jokes, and I asked him, did he see Jesus or God when he died? He made a sad smile, one that nearly broke my heart. ‘No,’ he said to me, ‘I saw Hope.’ ”
When I returned from Zimbabwe, I drove to the beach where Tru and Hope now live. I had taken nearly a year to research and write the book, and was reluctant to intrude on them anymore. Nonetheless, I found myself walking near the water’s edge, past their cottage. I didn’t see them.
It was midafternoon. I continued to walk up the beach, eventually reaching the pier, and strolled to the end of it. There were a handful of people fishing, but I found a clear spot in the corner. I stared at the ocean, feeling the breeze in my hair, knowing that writing their story had changed me.
I hadn’t seen either of them in months, and I missed them. I drew comfort from the knowledge that they were together, the way they were supposed to be. Later, as I passed by their cottage a second time on the way back, my eyes were drawn automatically to their home. Still no sight of them.
It was getting late by then, the sky a mixture of violets, blues, and grays, but on the horizon, the moon had begun its rise from the sea, as if it had spent the day hiding at the ocean floor.
Twilight began to deepen and I found myself scanning the beach again. I could see their house in the distance, and though the beach had largely emptied, I saw that Tru and Hope had emerged to enjoy the evening. My heart leaped at the sight of them, and I thought again about the years they’d spent apart. I thought about their future, the walks they would miss and the adventures they would never have. I thought about sacrifice and miracles. And I thought also about the love they’d always felt for each other—like stars in the daytime sky, unseen, but always present.
They were at the bottom of the ramp, the one that Tru had been building the first time I met him. Hope was in her wheelchair, a blanket over her legs. Tru was standing beside her, his hand resting gently on her shoulder. There was a lifetime of love in that simple gesture, and I felt my throat close up. As I continued to stare, he must have sensed my presence in the distance, for he turned in my direction.
He waved a greeting. Though I waved back, I knew it was a farewell of sorts. While I considered them friends, I doubted we would speak again.
It was their time, at last.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
While my novels generally hew to certain expected norms (they’re usually set in North Carolina, feature a love story, etc.), I do try to vary the themes, characters, or devices in interesting ways with every book. I’ve always loved the literary device of “self-insertion,” in which the author himself makes an appearance in a fictional work—sometimes as a thinly veiled autobiographical narrator, like Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five, or merely incidentally, like the character of Stephen King in The Dark Tower: Volume VI, whose entirely fictional diary plays a role in the story (and whose death is mentioned in the novel as occurring in 1997). One of my favorite novelists, Herman Wouk, wrote a novel at age ninety-seven, The Lawgiver, in which he fictitiously gets involved in a disastrous attempt to make a movie in Hollywood, over the misgivings of his real-life wife, Betty. This layered, “story-within-a-story” device involving the author always felt intriguing to me—the novelistic equivalent of Renaissance painters mischievously inserting themselves into their tableaux. I hope you agree that the bookends I wrote in my own voice added an interesting dimension to what is in other ways a classic story of lovers long denied.
While my “discovery” of Tru and Hope’s story is entirely fictional, the inspiration and setting of the novel are drawn directly from my own experiences. I first traveled to Africa in 2010, and on that trip fell head over heels in love with the countries I was lucky enough to visit—the utterly spectacular landscapes, the fascinating and varied cultures, the turbulent political histories, and curious sense of timelessness I experienced there. I’ve since returned to Africa several more times, each time exploring different regions and visiting a rapidly disappearing natural environment. These trips were nothing short of life-changing, expanding my awareness of the places far removed from my staid existence in small-town North Carolina. On each of these trips, I met dozens of safari guides whose rich knowledge and fascinating life stories provided grist for my creative mill, and eventually inspired me to create a character whose fate was entwined with and governed by his life growing up in Africa.