Chapter Four: The Book
By Christopher Mitchell
“Me?” Penelope asked, letting the question hang heavy in the air between them.
Oliver leaned against the door frame and thought carefully on the right words to say.
“I think,” He started, speaking slowly to give himself time to process each word for impact, “I was meant to build it…because I knew one day you’d come here.” He laughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “I hope that not too creepy. I don’t a get a lot of—”
“No!” she snapped. The tone caught him off guard and he jumped slightly, noticing an expression on her face that was simultaneously hard and stubborn.
“I’m sorry?” he asked, hoping his own expression would show is confusion.
“Do not,” she said, pointing a finger at him, “ever, belittle the words that come to mind in the moment.” She lowered her hand and approached him slowly, like someone would a wounded deer. She touched the side of his face and admired something she saw in his eyes. “They are usually the most honest words a person will ever genuinely say. If you say you think you built this for me, then I cannot thank you enough for it.” Her eyes welled up, and something stirred deep within him. “It is the most beautiful gift I have ever received.”
She took her hand away from his face and went back to her inspection of the bookcases. He watched her every step.
She was poring through an old volume of Don Quixote he’d found in old lady Lulabelle’s attic last year when her eyes caught the glass case. It was perched underneath the Portcullis window, the book opened and displayed as both ornament and monument simultaneously. The pages were worn to the color of oil-stained yellow, every page showing prominent dog-ears with underlines and notes in the blank spaces of the margins.
“What is it?” Penelope asked, enamored.
“It’s The Odyssey, by Homer.” Oliver explained. “It was my mother’s favorite book.”
An energy welled up in the room, then washed unexpectedly over Oliver’s whole body.
“Penelope.” She whispered. “Fate.”
“Destiny.” He interjected, letting the moment take him.
She looked up at him, and she smiled. There wasn’t any explanation needed. Just a nod of understanding, and she placed her hand over her heart in reverence to the moment.
She returned to her inspection of the book. “What was her favorite scene? Was it Odysseus’ heroic defeat of her evil suitors? Or maybe his defeat of the cyclops?”
“No, that one was my favorite scene.” Oliver said, chuckling. “I liked Odysseus’ cunning, then. How he kept his men safe with quick thinking and courage.” He approached, standing next to her, longing to place his hand around her waist or even to lightly touch the bony prominence where shoulder connected to collar bone. No, he thought. Being near her was enough. “No, believe it or not, her favorite scene was his reunion with his old dog, Argos.”
“Really?” she asked, looking up quickly at him. “That’s one of my favorite’s too. Not my absolute favorite, but one of them.”
Oliver smiled. “I liked the idea that seeing him was enough; that Argos could die happy having once again seen his best friend. Which is yours?”
Penelope closed her eyes, and the wayward strands of her beautiful auburn hair seemed to sway in a phantom breeze. “Mmm.” The noise was a mix between a moan and a sigh. It was a sound of pure, uncut nostalgia. “It’s the moment when Odysseus sees his wife again, after all those years, and manages to hold himself back from throwing himself at her feet.”
Oliver froze—that wasn’t in the book. “I’m not sure—”
“I know Homer didn’t write it, Oliver.” She interrupted, moving away from him quickly and making his heart leap in fear he’d upset her. “Homer didn’t need to. Can’t you feel it in the way he speaks to her? Couldn’t you hear it in how he described his journey to her? What restraint he showed as he watched the woman he loved tell him she’d rigged the game? All to give the man she loved the time to return to her?” She exhaled deeply, like she’d inhaled the first warm spring morning after a hard winter. “That love his magnetic, and to resist the pull of it showed his strength and his fragility.”
He nodded in understanding. “I suppose we lose the emotion in language if it isn’t expressed by the author.”
“No! No!” She exclaimed, getting excited. “That’s the job of the reader, Oliver: to listen to the emotion of the character, not on the words the author gives them.”
She took his hand and led him to the leather-bound sofa in the center of the room, worn with the impression of his body from years of hard use.
“Here,” she said, helping him ease into the seat. “Let me show you.”
She left him and looked over the shelves until she let out a cry of discovery and plucked a small volume from the shelf. He already knew what it was. He knew where every book in here was. And he was excited.
Penelope opened to the first chapter and began to read.
“Call me Ishmael…”
And she read to him, putting heart and soul into every word, acting each part out and describing the space between dialogue with flairs of emotion that changed the entire piece of the novel from the deranged obsession of man’s need to control nature to the quiet desperation of another man searching for meaning in the salt-hardened sailors around him. Oliver was moved to tears as she described Queequeg’s marriage proposal to Ishmael, and Ishmael’s reverent acceptance of such a strange ritual. And as she finished, saying the famous line “Better to sleep with a sober cannibal, than a drunken Christian.” She paused, then closed the book and took a bow.
Oliver clapped mightily and stood to solidify his high praise of her reading. “More!” he shouted, laughing through his tears. “More!”
She shook her head and moved slowly back to the shelf. “The sun got away from us, Oliver. It’s nearly sunset and—”
“Wait.” Oliver said, ceasing his clapping abruptly. “Sunset?” He looked out the large window to see the sun kissing the first spires of the mountain in goodnight, and his heart jumped in fear. “Buckshot!”
He tore from the room so quickly he barely heard Penelope’s call of alarm. He bolted past the washroom basin, knocking aside the small chair at the kitchen table and threw the front door open to a world growing dark blue against the orange sun as it sank further behind the Big Horns.
Buckshot stood facing the front door, the headstones casting long shadows over his left flank. He was waiting patiently, though the twitch of his ears let Oliver know he was displeased at such a late dinner.
“I’m sorry, big fella,” Oliver said, stepping from the front porch and up to the onyx thoroughbred, “I got caught up in a good story and lost track of time.”
Buckshot huffed and nipped at the back of his neck, pulling at the hairs that were still there.
“I know, I know.” Oliver said, petting the horsed long snout. “I didn’t even get a haircut like a said I would. But I met somebody today I want you to meet.” He turned, and Penelope stood there, looking nervous. “Penelope, I’d like you to meet my best friend, Buckshot.”
Oliver couldn’t stifle the laugh that burst from his throat as Penelope curtsied the stallion. It was cut short when Buckshot, against all expectation, bobbed his head in a slight bow. The horse left Oliver’s side and approached the front porch, stopping a few feet shy of the first step. She took them slowly until she was face to face with the stallion and, amazing the old farmer still, took both sides of the horse’s face and kissed him between the eyes.
Destiny, he said again in his mind.
“It’s nice to meet you, Buckshot,” she said, taking in the whole of the creature’s face and petting him on the side of the neck. “I hope you’re not too upset with me keeping your friend distracted and interrupting your dinner. If you show me where he keeps your grain, I’ll take care of it myself.”
The horse nipped at her hand gently as if to hold it and turned towards the stable where Oliver penned him up at night. Oliver followed some distance behind them, listening to Penelope explain how she’d met Buckshot’s owner, how they’d hit it off, and how she’d been reading to him over the past two hours.
“And that’s how we ended up here.” She finished, patting Buckshot’s head as he ate the barley she’d dumped in his feed tray. “We only got a few chapters in, but I think Oliver enjoyed it.”
“I did,” Oliver cut in, staying put while leaning against one of the stables pillars with his arms crossed over his chest.
She looked at him, and she smiled. The warmth of it was a spear to his chest, and he let the momentum of the day cascade him forward. “Penelope, would you stay with me?”
Her smile faltered, and she looked back to the horse.
“I’m sorry,” he said, recognizing the inference in her expression “I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant that I really did enjoy you reading to me today. I’d like to pay you to stay on do it more often if that’s okay?”
She stopped her petting and turned to face him wholly. “That’s all?”
He raised his right hand to the sky. “I promise by those three headstones near the house. You will be safe on this farm so long as I am on it.”
She smiled again, and the warmth radiating from it was enough to burn him to dust. She approached, slowly, then held her hand out toward him. “Then it sounds like we have a deal, Mr. Ketch.”
Oliver reached out and shook it. “Call me Ollie.”