Variations and Fugue – A Short Story

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Wally,” I say.

“I hope you’re right,” he calls out from the next room; shuffling into the doorway. He reads and re-reads the laminated piece of paper he had just picked up off the kitchen counter: Your dog’s name is Lady. The commands she knows are Sit, Lie Down, Stay, and Come. He turns the paper over and holds it out for me to see then says in a voice that is equal parts explanatory and apologetic, “I forget things sometimes…”

I nod knowingly. “You do alright Wally.”

“Let me show you something,” he says, and before I can respond he shuffles through the parlor and into his office, beckoning with his hand that I should follow. Lady, an extremely well-fed Black Labrador, creeps out of the kitchen and then under the enormous solid oak desk that sits in the center of the office.

“This dog will not bite you,” he says, as if the thought had just occurred to him. He then smiles warmly saying, “She’s a honey-pot… she’s a real sweetheart.”

His office walls are completely lined with books. The shelves extend from the floor to the ceiling and completely envelop the room, disrupted only by a window and a set of French doors opposite it. There are Bibles, countless Bibles. The Torah, the Septuagint, the Vulgate, giant leather-bound concordances and vast arrays of commentaries; their spines worn and pages yellowed. There are Greek and Hebrew dictionaries alongside an impossibly old Merriam-Webster that threatens to buckle the shelf it sits upon. Histories and biographies intermingle with memoirs and novels. On one shelf, Jack London’s Sea Wolf sits beside Robert Frost’s New Hampshire; above them is C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. The more recent additions sit horizontally atop the vertically arrayed older ones. Every shelf has been filled save one, which is empty but for a single framed photograph. He shuffles up to it and stands there silently. I can see his eyes come alive with pride. It is a picture of him from many years prior and next to him is a woman. They are laughing; they squint into the evening sun as the ocean rolls behind them.

“Elizabeth,” he says by way of explanation after prolonged silence- “My wife.”

My hip finds the edge of the immense desk and I lean against it. Sprawling across its top is a tattered but intact map of the Atlantic Ocean. There is a picture of a Navy ship; a young and familiar looking man stands at its helm. Next to it is a brass ship’s throttle, at its base is an engraved plaque- For our Captain- From the crew of the USS Augusta, July 1946. Just behind that is a framed diploma dated 1952 from the Wake Forest University School of Divinity. As I stand there, Lady crawls out from beneath the desk and lies down at my feet. She rolls onto her back as I kneel down to scratch her belly. Wally looks down as Lady’s contented tail thumps against his shoe.

“She’s a honey-pot,” he says. His eyes turn again to the picture.

“I would have loved to have met her,” I say for the lack of anything else. His eyes meet mine but seem confused and questioning. I gesture toward the photo, “Your wife…” I say; feeling awkward for the need to clarify and the uneasiness of the moment. He nods and gives a partial smile. His gaze is distant and he has the look of a man trying to find the elusive words to give voice to profound thought. At last he raises his hand as if about to give a recitation and says matter-of-factly, “Where there is the hope of Heaven, death is the most glorious part of life.” He turns and walks abruptly out of the room. I stand there for a moment, not sure what he is referencing, if anything at all.

The tinny peal of the grandfather clock in an adjacent room indicates it is 5:00. Lady lopes out of the office and returns to the kitchen. Wally shuffles across the living room to the bench of a very old and pristine grand piano. An ornate wooden cross hangs on the wall just behind him, next to it is a picture of him wearing a minister’s gown and holding a Bible. Just below them hangs a picture of a white country church; the lettered frame reads Hope Presbyterian Church, 1976. On a near wall is another framed photo: Wally sits at the piano- just as he is now but much younger, Elizabeth stands just behind him looking down into a songbook.

I sit in a small parlor chair in the corner of the living room as Wally begins to play Brahms’ Variation and Fugue on a Theme by Handel. On an end table next to me sits a worn King James Bible, the pages are curled from being thumbed through countless times. It is laid open to the 34th Psalm and there is a crisply folded sheet of paper standing up from the crease between the pages. I see him watching me as he begins playing the familiar melody of Greensleeves. Unfolding the paper, I begin reading-

Elizabeth-
I’m all too often at a loss
When I set down my compass and picked up my cross
I never imagined the changing tide
Would leave me without you by my side
I cannot for the life of me tell
Of the duality of love and of the spiritual realm
Where there is hope that causes so much pain
There is hope that keeps us alive
So death will never sway my faith
Even though it has taken my wife
Where there is the hope of Heaven
Death is the most glorious part of life.

Greensleeves becomes a lilting Amazing Grace. The grandfather clock chimes and it’s quarter past the hour. Lady walks out of the kitchen and to Wally’s side.

“She’s a honey-pot,” he says as they both watch me walk through the foyer toward the front door.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Wally,” I say.

“I hope you’re right,” he says.

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