THE  CAVERN  OF  DEEP  HARMONY

PART EIGHT:

Martha brought out an apple pie for dessert. She was a short, rather plump woman, with a cap of  white curls framing her open, pleasant face.  As she set the warm pie on the table, Marshall grinned and said, "Good Lord, Martha. My nose thinks it's died and gone to heaven."

Indeed the smell filling the room was marvelous...apples, cinnamon, brown sugar. Eden watched as Martha cut a huge slice, plopped it on a plate and set it in front of Marshall.  Her pleasure in being able to serve him was clearly writ on her features.  Eden wished Marshall could see how happy his little remark had made their hostess. His not being able to see Martha or the pie took her mind back to the daffodils with a sudden start.  She went over what he'd said, not that he remembered what daffodils looked like and could transpose that into the Lake Country, but that he'd run his fingers over one. She stared openly at him as he lifted a forkful of pie to his lips. Had he never seen a daffodil...ever?  Was that what he meant?  Did he know their  form completely but not that they were yellow? Did he not know about...yellow? The thought absolutely appalled her. How could she find out without being rude and asking him directly?

She ate a bite of  pie, so preoccupied that she didn't even taste it. "Was Wadsworth your first guide dog?" she asked offhandedly.

"My third," he replied, wiping his lips. "I had a golden retriever during my teens, but he was retired, lived with my mother after that. A guide dog usually serves for around seven years, but

I had Mellow for longer than that. She was my second, a yellow lab. Went off to college with me. A really wonderful animal."

"Then you got Wadsworth?"

"You have to go back to the Seeing Eye and train with a new dog each time you get one. They need to make sure you work as a team before they send you out in the world. But, yes, Wadsworth is my third dog."

"Um, how young can you get one?"

He smiled, laying down his fork.  "Small children aren't able to handle one. It's rather a work-out walking with a guide dog. So when I was little, I used a cane or my brother...or I just...went. My mother had a hard time with that, I'm afraid.  She didn't appreciate my love for climbing trees."

"You've been blind since you were a child?"  There, she'd asked it.

"Always," he said.

"Always?"

"Came into the world this way."  He grinned.  "But they decided to keep me anyway."

"I didn't...."

"It's fine, Eden. I don't mind at all your asking."

Her mind was racing. So he'd really never seen a daffodil.  Never. She'd couldn't begin to imagine it.  He returned to eating his pie, somehow realizing that she was thinking.  She was actually running through a lot of emotions. When she got past being appalled, she found that

she was angry that this should be so for him.  She took a bite of pie and almost choked on it, coughing and then taking a long drink of coffee.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"Went down wrong pipe," she gasped.

"I did that with mud yesterday," he offered pleasantly.

"So you did."  She was glad he'd brought that up again. "How did it happen that Wadsworth

let you go over the gully's edge anyway?"

"It wasn't his fault, not at all. Mine entirely. He stopped and even tried to block me with his body."  He patted the dog again, accompanied by more tail thumping.  "But I thought if I explored carefully with my foot, I could determine where to walk. Made the mistake, though,

of letting my weight come forward before I was sure. Blasted careless of me. And the edge just crumbled away.  Took me down with it. I should have known better. I DID know better.  So it was stupidity and not blindness that nearly did me in."

"Did you send him for help, then?"

"I couldn't. Too much mud in my mouth. He decided that all on his own."

"He's very smart."

"Evidently smarter than I am," Marshall chuckled.

There was a pause that lasted a couple of minutes as they finished their pie. "Have you been to the Morning Glory before?" he asked, wondering where it might lead.

"First time. My cousin found it on the internet, thought it would do me good to get away right now."

"And has it?"

"What?"

"Done you good? I imagine you didn't expect to spend your first day covered in mud."

She thought about that a minute. Actually yesterday had been easier for her than she'd imagined. He'd distracted her so from herself that she hadn't moped around thinking about Miles. "No, I didn't expect that. But...it was ok. You helped."

"Glad to be of service, though I don't see how I could have been of any help to you. It was entirely the other way round."

"Not really. Not...."  Did she really want to explain?  "It was an anniversary...of sorts."

"Wedding?"

"No, not a wedding."

"I'm sorry. I don't mean to pry, Eden."

She looked down at her plate and then remembered he wouldn't be staring at her anyway.  Suddenly she realized she wanted him to understand.  "Miles, my husband.  He was killed four years ago yesterday."

Marshall pressed his lips together, not having expected that. He said, "I'm so sorry, Eden,"

then thought how insufficient that was.

"He was a cop. Irish. Liked to sing.  Guess I didn't think I'd lose him that soon."

"How long were you married?"

"Two years. Now he's been gone twice as long as that."  She couldn't believe, really, that she was sitting there with a stranger telling him about her feelings. But she looked at her hands in her lap and they held the memory of touching his eyelids.  Did that make him more than a stranger? She didn't know.  Curling her fingers tightly into her palm, she pressed her thumb over them like a clamp, studying them. Did she owe it to Miles not to think about that, not to remember it?  She squeezed her own eyes shut.

Martha bustled back into the room to take away the pie dishes and found her sitting there like that, head down, eyes shut. Marshall was simply sitting quietly across from her, looking slightly grim. She put her hand on Eden's shoulder, startling her. "Are you ok, Eden, dear?"

"A bit of a headache. I think I'll go up to my room now, if that's all right."

"You go right along. You had quite the day yesterday."  She stood watching as Eden bade Marshall a quick good-night and then headed for the stairs.  When she heard Eden's door

close, she said to Marshall. "Looked a bit peaked. Probably just needs to rest a bit."

Marshall sat there a moment more, then got up and went into the living room, Wadsworth in attendance.  Harold came in, half a mug of coffee in his hand, cleared his throat loudly as he'd decided to do so Marshall would know he was in the room. Marshall had been there a month and Harold was still not used to his blindness but he liked the man, liked to talk with him when he got the chance. "You feeling better this evening?"

"A lot, thanks. After they got my arm back in its socket, a great deal of that pain simply stopped." He ran his palm down his right leg. "Still have a lot of aches and bruises, though. Must have really tumbled against things as I went down."  His right hip, in fact, ached rather profoundly.

"Good 25, maybe 30 feet down to the bottom of that thing. Surprised you didn't break your neck."  Harold had a definite tendency toward bluntness of speech.

"How do you think she did it, Harold? Eden. How do you think she got me out of there? I

barely remember anything about it."

"Don't know as I could've done it myself so I can't imagine how a slender little thing like her

did it. She's got guts, that one. Then after she got you up and out, she walked you halfway back down the trail. You collapsed on her right where it widens out and she got the idea of writing

a note and putting it under your dog's harness. That's what got me out there. Pouring rain, it was, too. Absolute buckets."

"I have some memory of the rain.  I imagine if I'd have still been in the gully when that started, I'd probably have drowned."

"'Spect so," he agreed. "She looked like a drowned pup herself when I found you, sitting there with your head in her lap, leaning over, trying to keep the rain off you."

Marshall licked his lips, trying to place the woman he'd just had dinner with in that totally different situation. Martha came in, still wiping her hands on a dish towel.  "Anything I can get you men?"

Marshall got to his feet. "Thanks, but no, Martha. I believe I'm going to retire for the night myself." He smiled. "That was outstanding pie, by the way."

When he was settled in his bed, Wadsworth sprawled on the rug beside it, he lay there trying to ignore his hip and shoulder, trying to center his mind on what Eden had done. Damn, he wished he could recall things more clearly.  Everything had become this big mush of mud and pain and wet and cold. And fingers touching his face. And the scent of something he strained to remember but just couldn't quite manage. He dropped his right arm off the side of the bed and Wadsworth lifted his head to lick it. He left it there, the dog's warm tongue somehow a needed connection in that moment. Sometimes, he mused, it was the lightest touch that kept us from floating away.

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