A KISS FROM ALEX

A Kiss from Alex

Anita rinsed the last of dinner dishes as an unusually strong scent of evergreen wafted through the screen above her sink. She closed her eyes to savor its richness when suddenly, a strange something made her tummy tingle.

Ah, I’m being silly. She dismissed the odd sensation as mere complaisance. Her thoughts returned to Butch, pleased her husband enjoyed his favorite meal served with loving empathy for the tragic loss of his lifelong friend the week before.

Alex was killed when overheated brakes failed to slow his old logging truck on a steep downgrade. Heavy with timber, it careened into a deep ravine near the base of Mt. Washington, the flagship of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. It was a sorrowful day in Bretton Woods as anyone who knew the jovial Alex was touched by his loss.

Finished with dishes, she wiped her hands and joined Butch in the den. He seemed restless and unable to get comfortable. She knew that on such balmy weekend nights as this, he and Alex used to run their hounds after raccoons for pelts. Though she remained sensitive to his troublesome time grieving Alex’s death, his fidgeting was beginning to annoy her.

Anita sighed. “It’s such a lovely evening, darling, why not take the dogs out? I know it won’t be the same without Alex, but it’s been a month since you last exercised them. Maybe a little hunting will do you some good; help take your mind off things. Pepper could use the experience, too.” She appealed to his sentiments for breaking in his new yearling with the older dogs.

Pepper was Butch’s pride and joy, aptly named for the bountiful markings spattering its coat. The handsome Bluetick was a birthday gift from Alex only months ago.

Maybe Nita’s right. Butch warmed to her idea though he wavered between romping in the woods or catching the Amos and Andy Show on the Philco. His mind made up, he kissed her temple and gave her a gentle hug. She offered to get his boots while he retrieved his pistol and flashlight from a hall closet.

Anita followed him onto the veranda and watched him cross the yard toward the kennel, pleased to see him smiling and more perky. Moments later, Butch returned with four tethered hounds eager to burn off pent up energy.

“There’s no sense driving anywhere special tonight, hon, plenty of coon in there.” Butch gestured toward wooded acreage leading to a boggy lowland where Anita often strolled to gather hickory nuts and wild blueberries. “Besides, it’s mostly for training young Pepper here, anyway. Ain’t that right, li’l fella,” he said, petting the playful youngster’s flanks.

She bid him luck and watched the troupe cross a two-acre hayfield before the hounds were turned loose at the perimeter. Anita lingered outside, her quiet solitude lulled by the bawling hounds growing faint as they ran deeper into the woods. She drew a deep breath of the warm night air, her eyes drawn to an especially sharp, crystalline sky. She marveled at the resplendent star clusters, like a mass of silver freckles against the violet hue of the heavens set aglow by the moon about to poke its nose above the horizon.

Anita soon returned to the den and settled comfortably in her rocker to crochet. Hours later, she was listening to a Red Skelton broadcast when a flicker of motion caught the corner of her eye. Curious, she parted the window sheers and was shocked to see the silhouette of her husband running toward the house.

Anita jumped to her feet as Butch bounded the steps, nearly knocking her aside when barging through the doorway. She followed him into the kitchen.

“What on earth— what’s wrong, Butch? Where are the dogs— your precious Pepper?”

Butch ignored her. Gasping for breath, he stood bracing himself against the kitchen table. Anita placed an arm around his waist, concerned as she guided him into a chair.

“What happened out there?” she asked, picking pine needles from his hair. She also noticed his muddy clothes and the flap of his holster was loose, its pistol gone. “And where are your Wellies?” She pointed to his feet absent of green slip-ons, a sock on one foot, the other bare.

He remained silent, looking numbly at her with wide, frenzied eyes.

“Come on, damn it— say something. Are you alright? Did you surprise a bear or something?”

“In a minute,” he grunted, and drew a sleeve across his sweaty brow. He popped from his chair, grabbed a tumbler from the dish basket, and fetched a bottle of bourbon from the cupboard.

Butch was visibly shaken as he poured a jigger of whiskey, inhaled it, and poured another. Anita slid her chair closer to the corner of the table and placed her hands atop his forearm.

“Please, honey, what the devil is going on? You’re scaring me.”

“Ha! I’m scaring you?” He slowly leaned closer and peered into her eyes. “Let me ask you something: do you believe in weird stuff like spirits? Well I sure as hell do— now,” he said, not waiting for an answer. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it.” Seated on the edge of her chair, she listened closely as Butch described how he and Alex used to have a set routine.

“We’d release the hounds and then follow until their yowls changed.” He explained how the difference in pitch signaled the dogs had treed a raccoon.

“That’s when we’d hustle in for the kill. Since Alex was older and fat, he’d hold the hounds back while I climbed the tree for a clear shot. If we had dead ones already, Alex had this crazy habit of laying ‘em out side-by-side instead of dropping ‘em in a pile— lining ‘em up in a neat row like this,” he said, gesturing with his hands.

“Well, tonight, I had two coons by the time I reached your blueberry patch. I was feeling pretty tired and was gonna call it quits when the hounds jumped a third deeper in the bog, so I followed.

“Traipsin’ through that spongy, summer-dried swamp was really spooky. It was dead quiet. And there was this dense, ground-hugging fog glowing with an eerie sheen from the moonlight, swirling around about knee high like you see in them werewolf flicks.

“I snapped the hounds to their leashes and tied them to a sapling out of reach of my kills. The dang coon was up near the top of a big walnut and hard to spot out on a limb. I climbed, and once in position, I shot and watched it tumble through the outer branches. I was so focused on getting down, I didn’t notice the dogs weren’t barkin’. But when I hit the ground, I glanced over at them— and that’s when I froze.”

He raised his hand in oath. “So help me, Nita, th-there they were— one, two, three dead coons,” Butch recounted, stroking his finger on the table. “All laid out in a row and only a yard from the dogs— just like Alex used to do.” He scanned her face for a sign she believed him, his eyes moist from emotion.

“The dogs were just layin’ there, stone-still on their bellies with the back of their necks bristlin’ and tails tucked ‘tween their legs— just starin’ at them coons. Even young Pepper didn’t budge. It was if they were trying to tell me something— like something was there with us, and close.” He paused to down his whiskey.

“I sensed it, too. It was like a tenseness— sort of how a big cat gets when it’s about to pounce on prey. It gave me the willies. I drew my pistol and listened for a crunch of moss, a twig to snap— anything. But there was no sound, not even a cricket chirping.”

In reenactment, Butch slowly swept an imagined beam of light around the kitchen as if probing the darkened shadows of the swamp. “But I couldn’t see a damned thing. I didn’t know what to think, but called out, anyway. ‘Alex?’ I whispered. ‘Alex? Are you out there?’ But there was nothin’— nothin’ but this ungodly, heavy silence hanging in the air.”

Goose-bumps dotted his forearms as he relived the jittery feeling that something was lurking in the fog roiling around him. Butch narrowed his focus, and again, slowly swung a phantom beam about the kitchen.

“Alex!” he barked, jolting Anita upright in her chair.

“I couldn’t move. I just stood there like a dumb fence post, every nerve in my body on edge trying to see or hear something.” He paused and looked deep into her eyes. “But it don’t end there.”

“I gotta tell ya, honey, my knees felt weak and I got the shakes. The dogs still hadn’t moved and I was about to bolt when I see this wisp of fog slowly rise from the swamp. But it wasn’t thick and moist, or shiny like the ground fog. It was different. More of a haze, sort of how a column of cigar smoke looks rising from an ashtray.”

Anita followed the motion of his hand, slowly rising and twisting until stopping a few inches from his face.

“When it got to about here, it leveled off like an anvil and there it hung. I know this is gonna sound crazy, but uh— well, it seemed almost like it was lookin’ at me. My eyes were glued to it— it barely moved, back and forth, ever so slight.” Butch’s nostrils flared, and again, the hairs prickled his neck and forearms.

“Then all of a sudden, ba-zoom!”

He thrust his hand past Anita’s ear, nearly bouncing her from her chair. “Just like that, it shot past my face and vanished. I could feel no breeze, but ‘cept for a split second, I could o’ sworn I felt a clammy coldness, sort of like a slight pressing sensation touch my face— right here.” Butch tapped his cheek as Anita gently squeezed his arm to console him, mystified by his story. “That’s when I got the heebie-jeebies and ran like hell.”

Butch described his mad dash out of the swamp, of how he stepped into a shallow mud hole that sucked off one of his boots, its sock still inside. Frantic, he kicked the other free to level his step, but within yards, his toe jammed into a surface root and he hit the ground hard. The impact broke the flashlight and dislodged his gun. He ignored the pain, sprung to his feet, and resumed his frenzied charge with only moonlight to guide his path.

“I couldn’t help it, Nita. I was scared out of my cotton-pickin’ mind. Even left the dogs where they were.”

“What? You left the hounds tied to a tree? How could you, Butch? You’ll have to go back and get them. What if a big moose happens by? They’ll be torn to shreds if they can’t run away.”

“I don’t care!” His eyes flared with determination. “I ain’t goin’ near that God-forsaken place ‘til daylight, I tell ya. They’ll just have to wait. That’s all there is to it.” He ignored the guilt and downed his whiskey praying they’d be safe until morning.

Anita was confused, unsure of what to make of his story. She hesitated saying anything knowing Butch was not easily rattled, let alone never prone to fanciful embellishment. She didn’t doubt the sincerity of what he perceived had happened given his state of trepidation, but it was another thing to refuse going back for his beloved hounds.

Butch studied her face, certain he detected a restrained, but dubious smirk. “I know damned well what you’re thinking. You think I’m nuts, a dang lunatic, don’t you? I swear, Nita, I ain’t made nothing up.” The inflection in his voice pleaded for support. “I saw what I saw.”

“I’m not saying it ain’t so, darling. But you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. You said so yourself, that you were overtired. Maybe when you rested, you nodded off or something. You know, maybe you didn’t realize it, but thinking of old times, you copied Alex. Maybe your mind was playing tricks on you in the moonlight.”

“Bullshit! I wasn’t daydreaming. I tell you, I was on my feet in the middle of a damned swamp. And what about the dogs? Why didn’t they howl or tear hell out the coons only a yard from their mugs? How did the one I shot end up with the others? Huh? Answer me that!”

He challenged her sense of reason, but Anita chose only to listen for fear of agitating him further. Butch rose and kicked back his chair. Frustrated, he removed his shirt and threw it into the sink. A medley of emotions grappled with his manhood; he was unnerved, embarrassed, and confused.

Well, I wasn’t there, Anita conceded, though she was bewildered and unable to offer any plausible explanation. She allowed Butch to vent before joining him by the door, staring at the woods through its small window. She slid a reassuring arm around his waist and kissed his shoulder.

Many things didn’t make sense at the moment, but she was certain of one thing— the dogs had to be freed and brought home. She nudged his ribs with playful enthusiasm, carefully choosing her words so as not to appear skeptical and risk discouraging him.

“I’ll tell you what. How about we get the camping lantern and I’ll help you get the dogs. You said they were in my blueberry stomping grounds, so they can’t be too hard to find, okay? Come on. Maybe between the two of us and that big lantern, things won’t be— um— quite the same.”

Pepper’s only a pup, Butch sighed. He knew it was the right thing to do, but felt ashamed and emasculated his wife had more courage to go into that dreaded swamp than he did.

“I’ll get the lantern,” he said, giving in. Anita was relieved his confidence seemed to be returning as she retreated to the bedroom to get him a clean shirt and socks. Slipping on a long-sleeved pullover, she returned to the kitchen carrying her hiking shoes.

While tying their boots, a muffled commotion could be heard coming from the veranda. Puzzled, they hesitated and glanced at each other before Butch snatched the door open. All four hounds were prancing about, wagging their tails. Pepper pawed the outer screen, eager to embrace his master.

At first, Butch studied his hounds in amazed disbelief. Anita watched as he pet the dogs, glad they were home safe when Butch looked up, glowering.

“Still think I’m a damned lunatic?”

“Oh for Pete’s sake,” she flustered. “I never said any such thing.” Not entirely convincing, she shrugged, offering what she deemed a logical defense. “I dunno, maybe when you ran off they got excited and wriggled free somehow.”

“Think so? Try again woman.” He pointed at the hounds. “Take another look— a good look.” Butch slid two fingers under one of the collars to demonstrate. “Where’s his leash? Do you see any leashes— any of ‘em? Who in hell do you suppose unsnapped the heavy clasps from all four turnbuckles?”

He left her stupefied as he brushed past her and whistled the dogs into the house. Anita would never have permitted such a thing in the past, but she was stumped, her mind a complete blank.

“Tonight, they stay in here— with us.”

Anita said naught, still spellbound and unable to react as two hounds curled up on the sofa, a third opting for the braided rug in front of the radio. Butch sat in his favorite chair and motioned Pepper to his lap. Anita looked on, trancelike, her eyes still focused on the pup’s collar. As Butch stroked Pepper’s head, the dog turned and nuzzled Butch’s chin. Anita’s eyes widened.

Oh-h-h, my God. Is such a thing even possible?

Her emotions soared. She had heard stories of the paranormal, but had no idea if such phenomena actually existed, let alone of being able to explain any of it. But feminine intuition told her something very strange had indeed happened in that swamp. Tears welled in her eyes.

Alex kissed him goodbye, tonight. She was convinced of it.

She was overcome with confusing, yet wondrous emotions trying to grasp the depth at which human bonding must be to lift the cosmic veil separating mortals from the supernatural.

Anita smoothed the goose bumps from her arms as she tiptoed into the kitchen. Though an infrequent drinker, she spotted Butch’s whiskey and poured herself a shot. She drew a taste to moisten her lips, shuddering at the bourbon’s initial bite.

Again, she found herself leaning against the kitchen sink and gazing out her window. Immersed in subliminal thought, she stared at the heavens, intrigued by what ineffable powers must lay concealed out there— way, way out there in the deepest reaches of the Cosmos.

She smiled, noting how the stars were truly more than brilliant, more than beautiful. Tonight— they were mystifying.

Suddenly, her tummy tingled as before. But rather than dismiss the feeling, she encouraged it; her eyes glued to what was the biggest, and the brightest of full moons she had ever seen.

Now fully risen in all her radiant splendor, Luna’s celestial visage seemed to be smiling back at her— coyly, as if sharing an intuitive, female-to-female nod allowing Anita a rare and privileged peek into the supernal void.