The Red Wagon
Once upon a time, a young man and woman fell in love, got married, and set up house in a pretty little cottage beside a river.
It was spring, and the sun shone young and bright. The river ran silver like tinsel under a rickety old bridge.
The young lady was planting flowers and setting out her kitchen garden, and her husband was plowing the field across the road behind his horses. She was happy with her home, happy to feel the warm earth in her hands, happy to set down roots in this place for her family and her children who would come. She could see the daisies unfurl and the hollyhocks climb, and the rosemary and thyme and the bushes of mint spread their arms over the stepping stones.
The Spring-sounds of robins and nuthatches played merrily, along with the work-sounds of her husband and Nob and Bob, the drafthorses pushing against their harnesses.
A new sound entered. A squeaking, grating sound, and a lot of panting and skittering. She looked out at the road in front of the cottage, and there was a boy, pulling a mostly-red wagon. A large though very young sheepdog was busy running back and forth from his young master to the sides of the road. The dog and his boy were laughing and singing and keeping time with the sun in Spring.
The creaking rusty wagon didn't seem to mind its labor. It carried a stack of dark red apples, clearly out of season. The young wife walked up to her picket fence, where she met the boy, the sheepdog and the wagon.
The boy stopped and smiled, and the sheepdog wagged his tail. The boy, who was wearing a clean but worn shirt, and dungarees that were torn at the knees, picked up an apple and presented it to the young woman. "Here, this is for you, it's from my tree.”
"Why," she stuttered, not expecting a gift from someone so poor, "thank you." She took it from his smudged hands.
"Try it now," he said, "it won't keep. But it’s the best you'll ever have."
She hesitated for a little. She looked down at the rusty wagon, so dingy that she could barely see the white letters spelling out "Radio Flyer." His hands were grubby, and he looked like he needed a bath.
But his smile was pure. She raised the apple to her lips and bit into the fruit: the cool nectar of everything apple and the Spring blossoms of the orchard, glimmered into her mouth and she was convinced that this was indeed the very best of apples she ever had.
She smiled. She could not resist the temptation to reach out her hand, as the future mother she already was, to comb his hair lightly with her fingers. He blushed, turned aside, and stammered: "I will leave some more here for all of you."
"Please wait," she said, "and let me get you something for your trouble." She turned and ran lightly into the cottage, for a coin or two to give the boy in return for the apple.
But when she returned, he was gone. He was already down the road, far enough not to hear her when she called. She saw him and the dog and the wagon continue on, singing and just as merrily, now halfway across the bridge.
No one used the bridge anymore. On the other side of the river, it seemed to stop all at once, right at the edge of the thick forest where no one lived. The forest was beautiful from this distance, but it looked dark and wild. There was a loneliness that she felt every time she looked that way, and she had no desire to ever cross the bridge to see what was there.
She waited at first for the boy to return. Then she went back to her work in the garden, looking up every so often to watch for the boy and the dog and the wagon.
She went inside to make dinner in the evening. As she set the dutch oven in the fireplace, she heard her husband washing himself before he came in.
"What a funny thing," he said as he came in from the evening, "I saw a little boy coming over the bridge just now."
She rushed out of the house, but only caught a glimpse of the end of the Radio Flyer, the head of the boy and the wagging tail of the dog disappearing around a bend in the road.
There were five more apples, by the gate, in a row.
* * * * * * *
Years passed and summer gleamed on the cottage home, now filled with the happy business of children. One little girl was inventing new rules for hopscotch. Another was fashioning a dress for her doll. A boy was helping his father cut hay for the stock. The youngest, a baby boy, was taking his first toddling steps in the sun, gurgling happily as he teetered in the soft grass.
There is nothing better than a June day that starts in the chilly sapphire dawn, quiet before the children rise, the murmur of reverence at the morning prayers at the flickering candle on the table. Then the day unveils, like a curtain drawn back, onto the horses and the livestock stomping to be fed, the cool morning cleansing breeze that sweeps through the kitchen carrying the scents of open earth and green. The work is hard and hot, but the tiredness is not weariness, and it ends in rest and contentment at the riverside: the husband and wife, now father and mother, wading in the streaming tide with the splashing chatter of children and laughter, always getting young again.
Into one of these summer evenings, by the riverside at the edge of the cottage yard, there came the sound again, the creak of dry metal wheels, and the padding of a now larger dog.
But the boy did not look too different. His clothes were changed, and not for the better. He wore only a thin simple shirt and frayed short pants, and his feet were bare.
The sheepdog was fully grown, but not old enough for dignity. He still leapt about with puppy eagerness to please and expect joy on every face.
He stopped and smiled at the young mother who came to him. The children watched to see if this newcomer would be good at tag and spud and kick-the-can. But he said nothing, but bent down and picked up a dark red apple.
"Won't you come inside for dinner?" she asked, even though the father, who was much more sensible, shook his head in worry and consternation.
The boy finally spoke. "I'm going to cross the bridge today." He bent down again, and counted out five more apples, and left with the dog bounding at his side.
There are moments that are so full of purpose and tomorrow that nothing more should be said. So she didn't. And the boy pulled the wagon away.
* * * * * * *
There are two ways to take Autumn. Some people, like the middle-aged lady in the cottage, took it with a calm happiness. She liked the snap in the air and the smell of wood fire, the crunch of fallen leaves on the ground and the fruit of the harvest all brought in.
The Fall winds, though, sounded melancholy. They blew from out of time, and they made her look on the bridge, across the river: they sighed through the oak and maple branches of yesterday and carried gold portraits of her children still playing tag and swimming at home, and a young husband who still knew how to laugh and sing in the fields. The winds, too, whispered of tomorrows unknown and unreached but still bound to come.
She prayed in the wind, and she chose to offer thanks for the past and hope for the still tomorrow, and she fixed faith to the bridge in her heart.
She looked up. The boy with the wagon was walking toward her down the lane, steadily, on purpose, not afraid. His sheepdog moved gently with him, now dignified in his fully grown stature. The dog no longer skittered like a puppy, but moved rather like a bear, proceeding in a rolling motion.
The sheepdog's face and eyes were covered by white long fur, but the large coal nose and the merry smile expressed a steady joy. He turned his nose into the variable wind, trying to guess its next move. He was a mighty friend of Autumn.
She was not surprised to see the boy. By now, she had started to recognize the rhythm of time, the arrangement of days in a year, and the procession of seasons. Faith and prayer had given her this.
The boy was clad in an old houndstooth jacket, the shabby leather buttons fastened up to his neck. His black beret had migrated off center, and was pitched jauntily to the side.
They smiled together as they met, across the picket fence of the old cottage by the river. "Try it," he said as he held out for her a dark red apple, "they're the best you'll ever have."
She took the fruit and savored its morsel without hesitation. The sweetness carried the substance of what the wind sang, of yesterday and tomorrow and today. She could taste the familiar traces of her place and cottage, the summer days of her babies on the grass, and even the spring morning of the window thrown open to the cool washing breeze.
"It is Time," she whispered, with a heart-rooted shudder, a sweet poignance.
The boy smiled, picked up the handle of his Radio Flyer, and followed the dog.
Almost at the bridge, he stopped by the field, and set another apple down against the fence that didn't seem to have any purpose other than to say "this is mine and no one else's."
He looked up at the stern man, standing beside his proud stuffed barn. The old husband looked, for all the world to see, like a man who's grown up too much, quite beyond liking apples, or even remembering how they taste.
The boy smiled again, and turned toward the road, and crossed the bridge.
The apple remained by the fence. Untried. Untasted.
There are Trolls in the world. Most of them live at the other end of old spooky bridges. This bridge was about to get one, because there is, after all, another way to take the Fall.
* * * * * * *
Trolls think important thoughts and are impatient with children who try to cross their bridges. They dislike the sunlight because they have been informed, by the best informed opinion, mind you, that such light is corrosive and will turn them into stone -- never mind the fact that they have already turned stone for the simple reason that they have turned away from that light.
There was no chance of light today, in the very dark of winter and the year-ending storm of cold and snow. The sun had gone down at noon for the solstice, and night was longest this day.
It was a troll day, a bad weather day that only confirmed troll thoughts for the old wizened Troll living under the far end of the spooky old bridge. He had built himself a shed under the bridge at this end because the thick green pine forest wouldn't let him in. Years ago he had tried to continue on where road had stopped at the end of the bridge, but there was nowhere to go in through the thick preventing hedge of spruce and fir
So he set up a ramshackle wall of sticks and stones between the bridge pilings, and thus he built for himself a miserable bachelor hole, just right for a troll such as he. And God help the soul who ever walked on the bridge, because they'd be stepping over his head and his squat little home and proving how superior they were over him, whoever they may be.
"Everyone's left me," the troll muttered, explaining to himself for the thousandth time why he lived stone-like in a hole, failing to mention, of course, that he was the one who did the leaving.
He recounted his resentments again, the recounting of which was on the schedule for today and everyday and was the only thing he looked forward to.
"They left me and went away to their own places … my fields grew weeds and thistles, and the bugs made work intolerable, and my back ached … no one wants this old piece of dirt so close to the river and by a useless bridge to nowhere and a bunch of rotten trees … and she would not listen, she would not move away to a nice place in town where I could be noticed and take my ease … I've paid my dues and should have come into my own, but she wanted to stay here in this forsaken country spot where nothing happens … she chose her old miserable garden but I was done with dirt and animals and staying put in the same miserable spot … I had things to do and people to meet and places to go and money to make and all I am is a god-forsaken troll."
Neglecting to mention, of course, that it was not God Who did the forsaking.
Which is usually the reason for why trolls exist, or why trolls think they're trolls and turn to stone.
A creaking sound above his head interrupted his happy misery. It was a grating creak of rusty wheels, the heavy padding of a large animal and the light footfall of what he suspected would belong to a boy.
He was right, when he raised his unkempt troll head over the timbers. "Who's that tramping and scraping over my bridge?" roared the troll.
From his substandard point of view, he looked first at boots and massive paws and an ancient toy red wagon, bending under a stack of dark, red apples.
The dark burgundy hue glowed mystically in the drapery of white winter, every wisp of snow in flight bowed and curled toward the Radio Flyer and the shepherds who drew it along.
They stopped. The boy, never aging, garbed in a woolen earflap hat and thick greatcoat, all in gray and turned silver and white on this cold Yule day. The great sheep dog stood now higher than the boy, a massive December bear in long white fur with blue gray markings in his thick topcoat.
He was now a dog of regal joy.
They were not bothered by the snow: the snow stood under them and with them, in procession, and the troll, of course, felt immediately as though he did not belong.
"You! Why do you trespass on my bridge! Why do you come here uninvited! Why do you stick your nose in my business! Why do you bother me!"
"Loneliness," the boy said, without a smile.
"Loneliness," he repeated, and then went on, softly, "and spite in the night, resentment, reproach, regret and repetition … you dug yourself a hole, when I gave you a home across the river."
"You gave me? The nerve ... who are you to tell me how things are in the place I built? Who are you to criticize my choices and my beliefs? I am entitled to my opinions and my hole! I have every right to be me! I am what I am, a God-forsaken troll!"
The sheepdog growled, loud and deep, and the threat was felt on the bridge.
"Stay, Billy," the boy patted his neck, "don't be so gruff."
He turned to the distraught refugee from a frustrated life, who was looking for a phone to hang up with.
"Not so forsaken, it turns out," he smiled and bent down to the old wagon.
"Here, take and eat. They're the best you'll ever have."
It is not true that nothing ever changes, or that old dogs cannot learn new tricks. In Time there are chances and turnings, and occasionally habituated trolls can step long enough out of their holes to do something new.
Or very old.
"I picked this apple a thousand years ago," and the boy's white young hand placed the deep red fruit in the troll's grubby palms.
In the deep winter and still curtain-fall of velvet white, on the bridge between home and the eternal woods, over the mystic river, the troll bit fitfully into the apple.
He tasted fire and cider and stone, laughter at an oaken table, the steaming holy earth delved by ploughshare behind Nob and Bob, and faces, bright faces that called out … and ice-melting springs of vernal rained gracefully into his streaming eyes. He was kneeling now on the bridge, for all the world to see, and gasping at the breaking of an unbreakable, iceberg heart.
Her face, he saw, and his body was riven by grief.
He felt shelter and warmth. Billy stood over him, shading him from the cold, nuzzling his ear.
"There is still Time," he heard the boy whisper.
He looked up. The boy was moving toward the forest hedge. "Come, Billy," he called.
The boy and his dog stood in front of the forest door. A cascade of snow draped the blue-green and black-silver fronds of fir and spruce, hemlock and pine.
The white opaqueness of the snow curtain turned to bright. Whiter, whiter it gleamed and light streamed not from above but from within, as though fire shone from the heart of each snow crystal. It was transfiguration fire, visiting from the feast that never ceases at the fullness of Time, the harvest and authorial joy of apples, sheepdogs, and ex-trolls.
And a boy.
Who, with his dog, was stepping through.
But in the cleft of Light, he paused and turned and smiled at the man.
"Go, there's still Time." He pointed.
* * * * * * *
Children are good at making snowmen, even at the coldest of seasons. And these grandchildren were no exception.
For while their moms and dads were busy preparing a bittersweet feast of Christmas, their snow forts and snowmen, their handcrafted wreaths which showed the jaunty stamp of child labor were lying now on a bed which had been set up in the main room of the cottage, so that she could see and be part of the home she had made.
She could hear the laughter just outside the door. The adults were too hushed and serious, she kept telling them, and she forbade them from silencing the boisterous voices.
She called them in to sing their little carols and even coached them with the words. She smiled at their little performances of Bethlehem plays, and kissed every card and carved cow and sheep and camel.
Suddenly, the noises of play and the voices stopped. The bustle of cooking in the kitchen cleared.
Into the winter cottage entered the old familiar sound of scraping wheels. The frail old woman struggled to rise; her daughters ran to her side and propped pillows behind her back.
The wheels came closer, and the fathers went outside and met the children, who were standing agape at the scene.
A white-haired and bearded old man was laboring with an old toy wagon, stacked with dark red apples.
He wore a snowflocked old woolen coat that swept through the drifts on both sides of his path.
He stopped at the gate.
"May I come in?" he asked, deep and shy, not used to conversation.
The oldest of the four young fathers nodded and opened the gate to the stepping stone path.
A little one called out, with astonishment, "St. Nicholas!"
"No," her father said softly, "not him. Not exactly."
The daughters opened the door. The old man bent down to the wagon, then stepped under the stone lintel, where he stood, wavering in the liminal distance. He had gone as far as he could on his own.
"It's you …" came a soft voice from the bed. "Take off that coat and come …" Her hand opened, her fingers bent toward her palm and her weak smile.
He set down his coat and shuffled forward.
"I'm not the Boy," he stuttered.
"I'm old, but I'm not a troll."
He bent down and smiled.
"This is for you. It's the best you'll ever have."