Lowman’s Net

Lowman swirled a pitted tin spoon through the dark broth in a deliberate figure eight, watching figures of steam dance and play around the bowl. Occasionally he blew the steam away with a wheezy breath, dispersing the vaporous dancers and revealing the chipped rim of the timeworn earthenware vessel.

“I used to own four silver spoons,” he said in his gravel-filled whisper. As soon as he said the words he remembered that he had said them before. Perhaps he had repeated this phrase often, but he could no longer remember if the statement was true.

“So you’ve told me,” his wife said. And so he had many times over the years, though the number of spoons had increased with successive telling.

Lowman looked up at her across the crude wooden table as if surprised to find he wasn’t alone. Twenty years had passed since he brought home his new bride, perhaps twenty five—he hadn’t had a firm grip on time since that day—yet he was still amazed each day when he found her still there. And always he had known she wouldn’t leave him.

Lowman’s wife looked back at him over the top of her wooden spoon, smooth and dark with age and the deep stains of too many meals eaten in this decrepit hut. She had done her best to keep their home clean with everything put in order, the bed clothes washed, the floor swept, and as decent a meal prepared daily with the meager provender that Lowman brought home.

She sipped at her own broth then looked back down at her bowl. She was so young when he brought her home, and he was already over 40 and despairing that he would ever marry, but he never could decide just how old she was. Even now, her hair that had begun to silver in their first year together showed some of the fiery red that had so captivated him when he first saw it shining in the sunlight of the forest meadow where she danced among the wildflowers. Her eyes were still the bright, though not quite natural, violet that he had never been able to look at directly for more than a few seconds.

Lowman went back to swirling his soup and, to his surprise, found very small bits of meat tumbling up from the depths. He captured two on his spoon and eyed them with some suspicion.

“Pork belly,” his wife said. “Jon Heinkel gave me a piece as thanks for nursing his wife back to health after birthing their twelfth child.”

“You always were one for tender mercies, Ann.”

“Arsenic might have been a greater mercy for that woman,” she said. “Anyway, I cut it small so you could swallow it. I didn’t think your remaining teeth could handle it.”

He rolled the tiny bits in his mouth, savoring the flavor, before he added another spoonful of the rich broth and swallowed it all. His wife never ate meat and sometimes was reluctant to even cook it. Lowman seldom ate meat simply because he was unable to provide it. He raised a few chickens for the eggs and scratched out a small garden behind their tiny home. He did little work and had long given up hunting and fishing. In fact he had not fished since the day he arrived home with his new bride.

Lowman turned and looked at the fishing net hung on a nail beside the door. He remembered how she had stared at it that day as he led her from their meadow across the stream and through the woods to his little cabin. He hung it on its accustomed nail and had not taken it down since. It was the one thing she had never cleaned in all their time together, and dust-thick cobwebs hung in strands from the tool he had once used so often.

He saw that she was looking at him, and he turned back to his soup. Clearing his throat he looked at her bowl and asked, “What’s that green stuff floating in your soup?”

“It’s meadow cress,” she said. “I gathered it at the stream on my way back from Heinkel’s.”

“Humph. Cress gives me the winds.”

Her lips curled upwards toward that smile that always threatened to break out but somehow never quite made it. “That is exactly why I didn’t give you any.”

They ate the remainder of the meal in silence. When he pushed away his bowl he stretched as far as his underused muscles would allow. The stiffness in his joints seemed to hold him in place, and every movement produced pops and snaps. He watched her as she rose and began to gather the dishes. He had spent so much of his time watching her over the last two decades, or possibly three. He was the miser that found a horde of treasure then sat on it so he would never lose it. There had been days when instead of working he would hide at the edge of the woods and watch his cabin to make sure she didn’t decide to run back to the meadow, knowing in his heart that she couldn’t

He looked again at his fishing net and felt a pain in his heart. This was more than the regret that held him in its grip for so long. It was the physical sharpness he had suffered more often lately. She could probably help him with one of her herbal infusions as she had done for several people. He could never refuse her requests to go nurse some ailing neighbor, yet he paced the few steps that his cramped home would allow and wrung his hands until she came back. A half smile always lingered on her face when she returned to him, then he would smile and look at the fishing net and her face would drop.

“You’ve always been a good wife, Ann,” Lowman said.

“Yes,” was her only reply.

He repeated her name over in his mind. Ann. Anna. Annanetta? Annafretta? The whole name wouldn’t come to him. He repeated it like a mantra as he struggled to his feet and, leaning on a walking stick, made his way to the bed on stiff, creaking legs. He sat on the edge and stared at the door then said her name again.

“Annaphralenia.”

She turned with widened eyes and that half smile.

“Help me stand again, my dear.”

“Just tell me what you need, and I’ll bring it to you.”

“No, you can’t.” He looked down at his feet. “I remember that first time I saw you dancing in the meadow. You had tiny flowers woven through that beautiful red hair, and your skin was as flawless as…” He couldn’t think of anything to which he could compare her perfection.

“I was careless not to notice you watching me,” she whispered. “You were quieter in those days.”

“If I hadn’t been fishing that day,” he said, “then I wouldn’t have had…” He started to raise his boney finger to point then dropped his hand again. “I never would have caught…”

Lowman wiped at his face and tried to stand. His wife helped him to his feet, and he made his way toward the door. He leaned against the door frame and panted then grimaced as the pains gripped his chest again, then he took down the net.

“Stir up the embers in the fireplace,” he told her. She watched him out of the corner of her eye as she began to coax the flames back to life.

Even for so tiny a dwelling the journey to the fireplace and back to the bed seemed interminable. When he finally lay his head down on his pillow his breathing was labored and he ached all over. His wife stood staring at the fire as it licked up and began to take hold of the fishing net.

“Would you do me one more kindness though I don’t deserve it?” he asked. “Would you brew me a cup of that tea with the mushroom and poppy?”

She held the cup for him as he sipped then he lay back and sighed.

“You were always a good wife,” he said then closed his eyes. She brushed the thin hair out of his face and listened to his breathing until there was silence. She looked at the ashes in the fireplace and then at the door.

Old hinges complained as she pushed open the door, and a fresh breeze carried with it a subtle coolness that presaged autumn. She took off the old shawl that she had usually worn around the perpetually drafty cabin and hung it on the rusty nail that had for so long held the fishing net. She had seen that net in her dark dreams almost every night, but now it was ashes. Lowman’s wife stretched a leg through doorway and touched her bare foot to the path outside. The half smile became whole.

She walked up the slope behind the cabin toward a large grey bolder at the top. The sun was warm, and the breeze carried the scent of late summer hay and spent gardens. She unbuttoned her plain, coarse dress, and let it fall away then untied the string holding back her silver hair, allowing it to fall about her shoulders. The silver flowed from her hair and dispersed in shimmering sparks, leaving behind a cascade of fiery red tresses. She stretched out her arms and, feeling the sun on her face, her lips parted into a gleaming smile.

Had anyone been watching they would have seen a woman somewhat past middle age stretching her arms and reclaiming her youth. She was a young woman, a girl, a child, a doll. Tiny iridescent wings on the woman became full sized on the fairy. She took flight and sailed into the woods without looking back. Weaving through the trees with speed she turned and flew along the stream where she spied two boys who had just dredged a fish from the water with a small net. She buzzed their heads and made them lose their catch and the net as well.

The fairy paused at the meadow to caress the late wildflowers then entered the deeper woods at the other side of the clearing.

“Annaphralenia,” a voice called to her. “Where have you been hiding? Did you fly off with the honeybees to play?”

“No, Minolea,” she said, greeting her friend who had flown down from a treetop. “I just got caught up in something for a moment.”

***

B. C. Nance is a writer who hasn't given up his day job. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, he works by day as a historical archaeologist and literally knows where the bodies are buried--most of them anyway. At night, after roaming his neighborhood, he writes fiction and poetry, then stays up too late reading. His stories and poems have been published in a diverse selection of publications.