Three-Legged-Ladder

Chapter One One swollen eye opens slightly. Extrinsically it searches, but does not see. Minutes pass. The eye, the stronger of the two, gradually begins to focus and scans the ceiling. The weaker eye joins in the search. They follow a thin, long crack. The fingers on the righthand tense. The eyes catch the movement and wait. The woman lying on her back on the living-room carpet is positioned as if for a final viewing. Slender arms rest upon the chest of forty-two-year-old Elizabeth Garrett, wife and mother of four grown children. Her blood-speckled nightgown is neatly arranged. Curly auburn hair frames her face. Her head is cradled on a small sofa pillow. Elizabeth’s consciousness struggles to emerge. She involuntarily rejects it. Revulsion washes over her, a vivid nightmare? Please be a nightmare, she silently pleads. She wills to wake up beside her husband Price just as she has for the past twenty-four years. With soundless words she calls out to God in the panic of protective denial, but she is appallingly aware that this is not an awakening from a horrific nightmare. Slowly she turns her aching head and studies the treasured book that had earlier spilled from her lap to the floor. Trickles of blood from her mouth and nose turn and take different paths down her chin. She stares at the book’s faded cover and mangled pages. Revulsion washes over her again. This room, this house, which has for so long been a haven now causes her to shudder as she takes in her surroundings and the realities of the night. Without visible emotion, she examines a speck of blood on the beige Berber carpet. Realizing that her attacker might still be in the house, she listens for any sound of movement. The lights, all but one reading lamp are dark, just as they were before her ordeal began. A single chime of the mantel clock pierces the silence. Two hours have passed since Elizabeth was seated and peacefully dozing. Her lip is split, her left forearm throbs and her head feels as though it is being squeezed in a vise. She closes her eyes to escape into the recesses of her mind where she can hide while strength gathers, unaware that in the days to come she will need more strength than she possesses. # It is October, the beginning of bow hunting season, the month of falling leaves and camouflage. The time that Elizabeth’s husband Price, their sons, Adam and Matt, son-in-law Tom, Price’s father, Norval, and a few friends head north across the Mackinac Bridge to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Elizabeth and daughters, Brooke and Darcy, head south. The men hunt. The women shop. Destinations differ, but the goals are the same; time together, time apart. Every fall the men congregate at the one-room schoolhouse which Price acquired when he purchased eighty acres of forest near hundreds of acres of state land. Some of the hunters stay a week or more, but seldom Price. Before seven days can pass, he typically yearns for home. Abruptly he packs up his gear and arrives at the farm before dusk. The women plan to go to Chicago again this fall, but Brooke’s stomach flu and a glitch with Darcy’s college research paper causes a last-minute cancellation. So, Elizabeth finds herself alone in the comfy farmhouse. The Garrett place has twice been renovated and is decorated in a traditional style. Her mother, Nina, chose the colors, not Elizabeth; she has little interest in shopping, matching, and arranging. Her Chicago shopping trips are merely excuses to spend time with her daughters. Whenever possible, she avoids shopping for clothing. From her kitchen table, she shops twice a year, once when the fall and winter catalogs arrive and again when the spring and summer editions are delivered. She places orders from pages where entire petite ensembles are coordinated. Her enthusiasm is for relationships, the farm, books and the out-of-doors, be it sun, rain, wind or snow. Elizabeth believes that life is tragically brief and that even the longest life is insufficient for embracing all that is important. When she chooses to do one thing, she is acutely aware that she is rejecting another. Throughout the house there are cozy chairs, reading lamps and numerous shelves lined with books. Price, primarily a fruit grower, is also an avid reader. The night stands which flank their bed are usually laden with two or three books and assorted magazines. They often take turns reading aloud to one another until the listener falls asleep. Several hours after breakfast the men took off in a caravan of vehicles loaded with hunting gear and supplies. Elizabeth, who will not willingly wound an animal and hates the gamy taste of venison, voices the same farewell as the year before, “Goodbye. Have a great time and don’t shoot anything.” She no longer tries to understand why men hunt. After the hunters leave with pies still warm from the oven, Elizabeth walks through the fields, the orchards and along the winding creek, collecting dried weeds, brown and brittle. With these she will fashion arrangements to remind her during long, winter days that spring’s beauty is waiting just beneath the snowdrifts. The first time Price returned home, and found the baskets of weeds inside, he questioned her bringing them into the house. Elizabeth reminded him that most flowers first grew wild and that nearly every flowering plant was once a transplanted weed.