A Passion For Eternity (7)

TO THE READERS

Old Joe told me these stories about passion....one rainy day back in 1985. He would cry in spots. I had been working for Joe about seven years. His parents had passed on in the early 70s and he hired me..... when he became so tuckered out.

He sat on the porch swing...the old red and blue blanket across his lap and told me all about Charlene. I do mean ALL about Charlene. Old Joe and I became best friends....he was never like a boss...he was a friend.

Anyhow....he said that he worked hard through the harvest in 1955...not a moment went by that he didn't think about Charlene. He chopped wood for first time with joy in his heart. He hated chopping wood before he met Charlene. All through the winter, he bundled up for walks every day to the middle of the north field....".little Kansas"...he called it.

He kept her white satin panties and pink socks under his mattress...he would touch them every night and whisper he loved her until he fell asleep. Sometimes he would get restless...he would cry because he missed her so bad. He would hear her voice softly say,"Wait Joey...we have time."

Joe told me that she met him in the middle of little Kansas that next August. They played every kind of sex game there is. He told me that she would do things like dab cherry juice on herself...blindfold him and tell him to find it with his lips....then he would do the same to her.

They mud wrestled after rain....climbed on the house roof and barn roof to make love..they even made love in the top of the old oak tree that stands by the house. Joe said that they could never seem to squeeze each other tight enough...sometimes they even left red marks on each other from squeezing.

He said that the sex was always wonderful but just looking at her throughout the day and night...it was heavenly...the only word he could think of. She would stand in the front yard in the evenings and just look at the moon and stars. The moonlight would shine on her hair and shoulders...every curve was perfect. Joe said he was jealous of the air...it could touch her everywhere at one time.

Joe told me that she was there every August of every year for three weeks. His parents would always be gone to their Canadian cabin. Even when he started getting older...by the time he got to her in the middle of the field...he was 18 years old again.

He mentioned that she told him later....the reason he believed she was Jim's fiance is that Jim and her would have been engaged if they had been born and lived. Jim would have joined the Navy but would have died in an explosion in September of 1955. Charlene would have married Joey in 1957...they would have had a very happy marriage. It had something to do with synchronizing a spiral of time.... was why Charlene was allowed to be with Joey.

Charlene told him secrets that he couldn't tell me about the future and about how things really are. He did tell me though.... she told him that every child who was unborn or should have been born, truly lives in the universe.

I know you readers may find all this hard to believe but in the summer of 1987, I was on my August vacation....I decided to sneak back to the farm one day. I went to the local crop duster's place and paid him a hundred dollars to fly me over the farm. It was around 3:00 in the afternoon.

We flew low and fast over the north field but I could see clearly. As I went by in that plane...looking out the side window...they both looked right at me and smiled. It was a young Joe and the most beautiful brown haired girl I had ever seen...they were naked except for Joe's John Deere hat....she was wearing it.

The scruffy old pilot said,"Hot dammed..he is a lucky little bastard!" I looked back and saw them both waving. The pilot wanted to fly by again but I begged him not to because I might get fired.

I am telling you folks...it blew my mind! When I went back to work in September...old Joe didn't say a word to me about it...he just held his blanket and grinned.

The next year in 1988...old Joe died. I came back to the farm house as the Coroner was loading him up. It was September 2nd.. The Sheriff told me that they found Joe covered with a blanket in the middle of the north field....he had been there a couple of days. The crop duster had called it in. The Sheriff showed me a pink ribbon they found in his right hand.

Old Joe left me the farm...he made certain conditions in his will and I stick to them by the letter. I rented most all of the land out except for an acre in the middle of the north field. I fenced it off, just as Joe wanted in his will.

I go on vacation every August. I pull Joe's old Pontiac Chieftain in the yard before I go. He left me a sign last year...a pink sock was on the gear shift. I grinned and gently placed it under the seat.

I guess folks...maybe love has power over time...maybe they are both the same thing sometimes. Joe looked at his pretty Charlene smile and saw love...it wasn't invisible...it was right there... in and all around her.

Old Joe told me once....." Love aint that hard to figure out...even life, death and time can't stand in the way of love.....love will find where it is wanted...it surely will."

He said that Charlene had seven passions....he only had one...for her....eternally.

Thank you.