Land I Will Show You (eBook)

Timothy Milnes (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
486 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-8759-1 (ISBN)

Infos

Although this book has elements of being a thriller, it's characters come from divergent backgrounds and places. It reflects the choices we can make to be loved and redeemed.

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A fictional story that starts in Juneau, Alaska. It takes us to Inis Mor, Ireland; Seattle, Washington; and El Salvador. There are multiple characters including a group of people who knew each other in high school in Juneau. One of the people from Juneau goes to Inis Mor, Ireland and becomes romantically involved with a resident there. Another character is Native American, a Vietnam Vet, and is suffering from PTSD. One has been recently releases from prison. Another struggles with her life's vocation. There is tragedy within their stories, but for some comes love and redemption.

Textauszug

ONE

Juneau, Alaska, July 1980

Marianne turned the key in the lock and opened the door into her future. Her new attic apartment at the top of the Highlands on the north edge of town and looked west across the silver waters of Gastineau Channel a mile or more to the line of mountains comprising the backbone of Douglas Island. It took an effort to take it all in, but Marianne smiled at the beautiful view.

Marianne glanced at her watch—she’d arrived this morning on the ferry. She had plenty of time to get her things settled and go for a walk to Basin Road this afternoon.

In the hard discipline of her suffering, she had learned orderliness. Everything had its place. She spent thirty minutes bringing boxes up the long stairway into her living room. She placed her rosary and her favorite drawing of the Virgin Mary on the end table next to a wooden rocking chair. Next came her colored pencils and painting supplies, which she set for now on two shelves of a bookcase next to a fireplace on the wall opposite the window, putting the books she’d brought there as well.

She quickly made up her bed, put her clothes in the dresser and closet, unpacked the dishes, and set out her toiletries in the bathroom just off her bedroom. Food that she’d bought on the way here from the ferry terminal went into the fridge and cabinets. By then it was past lunchtime. She turned on her radio and set about making a sandwich and small salad.

When the first notes of the Everly Brother’s “Let It Be Me” flowed from her radio, Marianne set her knife on the kitchen counter, sat herself at the dining table and cried. It had been their song in 1964, the year of the loveliest relationship of her life before it had crashed down in an act of violence and subsequent misunderstanding that she didn’t fully understand to this day. She cradled her chin and cheek in the palm of her right hand, laughing at the silliness of her tears. But she knew there was a lot more behind them than a broken relationship between two seventeen year olds.

Marianne noticed a man sitting on his deck across the narrow dead-end street looking her way—she waved down at him, and he waved back.

Wiping at her damp cheeks as the song ended, she returned to cutting tomatoes and cucumbers for a lunch salad, her thoughts lingering a moment longer in 1964. Marianne opened the Juneau Empire she’d bought. Food was expensive, apples at forty-five cents a pound, two pounds of bacon going for $1.89. An article said food prices were expected to rise over two percent this month alone. On a darker note, tensions were rising between Iran and Iraq—not that anybody she knew really seemed to care. War. Her hands shook a bit—her body reacted on its own sometimes. Marianne wondered about her plan for later in the day, to return to the raised area behind Second Bridge. She believed it was the right thing to do, but what if she couldn’t deal with it? What if she were attacked again? She took a breath, recognizing the craziness of that thought.

An hour later she put on a light sweater and headed down the narrow streets that eventually dropped onto 12th Street and the rest of the town. She cut through Evergreen Bowl and took the trail that led up its steep backside. Two large ravens wove through the trees with surprisingly loud thwaps of their wings. A third trailed, its caw-caw bringing to mind someone gargling with pebbles. Coming out on 7th Street, she was only a couple blocks from Basin Road and all at once felt an ache in her heart. Eager to see it, Marianne decided to walk two blocks down Gold Street to the Cathedral.

She walked up its stairs and into the church. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes. It smelled exactly the same, a hint of incense combined with melting candle wax, old wood, and the aging carpet. Walking along the vestibule, she turned right and passed through the open double-doors into the church proper, before the narrow stair that led up to the choir loft.

To her left several candles were burning. It’s so small she thought, remembering that it was the smallest Roman Catholic Cathedral in the world. She walked slowly up the central aisle, looking around. The same statues of Mary and Joseph filled two corner niches. The communion rail was gone, the old altar replaced with a simple table, not the more complex one from before Vatican II. She genuflected and entered a pew on the left. It was cool and quiet. A nice place to pray. She pulled out the kneeler and knelt down with her eyes closed. The first thing that came into her mind was the persecuted poor in El Salvador.

Ten minutes later Marianne emerged, blinking her eyes in the brightness of the day. A bit of anxiety troubled her stomach. Stop doubting and just go, she thought. She moved quickly up Harris Street a couple blocks to a short stairway that provided a shortcut to Basin Road. Halfway up the stairs, she had the sensation of being watched. It’s just my imagination, Marianne thought. She took a few more steps, but finally unable to help herself, she turned quickly around.

There was a large, dark haired man on the street below her, his body facing her direction, but his face turned to the right down the hill. Had he looked away as she turned? She thought maybe he had, but couldn’t be sure. He came the rest of the way up the street, glanced her direction at the corner then quickly away. In a few steps he entered the Alexander Apartments.

Marianne’s body reacted on its own for a second time that day with an adrenaline-pushed surge of her pulse hard to ignore. She walked to the top of the stairs, looking up for a few seconds toward the peak of the Knoll three hundred feet above her.

In a couple minutes she was wandering high above Gold Creek on Basin Road, which wound behind Juneau and around the back of the Knoll into a narrow valley. Michael had always said, “Let’s go Back Basin,” and this became their private name for the valley. Hard packed dirt, the road was used mainly as a trail. Few cars ever came this way.

As she walked along First Bridge, a long wooden structure that clung to the steep backside of the Knoll, her pace slowed. At the end of the bridge, she stopped. In a couple hundred meters, just before Second Bridge, she would be there, and now she felt a deepening uncertainty.

Marianne pulled the clean air deep into her lungs and slowly exhaled. She took another slow breath and released it just as slowly. She looked across the ravine through which Gold Creek flowed, up and up to the base of Mt. Juneau’s massive cliffs. Marianne could see three black bears in the large clearing at the bottom of the cliffs, probably a mama and her two cubs. It looked as if the cubs were playing with each other. She smiled.

Marianne turned back to the dark forest behind her. She had many good memories here before her unknown attacker had changed everything. In all her thoughts on her return to Juneau Marianne had not realized how much Michael would be present to her, the way a pleasant dream surfaces with a half-remembered feeling of peace.

They had come this way many times. In this moment she remembered them returning from the top of Mt. Juneau, tired and arm-in-arm, chatting the whole time of nothing and everything.

Marianne raised her left hand to her brow, and felt the small scar there. Now, she thought, really. Now is the time. She continued along the dirt road, head down, unaware of the person coming toward her until the last second, and she gasped and jerked to a stop. He was a little taller than her with darker skin—almost certainly a Tlingit. A memory flashed in less than an instant, even as the man was apologizing.

“Oh, hey, sorry about that. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“No,” Marianne laughed shakily, “My fault, really, I was looking down, lost in thought. Should have been watching where I was going. Don’t worry about it.”

The man nodded his head, “Okay, but still, sorry for scaring you.” He looked at her strangely for a second, making her feel uncomfortable, then went on his way. She turned for a moment, noticing his long hair. Some memory had been stirred. She’d thought of Johnny Williams for an instant—was that him? But he’d been taller, hadn’t he? And his hair had been a typical crew-cut of the mid-Sixties. Although he could have grown it out. After all, her own hair was longer than she’d worn it in high school. She shook her head, letting it go.

Marianne had long ago given up searching her memory for what happened that day. Maybe it was better anyway, given how badly she’d been beaten and that there was nothing that could be done now. And then she was there.

A few steps from Second Bridge which appeared utterly unchanged. The small road down which she’d walked 16 years ago was gated, overgrown with brush. Mt. Roberts and Mt. Juneau rose steeply to either side of the narrow valley just as they had then. The creek rushed by with the same ruckus. Marianne closed her eyes, breathing in the humid feel and smell of the rainforest which she had so loved. Prompted by the familiar smell, memory flowed without her willing it.

It was a late April day, and she was excited for so many reasons—being a senior, thinking about next year at college. And Michael. She knew they were young, but she loved him so much. He was full of positive energy,...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.11.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-8759-1 / 1543987591
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-8759-1 / 9781543987591