Twinkle Fiddles

Chapter Fourteen

Julie,

I woke early this morning to pen this note to you. I call it waking up but haven't really slept in a few days. I lie awake trying to think of the best way to tell you what you mean to me. I keep coming up with these long rambling thoughts. After I write them, I end up deleting them, and starting over, except for this one line I keep coming back to:

A friend. I miss you. I miss my friend. I want you in my life.

Always,

Dylan

Walter's dark oak coffin lay still in the front of the sanctuary. The front bridge of the casket was open. Walter was dressed in a black suit, white shirt and garnet tie. Despite his large number of friends, Joanne requested a visitation before the service, rather than at the funeral home the night prior. His unexpected passing was too much to take for her. She wanted a single event. Those who wished, filed reverently passed his body, before taking their seats in the pews.

The family was seated on each of the first rows, both left and right of the casket. The next three pews were empty, reserved for his office co-workers who had gathered under a series of heavy arches, in the bay, of the church narthex. As the service began, they uniformly proceeded passed him before taking their seats together.

Dylan was already seated with the other pallbearers, in the choir loft, as he watched his co-workers file into the sanctuary. He would have to wait to pay his respects; the eulogies were to be given after an invocation and solo hymn.

A college roommate told how they turned the famous University of South Carolina Horseshoe into a skating rink one winter night. They had attached garden hoses to the exterior dorm water faucets. The streets soon flooded. Walter was their Kappa Alpha fraternity ring leader who orchestrated the event. A few stolen dining hall food trays were turned into sleds on the icy Capital City thoroughfares.

A golfing companion told of an infamous hole in one. "It was a dogleg left on 16. I was having a good day, and the guys convinced me to try for the pin. I thought it was a good shot, but Walter, who was playing in the group ahead, came running down the fairway. 'It's good! It's good,' he kept yelling. I realized I had shot my first hole in one!

"About a year later someone told me Walter had placed the ball in the cup. It had landed on the next box where he was lining up his tee shot. My ball nearly hit him on his backswing. I had landed nowhere near my green, but Walter made it a hole in one for me. I bought everyone in the clubhouse a free round of drinks that day because of Walter's gag. Everyone knew but me. But it was still the best feeling I ever had!" He looked to the casket, "Thank you for that feeling, Buddy. Oh, and you're welcome for the free drink."

Dylan approached the church pulpit slowly. Unlike the others, he had no notes or cards. He looked to the casket, then to Joanne. She was seated on the first row next to Walter's elderly mother, and both her aging parents on her other flank. Dylan stood silently before glancing to a stained-glass window, midway through the sanctuary. He took a deep breath, then began his eulogy of Walter.

"A world without sunsets is like a book with no words. We weren't to live absent of detail, color, and beauty. Walter was our sunset. The fun orange, the warmth of deep purple, and the whimsical pinks. He was the mix of clouds that told us stories that seem to float, on a gentle breeze of life."

Dylan pulled a small slip of paper from the inner pocket of his black suit jacket. He stared at the words as if wondering whether to share them with the packed congregation.

"'You can never have too many sunsets.' Walter kept this fortune in his wallet. It was from his honeymoon and the night I met him. He and Joanne had eaten Chinese food, and this was his fortune. Later that night, he asked me, a pre-teen boy, who was sitting in a porch rocking chair, where the best place was to watch a sunset. It was something about his fortune. This small piece of paper." Dylan held it for the mourners to see.

"We all know the stories of Walter tossing golf clubs after errant shots, tailgating at the Cockaboose on fall Saturday afternoons, and his legendary cooking skills complete with secret sauce. Everyone knows it's cheap beer, right?" That drew weak laughter.

"But do you know the Walter that kept this paper in his wallet?" Dylan read it again to himself before looking back to the same stained-glass window, and finally to Joanne.

"Walter and Joanne were on their honeymoon. That first night we stayed and watched the sunset together, the three of us. But we also did that same ritual every night, for the duration they were in town. They'd look for me in the late afternoon, and we'd all walk to the water's edge together. We'd watch the sunset. This couple in love, and this previously unknown schoolboy who lived by the water.

"We'd sit there in the grass, among the knotted roots of the oak trees, and the small, shattered, bleached shell fragments that were part of the dark soil. Walter would hold Joanne's hand, while I tossed acorns into the pluff mud, of the receding tide. It was in those times most tourists would talk over the moment, about how pretty something was, or what they wanted to do tomorrow. Walter knew to be quiet, to hear the sound, of the Spanish moss, swaying in the wind. Most people miss that. I think they miss that about Walter too. That he knew how to appreciate life. And Joanne. And sunsets.

"Over the years they visited frequently. I grew older and threw less acorns in the mud, but Walter always held Joanne's hand, in the quiet stillness, of my hometown sunsets. The fun orange. The warmth of deep purple. The whimsical pinks. Our Walter, our sunset. You can never have too many sunsets."

Dylan stepped down. He approached the coffin. He tucked the slip of paper into Walter's front jacket pocket. Dylan then lowered the upper bridge, closing the casket.

The church was quiet.