The Story of Juvenal and Autumn

or, The In-Man, A Romance in Nature

Chapter 1

Juvenal forged his way to the edge of the stream. He’d halted the dog before they’d arrived, careful not to frighten away any interesting sights before times. Still, he moved on, not a stir in the water, until a measly turtle broke from a stone, really one more motion in the commotion he’d caused ten steps back which he wasn’t aware of, but the pond had heard him. The dog came on quietly; he didn’t stop her, and she lapped in the shallow ford. He was lucky to have known this wood, he felt, and was keen to keep to a favorite path in a season when the choice flowers bloom. To cross the stream here would bring them to the high path on the southern side, beyond which their savannah field parched to gold, warblers, sparrows bursting across the seed-heads to a new stalk. A deer path cut through the field, and Juvenal followed it, away from the sun setting beyond one solitary oak amidfield, thence the sun was to pass beyond the western tree line. A right leg of the path would lead a doe to recline beneath the serene oak’s irregular crown, grown large to its nature, alone in the field, striving against no greater obstacle than its own branches. Where the left leg of the path branched, he followed it east away from the sun and oak, toward the slope which led over to the river-bend downstream. He followed this path alone, for the dog had no care for deer scents. She bounded every which way, kicking up flocks of sparrows, but not a pheasant, sweet old girl.

Before the crest of this slope runs a service road which they’d made to cross. It’s a strange sense that looks out for trucks after being in the woods. A mighty long way across, and Juvenal stepped up onto the curb, held balance, then trod on, up through the fence gap, and passed to the field which sloped down. He heard a vehicle, so he sent the dog down. He took to blowing his nose, to catch a sight of the source of the sound. A car motored past. He pressed on in trail of the dog, whose sense of direction is as good as his when they’re heading to water. “I have no idea what these grasses are,” Juvenal said to himself. At once, he dug his feet, and took notice of a plant. He checked the ribbing of the leaf, variegated green and white along the underside, with a flimsy spike at the blade point, the seed-head like a bluegrass.

Juvenal oriented himself to the sun, and he saw four-thirty, or thereabouts. He spied down for the dog, and called for her to heel. The grass blades played dominos back up the hill, and Juvenal knew Brandy-girl was working her way to. He called her name; she stopped and looked into the thick blades of grass in front of her, and he put his hand up high, in case she could see, and said, “Down.” Juvenal marched down to find where she lay, happily panting. The two rested there a minute. Juvenal meant to scan for any visitors.

He’d heard some voices down by the lannonstone waterfall that the Conservation Corp had made years ago to pleasantly feed the wide pond. A concrete apron spread astride the scene, and a lannonstone wall curbed the affair at the bank of the little dam. A short access drive descended the north end of the public lodge, and was gated, the kind where the chain links are woven with green fiberglass strips. A railroad tie stairway raised landings of packed dirt upward along the back of the lodge, wrapping to the south end of the building higher up.

“If we stay down here to the path,” he commented to his retriever, “there’s the marsh with the stilted boardwalks.” He pleaded, “Just don’t dive in the water, okay?”

They made their way along, and Juvenal turned back to see the people they had just passed. He thought of the story of the fate of Lot’s wife, who turned to a pillar of salt when she turned to look at Sodom and Gemorah destroyed. She was a pretty woman, and probably wed, looking well cared for and all. Press on, you fool.

Later on astride the posted bridge, Juvenal remarked, “She liked you, Brandy,” watching the dog sashay ahead. He looked for water lilies that were not there; he would pick one flower for her, but that was illegal. He remembered Rose had done it for herself, but he figured she deserved it somehow, and so, evidently, had she. He searched for flowers everywhere, in the trees and elsewhere, until he wanted to shake himself of any obsessions while he was here. So he did, and forgot about the woman.

Juvenal took in some gnat-catchers above the pond. Upon dryer ground, a Cardinal pair played tag in the bushes, the telling chirp, sharp and intent, leading the other near, then to flit, the red male easy to spot in the game of tag with the mouse-brown female. He kept a careful eye around the marsh waters; lots of animals come around here, and many are just visitors like we. They, too, are a bit out of their element and on their guard; the pickings are easy for the predatory owl or hawk.

A muskrat is a big animal standing on a shaded path as this, and a frightened deer makes an awful racket bounding through the brush. Better to travel noisily, as city kids walking in the street, eager not to surprise anything along the way. Juvenal kept the dog near, which he didn’t care to do, too much attention to pay away from his environment. He kept snapping his finger to keep the good Brandy-girl in check. She loved the water, but she was a ‘fraidey-cat, and she kept to the path.

They reached higher land, and to a regular bridge that carried them across the outlet of a little ravine charging up the pond. I find that dogs are undone by set, regular, borders marking a drop in depth. Notice puppies when they’re first faced with a street curb; the plunge could be a thousand feet, the pups can’t tell. “Don’t know what it is about dogs,” said Juvenal.

The main route was cut as it approached some homes. Paths for some time had been cutting up to some lot where they didn’t want to be; the massive drainage cleaved gritty paths down the knoll to the path. “We can only turn back from here, Brandy, so come on.” The dog spun around, and she followed him on the return. Coming back, they rested at a predictable spot, and watched for kingfishers, or heron that weren’t there. Another turtle broke the water, this time upward, poking a phallic head above the placid surface, and you could see the nostrils atop of his snout; he only stayed a minute, which was all Juvenal could keep still. Juvenal scoured the trees for a good woodpecker or something, maybe along the edge of the pond, where he’d seen such things before. He saw a hawk way up and away. The woods obscure so much of what happens in the sky, for all the trees, and it was refreshing to sight something from a distance, across the pond, rather than listening for what there is to find in the woods, to see it only once you’ve rooted it out. Juvenal heard no woodpecker raps from some old birch, but a fish broke the water, there were bugs by the shore, and some minnows in the shallows. He dreamed of netting some minnows shrewdly with his button-up, the demands of survival trumping conservation laws.

“I could use a snack.” Brandy wanted to wade in the pond, and he let her. Juvenal’s pocket offered an egg hard-boiled and a bag of raisins, salted peanuts and oats, and honey - some things he’d always had in the kitchen, and packed before he left. He washed it down with a lot of water, kicked dirt over the eggshell pieces, and lit back for the trail. Curiously, Juvenal felt in a hurry to pass on to the waterfall, and he indulged his desire for this woman at the expense of any wonder of nature. He continued back the way he came, through the alternating sun and shade of the wide pond’s edge. In a bright patch, he might find some wild rose, or a raspberry thicket heavy with today’s fruit, yesterday’s always taken care of by dawn. He glanced here and there, noticed some wild grapes that wouldn’t be ripe until nearly October, and then, just for a couple weeks. Juvenal saw only the young woman, and still only in his mind. By the time they had reached the pavement again, she had gone.

He would meet her farther along the trail, he reasoned, if she’d taken the path up and kept walking, which she had. They danced this dance until he saw her along the trees’ edge through past the old oak in the savannah, like so many deer could be found foraging a breakfast in the dawn of day. Unlike a deer, she returned along the path she’d just come, to the main trail, and on into the woods. Brandy and Juvenal sought out for where a bench he knew of sat concealed in the grasses, and which faced south, giving a promontory over the slope far off, and surveying the sky almost horizon to horizon; there they stayed awhile.

Juvenal turned and looked at the sound in the grass. My God, she was coming! He straightened himself, and then turned once more to greet her seated. Turned right, he put his right hand on the back-rest of the bench, then stood facing his attraction somewhat. She smiled full on, but gave a modest wave. He held up his palm long to her and took a half step back, ‘til she neared a little more.

Chapter 2

“Hi,” he said. She was quiet.

“She’s such a beautiful dog,” at last she spoke. Juvenal noticed that this woman had discerned Brandy’s sex, and he kissed the air for Brandy to come.

“Was that to me?” she played.

Juvenal looked at her helpless. The dog broke in, and she petted. They spoke about the day, and he invited her to sit, so she did.

Juvenal searched for something interesting to say. “I was just thinking about the stars that are sitting back behind the blue sky right now. The stars that come out just when the sun sets, they’re off to the left of it now. You can’t see them for the blue sky. There’s a lion,” he pointed out, “and a virgin with an ear of corn. There’s a shepherd that looks like a kite,” pointing up. “The Big Dipper’s up there,” motioning higher upward. He looked right into her eyes.

“What’s behind the sun where it is?” she asked, peering back.

“A set of twins,” he answered.

“Why do you like the stars?” Autumn pried.

“All the better to see you with,” Juvenal stunted, and he shelved the ending to this time-worn quote, lest he frighten her into thinking him lupine.

Autumn let a moment pass, and she said, “You walk a fine line, Juvenal. And don’t even try to look sheepish; I know you’re a wolf. But I’d kill you if you tried anything, and I’d marry you if you really meant what you said.” Autumn blushed a perfunctory but inadequate blush; her whim had shown her colors suddenly. Taboo, of course, it was to bring up the dangers of being alone with a man when a woman be so presently compromised. Her attraction to the alert, playful quarry Juvenal made her sure of momentary dominion. Yet she knew, somewhere from her experience, that he was playing at the same show.

“What I meant about,”

“…never mind,”

“how the stars shine to light up your face?”

She smiled; she could look him up and down right now, if she wanted to, she knew.

“I’m building a toolchest,” Juvenal added, and on he bore, “to keep my business together in one place. That’s why I look at the stars. It’s purely mechanical.” He wanted to assure her of his earning potential.

Autumn looked at him askance, saying, “What business are you in?”

“Teaching,” he said quickly, to keep the mood high “…to make ends meet, you know,” he followed up. Juvenal had not intended to tape out a measure of his new companion. He simply wanted to escape any ideas of money; he should never have mentioned the word, ‘business.’ Only now, he had challenged her to give an impression of her expectations of a prospective husband and mate.

“You’re not always a teacher?”

He leaned back easily. “I guess my business is in ideas. That’s why I spend my day in the woods. I figure it this way…since I wind up teaching and working no matter what happens, then I might as well get paid for teaching, so I can pick and choose the work that fits me. It’s easier that way. So, if I help someone work on his house after classes are done for the day, then that’s just like giving a free lesson at the end of a hard day’s work. What you do in the light of day is just what you get paid for.”

“…and the nighttime?” she wondered.

“Nighttime is for sleep, for an honest man.” He looked proudly over at her. Juvenal could see that someday those comments, after some familiarity, would raise a flow of contempt out of Autumn.

“You’re full of it,” she would say, but not today.

It’s strange how two people can share in the same game when they’re after the same prize. Keep it real, but keep it like the movies; love becomes that way.

Autumn felt the need to redeem herself, and as she was raised well enough to keep her attention on him, she professed, “I think a person doesn’t always find what he’s looking for in the classified section of the newspaper. Jobs are for making your way to the things you really want in life. You just want a toolchest full of ideas. I wonder what that looks like,” she added purely.

Juvenal just stared. He said, in the moment, “It looks like you and me, staring out at the sky. I keep order of my ideas up in the stars. They’re not my own ideas, exactly - just the ones that you learn; about people, and how they live; about different skills you learn. I like to think that they all make sense somehow, so you can do as many different things in the world as you can, moving from one skill to another, and know that it’s all pretty much the same.”

“You like to do a lot of different things,” she repeated.

“I just do; that’s how I was raised. I like to keep to a plan, so I can tell plainly what it is that I’ve done. It’s a basic responsibility if you’re a teacher, since teaching covers so many different skills.”

“How is it like you and me, again?”

He looked at her, and thought, “You’re good at saving me.”

Chapter 3

“The sun’s high up in the sky all day, right…by the way, have you eaten?”

“Don’t worry about me. The sky….”

“Whenever the sun sits way up overhead, it’s summer, and the sun beats down on us, and everything gets heated up.”

“Speaking of which, let’s go sit under a tree,” said she, requesting.

They got up and made toward the cool beneath the oak tree, leaves cured from so many suns passing the summer by. A deer path gave them their approach. When they arrived, and reclined on the cool turf, Autumn reminded Juvenal to continue his story.

So he explained, “Each day, the sun traces a line across the sky, westward, and each day, the new line is like another pass of a weaver’s shuttle through the threads of the hours that run from north to south. The sun’s tracings build up, piling from south to north, arching from east to west, far overhead. Soon, they’ll start to back down, each day’s path getting a little lower toward the south horizon until it brings winter. Then, the rays of the sun glance off the earth, because they meet it at an angle, and the sun’s warmth skips past us. Every winter, when the sun bears so low, it stands before the same stars; where the sun is in winter we’ll see on a summer’s night.” Autumn smiled now at his cute presumption. He went on, “When the sun’s high up in summer, as it is now, and setting, it’s always has the same stars behind it.”

“The twins, I was listening.”

“Yeah, the twins, and they move with the sun, and when they all set together, all these other stars to the east resolve into the night sky.”

“The lion, and what else?”

“The virgin.”

“Oh, yeah, and the shepherd that looks like a kite.” Autumn was leaning on an elbow, beneath the old oak tree, seeming intent. For a moment, she broke the mood in protection of the romance, and warned, “Don’t for a minute think that I’m not interested. I like listening to you talk. You’ve got a nice voice, and you say nice things; that’s what a girl likes. Now, go on….”

“You mean, that’s the secret?”

“Don’t even…just go on.”

“Yes, of course.”

Juvenal went on to tell how he puts the stories of history up in the stars, just like people used to, only we have different histories that make sense to us. He makes something useful out of the old mythology of the stars that nobody can even understand any more. Autumn thought that genuine. There was just the prospect of marketability that Juvenal felt the urge to prove, but not today.

He said to her, “If I build a school, which I do from time to time, I build it to look like the sky. If I make the sky to look like a history, then the school looks like the history of any group of people in the world, and that’s what it needs to be. If I make something for people to live under, like we live under this tree, then I’d make it to live under the canopy of stars. It’s not for me to tell people how to live; it’s for me to tell them how they do live, no matter who they are. Where they go with their life is entirely up to them.”

“Isn’t it hard to write a whole history in the sky?” Autumn let herself glow in the pride of the success of her new mate, who makes such a burden sound easy. “I mean, history is a lot of ground to cover. Good thing you’ve got the whole sky,” she said.

“And it takes the whole sky, sure.” He’d better pass on, he thought. Brandy-girl shifted around, and Juvenal went ahead, “But the history of a race isn’t always so much book stuff,” he stated, to ease things up a bit. “A history can be just the way we think, the way we feel, the things we do. I want my new school to make a history for itself, starting from scratch, and I suppose that it will do that on its own, no matter what. My job is to help give that school’s history a lasting impression, so that, as the school takes shape into a single body, it can grow in the direction it sees for itself, and not just shoot up, like this tree, growing any which way it pleases. Nature can afford to grow the way it might; people have the right to grow the way they should.”

Juvenal stretched himself along the ground, rolling almost to his belly, then back to his left side, cradling his chin in the crook of his shoulder while his elbow turned the in-of-the-wrist to his ear; of course, he wore no watch on his left arm, none to trouble him with its mechanical tick. Autumn stayed still. She was ready to hear more. She didn’t want to kiss him, for she knew this gentle man would be undone by love. Then, Juvenal, as if to get up, pressed his right-hand palm to the sparse, cool turf of the ground beneath the tree, which acorns would pelt come fall, where seed-crown cups of last year’s corns lingered in gentle mastication of deer and us lounging around in their bed. Oak leaves last the longest, of course, on the trees in fall, and on the ground through winter, like shingles come off the roof.

“Don’t get up; stay that way, if you’re comfortable. You sound like you’re dreaming when you talk, so stay laying.” Autumn moved over to recline nearer to him.

“I had a clock,” Juvenal went on. “It didn’t work, but it was an attractive clock that a former student had made out of a slice of a tree trunk that was sawed down in his yard. He had asked the workers to cut him a slice since he liked the pattern. Of course, they obliged him. He’d fitted it with a battery clock unit which he’d taken from another clock face, and put it through this fine piece of wood. The hours he marked with dice alternating green and white with each hour. I say it didn’t work as a clock, only because I took the battery out. That way, I could run the clock backward.”

“Backward?”

“The sky has twelve hours, and the clock follows those twelve hours. I can make the clock look like the sky if I just put the stars on the clock face. I set the hour hand to where the sun is today…”

“The twins.”

“I like you.”

“I like you, too.”

“The twins. Then I look to see which stars are behind the moon that day - the sun and the moon follow the same path, high and low, through the sky.”

“Weaving the same fabric,” Autumn stated brightly.

“Right, only the moon weaves the whole fabric in a month’s time, what takes the sun the whole year to traverse. The moon falls away from the sun every day by a whole hand’s width,” and he held out his hand open at arm’s length to the sky, eyeing the span between some imaginary sun and moon, “and climbs up and down the sky as it goes.”

“Every day?”

“Every day it falls away to the left of the sun, to the east, every day, in the opposite direction that a clock runs. So, every day, when I get to school, I turn backward the second hand of the clock exactly two-minutes and twenty-seconds. That moves the minute hand, which shows where the moon is in the sky, back to the left, traveling halfway between two sets of dice. I do that every day, until four weeks later, when the moon catches back up with the sun, and it starts all over again. Except this time, the sun has fallen back, too; it’s retreated to the next hour, and you can find it in the next constellation to the left, to the east. A clock that runs backward keeps perfect track of the position of the moon and the sun in the sky; it didn’t cost me a penny to make!” Juvenal knew that a good woman could appreciate thrift, and Autumn smiled once more.

“You’re a little boy,” she exclaimed.

“I’ve fooled you,” he replied confidently.

“I’m sure. But go on. I’m in a good mood, imagining that there might be hope for schools after all.”

Chapter 4

Juvenal felt uncertain serving such a heady wine to a woman he had only just met. He could see that she was already feeling drunk on ideas about the way we live and the heavens which envelop it. He was all the more attracted to her indulgence of his dreams, but he didn’t wish to spoil a good time with the minutia of his life’s work. Still, she bade him go on, so he resolved to water down their cocktails, and keep a sharp head for any foolish mistakes he might make in the wooing.

Juvenal swept his hand across the ground, clearing off the layer of last year’s leaves and leavings. He scored a picture in the dusty, cool earth that he found beneath. Autumn, to watch, sidled nearer to him, supine. The stick Juvenal used was naturally of oak, with leaf scars alternating, twisting around the twig, reddish and straight. A twig would snap from time to time, and Autumn would scour the ground for another to keep Juvenal in his thoughts. She was genuine in her interest in what Juvenal had to say; she considered a life with him where companionship would never want for engaging conversation.

A sinuous curve lay drawn from the ground where Juvenal plied. “That’s pretty,” commented Autumn. “What does it stand for?”

“It’s the course of the sun and the moon and the planets in the sky.”

“The planets, too, Juvenal?” She enjoyed to say his name.

“Everything in our neighborhood – they call it the solar system, but that’s a pretty unromantic term. Imagine this…have you ever seen the Milky Way in the night sky?”

“My grandfather showed it to me when I was a little girl. Yeah, I always remember how it looked. It was a fuzzy band of light, and it flowed like a river across the sky.” She laughed, embarrassed, “Oh, my God, what a stupid way to describe something that you probably know so much about, ‘a fuzzy light!’ You probably think I’m an idiot.”

“Now, don’t you even…I would never sit and talk with someone about what’s important to me if I thought they weren’t smart. What better way to describe a fuzzy band of light in the sky than to call it a fuzzy band of light.” As he spoke, Juvenal leaned closer to Autumn, and when he reached her, he gave her a kiss. Autumn held still to let him, and he took his sweet time planting his lips right on her cheekbone near to her right eye as she faced him. She placed her left hand on his right shoulder, gently, and blushed.

“Thank you,” she said to him.

Juvenal leaned back to his former position, reclining on the ground. He looked at her, searching, unsure. Autumn said, “I want to kiss you back, but then you’ll stop talking, I know it. Tell me everything you have to say, so then we kiss the way we want.”

It was a fine sentiment, Juvenal felt, and he smiled, reassured that he had not offended his new girlfriend. He collected himself, and continued, “Do you remember where you were when you saw the Milky Way? In the woods, or on a hill, or something?”

“I remember…does it matter?”

“Not at all. I just want to hear you tell a story.”

“No stories from my side. We were in the back yard, my grandpa and me, when he showed me the Milky Way. It seemed very dark out, but maybe that’s just because we were looking up at the dark sky. There were so many stars, and the sky seemed so big. I don’t remember what my grandpa said that the Milky Way is, though. He just traced it with his hand across the sky. My eyes followed where he pointed, and at first I couldn’t see what he was talking about. I trusted him, of course, and kept looking until I saw what he meant for me to see. That beautiful, fuzzy band of light. It stretched all the way across the sky!” Autumn gave a little stretch herself. “Is that where the sun and moon and planets travel through the sky…is that this,” and she gestured to the curved line that Juvenal had scratched in the soil.

“It’s like that, only in a different place in the sky. The Milky Way looks just like this curved line, only it runs from north to south in the sky. The path of the sun and moon run east to west. I only mention the Milky Way because it’s pretty much the same thing as I’m talking about, except that it’s actually visible in the sky. I thought it might help you to understand what I’m saying about this invisible line that charts the sun and moon.”

“And planets, too, right?”

“Yeah, the planets, too.”

“So, what is the Milky Way, and do you know why it’s fuzzy?”

“It’s the galaxy we’re in. All the stars that you can see,” and Juvenal and Autumn both looked out from under the tree canopy to see whether the sky had grown dark yet, and it hadn’t, “all the stars you can see are in our galaxy.”

“The Milky Way galaxy.”

“Don’t you just love that name? I wish the solar system had such a classic name.”

“Let’s make one up!”

“Brilliant!”

“But go on, Juvenal, and maybe something that you say will help us come up with a good name for it.”

“The Milky Way galaxy holds all of the stars you can see. Each star is like our sun, in that it might as well have its own solar system, right?”

“If you say so, beautiful.”

“The Milky Way is flat, like a dish, right?” Juvenal asked rhetorically. “The fuzzy band of light is like looking into the edge of the dish, and all the light from all the stars that make up that dish shine at you all at once, all behind one another, see? The rest of the sky looks black because you’re looking out into outer space, above or below the dish, except for whatever stars happen to be around you. You get it? Most of the stars you can see are really close to us in the Milky Way. The dark parts of the night sky are like standing on the dish of the Milky Way, and looking up or down; you only see some neighboring stars, and outer space beyond. When you look along the Milky Way, especially towards the center, it’s thick with light, and there’s no dark space, because there are so many stars in a line!”

“That’s freaky. Where is the center of it?”

Juvenal pointed through the earth, towards the east, and said, “It’s thataway. In Scorpio. It’s always in the same place, and when Scorpio rises in a few hours, the center of the Milky Way will rise with it. It’s interesting, that when you have a telescope, and you want to look for other galaxies, which you can do pretty easily, if you know where to look, you never look along the Milky Way, because there are too many nearby stars to look through, stars in your own galaxy, and you just can’t cut through that much light, you know? So, when you look for a distant galaxy, and they always keep their same place in the sky – they don’t move around…”

“…you look up, away from the Milky Way, into outer space. I get it!”

“I like you.”

“Can you see any galaxies without a telescope? I mean, do you know where any are?”

“There is one galaxy that looks like the Milky Way, and it’s the nearest one to us, and yes, you can see it with the naked eye.”

“Where is it? Can you show it to me?”

“If you have good vision, yes, I can show you where it is. Guess what…it looks like a fuzzy star,” and he looked around to orient himself, pointed to the west, under the setting sun, and said, “It’s right there.”

“Look,” said Autumn, “the sun has moved a lot since we’ve been sitting here. But, if that galaxy is to the right of the sun, won’t it set out of sight before the sun does? We won’t get to see it!”

Juvenal answered provocatively, “We will get to see it, but not until morning, before the sun rises. They’ll have to go all the way around the Earth and come up on the other side, in the east,” and Juvenal motioned his hand through Hades beneath the Earth. Then, the Andromeda Galaxy will rise with the stars of the Andromeda constellation, where it’s always found, and after that, the sun will come up, and the whole sky will turn blue, again.”

“Andromeda Galaxy, what a beautiful name!”

“Isn’t it?”

“So galaxies don’t move like the sun, the moon, and the planets?”

“No,” said Juvenal, “they’re so far away, they stay stationary like the stars.”

“And we have to wait until morning to see it? That’s such a long time.”

Juvenal looked far off at the ground, quiet.

Chapter 5

Autumn looked at the sinus curve that Juvenal had made in the ground.

“If the solar system is shaped like a dish, than why do you make a curve like that, or don’t I want to know?”

“If you take the picture of the sky,” answered Juvenal, “and you lay it out flat, then the path of the sun and moon appear as a curve. Right now, the sun is…here.”

Brandy, for whatever her reason, looked over at Juvenal just then, and got up to sniff at the drawing he was doing. Autumn laughed, and petted the old girl. Juvenal leaned over to lay broad across brandy.

“Maybe we should walk a bit before the sun sets,” Autumn suggested, warning Juvenal of someday jealousy over his affection for old girl Brandy. “Then we can see better what you mean.”

The three slowly eased themselves off the ground where they were, and sat up to wait for their limbs to limber up. Juvenal looked back at the sine curve he had pressed into the ground, with Brandy’s snout swept through it from her curiosity. Autumn said, “I’m afraid I still don’t get it…if things in the sky look like a wave up and down?”

Juvenal thought for a moment, searching. Autumn raised her hands. She said, “Oh, never mind…”

Juvenal stopped her, smiled large, and said, “Wait, I have it.” Juvenal reached into his pocket and produced a dollar bill. Autumn watched with guarded interest, when Juvenal drew from the sheath on his belt a knife; he didn’t open it, but looked at Autumn as if to ask permission.

Autumn raised and eyebrow, and said, “I wasn’t going to mention it, but I wondered about that when I saw it.”

Juvenal dropped the closed knife onto the dirt ground, and stepped back. “You want to look at it,” quoth Juvenal, disarming.

Autumn shook her head and sort of rolled her eyes. “What are you going to use it for? Just use it,” she said imperiously. “I already told you,” she added, “that if you tried anything with me, I’d kill you….”

“Are you armed?” plied Juvenal.

She looked at him.

“I can ask a woman to give up a kiss, but not her secrets,” Juvenal resigning himself, while he retrieved the knife from the ground.

“You’re going to cut that dollar bill, aren’t you, Juvenal?”

“Oh, yeah,” he replied, seeming still disconcerted after their conflict, and that they didn’t have the materials he needed to cut the dollar bill in the way he wanted in order to answer her question about the reason for the curve. He went on, “We need to go back to the bench for a minute.”

They returned along the trail they had cleaved to the oak, and then back to the deer path, which led on to the tamped trail which led to the park bench. Juvenal walked heel-to-toe as one must following such as a deer path, like a tightrope you can run on; Autumn followed behind. For the first time that afternoon, she thought about her girlfriends, how they would cry out at her relation of following Juvenal on the path. Their comments, and she knew them, made Autumn blush, but then she wondered whether she would ever even see any of them again. “He doesn’t have to murder me;” she thought to herself, “if he’s in love, I’m already gone.”

“You’ve heard of the Iroquois? The Native American nation of New York State, to keep communication throughout their territories, had set up a network of deer paths like this one. Runners would carry messages by word of mouth along a series of fresh runners posted along these trails.”

“A pony express.”

“Just like that. So, as they’d run along these deer trails, they’d grown so used to going heel to toe that, when the white man came to build skyscrapers in Manhattan, they hired the Iroquois to walk the iron beams a thousand feet in the air, because they never fell off. At least, that’s how the story goes.”

Autumn was laughing at this ridiculous story, and Juvenal had to fight the urge to protest, and he quickly ended his story.

“You think I’m making this up!”

“No, I believe you. I believe you believe in ridiculous stories,” and she laughed some more.

“Are there any other kinds of stories?” Juvenal replied.

They met up with the main trail which would bring them to their former bench. Brandy-dog was aimless in the grasses, spying her mates occasionally, keeping to the general direction toward the tree line, the bench being situated a short way off from it.

“The story you’re telling, about the sky, and history, isn’t ridiculous,” Autumn averred.

Juvenal stopped in his tracks. He turned to face his new loving friend. “All stories are ridiculous; especially mine.” Autumn put both her hands on Juvenal’s shoulders as he approached in trumped-up assertiveness. “I think that’s why I enjoy my story – because I know I can’t believe it, and it needs revision constantly.” He went on, “Do you think Brandy will come if you call her,” he asked of Autumn.

She sang out, “Brandy-girl!” Brandy came running, as lively as if she lived for love alone. Juvenal turned, and he and Autumn walked over to the park bench; Brandy caught up, and Autumn petted her. Juvenal drew the clean, folded dollar bill from his pocket, and took out his knife. “Here,” and he handed Autumn the dollar, and he opened the knife, which showed a three-inch blade, broad, locking, and legal, and strong enough to gut a deer despite its discreet length. Juvenal kneeled, and set the knife on the bench seat. He held out a hand for the dollar bill; Autumn handed it to him.

“This is why the picture of the sky is a curved line.” Juvenal traced the point of the knife blade along the dollar bill set upon a board of the bench seat to sever it in two. He carved the same curve that he had laid out on the ground underneath the oak tree, this time from top to bottom, so he could cut safely; he cut the bill lengthwise in half, first curving the slice left, then slanting across, on down, then starting back up toward the middle of the bottom end of the bill. The bill separated into two identical curving parts, and Juvenal handed one to Autumn. She inspected it politely, as if in a magic trick. Juvenal stood, dusted his knees courteously, and then demonstrated how to curl the bill ends to meet one another. Autumn followed suit. Thereby was made was a perfect little tube, with one end of the tube showing a slanted oval, like a column which was cut off at an angle.

“That angle,” Juvenal explained, “is the plane of the tilt of the Earth. When you stretch it out flat, it looks like a curved line.

Autumn looked and marveled, “That’s the coolest thing I have ever seen.”

“You can draw the stars along that line, and they tell you what the sky looks like along the line where the sun, moon, and the planets all travel…it’s the background to the plane of the solar system.”

“We definitely need to come up with a better name than that!”

“For sure. Let’s walk awhile and think about it.”

Chapter 6

They walked in the woods while the sun yet shone. As dusk approached, they made their way back to the park bench. They had decided to wait out the daylight to gaze on the starry sky. For a while they sat, and Juvenal, out of habit, scanned the sky for any emerging planet, which often appear before the stars at sunset; the nearest planets reflect sunlight just like the moon, so they appear brighter and earlier than even the nearest, brightest stars. They talked about kids and schools, about times and schedules, about times before watches, about cities and the need for control when nature is not given her due. In the thin blue of the darkening sky, Juvenal spotted the planet Venus, and he pointed such out to Autumn.

“What does it look like to you?”

“It looks like a really bright star.”

“But it’s the only star right now,” Juvenal made obvious.

“The only light between the sun which is setting, and the stars which haven’t shone yet,” Autumn declared.

“Sheer poetry. That was beautiful.” Juvenal said mutely.

They watched on. In time, the stars began to peer in through the atmosphere. “Away from the city, the sky will turn white with stars. There are so many, you can get lost so easily, even if you know the brightest ones by heart.”

“You get lost in the stars up north?”

“In the city, you can only see the brightest stars, so it’s easy to make out pictures of the patterns the stars make, a triangle here, a circle there, and so on. In the country, the sky is awash with stars.”

“Where is the virgin?” Autumn wanted to know.

“Right in front of us…that star,” he said; they were sharing a bench.

She wondered aloud, “Is it supposed to look like a virgin?”

Juvenal pointed away to the right, “That’s supposed to look like a lion.”

“It does; oh my God. It looks just like a lion.”

“It’s been a lion for a very long time,” commented Juvenal. “So has the virgin.”

“All the stars haven’t been what they are today?” she asked lightly.

“They’ve all been changed throughout the world and in other ages. Different sailors see different images from their mythologies, so they color their maps differently, according to what’s important in their culture. That’s what I propose to do: to color a new map of the stars that has some cultural relevance for us, which for today’s troubles, had better be useful; easy to understand, too.”

“So, what does the lion mean to you, or do you not see it as a lion.”

“Of course, I do. I wouldn’t try to change the wisdom of generations. It’s just that I see the lion associated with the concept of Art. In my school, when the sun is in front of the lion, then we reconcile ourselves to Art in itself. We look around ourselves, and we discover the Art that we surround ourselves with, no matter what form it takes. Then we work on that during the month. The way it really works is I, as a teacher, concern myself with art, and so the students I work with follow along. That’s what truly happens.”

“Can you point out all the stars on this curved line?”

“It has a name, that line, but it’s another unromantic term. The ecliptic,” he announced.

“Ecliptic?” Autumn copied. “That word has got to go.”

“We could call it instead ‘The Calendar Line.’ That’s what it really is; that’s what the solar system is when you see it from Earth.”

“Okay, the Calendar Line. That works for now. Better than - what was it?”

“The ecliptic,” Juvenal claimed shamefacedly. “Scientists are awful people for their choice of words!”

“Can you show me again where the path is, now that the stars are out?”

“You can see a part of it; only half at one time, though. There it is,” and Juvenal carved a line through the sky with his hand.”

“But, why only half of it?”

“Because the other half is behind the Earth, where the sun is rising, now that it has set on us.”

“Oh, my God. The sky is really big, then. I see it, now that I look at it. The sky is enormous!”

“That’s why people stare at it; it’s much bigger than a mountain,” Juvenal exclaimed. “and it moves.”

“So, what part is this?” and she held out the dollar bill map of the sky.

“This part of the sky is…this middle section of the map,” and Juvenal spanned out the center portion of the bill.

“That’s too bad, that you can only see a part of the sky every night,” said Autumn with regret.
“You can see the rest of the stars, though, if you wait long enough. They all come out eventually; you just have to wait until nearer to sunrise.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re right.”

“The only stars that you cannot see are the ones that the sun is directly in front of today, because the brightness of the sun blots them out. Just like the moon, when it’s full and bright, sort of blocks out the stars behind it, even though it’s not nearly as bright as the sun…it can still cast your shadow for you, and it dims the stars around it.”

Autumn shifted, “Do you have different names for the seasons?”

Juvenal said, “Ha, you know I do! At least, different associations for the seasons, but I’m afraid they’re not very romantic, either.”

“You must be a scientist, then,” she said, sizing him up.

“When it comes to guiding groups of people, yes; it’s a very responsible position. That’s how I find teaching.”

“And all of this is what you see when you’re out in the woods,” Autumn mentioned.

“All this, and all of the stuff I collect in the woods, and which I keep in this tool chest.”

“Oh, now I’m starting to understand.”

Chapter 7

Juvenal supposed, “We’d better start back for the lodge before it gets too late. We can just walk over to the road by the slope; it’ll take us back to the lodge.”

“Do we have to go? It’s such a nice night,” Autumn volunteered.

“I don’t mind if you don’t,” confessed Juvenal. “I’m happy to sit all night, if they’ll let us.”

“The park will be open for hours, just for people like us, don’t you think?” Autumn moved over and kissed Juvenal. They kissed, and Brandy just had to horn in on the action. She butted her nose right between the two lovers, who decided that Brandy might as well be a child, and they had better mind their manners in front of her. Juvenal did love his dog Brandy.

Autumn stood up and stretched herself in the dusk air. She paced a bit, and peered around to see what she could notice in the changing patterns of light and the wash of the world away from the vivid colors of daylight to the deep blues of night which betrayed only the tones of things against one another: tree lines, grasses, the intermittent cloud, the old oak, even Juvenal and Brandy become blue in the night.

“Did you,” Autumn inquired, “ever wonder whether things are real?” She must have trusted Juvenal, or resigned herself to confidence in him with this rare talk, but she was speaking on his level, so she meant to go on. “I mean, everything changed color when the sun set. What’s to say that anything is what we think it is?”

Juvenal broke in, “Just a minute ago, I thought that tree was green.”

“Now,” August finished, “it’s blue. How do I know that you’re real?” she went on.

“Prick me, and I bleed,” he answered artfully.

“But, are you what I take you to be?”

“Which is…”

“You’re nice,” Autumn claimed.

“You’re saying, Maybe I’m not? I follow you. But think of this, Would you like it if I doubted your existence? There was a great thinker, who said, The world is my idea; but you would never assert that to your wife.” Juvenal approached, “Everything that science is tells us that we can never know our world with any certainty. That admission lets doctors give probability for recovery; it lets us shoot a man to the moon, and split the atom, but it admits that all knowledge is probability alone. And language is only a game.”

“So we move forward in science, but what about the risks?” Autumn tried.

“There’s still a moral side that fills out the field beyond the pale of knowledge, and you judge right from wrong. You affirm that reality exists if only because it was promised you.”

“Do you believe in God, Juvenal?”

“I believe that any question about religion can be answered with a Yes,” was his reply.

“I like that answer,” said Autumn in surprise. She went on cunningly, “There are a lot of contradictions in religion. A man dies, but does not die?”

“The first is last,” he went.

“The last shall be first! You can answer any question either way, and still be right,” Autumn made.

“The Buddhist would give a positive response, as it seems to generate rather than destroy an idea. Since words are just play, and they’re unreal, you can approach them the same way as you do everything else that’s ideal, with a positive attitude.”

“So, I just guess that things are real,” Autumn came back.

“Like a scientist, and so you work to figure out just what a thing is. But, like a saint, you believe that beauty is just as important, when the curse of seeing things that aren’t there is no longer a curse, but a boon. The impossibility of knowing the world with certainty makes the unknown much more real.”

“So, I’m supposed to believe that you really are a nice guy, even though I’m sure you have your faults,” Autumn got wise.

“You’re supposed to trust your emotions as much as you trust your thoughts. Then, you act. That’s all anyone can do. That’s what I set up in the stars, and in the classroom. Our emotions drive us to follow a course that we might never have thought. Maybe that’s what makes people so uncertain, especially when people’s emotions aren’t used to being brought into use. When you feel something, it’s powerful, and it lets you know for yourself what’s right and what’s wrong as you see it.”

“I’m not what I seem,” Autumn played convincingly.

“I reserve the right to be scared of you,” answered Juvenal.

“Do you ever think that there’s a part we play for others, and a part of us we keep to ourselves.” Autumn was asking youthful questions that she had long since put away as games of a child, but now she was feeling free. The playful word games that girls will indulge in returned to Autumn in a stream, things she’d not said since early years.

“A front you put on? A mask?” came Juvenal. “I don’t act with you the way I act with other people, I can tell.”

“You can never quite know someone completely, can you, lover?” Autumn asked.

“Maybe people are just like everything else in the world; you can’t ever be sure. But, if there’s a tie between two people, that goes beyond sense, and makes lovers do totally irrational things. Not to scare you.”

“You don’t scare me, Juvenal. I feel close to you.”

Chapter 8

The two sat in wisdom of their situation, looking to each other from time to time. They sat close, and Brandy sat chaperone. Thoughts of the television that they might otherwise have been watching appeared to them both, and they talked on it, the mystery that such crude entertainment might come to mind when they were both enraptured with love. Juvenal explored with Autumn the stories people all share through the tube, and they reckoned them as true myths that tie our disparate lives together, one with another. The topic brought Juvenal to how he cast the stories of history up into the heavens, and not just identities like Art, Science, or Morals.

“Each age of history,” he told, “is pregnant with one elementary idea, or so I read. With Rome, it was government above all else; with Greece, it was philosophy, to help reconcile all the different ideas that collected there as a result of their commercial empire. The Renaissance is art, when people made themselves individual, remaking themselves as living works of art. All different times have different cultures which stand to become the strongest, but the one that succeeds is the one that suits the current of need the best.”

“So, what do you see, exactly, when you look up there,” and she pointed.

“I see the course of history as I know it. Each season, to answer you from before, seems to me to stand for an age of history: ancient, medieval, renaissance, and modern. Break each of those into three groups, like Egypt, Greece, and Rome for the ancient times, and you have a mythology that makes some sense to somebody today.”

“Somebody like you,” Autumn challenged.

“You mean to say you can’t make a clear picture of each of those three ages, alone from images on television? I think you can.”

“Sure, I can see a picture of each one, but I don’t know any of their history.”

“They’re one in the same thing, as far as I can tell. You just fill in as best you can, and there you have it. At least it tells you what to study, if you want to use the tool chest any better than you might. But it doesn’t take much to imagine stories as well as we imagine shows from the television. Someday, they’ll place the Simpson’s up in the sky, if it represents something of a history to people!”

“I see your point. That’s how you like your stories, you said…because they’re never true, but they always need revision.”

“It makes life interesting, to see how stories compare with real life, to see for yourself how the events of a story must really have happened, based on what you know from your own experience. Caesar assembled and army; there’s a lot that goes along with that, but the history maybe doesn’t give the details. You have to fill in the gaps with your imagination, or you witness some event in the world, and you know its corollary in history, and you say: Aha, so that’s how that must have happened, what I read. It’s a good way to go through life, I believe.”

“I like a man who knows what he believes. It’s pretty unusual, and that can give a girl concern. You’re different, but I like you. So, you keep track of history up in the stars,” Autumn pursued.

“If you live a life that doesn’t follow the clock, you need to have some routine in your life to counterbalance that. I find that you don’t have to be on everyone else’s schedule to get along; it’s enough just to be on yours, no matter what it is, and that dedication to regularity is what people respect. In school, we keep to this routine, if only because it’s simple and stable. I would try better to live by it in my private life, but it’s too hard to follow all your own schedule, but you need others around you following it, too. School meets that need, but general society does not, quite.”

“So, either you follow along with society, or you make up your own,” said Autumn astutely.

“That’s exactly what I think,” laughed Juvenal. He was glad she got him so well. Juvenal had always harbored the hope that our waking, working moments could be so scheduled as befits complete, well adjusted people. Only in broad application in the schools could permanent dedication to a classical style of calendar could be followed widely.

“Is it like your own cult, do you think?” cautioned Autumn.

“It’s like my own army,” defended Juvenal. “However they happen to battle the world, that’s not up to me. I just organize them according to how I know that they’re already going to work as a society. Then, a society will flesh out its own picture of itself. I’m only a leader in that I keep track of what needs to be done in the school, and students must trust enough that I watch out for them, so they’ll accept my direction that way, and no other way, really.”

Brandy stood up, alert; something moved in the grass.

“We had better make our way back; the nighttime brings out all new animals.”

“Possum and such,” concurred Autumn. “Sweet Brandy’s getting excited.”

“Yeah, she’s scared…or she should be.” Juvenal continued, “She’s going to get beat up if she tangles with the wrong animal.”

“You’re right. Let’s go.”

“I’ve enjoyed being with you. Will you cap the night off with me somewhere?” Juvenal proposed.

“It is dinner time. We should eat.”

“Give me your cell number, in case we get split up,” Juvenal requested as he got up. I can’t stand the thought of losing you.”

“We can go together. I’m feeling light-headed, anyway. You must have a high tolerance for life.”