Chapter Thirty Nine - Louis Berry's Novel - Erstwhile - FINAL CHAPTER

Chapter Thirty-Nine

When all the loose ends had been secured it came time for Richard and Susan to begin their journey. They tried to put it off, but could do so no longer. The house had cleared escrow and no longer belonged to them. The car was packed with just the necessities. Richard drove and Susan sat in the passenger seat. She signed over the title to her car to Harriett’s granddaughter. The past few days had been spent packing every-thing in the house into boxes. Once they had everything packed, a moving company came to the house and moved everything into a warehouse, indefinitely. Richard spent about thirty minutes at the attorney’s office signing papers. He had no idea what the buyer’s plans were for the property, only that it entailed demolishing the old house.
He drove to the end of the driveway, and then looked both ways for oncoming traffic. When he looked east he noticed a large yellow bulldozer bouncing on its massive tires over the bumps in the highway. He knew it would stop at the house where he and Susan had spent the most perilous days of their lives. Quickly, he drove onto the highway and watched his rear-view mirror as the dozer came to a stop. Tears began to build on his lower eye-lid. He quickly diverted his attention from the rear-view mirror and affixed it onto the road ahead. Regardless of the issues they faced early in their marriage, neither Richard nor Susan ever imagined that retreating into a simpler lifestyle would have such an adverse impact on them. Getting back to basics was supposed to provide the necessary escape from the complications of urban life. Instead it exposed a complicated fabric of conflicting values that left them with-out a true sense of who they were. Questions remained unresolved and left them without a true sense of how to proceed with their lives.
When the truck rolled across the first expansion joint of the Talquin Bridge Richard released the pres-sure on the accelerator and the vehicle began to stall as it slowly crawled up the increasing gradient. There was great trepidation within him. He summoned the courage to continue and held his foot firmly against the pedal.  Their hearts raced as the vehicle’s speed increased and approached the apex of the bridge where Erstwhile Bay met a man made canal one hundred feet below. Richard released the pressure on the accelerator when the truck eclipsed the top of the bridge and began its descent under the energy provided by the incline. Once the tires clapped across the final joint and onto the highway, Richard maintained a normal speed as they approached town. Their destination was on the other side.
The truck jostled as it crossed the railroad tracks that had come to mean so much to him. He looked down the street with hope of catching a glimpse of Harriett, but her house was too far away for him to make out any distinguishable figure. He dropped his eyes down, away from his gaze on the road ahead as he sad-ly realized that he would never see her or Talitha again. They meant more to him than many people who he had known for much longer.
Boldly Richard maneuvered the car down the deserted road that lead from the highway into the old mill’s parking lot. It was empty and the railroad ties that defined the front of each spot could barely be seen through the overgrown brush. He followed the path to-ward the mill and beyond. He stopped at the seawall where ships once loaded the factory’s finished product, turned sharply to the left until the rear of the truck faced the bay and drove backward until it came to rest at the edge of the wall. They stepped out of the truck and walked around it until they met at its rear door. They looked into each other’s eyes and smiled. Richard reached down and pulled the lever that released the lock on the tailgate and lifted until it rested in the open position above their heads. Without a word to each other they crawled in and sat, facing the setting sun, and rested their backs against the rear seats. In simpatico fashion they reached out to one another and held hands. Susan gently laid her head on her husband’s shoulder.
They sat silently watching the sun until its bot-tom edge gently kissed the horizon. Richard’s heart pounded as he removed a box-cutter from his front pocket. Gently, he slid the lever on the side, exposing a shiny, brand new blade. His thumb quivered nervously as he ran it across the underside of Susan’s wrist, pressing it to expose the largest vein. When he decided on where to make the incision, he quickly, yet as gently as he could ran the tip of the blade into her skin and pulled down toward her elbow, sharply. She winced. He reached across his wife’s body and proceeded to repeat the deed on her other wrist. Richard’s heart pounded and his blood ran cold as he looked into her eyes knowing it would be the last time they would do so. He then settled into the last position that his earthly body would take before joining his wife along the course that they had chosen for their lives together.
Blood ran freely about their bodies. It poured warmly across their palms and onto their pants. When it soaked through it became eerily cold. One quarter of the sun had disappeared. Any sense of nervousness they felt left them both. They held each other closely. It was a natural feeling of calm.
Susan gasped for breath as she became weak. She felt drowsy and nuzzled closer to her husband. There would be no more allowing people to influence her into being someone she was not comfortable with. The strength to be her own person had never been in-stilled in her and she feared that she faced a lifetime of repeating the same behavior. That was something she had no desire to do.
Richard held on tightly to his wife. Never once during his life had he felt that he was letting anyone down. His self-examination revealed to him a person that he could not live with, and he had no idea how to change. He lifted his head one last time to see the sun disappear beyond the horizon, and then it dropped next to that of his beautiful wife, lifeless.
For Susan, her life had always revolved around her physical being; whether it was drug use or the desire to be wanted, she craved an existence that was more spiritual. Richard simply wanted the pain to be gone. Denying who he was and from where he came left him without direction and careening toward his death. These emotions brought them to a common course. Neither was sure, but they hoped there would be a greater existence beyond the one they despised. The last days of their lives were filled with a great euphoria derived from the newfound ability to forgive the other for their indiscretions. Regardless, their demise was a direct result of the fact they had no idea how to forgive them-selves for the mistakes they made throughout their lives. Without that exoneration, their souls were doomed to ache and that pain manifested itself physically. Things might have turned out differently if they only had someone in their lives that was truly special; someone that gave them hope. Neither of them had benefitted from a relationship that instilled self-esteem so that their past became irrelevant to a future that held promise.      Unscrupulous actions that they had undertaken could not be erased. The couple did not realize that the morality of enlightenment was seeded in the soil of regret.