Short Stories

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It was a long walk for the small amount of money that I made by delivering 12 newspapers, and the deserted street was slippery with ice and melting snow. What a difference from how that same street would be in the summer during the tourist season when the little town on the lake would be bursting at the seams with people on vacation. The arcades would be full of people playing pinball machines, the restaurants would be full, and the streets would be crowded with bathing suit attired families on their way to or from the beach. But right now, all was boarded up and on many days I could walk the entire length of the strip, delivering papers to those scattered dozen year-round residents who were my clients, without ever seeing another soul.

I dreaded doing it, and on the coldest days of winter, my mother or father would sometimes take me in the car, but on most days it was just a long, lonely walk with not much of interest in the gray and barren landscape that made up my after school routine. The sun, already low in the winter sky, and now sinking quickly in the late afternoon, did little to make the job any more tolerable. The few extra dollars it provided for spending money was little comfort. On cloudy days, it would be almost dark by the time I got home. I dreaded that long walk, that is until I found it.

It was a short way off the path I took to the farthest of my customers' houses, and I don't remember for sure how I found it. But it was the one thing that made my paper route a bearable routine on those mid winter afternoons. I was sure that I had found something that no one else knew existed, and at the same time, that no one else would value. To me, it was the thing that hurried my steps at the midpoint of the long walk and the thing that lifted my spirits for the return trip to my house. It was a pool of water.

The summer sun, low in the southern sky, managed during the middle of the day to hit a certain roof at just the right angle to melt the snow, which drained off of the corner of the roof and into a pool about the size of a large wash basin. It wasn't very deep, but the water, crystal clear and ice cold, provided a welcome and refreshing drink when the cold, dry winter air had left me parched after the mile and a half walk.

But it was more than just the provision of the cold water that has kept that place in my memory over the years. Until I disturbed the water in that pool, it was a thing of beauty, lined with round pebbles that glistened in a variety of hues, all made more beautiful by the fact that they provided a source of relief from the surrounding drabness. Yet beyond that, the thing at which I marveled was the fact that the pool was there at all. I knew from the lack of tracks other than mine in the snow that I was the only one who visited it, so it seemed that it was there just for me. It really made no sense that it was there since there were plenty of other roofs facing south at the corner of which there were no pebble-lined pools of cold water. Most of the melting snow simply disappeared beneath the white blanket on the ground or ended up as icicles hanging along the edge of the roof. Yet here, where I needed it the most, was this pool of refreshment.

I visited that pool many times during the winter, and each time it revived me to continue on my way. I've often found a spring in the woods, or a brook from which to take a drink, but I've never found another pool like that one that has stuck in my mind for more than 40 years now. What I have found is that the remembrance of that pool has continued to refresh me when I find that the way has grown hard or that I'm in a drab or deserted place in my life. When it seems that I walk a lonely path, thinking back on that pool quickens my steps toward "home."

I'm sure that at times I have missed the hidden pools that waited to refresh me, simply because I was too occupied with the coldness and austerity of the path on which I was walking. I'm also sure that when I need a cool drink, there is always one waiting, if I'll simply lift my eyes to see it. I'm also sure that, every time I have found one of those hidden pools, its impact has stayed with me for many days, even as that pool of long ago continues to refresh me even as I think of it now.

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