New Logo

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

I am still chipping away at revisions for the book I have coming out at the end of this year. Once I finish with it, it will be sent off to my editor, and she will send it back with a million notes to tell me all the things that are wrong with it.

When you have someone like that, y’all, appreciate them. Not everyone is willing to be so wonderfully honest with you.

While I’m working on that, I’m also checking off the other thousand tiny tasks that go into getting a book published, including this lovely new logo.

I finished it last night. It’s perfect.

My book is being published through my business, Storynook Productions. The regular logo that I have, with my personal and business brand, is too complex for the spine of a book, so I had to come up with a similar, simplified version.

I think I managed it.

I’m excited about this, y’all. Getting a book from manuscript to finished product is an overwhelming amount of details, but I have been planning for this for years, and I am so ready to have it in my hands.

Plus, this is the kind of thing I enjoy. I mean, who doesn’t love seeing a dream come together?

If I Were A Pilot

Posted on by A.R. Geiger 

If I were a pilot,
I’d fly so very far.
Probably to Malaysia,
Or maybe Zanzibar.

I’d take my plane above the clouds,
As high as we could soar.
Then drop down low so we could see,
That strange and distant shore.

I’d fly us to a jungle,
And land among the trees,
So we could hunt for lions,
Such mighty prey we’d seize.

With lions in our cargo bay,
And a snake or two,
We’d take off to the skies,
We fleet and fearless few.

I’d fly to a volcano,
And land beside the flow,
To seek the mighty dragons,
Who fuel that fearsome glow.

With a dragon in my carry-on,
And burning rocks inside my case,
I’d fly us off to somewhere new,
With adventures we could chase.

What a trip we’d have,
If a pilot I could be.
I’d take us all around the world,
And still be back for tea.

To Fool A Witch

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

Witches, I’ve been told, are very difficult to fool.

I’ve got a witch on my block. She lives three houses down from mine, behind the gate that’s climbing with ivy and blue morning glories. I’ve seen her a few times, working in her garden, or sweeping off her steps with a twiggy broom that I’m pretty sure she flies about on when the moon is full.

I haven’t let her see me. Not even once, although I’m sure she’s tried. Sometimes I take the long way home from school, walking all the way around the block to reach my house from the other side, to keep from passing her door. Sometimes I get down on my hands and knees and crawl past her gate, although the gravel on the sidewalk cuts my knees in the worst kind of way. Sometimes she isn’t in her yard at all, and I can hurry past without being seen.

Today is that sort of day. Her yard is empty and a little smoke curls up from her chimney as I go by. I wonder what she is cooking in her big black kettle, and hope it isn’t a child that forgot to duck when he was walking by her gate. Tommy, I think, is a very probable candidate. Tommy does not believe in witches, even though he’s got one living on his block, and sometimes he does forget to duck.
But he’s waiting for me at the bus stop, same as every other day, and I decide that the kettle was probably full of squirrel guts and frog eyes instead of careless children.

The kids at school all know about the witch on my block. I tell them stories about her every day. Today, I tell them about her bubbling, steaming kettle, and the frog eyes that she collects in her garden an hour after midnight. Only Tommy pretends not to believe me, but I can tell my stories are getting into his head. Tomorrow, I think he’ll duck when he goes past the gate.

Just in case.

I’ve been thinking about our witch more and more lately. I sit in the back of the bus on the way home, so as to think better, and put my mind to the problem. Witches have extremely sharp eyes, and I’m sure that one day she’ll see me walking by her house. Maybe she’ll follow me home, just to see where I live, or maybe she’ll lure me inside her house with something that I can’t possibly resist. A new baseball glove, maybe. Or a white mouse in a cage, like Eliza Finch has in her bedroom.

I don’t think I could resist a white mouse. Their pink paws are so impossibly tiny.

When we climb off the bus, Tommy suggests I come to his house to play basketball in his basement, but I tell him I can’t today. I have other things to do. Important things. He leaves me to myself, and I take the long way home, down our shady street, thinking all the way.

Witches, I’ve been told, are very difficult to fool. Only the cleverest sort of person can do it, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a chance. I’ve won the school spelling bee three times in a row, after all, and I am the only boy in school who knows how to count backward by threes. That has to count for something, I am sure.

So I go home the long way around and stop to pick a whole handful of daisies from the empty lot at the end of the street. I find some thistles too and add them to the bunch, because I’ve heard that witches like to use thistles to fill their pillows. They prick my fingers, so I’m not sure why a witch would like to sleep on them at night, but I bring them anyway, right up to her front gate.

She’s working in her yard again. She has a black cat with her, which is very fitting for a witch, and she comes over to the gate to see me when I knock. Her eyes are very blue, and she has a hooked nose and gray hair and a long, pointy chin. She smiles when I give her the flowers, a witch’s kind of smile, and asks if I would like a cookie. I’m cleverer than she is, so I say no—because witch’s cookies are made with spells—and thank you—because it’s always wise to be polite to a witch—and walk home.

The next day, I bring her a muffin from the school bake sale and tell her about the batch of brownies that Ellen Stauch tried to sell, even though they were made with salt instead of sugar and tasted worse than anything I’d ever eaten in my life. She tells me her name is Milly-Jane, which I think is a terrible name for a witch, but I don’t say so, because maybe she’s self-conscious about not having a really good witchy name.

After that, I meet her at her gate almost every day after school. I bring her lots of things, like thistles or ugly plants that I think a witch might like or river rocks that are extra smooth. Once, I even brought her a toad I found, and she seemed to like that more than anything else. I give her the gift and tell her about the pop-quiz at school, or about being chosen last for the baseball team and still hitting that home run, or about the white mouse I want to buy when I’m old enough. Sometimes she lets me into her garden, and I help her pull weeds or pick up sticks so she can mow her grass, and she gives me a cookie and some lemonade that she made in an ordinary kitchen, without any spells.

Witches, I’m told, are very difficult to fool, but I’ve fooled mine. I’m not afraid to walk past her house anymore, because I know she won’t try to boil me up in her kettle or turn me into a toad for her garden. If she did, who would bring her interesting treasures for her window sills, or tell her about baseball and bake sales and the girl at school who I’m pretty certain is actually a vampire?

No one, that’s who. So I guess I’m pretty safe.

Slowing Down

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

They’re waking up when I come into town. Shopkeepers, housewives. A few beggars. This town doesn’t have very many—I remember that from the last time I came through. I’m not sure they like that sort.

I probably look like a beggar to most of them. My shoes are getting thin around the soles, and my jacket’s been threadbare for, oh, nearly a hundred years now.

They don’t make things like they used to.

I head for the pastry shop first. This town has an impeccable pastry shop, and if I remember rightly, it’s run by a very sweet young lady with a streak of gray in her hair. I don’t make many friends on my rounds through the country, but I’ve always counted her as one of them.

Her daughter answers my knock. Her daughter with the cold eyes and ash gray hair. Her mouth pinches when I ask about my friend, and she tells me that particular grave is more than a dozen years old.

I’ve been gone longer than I thought.

I mumble apologies—and my condolences—and buy three sweet rolls and a chocolate bun, although the smell in the shop isn’t nearly as heavenly as it was years ago.

The price of time, as they say.

The woman’s sharp gaze fastens on the pennies I’m counting for her, and the silver coins mixed in with the coppers cause her eyes to widen greedily. I want to laugh. I want to tell her that those particular silver coins won’t bring her any luck or happiness. They never have for me.

But I don’t. I pay for my meal and wander on, munching a sweet roll and studying the town. It looks worn thin. The streets are thick with dust, and the buildings slump wearily, although I’m willing to bet they’re not half so tired as I am. Nor half so old. I’ve been charged with bringing the life back into these places—this town and about a hundred others scattered all over the western coastline. I travel to them each in turn, leaving pieces of my soul behind, and they never used to get in such bad shape while I was gone.

I think I’m slowing down. Getting old.

A thousand years as a cursed man will do that to you.

Quite a few of the shops in the main square are empty and boarded up. People left, I guess. They must have gotten tired of waiting for the grass to grow and the flowers to bloom again. The fields around the town are nearly dust themselves, but that will change soon enough.

I sit down by the fountain in the middle of the square and finish my bun. I used to rush through the towns, when all of this first started. When I was a young, newly murdered conquerer, and the gods sentenced me to spend a thousand years undoing the damage I’d done to the western coastlands. I’d rush through the town without stopping, flipping my silver coin into the fountain as I passed by, somehow thinking that if I hurried, I’d get through a thousand years a little quicker.

I’m not in such a hurry these days. I’ve got time to buy a few sweet rolls, talk to a few drifters, maybe make a friend if a shopkeeper doesn’t mind my worn-out coat and whiskers.

They don’t last long, those friends. I learned that the hard way. I miss them when they’re gone, more than I ever missed anyone when I was alive. I don’t think I appreciated life the same way back then, but I’ve grown to treasure the moments a little better now.

A thousand years as a cursed man will do that to you.

I brush the crumbs off my coat and dig a silver coin out of my pouch, dropping it into the fountain before I head off on my way. It’ll be raining soon, probably before I get out of town, and before the week is out the trees will push out new leaves and the flowers will be blooming in the hollows again.

I can’t wait around to see it, of course, but it’s nice to know the trip was worth the effort. Maybe I’ll shuffle a little faster this time around, and get back before the last of the day lilies die out.

I have a friend who might like a few on her grave.

Marshes

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

photo-of-two-white-ducks-on-water-during-fog-845619.jpg

They left her to the marshes.

That’s the rumor, anyway. The women in the kitchens whisper about it when they mop the floors, and the men tell the stories in the stable. I’ve heard it both places.

It’s always the same.

She spurned a lord, and the marshes took her soul.

I’ve spurned my own lord. Time and time again. He’s told no one yet, but stories have a way of slipping out. When it does, they’ll do worse to me.

The marshes are calling, and I’ve decided to answer.

They’ll bring me here anyway, and I’m more afraid of their sharp tongues and hard blows than the brackish water and trailing willows of the marsh. I played in it as a child, always alone, always watched over by friendly eyes, and I feel their gentle watchfulness as I brush aside the willow branches and ease into the marsh.

Mud squelches to my knees, but I know the way through the marsh better than most. Better than any in the lord’s house, thank goodness. They won’t follow me here.

The mermaids hear me coming before I’ve gone two steps. I’m surrounded almost before I realize they’re here, and I trail my fingers in the water and pretend I haven’t seen them. Really, I only catch glimpses anyway. A rippling among the reeds on my left. A flash of silver and pink scales beneath the willows. Black hair trailing among the weeds.

I keep my eyes on the horizon and wait for them to come to me.

They do eventually. When they’re sure it’s safe. Startled mermaids are dangerous friends, but I’ve come to love them like kin, whatever our differences. They stroke my hands with their slimy fingers, tracing the bruises on my wrists and hissing in dismay when they taste the blood from my fingers in the water. I hum soothingly, swallowing the hitch in my throat. I’ve been banished to the marshes, like the woman in the old tales.

She spurned a lord, and the marshes took her soul.

How I wish they would take mine. They could wash it clean, rinse the bruises from my skin and the pain from my mind, and leave me with the kind of peace I’ve been needing.

Their hands tug me along, through thick mud and deep water, until the marshes have swallowed me completely and even the willows have faded into the night behind me. An island of thick moss and white sand rises out of the water, and I rinse the mud from between my toes and kneel on the bank, listening as their songs chase away the darkness in my mind. Their pale faces rise from beneath the surface, their strange eyes faded and dull as they smile at me.

Then the hounds begin the bay, away off at the edge of the marshes, and I know the hunt is underway.

The song of the merfolk changes, and their wide pupils narrow to slits, their gold eyes beginning to glow as they bare their spiky teeth in the direction of the barking and shouts.

The marshes have me now, and they won’t let me go again. Not without a fight.

Herb-Woman

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

close-up-door-door-handle-907609.jpg

Rose hips grow by the wooden gate, red fruit already wrinkling in the late-summer sun. I pause with my hand on the latch, gathering a few and storing them away in my apron pockets before I go inside. They smell of hot wind and dust, but brewed into a syrup, they’ll cure cough and treat strep throat.

Inside the sandstone walls, the air is scorched and still. The grass beside the path has withered and turned gold, and the gravel paths are hot beneath my bare feet. The sisters sent for me two days since. They said the dry weather brought a plague with it, driven in the wind with the dust and the pollen of the ash trees.

Plague or not, the disease must be severe. They wouldn’t dare allow me to tread within their sacred walls otherwise.

Abbess Duval comes to meet me across the grounds. Two of the sisters are with her, their gray robes and white headdresses too heavy for such unbearable heat. Her voice is harsher than I remember, more grating, as if age is catching up with her. Or perhaps I’ve been away too long, and I’ve forgotten more than I thought. “Myla. You look well.”

The greeting is formal, painfully so, and I don’t respond to it. My eyes drift around the grounds of the convent, lingering among the trees of the orchard, the well-tended gardens, the bleached linen flapping on the lines. Beneath the rigid discipline of the convent is an air of unkempt neglect that would never have been allowed under normal circumstances.

“How many?”

The abbess’s lips pinch. She’s always hated my impudence. “What?”

I look at her, hearing the steel in my own voice as I say hoarsely, “How many did you bury before they convinced you to send for me?”

Her face whitens, her thin, bony frame taut with rage. She stares at me for a long moment, her nostrils flared and her black eyes scorching me, but it has been a long time since I feared her wrath. At last, she hisses quietly, “Sixteen.”

Her voice is terrible, the number worse. I bite my tongue, resisting the urge to hit her in the face, to slap her as hard as she does the novices that sweep the floors outside her chambers. Instead, I step past her, gathering my ragged skirts in one hand as I cross the lawns to the infirmary doors. “It’s a wonder the lot of you aren’t dead by now,” I say over my shoulder, and the words feel like a curse in my mouth. One of the sisters makes a quick sign to ward off evil, and I laugh.

That’s all I am to them. The witch. The healer they threw out of their home for daring to understand herb and root, seed and bark better than they did themselves. Among the villages to the south I am the herb-woman, in the valleys I am the bone-knitter, loved and sought after and respected.

Only here do I get no respect. Only here do they call me a witch and wipe my dust from the stone floors.

The air is cool inside, protected from the hot sun by the stone tiles on the roof. I lived in this house once. Even loved it. Now the floor is littered with pallets, the sick twisted in their damp sheets as they toss and turn, their faces shiny with sweat. Novices pad quietly from bed to bed, sponging brows, spooning broth into mouths, coaxing a disturbed patient to lie back again. Easing death. Their faces are pale. They are too young for this, and the knot in my breast loosens.

I will not punish children for one woman’s sins.

They draw away from me as I cross the room to the empty fireplace. I can see the fear in their eyes—the hope too—and it makes me smile. “I need fresh water,” I tell them. “Elmwood and as much birch bark as you can gather. Lavender, willow wythes, sweet bindweed, and whiteleaf oil. Mother Abbess will show you where it is.”

Three of the girls scurry off. They are like mice, like shy, timid little mice, and they watch as I build a fire in the hearth and hang an iron kettle over the new flames. The smell of death seeps from the rafters, from the cool floors, but the lavender will sweep it away, and no more will die now.

The witch has come, and hated or not, I bring healing.

Ash and Smoke

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

pexels-photo-14111.jpeg

I buy the kerosene at the shop around the corner. The woman selling it smiles at me, and we talk about the fresh spring weather, the crocuses popping up in her flower beds, and the barges coming down the river from the cities inland. It’ll be a rich year, she tells me. A blessed year.

I laugh and agree with her. This is a blessed year. She doesn’t know how blessed.

I pay for the kerosene with his silver, and she asks me where I’m going. I tell her I’m going to the old mill, the one up by Silverstone stream. She clicks her tongue disapprovingly, as if a girl like me shouldn’t have anything to do with such a bad-tempered curmudgeon. But she doesn’t warn me away, only tells me—a little frostily—to say hello to the miller for her.

I smile and promise I will. The bell over the door rings pleasantly as I leave, and the jug of kerosene bumps against my legs as I cross the cobbled road and begin the long, long walk back to the mill. I can smell the sea from the here, hear the raucous squabbling of the gulls over the bay. I never realized what a busy little town this was, how the port was constantly bustling with sailors and merchants. He never let me come here, not even once. A woman should look after her home first, he said, not bustle about gossiping and poking her nose into the business of others.

Maybe when I’ve brought the kerosene home, I’ll come back and sit on the seawall. Just to watch the world go by, to smell the salt and hear the gulls. I’d like that.

It’s quieter when I leave the town behind me. I kick up dust on the lane, passing through the birch trees that line the road. The mill sits in the clearing, all alone, the old wheel creaking as the creek splashes over the paddles and into the pond. Moss carpets the path up the door, and the lilac bushes on either side are blooming. I pause and set the kerosene down, burying my face in the rich blossoms and breathing deeply. I want to remember that scent. Everything else, I intend to forget, but that fragrance is worth remembering.

The mill smells of death, and the floor is cold. The bedroom door is closed, and I leave it that way. I left his body on the bed, wrapped in the sheet, and it’s as good a burial as he deserves. If he’d really lived alone, as most people thought, his body would have rotted in that bed after the consumption took his soul. Instead, his darling wife—the one he locked away for so many years—will burn his body.

I uncork the jug of kerosene and pour a trail from the kitchen to the living room. I use the whole jug, and several cans of oil as well. And the last of the baking grease. When it’s all soaked into the wood, I light a match and leave it burning on the floor.

Outside, the birch trees are shivering in the wind, as if they know what’s happening. Maybe some of them will burn too. I wouldn’t mind that.

In less than ten minutes, fire is leaping from the roof. I lean against a big oak, listening to it burn. I can almost hear him screaming at me amid the roar of the flames, the way he did all those nights when the liquor was in his blood. He used to weep when the rage left him, telling me how sorry he was, and how I shouldn’t provoke him like that. I would lick the blood from my chin and say I forgave him, and he would go back to drinking.

I smile, watching it all go up in smoke and take my pain with it. The mill, his desk, our bedroom. Everything. All that was left of his stupid life and my imprisonment. I didn’t take anything with me, not even the clothes he liked me to wear. Only his silver, and the memory of the lilacs.

Everything else can burn.

On The Edge Of Living

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

niagara-cases-water-waterfall-62627.jpeg

All men die, I tell them when they ask me why the world ends the way it does. And when they die, they come here.

We’re not dead. Not yet. They ask me why that is, but I don’t tell them the reason. I don’t tell them that we’re the forgotten people, the ones sent ahead to meet Death before she was sent for them. Some know already.

The ones that don’t are happier not knowing.

We live in the cliffs. Beneath Death’s falls, on the edge of the world. The seventh sea flows above us, spilling over the black rocks, tumbling into the abyss below us. The dead follow the current, and they fall. Straight to heaven’s doors, the tales say, or maybe straight through hell’s gates. I’ve stopped trying to guess which. Maybe it’s both at once. Maybe neither.

Either way, I don’t intend to find out. We live on the edge of the world, in the span of breath between living and dying, and I have no intention of joining either side.

Instead, I watch the sunrise from the black rocks, the cliffs and ledges. The light passes through the falling water, glinting like jewels, gleaming like veils of gossamer and pearls. Rainbows dance across the damp stones, and mist hangs in the air, smelling of wet earth and sea air. The dead pass us by, hardly more than a flicker of pale light, a solitary spirit caught up by the falling water and the ocean currents.

I’ve been watching them this morning, mostly before the sun came up. They’re easiest to see by moonlight, and I find that I think clearer when I’m behind the falls. I’ve lost count of how many souls have gone by, some of them so thin that they’re nearly transparent, but I have to go back now. The others will be waiting, and if I don’t come they’ll worry.

I rise, climbing down from the ledge I’ve been sitting on. The rocks are slick with mist and moss, but I’ve been climbing these cliffs for a millennia, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve slipped. I know these rocks too well.

The ledges below are flushed with green, with tangled vines and waving leaves. The gardens are being tended already, and more people are awake than I expected. Fires are being lit, coals fanned to life and kindled again with driftwood and dried grass. I kneel beside one, helping the woman to blow the embers to life again. She glances at me, at my soaked shirt and wet hair, and smiles. “Been at the falls?”

I shrug. “Keeping watch, that’s all.”

She nods. Someone is always watching the falls, not for the dead, but for the living. Those who were sent ahead, meant to meet Death on her way rather than waiting for her. People like Mazia, whose uncles put her on a boat in the seventh sea and towed her into the current. She spoke with the wind, they said, and her smile belonged to the devil.

Personally, I’ve always liked her smile.

Ewan, too, came to us from his own family. His legs are crippled, and they were finished with him. Most of the others have the same story. A child that no one wanted, a baby that was an inconvenience, a grandmother who was a burden. They come to use one by one, and we take them in. The lip of the falls catches them, the rocks that allow the dead through but hold back the living. I hear them, or someone does, and we bring them here. Here, where the sun shines like liquid gold through the curtain of falling water, where the moon rests on her flight across the sky, and the stars seek shelter from the burning rays of the sun. Death doesn’t come looking for us here, and the nights are cool and still, broken only by the rushing of the falls. They are broken when they come, but they heal. There is peace in growing things, in gathering a harvest, in building a colony. We live on the edge of the world, in the span of breath between living and dying, and we are content.

Almost Life

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

pexels-photo-139389.jpeg

He was dying when he told me, “I had an almost life.”

The nurses sent for me when he woke up. His face was gray in the moonlight, gray against his sheets, gray against the hospital walls. I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to the heart rate monitor blip softly in the background. Outside his room, the world was moving on. Shoes squeaked on the tiled floors, intercoms echoed in the halls, and someone was shouting.

I barely heard them.

I had an almost life. Whatever he’d meant by the words, they were caught in my brain for good now. An almost life. I held his hand, watching him breathe, wanting to pause the moment and live in it forever. An almost life.

“What does that mean, Papa?” I squeezed his hand gently, rubbing my thumb against his paper-thin skin. “An almost life?”

He wasn’t listening. His eyes were on the door, as if he were waiting for someone. The window was open, for the angels, he’d said, but he was waiting for someone else. His dead wife, maybe. He’d always said she would be the one to welcome him into heaven. “No one else,” he’d confided in me once with a wink, “would have the guts to tell me my time was up. It’ll be Jesus, or it’ll be your Meemaw.”

I used to laugh when he told me that. I believed him, though. He’d been a contractor while I was growing up, so tall that he had to duck to come inside, with a booming voice that shook the house. My father had his temper, but not his love, not his compassionate heart. I’d been afraid of my father before I’d come to live with Meemaw and Papa. I still was, although I wouldn’t admit it, but I’d never once been afraid of Papa.

Death would be, though. I was sure of that. Jesus would come, or Meemaw. He wouldn’t go with anyone else.

But I wasn’t ready for him to leave yet. Not with his words in my head. I bent over, kissed his cheek, and whispered, “Papa?” He looked at me, his eyes faded and far away, and I almost asked him what kind of angels he was seeing now. But his words would haunt me if he didn’t explain them, and I didn’t want to live the rest of my life wondering what he’d meant by almost. “What do you mean, ‘an almost life’?”

He took a long time to answer, and his eyes kept straying toward the door. He was waiting for Meemaw, and I held his hand and prayed she’d wait outside until he’d told me what he meant. I needed this, especially now.

“I almost made it through school,” he said, very, very softly. I winced. “Almost went to college. I was pretty sure I was destined to be famous.”

He laughed a bit, his eyes wandering around the room. A breeze flitted through the open window, carrying angels.

“I almost sold my business. We were going to sell the house too, travel a bit. Whole lot of almosts . . .” his voice petered out, and I tried to breathe. He hadn’t retired, not until they made him. He needed the work to raise his granddaughter when his son abandoned her. I still remember waiting by the door for him to come home at night. He’d never told me I was the reason for that ‘almost’.

Papa pulled his hand away, turned my face toward his and wiped my tears with his thumb. “I almost didn’t make it the day you were born. Did your Meemaw ever tell you that?”

I choked on a laugh and nodded. I’d heard that story more than once.

“I almost missed you.” He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Thank God for almosts.”

I buried my face in his chest, crying into his shirt like I had after my first breakup. And after Meemaw had died. We’d both been crying then, but he’d still had strength enough to hold me. “You didn’t miss me, Papa.”

He nodded and looked past me at the empty room. A smile touched his face, the kind he used to have when Meemaw came in wearing a new dress, or when she bought new earrings and wanted him to notice. “I’m glad you weren’t an almost, Kaity,” he murmured. “I had all the right almosts. I was always glad of that.”

“Me too, Papa,” I whispered, watching his soul pull away. “Me too.”

Portrait of a Missionary

Posted on by A.R. Geiger

40616397_1866449356723854_3601803404566855680_n

As a writer, I am fascinated by people.

No two people carry the same stories. Their life experiences, their worldview, and their hopes and dreams are uniquely their own. No work of fiction can compare to the beauty and complexity of the world around us, but, caught in our jobs, our routines, and our day-to-day tasks, it’s easy to lose sight of the richness of life amidst the mundane.

In this series, I would like to reawaken your awareness of the extraordinary.

A.R. Geiger

Not everyone has the privilege of a returning missionary sitting at their dinner table.

As I was setting out our plates and sitting down opposite my visitor, I was very aware of this. Even in my unique position as this particular missionary’s sister, I only get the chance to have dinner with him once every other year or so. Armin Geiger is a youth pastor in Vanuatu, a collection of islands in the South Pacific, and he returns to the United States very rarely.

When he does, I like to make sure I have at least one evening with him.

He didn’t hesitate when I told him I wanted a story. His life in Vanuatu is a strange mix of the mundane and the fantastical, of office work, a regular job, and schedules, and, scattered throughout, adventures worthy of a far longer post than this one. He always has a story ready when I ask.

“We were in west coast Santo on the medical ship last year,” he told me, already forgetting his dinner. “Giving care to the local communities. But their clinic location was set up in one village, and all the other people had to travel to get there. We knew a lot of elderly and disabled people needed medical care. So a local, one other girl, and I took a tender—a small speedboat—and drove forty minutes up the coast from where the ship was anchored.”

He sat back in his chair, pausing to remember. “We arrived and the waves were stronger than we anticipated. So I hopped off with this other girl, and we go off with the local to find these two old ladies. In this small woven hut, we find this one lady who was practically deaf, hunched over, frail as a bone, with this stick that she used to walk. She was in her seventies, I think, dressed in a classic, flowery gown that they wear in the islands. My friend began to walk her toward the shore, while I went to get the other patient, who ended up being an old lady who had no legs. Not as old, probably in her forties or fifties, but she had no legs and some sort of odd, wheelchair type thing that didn’t work so well.”

“So we half-carried, half-wheeled her to the shore, which was probably 200-300 meters away, and when we arrived, the waves had gotten even bigger.” He ran his hand through his hair, looking out the window. “And so the challenge was to get these two old ladies into the boat with waves that were up to my chest and not kill them or drown them. Cause at that age, you’re very frail. The guy on the boat had it running because you had to keep it running continually. So he’s running it with prow pointed out to sea, hitting every wave and riding it out. We’re timing it with the waves. So I scooped up the old grandma with the walking stick, and when a wave comes and it runs down, I run in and chuck her on board.”

I laughed, and he grinned, continuing, “She’s sitting there, freaking out,” he lets out a yell that sounds as much like an older woman as a twenty-something man can sound. “Then we go back for the next lady. I’m carrying her in front of my chest and the boat comes down—‘cause when it’s on a wave it’s up high, like above my head—the boat comes down, and I go for it to put her in. Then the wave comes a little sooner than we anticipated, so I lift the lady up high above my head, and the wave hits me in the chest, drenching me, ruining my phone.”

He lifts his arms above his head, demonstrating for me, totally caught up in his story now. “So I’m holding her as high as I can, and the waves are still coming, and then the boat comes down again and I chucked her onto the side and the guy on top grabbed her and pulled her up.”

“Pretty intense couple of moments,” he tells me, pausing again as he remembers the boat trip and the struggle to get the women aboard and back down the coast, “because if she fell in, that would not have been good. But we got them safely to the location, where they got medical care and glasses.”

I got up to refill his plate, marveling that, to him, his story is a fairly normal part of his life in Vanuatu. To me, it sounds as outlandish as one of the history books I grew up on, and the realization serves as a reminder that the extraordinary still remains hidden among the mundane.

But, as I said, not everyone has the pleasure of a returning missionary sitting at their dinner table.