I let it go…releasing a wished for past as I had often done before.
***
Returning to Mr. Jones and our present, I noticed his anger seemed dispersed. He continued his story with studied patience. "During my apprenticeship, the Dicksons were required to provide room and board, clothing, and some schooling. The Stonebreakers' place was just a block from the Dicksons' establishment where Cyrus, Mr. George, and I worked. Oh, I don't need to go into such detail, I suppose." Frustrated, he paused to clear his thoughts.
"The short of it was that the Dicksons arranged for me to sleep in the upstairs loft room of the Stonebreaker home, and to take my victuals at their table. The Stonebreakers were my second family and would be for the rest of my life. I was a part of their household until Miss Patc died.
"Oh, I was often away in Nashville, Washington and Richmond and so forth, but I always had welcoming accommodations in their home for over fifty years. Mr. George died a few weeks after Appomattox, in 1865. When they had built their new place up on the ridge in 1845, my room there needed proper furniture. I was in Congress then, elected in 1843. The wardrobe you saw at your friend Mr. Wyatt's was a piece of the bedroom set I acquired in Philadelphia, I venture in about 1852."
My expression must have been one of puzzlement.
"Sir, as I've said from time to time, I do travel with you when you are about your business, which seems mostly to be me. When I called on you, I told you I would help facilitate your work. No, sir, it is not a Barnum gull or some hocus-pocus. It is as I said before-your calling on me, your interest in my life, brought me thence and I share your reality when we're face to face, and when I'm on your mind. Just call it an added aspect of your obsession. Don't make it more than that or try to comprehend it. That will take up our time for no purpose that relates to your effort to tell my story."
He returned to his reminiscing after straightening me out about our relationship. My phantom did, it would seem, have powers useful in dealing with my obsession. Those abilities could be used in accomplishing something we both needed-presenting his story as more than a footnote, 120-year-old, probate records, legislative voting records, census data, and a few letters from friends and his brother Will. Our situation presented me a means to reckon with my compelling need to resolve something. What?
Maybe it was simply my finding a signal blessing to initiate a new phase of living. Every day should be an appreciated new beginning, but that does not seem significant until one spends countless nights and days fearing that the next breath will be the last. It's the knowledge of and hardnosed acceptance of eventual loss that makes appreciative joy an imperative ethic.