INSEPERABLE


Hand in glove, peas in a pod, they fit together. There was one more example, but he couldn’t think of it right then. Because just now, she had gone down that road, over that hill, and disappeared out of his life. Like the flame on a match dropped into the dust – phffft – just like that.

It was not right, not right at all. He had him self a major temper tantrum right there on the side of the road. Stomped his feet in the dust and whirled, and howled, flailed his arms, beating himself and the air around him black and blue.

But then the gray dust rose up around him, over his head, covered him gently. Like the faded quilt she used to pull up over their heads in her little bed.

He shook his head furiously, not wanting that comfort. He’d show her, he’d run away and live in a cave like a hermit. He’d wear raggedy clothes and eat pork and beans with a fork, out of the can heated over his campfire.

He did run away – to his secret cave and pouted and whined there until clear after dark. Nobody came after him (much less her) and he finally got too cold and hungry to be mad anymore, so he trudged on home.

His mother was standing outside the front door calling his name, “Robbie! Robbie!” He ran the last half block into her arms. And though he was too big to be picked up (being seven and a half, almost eight) he allowed her to cosset him, to feel his forehead, clean him up, feed him and tuck him into his own bed. There he could just be the little boy he was, whose best friend had moved away.

Many years later, around a campfire in Yosemite, his twin sons asked him for a story about the old days. So he told them about that day and his best friend Reba and the two things of how they fit so perfectly together: hand in glove, two peas in a pod.

“And the third thing? What was the third thing, Daddy?” Jake yelped.

“You know what it was,” Robbie said. “You’ve heard this story a million times.”

“No! You have to show it, you have to show!”

So Robbie stood up and offered his hand to his wife Reba, sitting there on the log. And they got up and walked slowly to the back side of the fire so that their shadows stood out from them against the side of their van. Then he stepped behind her, engulfing her in his arms and they said it to each other, together. “Me and my shadow.”

And their boys whooped in glee like wild Indians.