Trip to Serenity – Speakeasy # 146

Trip to Serenity

He’d been down the coast so many times, that no one even bothered to wait for him any more.  He’d take off at dawn then kayak his way down coast ’til he came to Serenity.  Do his shopping, then return to their isolated village some 500 miles away. The trip sometimes took as much as a month, depending on the weather or who he met along the coast.

Jim Mathers loved kayaking, he loved the wilderness and he loved being alone.  A few months before he disappeared back in ’14, he’d gotten married to a young woman who’d come to teach at the local school from somewhere in the lower 48.  They seemed happy enough, but Jim, well Jim liked to be alone and sometimes they’d have words about him walking out into the wood without saying a word and not coming back ’til the next morning!

Mary Hellen had her work with the school, which kept here pretty much occupied. Still, she wanted to have Jim more to herself and would have liked to share more time with him.  She couldn’t understand his need for solitude.

They were both poets.  Seems he could just whip a poem out without any efforts…Mary was a perfectionist, and loved her forms and rules, something she tried to teach Jim, but he didn’t take much to.

One day they had words once again after Jim had been walking out in the woods for two days.  He never became angry and didn’t this time either.  As she shouted and cried, Jim just looked on a little bewildered.  Then he went to their room, packed up his backpack, and as he went through the livingroom, he passed her his folder full of his poems.

He gave her a passionate kiss and then said: “I love you Mary Helen and I hate to see you upset.  I’m going to Serenity.”

“That was the last time I saw Jim,” Mary Hellen said years later,
“I sat there and waited, but he never came back.”

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The Speakeasy Prompt: Your piece must include the following sentence as the LAST line: “I sat there and waited, but he never came back.”