Goines On: Going slow

Background from a painting
by Karin Neuvirth
Click image for more vignettes

A few days after going fast in exultation, Goines found himself going slow. The only thing fast about his walk was the speed of the thoughts swirling in his head.
    There were images of friends’ faces, of nieces and nephews, of cousins, and his wife.
    There were thoughts of his friend whose 50th birthday party he had attended, which had been thrown by his sister. He had been trying to write but was lately showing signs of maybe no longer having it in him....
    ...of his friend in Bulgaria whom he’d never met in person and whose mountain treks were on hold for family reasons and might never resume....
    ...of his cousin in Arkansas whom he had not telephoned in months and definitely “owed” a call, especially because her old house had finally been rendered uninhabitable by the April tornadoes that ripped North Little Rock. It had been her parents’ house before her, and one of Goines’ sisters and her family had lived in it as well....
    Goines stopped on the sidewalk under a tree and propped the handle of his cane between his legs as he dug out his iPhone to take notes. He started a draft email to himself and began entering, but was interrupted by a cheery hello and felt the nudge of a dog’s muzzle on the side of his leg.
    It was a friend who lived in the adjacent block. He returned her hello and squatted to palm her little dog’s head.
    “We’re going to Asheville this week!” she announced with some excitement. She and her husband and their teenagers were going to visit the Biltmore House.
    Images of the place sprang into Goines’ head. The Goineses had visited the Biltmore House most recently only two or three years earlier. “Your first visit?” he asked.
    “We were there once, many years ago.”
    “Are you going to the Thomas Wolfe house as well?”
    “Uh, no, but we’re going to see a friend of mine who used to work with me at UNC Health, before she retired to paint.”
         “An artist!” Goines exclaimed, and asked whether they would bring one of her friend’s paintings home.
    “Ha,” she said, “we couldn’t afford one.”
    “She’s big, then?” Goines asked. “What’s her name?” He looked down to key the name into the notes he had started.
    “That’s ‘Karin’ with an ‘i’,” she said.
    When Goines arrived home, Mrs. Goines startled him: “Why have you been gone so long? I was worried about you.”
    Lost in slowed thoughts, he hadn’t seen her sitting in a folding chair on the driveway.

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