(A bit of prosetry mixed with some parable notions.) Age treats some of us very well. I‘ve been fortunate avoiding loneliness. Others? (Image by flickr hive)
Death on Hold
A crumbling house, its windows curtained with Walmart plastic bags, remembers well the first beer bottle thrown through the window, the first laugh, the other boys astride their bikes joining in, the fast retreat, their wheelies like an E.T. parade.
Mr. Huxley’s ancient red wagon, wheel-less and corroded, rotting porch rocker, rusted out washing machine, bagless antique Hoover, old ice box, its ice long forgotten, and still, life keeps holdin’ him prisoner behind these walls of suffering.
Police drive by occasionally, their one-blast siren warning the dusty street, law and order is near, never seeing the bashful junk-yard dog, Grossberger, snoozing in the weeds that continue choking the yard with grays, browns and black remnants of life once alive.
Grossberger knows his job, though. Just the sight of the that UPS truck slowing down, pausing at the curb of Huxley’s view of the world, the driver cautiously looking about, knows Grossberger might flash his teeth and a not so welcoming stare. The driver nevertheless steps up toward the porch, box between his arms, pen and form to sign between his fingers, and tries again to deliver. Grossberger goes back to sleep with that look of “same ol’, same ol’.”
But Huxley…
His cane parts the blur of plastic bags giving the delivery man his own bark. ”Get outa here!” a greeting the uniformed package man knows well. “Ah’ c’mon Mr. Huxley. Just sign and it’s yours.”
Mr. Huxley gazes out over the yard and beyond the acres of drought stricken land, where once crops grew, where before the “World State” took over everything, Nature enjoyed its existence. As his eyes settle back on the UPS man, “You’re not gonna steal my name too. God damn it! Not my name!”
And so, more nocturnal mumbling into his pillow arrests Mr. Huxley’s nightmare of a broken window, siren squawk and UPS visit. He turns over and tries again to get past taunting dreams to hopefully slip into that forever-sleep-escape he’s waited so long for. But, as always, he lapses back into that other merciless dream; his schoolhouse yard, where his tongue is still frozen to the January frigid flagpole, the bullying boys laughing while circling him like an ancient group of tribesmen. As his eyes shoot open and his bedroom’s peeling ceiling stares down at him, he ponders; Am I alone, or are there others who stay alive only through the cruelty of loneliness they make for themselves?
|
|
|
Love ya!
Jane
In my grade school years, to the left across the alley behind our house and next to the dentist's beautifully painted and manicured two-story home in a changing urban ghetto, was a lot that was so extremely overgrown that you could barely see the one-story paint peeled low-lying house amid the virtual forest of young saplings grown up from the unattended lot. There was a wheelchair ramp to the front door porch, but we never saw the old man that supposedly lived there.
We would peer through the grimy window of the shed out back on the alley at an old car in there, wondering what it was. When the old man died, someone cleared the property and took down the wall of the shed so that the old car would come out to be parked behind our house. It was a 1917 model with isinglass curtains and lamps for headlights. The license was for 1935, probably the last year he drove it.
Ron