Sundown
I
woke up this morning an old man. I can’t explain to you when it
happened but it did. It feels like some kind of joke and I missed the
punch line. The whole ordeal must have been gradual because I didn‘t
take any notice. Age snuck up on me and started to kick hard. Feels
like how the first big storm of the year always seems to surprise
everyone like no one has ever seen snow before in their lives. Its
much like when a season decides its done and it will be winter now.
I
finish washing my face, place my soap back in its place on the shelf
and quickly shut the cabinet mirror door above the bathroom sink. I
take one more look at myself. You are old now, I mouth to my
reflection. I leave the small bath, no bigger than a closet and move
down my dim hallway. I walk squinting into the daylight. The screen
door swings closed behind me on the front porch and gives my ears its
familiar slam sound. I step my half-way caulked walk to my bicycle
and get on. What’s it to ya, I answer myself. I push the
left pedal first because its my good leg and follow it with the right
one because its partly crippled these days.
The weather this morning puts me in high spirits. The fall sun is
just strong enough to warm my back but the air is clean and cool to
breath. The soft heat is like a woman’s sigh and feels redeeming.
The sunlight is amber coloured and everything looks golden. The
evenings are alright too, when the sun sets behind the row of
identical wartime homes across the street from my own I imagine there
is something glorious beyond it.
I
ride my bicycle down two blocks and across one more to the market
stores every day for my supplies. I greet the checkout ladies and
pretend interest in their concerns.
“Apples
one dollar ninety this morning Mister Kocher”, the girl tells me. I
have heard the girls call me Mister Masher when they think I
am out of hearing range. I believe that to be what this one thinks.
“Nice
day it is.” I say back to her and smile through my mess of crooked,
yellowing teeth.
The
check-out girl may not think much of me. Come to think of it they may
not think much at all. I know who I am and I still require supplies
for my cupboard. I knot the stuffed bags to the handle bars of my
bicycle and push on back towards home. Routine can keep you alive.
Pastimes
I fix up old bicycles and sell them for a couple of dollars to the
kids around the neighborhood. More often than not they look at
me sideways like I’d be some type of debaser. I look past it though
and ask if they’re buying or not. Best ask your folks first, I
tell them. Better make sure it’s okay before you go spending all
their money. Drop mention about the parents. Always seems to shut
those brats up. I don’t want trouble over bicycles. And get
yourself a good lock, I tell them. Better looking at it than
looking for it.
I
look for Lenny down by the coffee shop. He haunts the place like a
ghost that don’t know he’s passed to God. He lost most of his
vision back twenty years now from pulling up lime in glass tubes for
Can-Co Company test samples. I would watch him while he put his lips
on the tube and suck the lime up to the top of the rim and think that
can’t be good. Lenny is still around though standing outside
the red brick café building on the dusty sidewalk. An old bastard in
old rags not much different than myself. That can’t be good either.
Lenny
was raised same as me in a big family; six siblings and a bath once a
week. The bathing orders always came the same too; youngest child to
eldest in one tub of hot water from the stove and by the time you got
your turn it was chilled cold and brown. When Lenny and me was kids
we’d ride our bikes like terrors around the neighborhood and go as
far from home as we could before we’d run half-ways out of steam
and have to be saving some to get home again. We would ride over the
train tracks and down the gravel roads that run beside the river
where Billy Samuel was found face down, bloated and bobbing like a
log. We loved pedaling as fast and as far away as we could; long
before we’d sign up to work for the shipyards or began to look like
men. Mothers then had a common means to rid themselves from children
under-foot. It was to show you the door and say be home by sundown.
I
was in love with Lenny’s second youngest sister Jenny. When she
passed away it was alright with me. Love lost to one evening. I
caught her entertaining another gentleman partly through her sliding
backyard patio door. Up until that time we visited regular nights; me
and Jenny. I can see her swinging her long brown hair over her
shoulders and laughing while we played cards in her kitchen. We’d
have conversations over cups of coffee or sour tasting gin until we
were silly with one or the other and it was time to retire.
I
was a spry man at that time. I was fit and bulked with muscle from
hauling metal casings at the shipyard, fired up with excitement from
watching the minesweepers roll out of our harbors ready to defeat
naval mines. If a ship came in touch with a naval mine horn it would
blow a hole in it so big as to send it to the bottom. Our shipyard
could barely keep up with production. The work pace was lightning
fast because apparently our enemy was as good at sinking ships as we
were making them; sometimes better.
I
didn’t think much of what happened that night. I grabbed the man
with my rough hands and squeezed his neck with them, tighter and
tighter. My heart didn’t complain once as I wrung the life out him.
I watched the scene from somewhere outside myself during the few
minutes it took for the man to die. He looked so shocked as the
lights escaped from his bulgy eyes. Even when dead on the ground his
face still held a look of surprise. Jenny screamed all the while like
she was being killed herself. I turned to her and said You got to
keep out of trouble Jenny. I felt she needed me to tell her. I
dragged the man’s dead body down the dirt and pebble lane by one of
his arms and buried him somewhere I can’t never say. When I
finished with the burial I went back to Jenny’s house. I came back
the same ways I left and found her in the shadows sobbing in her
hands like women do. In the dark kitchen I sat down in the chair next
to hers. As soft as I could I explained to her how it would be best
if she would keep quiet about the whole mess for good. She threw her
hands up in protest then and moaned something that sounded like an
agreement. I walked out her door and never went back.
Its
almost four thirty now and I lay in my bed fully dressed and wait. My
small television tries to sell me some walk-in bath tubs with chairs
built inside them and motorized scooter chairs. I don’t know why
everybody wants to sit down so much. I enjoy the light that shines
through the glass despite the dirt on my window, through the dingy
sheers that were white fifty years ago. It is almost time for old
men like me to have their supper.
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