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Thunder Sandwich #23 |
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Loren Laird Burris |
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The Fog and Time Passing Byron stood on his front walkway and talked to his wife Linda as she tarried in the semi-visible doorway. "Never seen fog this bad." Byron crossed his arms. "That the car over yonder?" Linda said. Byron, his eyes trained west toward the driveway, tried to pierce the fog, to sound the chalky distance. He yawned. "Can't go to work in this." "Yes hon." He hadn't seen anything. "Then why don't you go to it?" "I'm not driving in this." "You're going to lose it." "What?" "Linda, I doubt anything is open today. Look at this." Byron tried to imagine the layout of the neighborhood as it had been without the fog. He pictured their car to the west, the doors dented, the windshield crazed, the antennae lost. Swivel a few yards to the east and you had the street, and further east, staring flush ahead you saw the Harlinger home and the '87 Ford parked at the curb, wheel-less, windowless. To the extreme east could be seen an abandoned building, a gabled affair with a decorative turret and stained glass windows. Now the roof had caved in, and the grass had not been mown in six months, and neighborhood punks had smashed the window, leaving variegated glass shards all over the driveway to be either collected and thrown away, or left. "Go to work." Byron shook himself. He turned and tried to see his wife. "I'm not driving in this." His mind turned and he smiled. "Why not?" She said. "I'll be right back, Lin." He stepped off the walkway, all the time trying to recall their yard and what was in it. He remembered there was a loquat tree smack in the center, the branches sagging to the grass under the weight of unharvested, untasted fruit. Byron tiptoed along, the unkempt grass brushing its leaf-tips on his shoes and the cuffs of his slacks. Byron reached out and touched a laden branch and knew he was halfway to the other driveway. He stopped and called back to Linda. "I need a trash bag." "Why?" Linda was scuffing her shoed foot against the cement. Her bottom lip quivered, and she found herself biting it too hard and relaxed her jaw. She had ventured outside, beyond the doorway, and it angered her. "Just get me a trash bag please." "Sorry, Byron." He heard the door slam. He did not hear the lock. Byron sighed, immensely relieved. He whipped the branch to the side and proceeded, this time with lion-like confidence. "She'll get over it." He thought. "I'm not driving in this." Byron walked the grass until the softness ended and he felt through his shoes the hard unquestioning cement. Bending slightly, Byron eased onward as the fog seemed to thicken until his shoe kicked and sent scuttling an object that landed somewhere in the tremendous invisibility with a glassy ting. Byron crouched. Slivers of blue and red and honey-yellow glass were spread to all sides. He picked up a piece and ran his thumb over the subtle contour, noting the facets and finally rubbing the edge gently. He threw this fragment aside and waited for the glassy report. With careful fingers he began to pile the glass together, wedding blue to red to yellow. The fog pressed closer, and Byron stood up and dusted his hands, though there had been no grit on the glass. The house that, when seen clearly was a wreck of boarded windows and a door kicked in years ago and a sidewalk and front walkway busted and reduced in places to shivered stone, seemed as if nonexistent now. Byron tried to recall the family that had lived there, and couldn't. Straining with memory, at last he could recall an impression of a young boy, perhaps six, and a grandfatherly figure, stooped and tremulous and wielding a cane. Byron had approached the man once, the day they had finished packing and the truck had left, and the old man and the boy were walking toward their car, red Cadillac with some secondary luggage tied on the roof. The old man had stood waiting, the boy jittering about at his side, as Byron strode up and extended his hand unthinkingly. The old man didn't offer a hand in return. "What's this about?" "I just wanted…" Byron had had to clear his throat. "I just wanted to say Linda and I are sorry to see you go." "Who's Linda?" "My wife." "And who are you?" "I'm Byron Peterson." "And why the hell are you coming to talk to me now, when my son and I have lived her for a year. Why didn't you say hello a year ago?" "I didn't mean, uh…I'm just real busy most days, see. I work in…" "You've been too busy to say hello for a year, and so have all the rest of these idiots in this neighborhood. It's as if I don't count cause I don't entertain false hopes about this area and where it's headed. But you know what? To hell with them and you too. If you can't see the burden you're putting on your children living here, then God help you." "We don't have any children." Byron had turned to leave. "You haven't been busy working." The old man had called. Byron had stopped and stood, shielding his face from the sun. "Then what have I been busy doing?" "Easy. You've bee busy thinking about escaping." "From what?" "From this." The old man swept his arm in a decisive gesture that at one time encompassed and wiped away the panorama of tumbledown garages and broken down cars rusting on curbs and houses newspapers over broken windows with tattered American flags flexing in the swell of wind. "Why would I want to escape? And if you're so unhappy, why did you move here to begin with." "Because of that." The old man pointed to his house. Then, it had been in great shape. A rawboned Haitian boy who lived a few streets over had mowed the grass every week. There had been splendid roses in the flowerbeds, which the old man had kept up himself and plied twice a week with water and fresh fertilizer. The stained glass window had been intact, the disparity of the pieces colliding in an image of the Madonna, clutching her invaluable child and cocking her head upward as if to drink in a righteous light. Floating against a backdrop of trash and decay, the house had seemed almost disagreeably tidy and hopeful. "Because of that." The old man had repeated. "I once saw promise for this place. And now." The boy, bemused at this tall stranger addressing his father, had hidden behind his father's legs, peeping now and then around them before ducking his head back to safety. Byron had gone inside and watched through the blinds as the old man and the boy drove away. When he had lost sight of their car he'd gone out and studied the house, its gables and that flowery abomination of a turret. It was all out of place, he had thought. Some things don't belong. "Well." Byron lost the thread and tried to remember again, to dredge up impressions, to revive history. The old man stood right there, he decided, and he pointed haplessly into the white. The fog was gone the next morning. Byron rolled out to fetch the paper. The world was clearer and objects fuller and more hideous than they had been in months, as if the fog had washed them of all deceptions. He glanced at the house, saw the mound of broken glass, breathed in the entire decadent vision. A car backfired somewhere to the west. That or a gun had been fired. Byron locked the door behind him. He sat down to his coffee, and as he scanned the headlines Linda paced through, placed her hand on his shoulder and rubbed the muscles. "Sorry about yesterday." "It's okay. Looks like I'm going to get to work today." "Yes." Linda poured a cup for herself and selected a cookie from a tin and munched quietly. Her mascara was running, and Byron noticed her biting her bottom lip nervously. He pushed his paper aside. There was another gunshot, or car backfiring, or whatever it was. Byron took his briefcase and headed to the door. "Byron?" "Yes." "Have a good day." "Yes. Lock the door." He stepped out and waited to hear the lock click. He stood and looked to the west. His car was still dented, the hubcaps missing on a wheel, bird shit spattered across the roof and hood. To the east the old man's dream looked even bleaker and more decayed than it had for some time. Some time ago, Byron thought. Some time ago, a few people still had dreams. |