Usually, I'm going to post *parts* of fiction that I'm working on at the moment. Sometimes, I'll post stuff I wrote a while back; either way, I'll always give it an intro (much like this).
Today's will be different mainly because I won't be posting a fantasy/other fiction short story. I figured, for the hell of it, I'd post a personal essay of mine I wrote for my creative non-fiction class. It's...well, it actually is REALLY personal. I almost don't want to post it.
The theme for the essay was "place". So...I tried to roll a bunch of places...and their memories...in to one. I didn't think too deeply about this; just the first memory of a place that came to mind, I wrote about.
This version is slightly short. There's supposed to be two more "memories" I have (one at the Elementary School and one in front of Nate's house), but they made it too long for the essay's requirements, so I cut them out. And, like an idiot, accidentally saved over them. If there's one thing I hate, it's rewriting something I JUST wrote. It feels like going on a date the day after your wife passed away or something.
Anyway, I'll leave you with this: This essay should give you a really good sense of who I am...or, at least, who I was. Because, more than anything, it's about how these places...these memories....are just that. My past. Something I look back on now, from the outside.
Enjoy, and, as always, please leave comments.
_____________________________________________________________________
Luke Dailey
501.16
I step outside, and take a sharp breath. The air is crisp and frigid, ripe with the sting of winter’s heart. The wind flirts with potency, now flailing at me like a wronged lover, now slowing to an almost imperceptible lull. Others might draw their coats tighter, shiver, and turn around to retreat to the warmth of the house. Not me. The cold’s bite is like the friendly punch of an old friend; nothing more than a greeting.
My breath frosts as I squat down, grab my toes, arch my arms across my back, flex my neck. Squinting at me like a single, baleful eye, the waning moon stands stark against the empty night sky. The stars are little more than imperceptible pinholes on a black canvas. Silent and unforgiving, they watch me rise to my feet, pull up my hood, pause for a heartbeat to adjust the volume on the mp3 player banded to my arm. Then I’m off, feet pounding on the driveway, the sidewalk, the road, a lonely patch of life in a dead December night.
The town is a graveyard after 9; past midnight as it is, I could be running through a photograph. I run down Church Street, headphones blaring. Even through the music, I can feel the silence. The houses are darkened and quiet, no cars prowl the streets. In the middle of town, I’m alone.
The first corner comes soon; with the automated precision that comes with thousands of repetitions, I juke to the side of the stop sign, stepping lightly onto the sidewalk. The town seems a bit more alive here; two successive streetlights stare feverishly at the ground, and the glow of the grocery stores eternal fluorescent lights spills through its windows in a pale crescent. The parking lot waits for me soberly, unvisited and forgotten this late at night, so far from the bustling traffic that packs its corners during the day.
It was a Saturday night. We’d played a football game earlier in the day; more importantly, we’d won. Blessed with the liberating sense of carefree apathy that can only come after you’ve accomplished something that makes you feel truly proud of yourself, Nate, Ed and I were lounging the afternoon away in Nate’s living room. The gurgling TV, a constant fixture of his house, sputtered noisily in the other room; it had been annoying at first, but after half an hour had inevitably faded into forgettable background noise.
It was late September, but Summer was maintaining a more-than-welcome extended visit. A cool breeze, smelling subtly of freshly cut lawn, wafted through the windows, mingling comfortably with the distinct odor of Nate’s house. We threw barbs back and forth, discussed the highlights of the day’s game. Idly perused the internet. Plopped down in front of the TV; for an hour or so, game controllers were exchanged and tempers flared and fell. As usual, the games got old fast, and we sank quickly into the inescapable quagmire, Boredom, that relentlessly sucks in all of Poultney’s youth.
Ed suggested heading outside, Nate and I agreed. We grabbed a football, headed out to his driveway, and spent a few lazy minutes tossing it back and forth. We headed off down the street, the football flickering randomly between as we made our way. Past Ed’s house, past the old firehouse. To Shaw’s parking lot.
By now it was growing dark. But Shaws was light enough for us---their fluorescent lights never went off. Young, careless, and scornful of any potential consequences, we hucked the football back and forth violently. A few other meandering kids gathered around. We punted, passed, ran. Had fun with the football in the way you only really can in perfect weather.
I caught a pass, stepped back past one of the two lampposts. Nate darted across my field of vision, waving for me to pass it to him. Behind him, smaller and faster, Ed blurred towards the edge of the lot. Smiling, I readied the ball and launched it.
Too hard. Too high. It flew out of my hands, out of my reach, out of the parking lot. Over the roof of Shaws, into some unreachable nowhere.
We all stopped, too stunned to speak. I tried to apologize. Ed, incredulous, Nate—upset. It was his football after all. We searched behind the grocery store, to the sides, a task made even more hopeless by the gathering darkness. At last we gave up, deciding to give it one more shot in the morning. And so, dejected and football-less, we trudged back to Nate’s to endure another Poultney night of boredom.
Now I am past the parking lot, worming my way through the side road past the Discount Food store. Doggedly I jog on, and suddenly I am on Main Street. I run past Stewarts, the library, the bank. Still no cars, still not another person to speak of. The streetlights here are lower and dimmer. I start to sweat, breathe a bit heavier, shake my hair out of my eyes. I feel as if I’m running through a dream. The hardware store slips by unnoticed. Another corner, this one host to the only traffic light in town. I cross the road, picking up my pace to keep in time with the music. To my right is the Mobil gas station, Dunkin Donuts discreetly sandwiched into the same building. I spare the building a glance, but have no time to spare it a thought; I’ve reached the bottom of the hill.
It was spring break, 2007. I stood in the back room of Dunkin Donuts, sequestered from the rest of the store by firmly posted “Employees Only Sign”. Hunched over her desk, rifling through papers, the woman who I’d come to know as my boss paused. She straightened up, and seemed to notice me for the first time. “Oh.” She blinks. “Hello.”
Tuesday---2:30, right? I ignored the thought. At this point, I could have bet my soul on that I was right. “Hi,” I started awkwardly. “I got your message. And. Ah. Since I just live up the street, I figured stopping back by would be easier than calling back.”
“Oh. Right. You’re Luke.” The squat woman smiled. “I’m Anna, the manager.” Was the smile fake? Sincere? I wiped my palms dry on my pants. Don’t do that! It seems fidgety.
“Yeah.” I managed, scraping most of the rust off of my voice. “So, uhm...”
“Well, we could definitely use you.” She eyed me. Appraising? Considering? Nothing? “You’ll start Sunday. Lyndsey will be training you.”
“Allright. Allright.” I kept up an evenly paced nod the whole time she spoke. “Uh-huh.”
Anna opened a drawer, frowned, slammed it shut, opened another. Paused, squinted. Frowned again. A third drawer. This time after a dubious moment, she reached and pulled out a paper-clipped stack of papers. “Here’s all the forms you have to fill out. Just your standard stuff, things like that.” She held them out towards me in a pudgy grip. “Just have them by Sunday.”
“Allright,” I said, doing my best to sound pleasant. Was I sounding too pleasant?
“Let’s see. Hmmm.” She started to tap her pen against the desk thoughtfully. After less than 2 seconds, it became insanely irritating. I forced my smile a little bit wider. It felt like stretching a rubber band too far, to the point where it breaks. “Oh, right. I put in request for a uniform. It should be in soon.”
“Great,” I replied amicably. “Great.”
Anna tilted her head. “I think that’s it. We’ll set you up with keys and everything on Sunday. 1:30.”
Sunday. 1:30. A new mantra for my mind to mull over for the next few days. “Sounds awesome. I’ll be there!” I almost cringed at my own forced enthusiasm. Was it obvious? I wasn’t cut out for this ‘’be pleasant to everyone’’ stuff.
“Well then.” She nodded dismissively, and spun her chair towards her desk so she was no longer facing me. “See you Sunday.”
“See you Sunday,” I parroted, and walked away with calculated poise until I was out of the store.
The night is as serene as ever, but my lungs are burning. I stumble rather than stride past the empty apartments, draw ragged breathes as I battle my way to the crest of the hill. The cold hovers above me, anticipating, eager for me to succumb to exhaustion and collapse, hungry to devour me. I lower my head and plow forward, the music pulsing in a trancelike rhythm.
The hill breaks, and the burning in my legs and lungs starts to lessen just a bit. I am running slowly enough to read the sign in front of the high school. It announces a spaghetti dinner, wishes the basketball team luck in their next game. I pass the sign; begin to pass the main entrance. On a nostalgic whim, I detour my route, turning to jog to the front of the glass doors. I pause from my run for a brief moment to look through the darkened glass, to let my eyes look at the lobby for the first time in months. It has stayed the same. Everything does, back home. I think it is growing colder. I turn and return to my run, past the principle’s empty parking lot, losing my thoughts in the monotony of the jog.
I dropped on to the mat panting. Man, is the last station rough. I mustered the energy to look around. As red-faced and sweaty as I was, I was better off than a lot of my teammates. A lot of them could have been corpses, if corpses could breathe rapidly and complain in strained voices.
Today was especially rugged; I’d lifted weights at the college earlier in the afternoon, then showed up early to run my typical 35 plus laps around the court. Dedication is a good idea in principle, but when you feel like curling up and going to sleep for 12 hours at the beginning of practice...eh, not so much.
It was going to be a rough practice.
I could see the dark scowl already mustering strength on Mrs. Fuller’s face. Oh boy. If I could have gathered the energy and melodrama necessary to groan in misery, I probably would have. She’d been in a bad mood all week, and it had only been getting worse every day. Unless I missed my guess, today was going to be the day the storm came crashing down on us. Lots of lightning, and plenty of thunder
“Boys,” she snapped, “go get the speakers.” Normally, I’d be thrilled as hell to get the speakers. In fact, even now, it didn’t sound so bad—get away from her unstable wrath for a few precious minutes. Problem was, I was seeing everything through a kind of grayish haze, and when I tried to stand up, the world kind of grew dimmer. Still not quite horrendous enough to make me groan, but close.
“Ryan, go get the megaphones,” I grumbled out. He scrambled up like some kind of lurching chimp, and, with his goddamned grin plastered smack across his face, scuttled off to do my bidding. I watched him go with feelings somewhere between disgust and amusement. What a fucking clown.
Nothing quite as intense as cheerleading. Kind of a miserable thought. Ms. Fuller started to snap out orders like some kind of high-ranking professional Gestapo. Violently warning my body that it better not give up on me, I forced it to stand up, then. Hope wasn’t lost. Maybe she’d start off with something easy, where I just stood around with my arms crossed and tried to look sullen but likeable. I hoped she’d start off with something easy. Kind of like hoping for a fire truck for Christmas.
“First, I think...” I could hear the musing in her voice, and I realized with an awful dread she was about to hand out a death sentence. It was like when a teacher asks the one question you no clue how to answer, and you immediately just know, no matter what you do, you’re going to get picked out to answer it.
“I think we’ll start with the basket toss,” my coach concluded happily.
This time, I groaned. Death sentence, indeed. Everybody had to go sometime, I guess. Too bad I’d be taking off during cheerleading practice.
I loop around, running across the street, looking for cars even though they’re a rare, shy beast this time of night. I grit my teeth and launch myself over the stone ledge as it rises up before me, and land heavily on the doc’s lawn. From experience I know his dog is probably barking, savage yips belying its miniscule stature. But my music still separates me from the outside world, a paper-thin auditory armor that keeps the emptiness at bay.
Downhill now, my stride stretching in front of me, carefully monitoring my speed. Too fast, and a crafty patch of ice will slide up to cut off my foot’s journey to the sidewalk. I never fall, but that is as much because I’m cautious as well balanced. I run past the stream, emptier of life even than the night, frozen into a stone imitation of its usual gurgling self by winter’s touch.
A left turn at the traffic light, an uneventful straight stretch where the houses start to give way to open space. The four-way stop, a right turn. I think I can hear my ragged breathing over the music, but decide it is probably my imagination. Past Kurt’s house, over the stream again, still ashen. My vision is blurring now, I blink and force my head to stay up straight. The conclusion of my run is still a ways off.
To my left, suddenly, looms the entrance to the rail trail. An abrupt departure from the relative civilization of Poultney, a steadily deteriorating path into the woods. It’s entrance is black and foreboding, halled and roofed by a heavy canopy of trees, oppressive even without their dense foliage. I run decisively past its inky maw. Beyond that is a hungry, colder world; one best not visited at night. It falls away behind me as I continue down the road.
A shooting star cut across the sky, bleeding a thin orange trail out behind it. The night was a velvet blanket, stars dotted it, sand scattered against obsidian. The moon clung feebly onto the last lingering remnants of supremacy; the slight sliver that hadn’t yet been devoured by the heavens was half covered by a dense grey cloud. It was beautiful, a night sky unfettered by bothersome city lights, full of all the wonder and awe that has entranced humankind for all of its existence.
And then the sky was gone, shielded by an impenetrable roof of dense leafy treetops, and there was nothing but night and my bike and my friends. Like a body come home to an empty grave, the rail trail swallowed us.
The darkness was so complete and so unexpected that none of us spoke for a long moment, only pedaled, slowly, each of us struggling to come to terms with the limitless night enveloping us.
“We should have brought a flashlight.” I said at last.
A short silence followed. “Yeah.” Ed said, from somewhere up ahead. I could just make out his shirt---it was white, but still, it was only a candle in an ocean of ink.
Nate was closer, the man in the middle, and his shirt was white too. “We’re already here,” he said. “So let’s just go.” His bike gears whirred and clattered.
I looked behind me. There was nothing but the night, yawning, its gaping maw spread wide open, eager to devour me should I allow it to catch up with me. I shuddered and turned back around, and kept my eyes locked on the two white dots that were my friends’ shirts. “Yeah. I don’t want to go back. Let’s just go.”
My thoughts are scattered, my steps uneven. My once secure defense against winter, underarmor and a sweatshirt, has succumbed to the irrefutable reality that it is no match for this caliber of cold. I imagine my sweat freezing on my face, leaving frosted beads clinging to my skin like transparent leeches.
I turn into the arch of the corner, leaning forward to increase my momentum. The college materializes in the darkness to my left, stark tall sentinels through the night. The campus is usually alive, and so it is comparatively deader than even the town itself. The wind prowls its corners, frost paces its sidewalks. Tonight, it is a place best avoided, inexplicably mysterious despite its dogged familiarity. For a time it follows me, the campus perpetuating itself as I try to outrun it. At last my hampered pace brings me past its reach; if I had the energy, I would sigh in a strange sort of relief.
Two guys.
Late spring, and it’s just getting dark. Two guys, walking through the college. Not students, but old enough to blend. We walk a strange route; circling and recircling the same ground. To a keen observer, there is something skittish, flighty about the way we walk, avoiding others’ gaze, doing our best not to be seen.
Me- tall, red haired, and Ed,- shorter, black hair. It is nearly dark by now. We laugh, joke, whisper up unheard plans in furious undertones. The absurdity of our plan keeps our spirits on the cusp of boiling over. We are waiting for something. An oppurtunity.
At last it comes. None of the college hippies that litter the campus are around. We dart forward, grab two bikes. Locked. Two more. Locked. Frantic, now, we fly to a third set. These bikes are old. Rusted. Decorated with strange, painted designs. Bottom of the barrel.
But unlocked.
Cackling like hyenas, the two of us leap onto the bikes, peddling away furiously, unable to contain our ecstatic laughter. Two hippy bikes, clandestinely borrowed for the evening. The bikes will carry us around for a few hours, give us a good story for a few years. In the morning they will be back in the hippies’ bike rack, their dreadlocked owners none the wiser.
Everything seems to be pressing down on me now. The cold, the darkness, my own fatigue. Memories. Even the silence presses through my music, undeterred. My steps are stumbling; my head hangs at my chest. Breaths come forced and uneven, and chilled sweat cascades from my face. An aura of steam drifts up behind me, testament to my body’s battle against the cold. I start up the street; it is the last one before my house. Lurching, I force myself forward to the corner, take a right, again past the grocery store, only this time I double back, cut off the main road onto the private drive.
Treacherous potholes lurk beneath a malicious coating of ice; I battle through my exhaustion and force myself to run carefully. Over the ice, avoiding the potholes; drained as I am, I could probably do it with my eyes closed. Past the house, the window. I force myself not to look, not to think. Fatigue is not enough to keep those thoughts, those questions at bay.
But they are best kept dormant. To myself. Forgotten. Unanswerable. I leave the house behind me, meld back with the street. The final stretch. Mustering all my reserves, I channel all my energy into a final, all out sprint.
I felt conspicuous. I felt out of place. I felt unsure.
I felt like a complete idiot.
Uneasily, I shuffled through the snow, hands in my pockets. What was I doing? Was there any logic to this?Any reason? Should I have even come out? My brain, normally so dependable, just shook its head at these questions, baffled by them, not sure what to say.
I was, I decided, nowhere near as rational as I liked to think. I really wasn’t in the mood for this—I could probably still just turn around and head back...
“Luke!” My voice, hissed, a sole sound fleeting across the night. I jumped and looked up. She was there, leaning out of her window. The stupid smile that, no matter how hard I fought against it, always found a way on to my face, started to make its hallmark appearance, and my heart decided to inconvenience me even more by beating twice as fast. I hate them both, hated the endless wondering in my mind. I thought I’d been done with those feelings a long time ago. Relics from high school. A dream, no hope whatsoever. Dreams are a lot easier to forget about then hold onto.
I walked forward, stepping carefully around the frozen potholes. It was all I could do to force my grin down into an uneasy halfsmile. “You’re crazy!” I whispered back up, my mouth deciding to randomly spout words on its own, since my brain certainly wasn’t giving it any direction.“Where did you drop it?”
Clearly she found this whole situation hilarious, she was smiling like Ed from the Lion King. The smile that I couldn’t stand, the smile I just wanted to forget. To not care about. But instead, there I was, wondering if she was smiling in amusement, just because, who knows. I certainly had no idea. I never did, with her. I was never sure of anything, least of all myself.
“There.” Her hand reaches out her windows, points down to the ground, into some obscure patch of snow.
“What did you drop?” I asked as I stepped forward to try and locate the whatever-it-was.
Her reply was matter of fact. “A snowglobe.”
Oh, that made a lot of sense. You can only wonder how or why a snowglobe manages to get dropped out a second story window. It wasn’t even worth it to ask.
“Here it is.” It was easy enough to find, its fall fortunately cushioned by the fluffiness of the recent snowfall. It was, indeed, a snowglobe. Not particularly distinct, just a typical crystalline orb eternally catching a woefully idyllic scene. “Can you catch it?” I motioned throwing it back up.
“Probably not.”
Whatever. “Alright, here goes.” I hucked it up, trying to find the perfect balance between power and accuracy.
It rocketed up, spinning over and over on its own wait. It slowed, crested, and for a moment seemed to simply hang in the air. A sparkling, spinning glass ball, one that I was sure was going to come crashing back down shattering. Reflexively I stepped forward ready to catch it.
Her hands reached out and grabbed it clumsily. I breathed out, relieved. “Don’t drop it again,” my mouth, still operating independently of my brain, warned. “I don’t want to come out again.”
“I won’t,” she promised, fighting back a laugh. I think. “Thanks, Luke. Thanks for coming out to get me m snowglobe.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re welcome. Like I said though, just don’t drop it again. It was hard enough to get out of the house the first time.”
“How’d you get out?” She asked.
I grinned. “Told my parents I lost my wallet.” I lose my wallet all the time.
She flashed a smile back at me. “Ha. Alright, thanks again, Luke.”
“You’re welcome, again.” I turned, started to walk away. “Good night.”
“Good night!” I turned back one last time as she said it. She was still smiling. I shook my head at myself ruefully. I should have given it up a long time ago—had given it up a long time ago—but just being around her made it hard to forget.
Her smiling down at me. That was the last time I ever saw her.
* * *
I collapse breathlessly in my driveway, finally submit to the cold. With a sadistic glee, it rushes on to me, cloaking me, embracing me, flooding my panting lungs. My body heat floods the air around me with a dense steam, and for a moment all I can do is lie panting, thoughtless, guiltless.
Slowly my breath returns. I rise tottering to my feet, and creak my way up the porch, into the house. The town sits silent behind me, looming, waiting. Day will come, and with it life, and for a time the town will be a brighter place, warmer, bustling.
But day will fade. Night will come. The cold will creep back again. And then, once again, the town will be mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment