I accessed some very old stories that I had logged in as Wordperfect files from typewritten stories done early in my days of working to become a published author.
In the mix was this one. It's not really a story, as such. I think I was trying to write about what it must be like to be old and alone. I was 26 years old when I wrote it, and I think I did a pretty good job of figuring out what it must be to be a bitter old man. (In many ways, I've been a bitter old man since I was 12 years of age.)
The story also reminds me a little of a couple of Charles Bukowski works, but I wrote this at least ten years before I discovered Bukowski.
At any rate, here is the brief yarn:
“Let It Fall”
by
James Robert Smith
Approximately 1,500 words
The
Winter always brings back the bad memories, the old man thought as he peered through the window, squinting his eyes at the back yard. Above, the skies were gray and
overcast, threatening snow, sleet--something. He sat at the window, feeling a
nagging draft slithering in through some crack near his elbow. He grimaced,
remembering.
Nostalgia: It was a no good emotion. He
hated it, for there was nothing sweet in his melancholy; it was all bitter. It
was Winter, though. Winter always did this. Before him, beneath the old oak at
the rear of the weedy lawn, he stared at the spot that once shielded a tire
swing, where Nan liked to play.
Goddamned
winter.
He stood, feeling bones creak, muscles
ache. I'm getting on, he had to
admit; but it was hard for him to think of himself as an old man. Always, when
he was young, he had imagined himself growing old with Rebecca, perhaps
visiting their daughter, grandchildren that might be. When he'd been young it had never occurred to
him that he would be old, and alone. There was a tapping at the window that snapped
him out of his sour reverie. Sleet, after
all.
It was time to go to the convenience
store, he remembered. There were things that he was out of. Shelves in the
pantry were empty, in spots, and he didn't feel like going to the supermarket. Not
when he needed only a few items and the convenience store was barely four
blocks away. Besides, he enjoyed the walk. But it would make him think of
Rebecca and Nan. Everything seemed to, these cold, old days.
As he came out of his house--the same
house he and Rebecca had bought more than three decades before--he heard the
raucous yelling of the neighborhood children. There were a lot of them, this
year. There had to be seven or eight ten-year-olds on the street, these days.
Nan had been ten when his wife had left, taking the girl with her. He shrugged
his coat on snugly over his still-broad shoulders and watched them, running
about like mad animals in the pelting sleet. No smile etched his aging face.
His eyes tracked a trio of boys dashing madly about the yard of the house
across the way, as if there was already enough of the white stuff on the ground
to toss a sled upon. There wasn't though; it had barely begun. The old man
grunted and stepped to his lawn.
Good crepe soles crunched down on the icy
stuff as he strode down the walk, headed for the store. As he moved along, he
recalled days when he had made just such a stroll with his two girls, as he had begun to call them during that last year
together. There hadn't been quite as many homes on the street in those days,
and the convenience store had been merely an empty, wooded lot where Nan would
go to climb a great magnolia tree with her friends. She had especially enjoyed
that tree. Magnolias have limbs that go all the way to the earth--they're oh so
easy to climb.
The sleet came down harder, bopping the
old man atop his gray head, catching in the thick hair. He hadn't brought a
cap. Behind him, little boys yelled louder, glad that the storm was
intensifying. A girl screeched happily. The old man sobbed.
He strode along, crossing over to a side
street, not bothering to check for traffic. His street was a blessing to live on
if you were a parent. Old trees lined it, and few cars traveled its length.
Reaching into his pocket, he felt for the money he would need, a couple of
bills he had hurriedly thrust into it as he had left the house. His old
fingers found the money, gripped the paper tightly. In days gone, he had often thrust small
bills into the hands of his two girls
so that they could go shopping, have a good time. Gone now. Gone for almost
thirty years. And not once had he heard from them. Not once had he seen either
of them, or received a single letter. Nan would be grown, now. Grown and with
children of her own--possibly even grandchildren! She'd have children certainly, because he had seen, even then,
that she was going to grow into a fine-looking young woman, like her mother. He glanced ahead and saw that he was at the convenience store.
Milk,
he recalled. Milk and some crackers for when his stomach was upset. In the store he shuffled
around, found what he wanted, went to the counter.
When the old man withdrew his hand to give
the clerk the money, he brought his thick nails clear of the flesh of his
palms, and spots of blood trailed across the bills. “I'm sorry,” he told the
young clerk, who took the bills and touched them as little as he was able.
He started back, along the way he had
come, crunching through the thickening layer of frozen sleet that continued to
pelt down from the cold skies. Winter,
you took it all, he thought. It had been cold and gray when Rebecca had
left, taking Nan and nothing else. Everything.
It had been over the cat, he remembered.
Rebecca and Nan had had a cat--he couldn't recall its name, only that it had
been a girl, like them. Even now, it was fresh, bright: a pungent, biting
memory. He had put the cat out one afternoon, not allowing it back in for
days, though it had yowled to be let in. You're
so cruel, Nan's eyes had accused, though she had said nothing. He'd just
had enough of the thing, that was all. After three days of its constant crying,
Rebecca had let it back in while he was at work, and it had made a bee-line for
his hobby room and the closet above his tool box. Rebecca had opened the door
at which the cat had pawed, revealing the single starved, now lifeless kitten
it had given birth to days before. Neither Nan or Rebecca had even realized the
cat had been pregnant. Nan had been there when her mother had opened the door to
the little closet.
What was that in their eyes he'd seen when
he'd gotten home?
And then they were gone. Gone. Gone.
The final straw, Rebecca had called it.
Through the hard fall of sleet he walked,
thinking of those awful weeks, waiting for some word from Rebecca.
Surely, he had thought, she would call, eventually. But she hadn't. And then he'd
awaited some word, some request. It had never come. Word from the
lawyer, that had finally arrived; but it had only been a court order denying him
knowledge as to his family's whereabouts, and barring him from his daughter.
And that had been it. For almost thirty years, that had been the only word from
them. Damn Rebecca. Damn her to Hell.
Nan, too. She was old enough to see her father on her own. Damn her, too.
And the winter. Damn the winter when it
had all happened. To Hell with every, lousy winter.
At the end of the block, he began to scuff
his way through the cold, numbing stuff, kicking at it, wishing it was
Rebecca's face, her teeth. He did not look up until he was almost standing before
his house, in front of his own yard. There were no screeching children's voices
echoing through the neighborhood, just a hushed kind of silence beneath the
nagging hiss of falling sleet. He was almost surprised to see the police cars
parked in front of his neighbor's home: the family of three who lived next door
to him. The old man stood still in the cold sleet, holding his bag with its
quart of milk and box of crackers.
He looked. Two police officers held back
another, restraining him. A fourth broke away from the cluster on the old man's
front porch and began to walk toward him. In one of the squad cars he could
see that the mother from next door was lying, unconscious, on the seat.
Undoubtedly, her husband was rushing home, called there by some official voice
over his phone at work.
They
must have gotten into my work room, the old man thought as the officer
approached. And the little closet there above the tool box. They must have
opened it.
And something else. The old man saw the
look of grim determination of the officer suddenly change to one of hatred as he
got closer, came within reach of the old man and saw the expression of numbness on his aged
face.
Even though he saw it coming, the old man
did not move when he saw the policeman's hand clench into a hard fist aimed at his head. Let it fall.
Let
it.
