It was a
city like any other where it began, and, he knew, it was a city like any other
where it would someday end. The rainy nights were usually the ones to inspire
thoughts of Perhaps it’s already ending
or If not, perhaps it would be better to
end it now... The rainy nights, in spite of some infuriating beauty to be
found, were the worst. A piece of cardboard meant the world to him on those
nights. The inner, corrugated type, though seldom procured, was the stuff of
legend. As the rain soaked his clothes on those nights, he’d imagine a raised,
corrugated cardboard (or corrugated iron, even. That would surely do) bed under
which the dirty rainwater would flow. He was aging. But still, a man could
dream.
Through the years he’d found a
friend or two. A hazard of the job always got to the lungs. That’s how Blue had
gone. Smalls. Johnny B. But the friends were there for the finding. The dignity
too, if you wanted it. He wanted it. How he wanted it.
He’d packed his cardboard pieces
away. Tied his lace-less shoes with string Blue had saved up, even managed to wash
his hair.
A little of his apathy was left
behind with the noisy traffic. He liked that. The firmness of the road had
always been there, he knew, but this new feeling, this realness of the road,
must have come with the freedom of leaving. From the choice.
Night in the city was different from
night out of the city; the stars were indeed brighter, but the light form the
missing traffic hung lowly over him and somehow cast strange shadows; where he
had always learned to fear the approach of another in the night, he now learned
that the absence of a threat was a threat in itself. But he continued, as he
knew he would.
When his hair no longer bounced from
the freshness of the wash, and when it instead clung to his damp brow, a mutt
found his side. Lank as he himself was, the dog’s eyes burned with need.
Perhaps because he recognized that need, or perhaps because he wanted to, he
allowed the thing to follow his steps. She lapped at what water they found,
looked up, and then lapped again. Her pretty eyes grew calmer and, as she
accepted what he offered her to eat, came close enough to be petted.
When his hair took on the same sad
look of his cardboard pieces and when his own steps lagged, the roads—instead
of growing shorted—grew longer. Some higher ground, some longed-for end, held
off showing itself. A place to regain his name, his real name and not the one
given him on the streets, couldn’t be as far as it seemed. Could it? Then the
thoughts quietly came back. Maybe it was
ending all the time? Or, Maybe there
is no end at all?
The tall trees he found were nothing like the skyscrapers he was
used to. Their shadows weren’t nearly so long or dark, and yet, he thought,
somehow they cast him in a deeper darkness than he had prepared himself for.
And the birds, the birds weren’t like the people he knew. Those middle class volunteers,
who gave him food, gave him hot coffee and maybe a small conversation, those
too were missing. He tossed the dog a piece of bread and took a bite from what
remained in his hand. She swallowed hers whole like a bitter pill. The faster
the better. When he savoured the taste of the bread on his tongue he wondered
if it would be at all possible for this to remain. If everything else, why not
this?
He gulped. It was gone. Night was
here. And then the rain fell. It was a soft, slow drizzle so unlike the busy
city downpours he had come to know. Taking the cardboard pieces, he set them
down. The dog curled up, and, as he watched her blink her eyes, he offered her
the last of his bread.
The apathy wasn’t there. The loose
string of his shoes didn’t look as good as he’d thought. His hair wanted
washing. And the stars were almost pretty, he thought.
In the morning maybe he’d go back.
He’d tell them, if they asked, all that he found—how freedom was there for the
taking. How the quiet nighttime sky was unlike anything they’d ever known. How
if they wanted it, it was all there for the taking.
He would mention something about dignity too, because people always
wanted a little of that if they could get it. He had it. He did. But the other
things, those other things that had been sitting on the horizon for so many
years, weren’t quite there to meet his outstretched hand, he thought. He didn’t
mind. He watched the dog as she slept and nodded to himself. He’d go home.
Author Bio:
Carmen
Tudor is an Australian lit and genre fic writer whose anthologized works
can be found in Real Girls Don’t Rust,
Spotlight, and Spirited: 13 Haunting Tales, among others. Her website is http://carmentudor.net.
