Clouds without edges are worse than the storm, I thought. A violent rain that strikes shingles like shell casings may hush one to sleep, but endless bleak can crush a soul, throwing ash where there is no flame.
I slunk outside into the afternoon from my apartment, newly woken. Above me, an incurious, infinite shawl covered the sky: a colorless day crouching, trapped against the earth, as if in a clammy sweat of cold distress. A sudden autumn breeze prickled up my bare arms: seemingly just yesterday, chickadee minstrels whistled delight onto a long hot sky, the glinting city hummed warmly like a bell. But the gummy, grubby air has squeezed the little birds into silence; overnight the city dampened, and began hinting at the sting to come. I could feel the frost forecasting its gathering in the clouds. Winter will turn quickly now that Diane is gone.
I skulked through familiar neighborhood blocks, among familiar homes, a familiar park —
mummy bags clutter this park at dusk
parties of lunchers now crowd the grill
beside the pea patches of a cathedral
sliced into condos —
and a familiar clinic. Then, quieter blocks: here I lit a cigarette before I turned the corner right, and then a corner left, approaching the yard of the Little Hill House: “a collective for misfits” as Diane had recently begun calling it, with hushing, chuckling eyes. (At the thought, urgent hollowness seized me, and then relievingly eased back into blank hollowness). As I neared the corner of the yard and the bowing chain-link fence which strained to dam a lawn that itself was at a self-limiting point of neglect, like a straw field in the armageddon flocked with ghostly dandelion pods, there were inhabitants outside. A lonely swing hangs in the back of the yard, with a slanted seat, from a low, thick cedar branch, and a man that shuffled and flung himself like a toddler twirled the swing into dizzy rings as his chaperone patiently held out a spoonful of cereal. An elderly woman in a nightgown paced on the front deck as another chaperone observed. These caught my attention briefly, like the skittering of a squirrel. Then, in a rocking chair by the front gate, staring straight at me, was a little man with a flushed, scrunched face, puffing a cigarette as if he were racing — sip,blow,sip,blow — as he bounced and rocked back and forth. He was slouching in a baggy purple T-shirt and pouchy khaki pants cinched with a rope at the waist like a money purse. He must be tasting the filter by now, I was thinking, his pinched fingertips so close to his lips. Suddenly, he flicked away the butt, and pulled out a soft pack from the T-shirt’s breast pocket. He swiftly lit it, and was puffing frantically once more as I passed the gate.
“Spare a smoke?” he croaked. I had no time to shake my head before he turned away. He scowled down the sidewalk behind me, his eyes ice blue and glazed with madness. I finished my cigarette along the two blocks further to the market —
rice, butter, oatmeal, bread, cabbage, apples, sausage, beer
check my cash, scratch the bread
get in line, that cute checker isn’t here —
On the way home after the market, I approached the Little Hill House again, but sensed disorder this time. I snuck closer on soft toes trying to stifle the rustle of my two paper grocery bags. The nightgown woman who had been pacing on the front deck was now racing up and down the stairs, dragging her arms along the railing flimsily. The toddler man was screaming a stable high-pitched howl. A new man, clean-cut, middle-aged, in a hospital gown, was in the rocking chair by the gate now, creaking back and forth wildly with his eyes closed in apparent prayer or agony.
I skidded and kneeled into the fence for a better view through the yard. Several attendants were on the ground, in a circle. I hunched forward to peer between the crouching legs of one of the attendants, a hairy man in shorts: the head of that little chain-smoking man from before lay against the gravel path, and he was writhing and drooling, his face much redder and bulging, almost the purple of his shirt. A large attendant had his arms around him, and was scrunching the little man’s ribs from behind, hard. After a minute, the little man stopped squirming, limped, and wilted: his only motion became the buckling from the fists thumping against his chest. As I watched, completely still, he raised his distant gaze slightly, and somehow found me straight in the eyes, lurching every couple of moments from the impact. I saw his eyes soften, and their mad glaze melted away as they stayed focused like fire sirens on me. He smiled slightly, peacefully; then, lifted his eyes toward the blank sky and closed them, as the crunching and lurching continued.
Burst! went his chest, something flew out of his mouth, and air rushed back into the little man’s lungs with a whip of his neck. His eyes popped open — glazing back over quickly like a warm glass in a blizzard. The attendants turned; feet away across the gravel was the butt of a cigarette, no more than a filter, soggy with ochre phlegm. The little man slumped over heaving and coughing and breathing. When he recovered, the attendants helped him to his feet. They guided him shuffling slowly toward the house, his head very low and walking almost without moving. The man in the chair still prayed painfully.
I straightened up from the fence. Adjusting the grocery bags in my clutch, a handle broke, and I ambled down the familiar block, cribbing the broken bag in my right arm, trying to light a cigarette. I should have purchased whisky instead of apples and beer, I decided: lighter, and warmer too. Winter will turn quickly now that Diane is gone.
DoubleSpeak 