Page 50 - WTP Vol. X #2

Was that a boy or a grownup in the car next to mine? I couldn’t guess his age.
When I got out, he reached through the passenger window and grappled my hand. “Hey!” he shouted “My name... my name... my name...” He squirmed, he stammered, he all but choked, his eyes suggesting agony. Clearly, his mind was off.
The man-child kept at his labored chant until the woman who drove him—mother? sister? keeper?— came around to where I stood and finished the sentence. “He says his name is Marcus.” She gently parted our hands, having spoken more gently than I’d have predicted. Her behavior pleased me, as any instance of human compassion, big or small, can in these fraught days.
A Shih-Tzu sat calm as the Buddha in Marcus’s lap. “I’m glad to meet you,” I said. “Is that your dog?” His eyes rolled back.
“He’s a good little guy,” I went on, a bit over-urgently; but I did mean it. From what I’ve seen, that breed can be pretty yappy.
“Are you the poet?” his cheerful companion asked me.
Taken aback, I aimed at self-dismissal: “Well, one of the many.”
There’s no particular creed in my private beliefs, but I do give weight to grace, or chesed, as Judaism calls
it, the notion that gratuitous favor can be visited on anyone.
I have three dogs of my own that I cherish, for mini- mal instance. More importantly, I could pray for no better wife, and five beloved children are sound and sane, as are their sons and daughters. What have I re- ally done to deserve their cherished affection? Call all this whatever you want; I call it a godsend.
I looked up at the newspaper rack on the store’s front porch: even from fifteen feet off, the headlines showed boldly. The latest mass shooting, depleted state and federal budgets, one more war somewhere.
What will ever save us? Some, it’s claimed, cast off their crutches at Lourdes. I’ve seen signs and won- ders, but none so spectacular.
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“I love you!” Marcus bawled as his driver backed onto the road.
Brighter for Absence
I passed the site of the old Colby Block last week. I never gave that stretch of real estate too much thought until I watched it burn. The block sprawled along the west shore of the Connecticut River. Its northmost building was a market. To the south stood a little house where a video store did a healthy busi- ness. In those days, such places existed. I remember renting The Sword and the Stone there, and our son watching it dozens of times in his fifth year. Children, counter to adult mythology, prefer iteration to nov- elty. At my age, I do too.
The video store survived the fire. Its owner was a great big blond guy, whom people who knew him called Truck. I called him by his given name, Calvin, just to stay safe. Others, even ones who didn’t really know him at all, claimed he peddled drugs
as well as movies. I had no grounds for judgment either way.
Our family moved upriver over thirty years back. By then, Truck had sold out to a fireworks business.
Or maybe he’d already sold out and the next owner passed the building on to the fireworks place. I’m hazy on the details, but they don’t much matter.
I heard Truck died shortly after we left that neighbor- hood. Sad. He was still more or less young.
The eponymous Mr. Colby ran a shop in the complex, as his father had before him. It dealt in obsolete clothing, not that that was Colby’s intention—no retro-hip for his establishment. It was empty when fire took it. He had shut the place down and retired well before the disaster. He died perhaps a decade ago, but as an old man, unlike Truck.
Happily, we soon heard that no one got hurt in the conflagration. As for the buildings, the fire depart- ment had little choice but to stand by, guarding
the rest of the neighborhood from the inferno that reduced so much to cinders in a few hours. I found myself among the rubberneckers across the road. I’d been passing through town and noticed the tank trucks and the crowd.
One remembers strange details. At one point, I looked away from the devastation and down route 5.
Stranger Love
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