Page 51 - WTP Vol. X #2

I watched a cat—old fighter, I judged, tatterdemalion, missing an ear—as he crept toward a bush. To him, it must have been just another evening.
The bush was a double-flowering plum, or so I’d been told by a local nurserywoman. I kept meaning to buy one and plant it at our house down that way, but never got around to the job. And then we moved. I have planted one here, but it doesn’t seem to flower as splendidly as the plum I beheld that night, which still blooms bright and pink come May.
This was middle August anyhow. There weren’t any flowers. The tom made a rush, flushed a sparrow, and missed it. Now there, now gone.
Nobody has built on the block since that night long ago. Nowadays I rarely pass where everything stood, but when I do, it’s as though I look through the build- ings’ ghosts to the quaint New Hampshire town just across the river. To me, those fancied old structures resemble photograph negatives. That was our town on the other side back then, though we lived deep in the woods beyond it.
Yes, I largely ignored the block until I saw it burn. Now when I do go by, I pay it more attention.
Once we lived even farther away, ten miles south, in yet another village, where Landers, an impoverished bachelor townsman, burned to death in his shack one Fourth of July. He’d kicked a kerosene lamp in his sleep. Now there, now gone.
I’m not sure why Landers occurs to me now, but for the thought of fire—and that he shines brighter now for his absence, just like those charred stores, or Truck, or Mr. Colby the haberdasher.
Sticking to Facts
As I lay in bed, I vowed to record the dream’s details: the mocha river, the wooden dock, the boy, and the older man, who may have stood for me, though I hope not. Those specifics alone seemed so cogent that I kept urging my half-conscious body to get up and write them down, believing they boded revela- tion. But to leave my bed—its pillow so soft, its blan- ket so kindly—proved beyond me.
No matter, as it turned out. I retained the physical data and more. I clearly pictured the elderly man as he leaned over a rail, advising the boy that the river’s anger meant a hurricane coming. This sounded exactly backward to me, but something about the
“What will ever save us? Some, it’s
claimed, cast off their crutches at Lourdes. I’ve seen signs and wonders, but none so spectacular.”
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