Kirk, thanks for the motivation.
The Gift
She lived in a small brick one-story house on the corner of 5th and Bine. Her mother was a whore. Her mother never even ventured a guess at who her father was. It didn’t matter, she was one of eight. Her mother sat on the narrow cement patio in her faded housecoat with the dirty rose pattern and smoked a Lucky Strike. The flaming ember glowed in the dusky air and the cigarette held jauntily in bony fingers. Hair piled on her head and fell at intervals onto shoulders stooped from years of misuse. She cared nothing for her eight children, nor for the three that had died in infancy. She was unrepentant of the life she had led. Her name was Lucille. She fancied herself a woman of beauty and she spoke to her neighbors only in dissatisfied grunts and curt replies.
The little girl passed her mother every Saturday with a smile and skipped down the flagstone path to the gate that hung loosely on its hinges. She had a red dress that she wore every Saturday. Soft crushed velvet with a white lace collar and one faded cloth rose in the center. She had one foot that curved slightly inward and gave her a pronounced gait that gave many the false impression of retardation. She smiled at everyone. Her greasy hair hung to her shoulders.
Weeds split the sidewalks and trees dropped seeds that fermented in the sun and turned to paste on the porous concrete. Birds sang in the branches causing her to stumble occasionally on the uneven concrete as she struggled to catch a glimpse of the elusive singer. A car passed by and stared at the strange neighborhood princess on her Saturday procession. And he, he sat in a rocker and watched the world unfold like a story he had read so many times and never really understood.
He was 81 or rather he was nearly 81. His khaki pants showed signs his aging body was no longer always able to control its functions. He wore shoes that tattered at the edges and wore inward. The tennis balls on his walker had not been replaced in three years. His flannel shirt was open to his wrinkled chest. Faded tattoos adorned his arms. The outline of a woman standing in a coquettish pose, an anchor and on the edge of his chest, a red devil with pointed tail and pitch fork. His porch chair never moved and his feet scuffed furrows into the grey boards of the porch. He went by the name Walter. No one knew his last name.
The days began to change slowly and her walk looked different as the leaves shed their emerald dresses for gold, amber and orange. They drifted to the ground in a final, slow dance. The air took on a different feel, different smell and the icy fingers of winter began to wrap around every light post, handrail and gnarled tree trunk. Pumpkins took residence on porch fronts and scarecrows became silent sentinels in front yards. Jack-o-lanterns became harvest pumpkins and paper ghosts in front windows turned to pilgrims, turkeys and cornucopias. Fathers and sons ran along the sidewalk throwing footballs and laughing. Old men sat and smoked and old women chided them for the state of the yard.
Winter came without a sound. The children slipped into the dark cloak of an autumn night and awoke to the pure white of sister winter’s welcoming arms. Pilgrims and turkeys disappeared, pumpkins froze and trees began to appear behind the frosty panes. Lights flickered and then stayed. The scarecrows yielded to inflatable Santas and the children watched beneath their trees with expectation. Boxes were shook, guesses were made and parents smiled benignly to inquisition. Carols, excitement, egg nog and lots of sugar were the new order of the day. Everywhere was magic.
Dec. 24th was a Friday. She knew that she wouldn’t take her walk on Christmas so she set out a day earlier. She skipped, the snow resisted. She walked on with a smile. Her feet made little boats in the frozen surface as she walked. Her nose was red and running. Her cheeks flushed, her eyes bleary in the cold of morning. The sky was grey, somewhat ambivalent and unsure if it should cheer into a welcoming blue or kill its red streaks of a late dawn with the grim dark of winter. She walked with a purpose, head up and hair back. She had a plaid, double-breasted, wool coat that was slightly too large. Her hands were lost in the sleeves and with each stride a couple fingers would take a tentative peek at their winter surroundings. She struggled through a deep drift and dusted off her legs with quick and purposeful movements. Steam rose from her mouth as she walked and the smell of wood smoke came through the air like an old friend.
Walter walked slowly down the narrow passage towards his front door. His shoulder brushed a dusty photograph of he and his wife standing on a stone bridge, the Eiffel Tower stood tall in the background amidst the dusty air of Paris. He walked past rows of black and white photos in age induced sepia tone. Soldiers on the deck of a ship. Helmets cocked to the side, chin straps hanging to their bare shoulders. Fresh tattoos on white skin and smiles on their faces.
He slipped a little heavily into his worn rocker and pulled an old blanket around his shoulders. A dirty woolen cap sat on his head, ear flaps hanging just a bit short of his oversized ears. He cracked the tab on his beer and the sharp report rang in the cold air. He slid his feet into the furrows of the porch and stared with discontent on the world that had left him broken. The cold brought back an old friend; a bullet wound in his right thigh from Normandy and a busted up shoulder from a flipped Jeep in that field in France…the pretty girl that set his arm. The corners of his mouth danced ever so slightly at the memory.
Walter had always lived a life alone. The little girl had always lived a life surrounded. They had something in common, neither had ever felt love, real unconditional love. The three years or so of Saturdays that she had been going past Walter’s house, he had never paid any attention. His gaunt face didn’t soften when she smiled and waved, he never responded to her inquiries and he seemed impervious to her friendship. She never stopped smiling and she never stopped waving. She waved today. She waved and then made a turn into the street…
Those that saw everything that Saturday, or those who say they saw everything all describe it the same. The same silence and struggle for words, the same shaking of the head, the same tears…the same disbelief.
She was walking down the sidewalk, leaving furrows in the snow as she shuffled. She would pause occasionally and look back on her tracks and laugh a little. Walter sat on his porch, the old blanket around his shoulders, hunched just a bit into the wind with a steaming cup in his gnarled fingers. He saw her wave and responded again with the same blank stare, the same apathy.
They said she took a few quick steps and suddenly turned right to cross the street. Her head was down, she was playing with the buttons on the front of her plaid coat. No one had ever heard Walter utter a coherent word, but this time they all heard him yelling. She turned with the absent gaze of a child who has been startled from play to see Walter coming out of his chair. Annie next door said she never imagined Walter could do more than shuffle. The blanket dropped to the porch as he cleared the three steps to the front walk. He didn’t slip. He was still yelling. She looked to see the cause just as an air horn split the silent winter morning. All she could see was the large grill of a semi as it slid along the ice, the driver desperately trying to stop the runaway truck. Somehow Walter made it down his walk, out of his gate and into the street. She was bracing for the impact when she felt the arms. They wrapped around her with surprising strength.
They said that he got there just before the truck and grabbed the little girl swinging a quarter turn to place is withered back towards the truck, clutching the girl in an iron grip against his chest. Some say he flew twenty feet, others thirty. The official police report said twenty-two. The important part wasn’t written in the official report. He never let go.
It took sometime for the police and ambulance to get to the scene. The chief still had a bit of Christmas ham stuck to his tie when he jumped out to survey the scene. The little girl was sitting in the middle of the street, an old man’s head was cradled on her lap, held in her tiny, pink hands. People stood around in small groups. The driver of the truck sat on the side steps of his truck, head in his hands. The chief walked towards the two in the street, his footsteps sounded sharp in the frozen snow. When he got close he heard the little girl singing; “…sleep in heavenly peace, sleep in heavenly peace.” The old man was gone.
I met a man some time ago. He had a wife, a job…a life.
Two months ago he came home after being on the road and found his wife dead. She had been dead for a couple days. No foul play, just one or another natural cause.
It has been two months. I spoke to him today. He still speaks of her in present tense. He said, “People ask my wife…my wife tells them…”
I can’t think of anything sadder.
Keep him in prayer.
P.S.
I know it has been awhile since my last decent post. I am working on a Christmas story thanks to Kirk Marshall…perhaps that will be done before the 25th. I have a slight rambling on mortality that I began in the dusty back of a Nissan 1400 in the Free State province. We’ll see what happens.
I witnessed the simple beauty of the early morning sunshine in window shapes on the wall.
I allowed my height to give me a false sense of confidence. Tried to scale the fence at the school by using an old telephone pole as a handgrip. It was one sure leap, a slip of the foot, a slip of the hands and sooner than I could have expected was flat on my back with my head cushioned by some rocks…I spent the next fifteen to twenty minutes with my pocket knife (and very disgusted yet mesmerized students) as I tried to dig a large piece of old telephone pole out of my finger. So much for freesbie tag being a gentle game.
I corrected a student in anger (not the righteous kind). God didn’t waste any time in telling me. Had the privilege of tasting my own feet.
I climbed part way up a small mountain, all the way up and down pulling ticks off me, and sat on a small sandstone cliff and just took in the lovely green fields, the winding creek and the far off plateaus in the late afternoon sun.
Stood in front of a very photogenic dead tree surrounded by four, broken down walls of an old graveyard with one headstone, slightly leaning to one side and weather beaten as though all the years had taken their toll and it found standing upright a bit too troublesome. End date, 1915.
Moved cattle twice on a mare named, Lala. It is hard to feel “John Wayne” while sitting an English saddle that’s been on a diet, on a mare named Lala, whose boyfriend and constant worry is an old gelding named, Fred…had a fantastic time until I tried walking the next day.
Got scared.
Learned more about God and subsequently more of my inadequacies. God answered a series of prayers in the mundane, monotony of life…just because He can and His thoughts toward me are precious.
I agreed to preach with about ten minutes notice; used a story from II Chronicles and a few hastily remembered Scriptures from the New Testament. Somehow I think I was the most convicted listener there. Fortunately, God didn’t let me get in the way of what He had planned.
I laughed until I cried…Reader’s Digest job application montage.
I made biscuits and gravy for everyone on a Saturday morning.
Baked a chocolate birthday cake, much to the amusement of Michelle and Joreth who were helping me translate the recipe from Afrikaans…made a rather large-ish mess.
Saw deep hurt through tears in a student’s eyes…nearly cried…this is a new kind of pain.
Witnessed another in a long line of breath-taking sunsets. The feeling I had can only be described as the closest to “peace” on this earth.
I tried to write a sonnet, tried.
Witnessed the death of a star.
Etc…
