The Time Between…
Bill married one of the local women and worked in a bank until he retired and lost his mind.
You could talk to him. He’d see you, maybe, because his eyes were pointed at you, but reaction never creased his face, and sometimes he’d just walk away. His wife trailed behind him, spilling apologies past her shoulder.
His skin was frosty gray, hanging to him in places that were once full, his lips a straight horizon, dry and tight. You don’t remember the last time you heard his voice.
Still, there was something there, something not quite escaped, call it curiosity, the way he’d seem to be seeking, but whatever it was stayed too far in front, and all he had was a guess which way it went. That’s what kept him moving.
You knew him before, of course, and that’s what hurts, remembering him behind the mower, sweaty grins below the sun-pinked scalp. You saw him in the park, dragging branches off the walkways or nursing impatiens into bloom.
There were visitors this last weekend, friends gathered to bury another of their time, and they spoke the way we do when it’s old age that crept in. It was good, they said, that she wasn’t too far gone, she was still as sharp as could be expected, that she went before she became a burden.
He left them for a time, slipped inside for something, maybe some water, because it was warm there in the yard, where they knew he liked to go. And they watched the door swing to, before nodding and returning to talk of other friends and other funerals.
So they didn’t see him go in the bedroom. They didn’t know he got the pistol from the drawer by the bed. They didn’t think he was lying down atop the chenille, just out of the linen closet for Spring. They didn’t feel the two thumps of his shoes landing on the rug.
But they heard the shot, when it was just a pop by the time it reached them, more of a feeling than a real sound. And in the time between the feeling and the full knowing, when there was no sound at all, they understood.
They understood that he had been there, and then he wasn’t.
on April 11, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Permalink
Your ability to capture the human condition renders me speechless.
Certainly worthy of the accolade it received, Cog.
on April 12, 2007 at 6:12 am
Permalink
thanks, knarf. What a nice thing to say.