Читать книгу Time to Fall - Austin C. Beal - Страница 6

I

Band on a Ring

Beneath sky and cloud, under metal and mortar, under all things, I stood at my post before the podium, awaiting the end of my shift. The day was just beginning to fade into early evening. The sun and its blades cut through the trees behind me creating an odd mixture of light and shade beneath the driveway overhang which swept up into a ramp from the second floor of the hospital. Lines of light and shadow danced like piano keys mid-concerto as a rush of wind rustled alive the forest, welcoming the approaching fall.

In time, an old brown Town Car rattled around the corner and into the parkway. I ripped a ticket and prepared to assist the driver. The car came to a stop just past my station. An old man, skinny and frail looking, exited the shabby vehicle, cane in hand. The man wore a white mustache, a firmly pressed plaid shirt—tucked—and a rugged looking pair of denims fitted properly high. His cane, mahogany of some sort, looked astonishingly polished with a thick lacquer and was adorned with a golden eagle at the head end. His shoes—brown, new, untarnished, and undoubtedly orthopedic—matched his belt and cane, yet nothing of his appearance matched the car he drove. His vehicle matched only his visibly all-but-defeated spirit and, perhaps, his age, counterbalancing the manner in which he dressed and groomed. I thought this an enigma, one of little consequence of course; though, in consequence, I now thought him enigmatic.

“That’ll be four dollars, sir,” I said, extending the valet ticket toward him.

“Very well, then . . . Charlie,” agreed the old man, inspecting my nametag at an otherwise uncomfortably close distance. Proceeding, he reached into his billfold and presented four wrinkled singles.

“Thank you, sir. We’re here till eight this evening. I’ll have it pulled right up front for you.”

“Thank you, son. I shouldn’t be long.”

The old man handed me his keys and hobbled off inside to his appointment. His was the only car parked at this hour, so I didn’t bother hanging them. Instead, I set them atop the podium and stared off through the hospital windows, watching the old man limp leisurely into the elevator. Looking down again, I inspected the old man’s keys. Nothing terribly interesting: a miniature Swiss Army knife, a leather swatch adorned with an unrecognizable emblem, and several room keys, from what it appeared, recalling to mind in shape and number those which hung from the belt of a janitor. I noticed a metal band which spun on the keyring when turning them over, a peculiar item to carry around in that way, I thought. It was dull and worn, looking as if time had not displaced, but merely hidden a once vibrant luster. “How dull it is to pause, to make an end. To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” I pondered, recollecting Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses, so different from the Ulysses of myth and legend.

I dropped the keys in the top drawer and wandered off to pace and plan and think, as all young men do, and to wait.

w w w

Half-past eight and the old man had yet to return for his car. On the bench where I now sat, I could see a spider weaving its web for the night. In the misery of waiting, I imagined it would grow in size and stature and swallow me here whole alive under the rising moon that I may die by a kinder predator than silent boredom. Was it true that boredom was only desire seeking desire? At that moment I sought the desire for something, yes, something like a story.

At last I heard the hospital doors glide open. I roused to my feet, turning to the podium. Ticket in hand, the old man gradually made his way toward me.

“Is this mine?” he said in a tired tone, looking perplexed as he gestured with a gaze toward the brown Town Car, unmoved from its arrival.

“Yes, it is, sir. Don’t you recognize it?”

He paused.

“If I could only remember,” he muttered under his breath. “There’s a mystery to memory, son; one I haven’t yet mastered.”

I chucked wryly, perplexed by the weight of his sentiment. I pulled his keys from the drawer. The band slid into the side of my finger as I held out the set toward their rightful owner. I felt compelled to ask the old man about the ring, thinking it a talisman or some novelty bearing with it a story, perhaps. I proceeded to inquire.

“Will you tell me, sir, what is this ring on your keys?” I asked in wonder, in curiosity, meeting the old man’s eyes with a lively look.

The old man sighed heavily as his countenance seemed to slump into a submission of sadness. His shoulders, held so nearly high just a moment ago, now drooped deeper into a shrug.

“That’s a long story, son. Have you the time?” he asked, with a new twinkle in his eyes, returning to me the favor of my hopeful gaze as his shoulders shifted back and his posture erected.

Almost out of duty or an inherent respect for my elder, or in that sense of intrigue which is to most of my kind irresistible, I obliged to listen despite the time, hoping all the while that my hope for a story was met with a consideration for brevity at the thought of a young man’s want for supper at an hour before too late. We would see. I agreed with a nod.

The old man and I moved to sit on the same bench behind the podium which overlooked a retention area. I brushed away the spider’s web as we sat. An egret waltzed down toward the water as the light of the moon, rising higher to its post in the night sky, shown out from behind the hospital.

I looked intently at the old man, awaiting his story. Age shown through his furrowed visage, greater now under the mix of moonbeam and the unflattering fluorescence of the exterior hospital lighting. He spoke. His voice, deeper and more dream-like, echoed in the driveway and over the pond and through time itself as he recalled this tale:

“In the time I spent in the Orient, days or decades, I cannot place it, I learned precisely how to panic. That day, I awoke above a small, inconspicuous tavern just south of Ban Mo. There were two bunks in the slummy one-room flat, mine and one also inhabited on the opposing wall to my right. Between us, a poorly hewn and stained dark wood floor that had seen the better part of its life already—chipped and creaking under foot, with lumps and dips to waiver faith in its integrity at each step—marked off a chasm I thought impassable in the stillness of that waking moment.

As my eyes adjusted to the light of morning, I made out the form of a slender, tan, freckled upper-back and shoulders of what I imagined to be a beautiful young woman asleep in that adjacent bunk. Her head faced the outer wall, resting on a pillow with her arms tucked beneath. The sheets, below her back, covered the remainder of civilization, save for her toes, exposed off the end of the too-short cot. She flinched slightly and strands of her long, golden hair drifted across her back. Her head began to turn slowly toward me. As her back arched, slipping the covers from their stay, her arms reached forward like a cat stretching awake under the sun about a safer floor on any lazy Sunday afternoon. I quickly pretended to sleep, listening intently for an assurance that she hadn’t awoken entirely.

After a short period of silence, when no further rustling could be heard from my presumed companion’s bunk, I haltingly opened my eyes. To my surprise, the bunk was empty. I sat up—a creak of the floor—and found her again to my right, standing by the window. The sunlight poured in, falling over what I could see of her body, veiled now by a white nightgown. Given the manner in which she stood—contrapposto leaning against the casement—I could see only her silhouette, for the entirety of her form was shadowed also in waves by the sheer curtain which ruffled over her just then as a cool breeze eased over the sill of the open window.

From that window, by which it seemed the world itself might be looking in, she turned slow and graceful. Facing me, her eyes—hazel, amber, or emerald—I could not tell from the distance, seemed anyway to shift shades, flickering reflections of the sunlight outside. They glowed regardless: bright, joyful, and spontaneous. Her whole being glowed. She was something out of a dream—a vision through the dusty light of that ancient tavern loft. Her mere presence, in that light or any, it seemed, shifted the atmosphere from an aura of decay, even shame, to that of new life, even hope, a word I had not heard or spoke of or thought in a long time. Another breeze eased in, waving fibers of gilded hair across her face. She cleared the strands to one side, setting them behind her ear, and spoke . . .

“Good morning, Captain. Did you sleep well?”