Life 2

"I woke up this morning, and I felt like I was ready to take on the world."

I saw an honesty in his flush lips, a certain directness behind his pale complexion. I caught a good-humored candor in the old man's voice as he continued:

"Now I feel otherwise."

He stood there hunched over his cart as I handed him his change. Brows furrowed in suspicion, his bruised hands shook violently as he counted his money. His arms were battered, purplish, banged up. After a few moments he looked up, smiled halfheartedly, and left. My voice called after him, delivering the customary "Have a nice day," but my words sounded surprisingly distant, somehow unsure. I knew that I was saying them, but I wasn't sure that they were my own; I couldn't tell where they were coming from.

There was something unsettling about that man.

The rest of the day passed as normal - the crowds, the rush, the receipt reprints, the tiny errors at the register, the "I'm sorry, can I have you swipe your card again?" and the the "can I see your i.d. please?" - but an introspective quietness had come over me. I drove home in silence that night, with all the windows down and my arm hanging out, palm open, facing the unforgiving torrent of oncoming wind. A storm was approaching from the west; it had begun to rain. My hand nearly froze in the night's cold, but I didn't care; for a few moments, it was enough just to feel the bitter wind rush over my exposed skin.

..

My bed was uncomfortable; I couldn't sleep. Or maybe it was my mind, maybe my mind was uncomfortable; maybe my mind was uncomfortable and my body couldn't sleep. Or maybe it was my body, maybe that was it; maybe my body was uncomfortable and maybe my mind couldn't sleep. Every now and then I would scoot out of bed to walk around the room. Legs tingling, sometimes I'd go to the window and peer out, watching leaves flit and quiver uncontrollably in the wind.

That's what I'd seen.

There was a wind in that man's soul, not a breeze - a gale, a ferocious current, a jet stream - and I was just a leaf. You couldn't hear it in his voice, but you could see it in his face; it was quiet at first, but it was there. Behind the skin, the flesh, the bone, tucked away somewhere near that still-beating heart, amidst that water-and-carbon frame, it was there. Amongst otherwise organic components there was some other element, something deathless, abiding. There was an intractably grim determination in the way he moved, a deliberateness in each motion and a boldness in each step.

Maybe he's a veteran; maybe he'd once been sent half way across the world to struggle his way through unfamiliar landscapes, get lost in exotic surroundings, gnash his teeth in frustration and steel himself against defeat at the hands of his faceless enemies. Maybe his gun had jammed once, and maybe in that moment it had meant his friend's life. Maybe he pushed on anyways, despite the burn in his knees and the pain in his gut. Maybe, in his old age, he just sits and stares at the cracks in his kitchen table, wondering what would've happened if he'd been quicker, if he'd used his knife, if he'd been a better friend.

Or maybe he's just a farmer. Maybe he's never left the Midwest. Maybe he's only ever seen the corn and the beans and squash, but maybe he survived the blizzard of '78 and the death of his beloved wife, and maybe he still chooses to live alone in that secluded farmhouse and buy his own groceries. Maybe he just sits on his old oak swing now, watching the sun go down and pretending that she's still sitting next to him. Maybe that makes him smile, and maybe he wonders if she can see him smile, and if she's smiling down on him from the clouds, like the nice man at church said she would.

Life had marked that man, but it'd done more that; it had marred him. Yet, he persisted. He still pushed his own cart at the grocery store, and he still looked suspiciously at the boy behind the counter until he knew he had the correct change. He still preferred paper to plastic, and he still found it within himself to smile in acknowledgment at the absent-minded, gum-chewing teenager who bagged his canned beets.

The tingling in my legs was gone. I'd found my way to the floor; it was cool, but firm, and I took comfort in its steadiness.

Sometime during the darkest hours of the night I fell asleep, lying there on the floor with my hands behind my head like an easygoing pharaoh the priests had forgotten to entomb.

..

The sun's amber rays, blanketing me in warmth, teased me awake the next morning. Eyes closed, I laid there alone, my limbs enjoying the heat of its mellow glow. Parts of my brain coming back to life, a surge of adrenaline sprang into my chest from my gut. I smiled knowingly, feeling for those few moments that I was ready to take on the world.