Small works of fiction concerning life.
Even if nothing really matters–
and nothing endures–
and nothing counts.
Even when nobody cares–
and nobody knows–
and none remember.
Even when a thousand mouths snicker,
disbelieve, mock,
pummel with scorn.
Even at life’s end, twisted with regret,
thinking I might have–
could have–should have–
Even though a world becomes dust,
I did a few things
I felt were good.
High arches shaped like immense bones had been erected in the city plaza. According to a sign it was a temporary art installation. At night hundreds of suspended lights illuminated the space beneath the bones. The effect was fantastic. The bones vanished and the colored lights became a galaxy of stars.
During lunchtime many in the plaza paused to read the sign. The thing was titled Earthbound. Predictably entering the yawning entrance, a line of people passed through unelectrified bones. When they exited they walked on as though nothing had happened.
I watched people move through the bones from a bench as I devoured my sandwich.
People walked steadily through. I’m not sure what they expected to see.
A tiny girl with an ice cream cone came flying across the plaza. She darted straight into the bones. She sprinted wildly to the opposite end, twirled around, ran back out into the open. She jumped up and down excitedly, laughed, yammered something I didn’t understand, then dashed once again into the bones. Stopping halfway through, she began leaping up and down with abandon, swinging her arms with glee, sending the pistachio ice cream on her cone up through the air like a green rocket. I don’t believe she read the sign.
Joey liked to talk to himself about deep mysteries.
He often talked about religion, and sacred texts, and sleeping outside in moonlight, and the little-known teachings of prophets, and the cruelty of rich people, and the innumerable conspiracies of the Masons and the Illuminati.
Most days he sat on a bench halfway down the pier waving at people. He really liked to wave at people passing at a distance on the big harbor tour ships. They were the nicest.
When those people saw him they all waved back. Leaning on the ship’s rail, or sitting in rows on white plastic seats facing the water, the people upon seeing him would all wave at him with happy faces and genuine smiles. They’d wave and wave and wave, as if they couldn’t wave enough, and Joey waved happily back.
Even at a distance he could clearly see their faces. He could see how the free wind moved in their hair and he could see the strange way that passing sailboats tugged at their eyes. In their eyes he saw a deep love for the gentle, rippling water and the floating clouds in blue sky. He loved those things, too.
He easily saw their joy. As he waved, he could feel an electric love and yearning passing between them, like radio waves across the water.
Even at a distance, Joey could see the light in their eyes.
When Joey waved at people who were walking past his bench on the pier, they ignored him.
“Try one more time! I know you can catch it!”
Randy’s father tossed the ball a bit too high. The ball sailed through the sun and bounced off a rusting patio chair.
“I got it!” Randy shouted.
The four-year-old boy scampered after the rolling ball. The ball bumped off the patio and accelerated down the sloping lawn. The boy pursued it with eager legs.
The ball wouldn’t slow down.
It zipped past the startled cat.
It rolled past the spot where Randy was destined to celebrate his fifth birthday on freshly mown grass with laughing friends.
The ball rolled down the steep hill, past the grassy spot where Randy would one day rescue a hummingbird. And learn to fly a kite.
The ball rolled past the sprinkler head that would break his leg.
The ball kept going. Randy chased after it.
It rolled past the pepper tree where he and his father would build a treehouse. But that was still a few years off.
The ball rolled down the green slope, past the sun-facing garden where he would be taught by his mother to plant cherry tomatoes, green beans and sunflowers.
The boy ran at full speed.
The ball rolled past the garden bench where, sitting quietly one day, it would dawn on Randy that he would grow old.
The ball rolled past a year and another year.
The ball rolled through the grassy spot where he would lie on his back looking up at the clouds, dreaming about winning an Olympic gold medal.
The ball rolled past the tire swing where he would dangle reading a favorite book.
The ball rolled past the dirt patch where his father would ask why he ditched class.
The ball rolled past the old stump where he would sit very close to a girl.
The ball rolled and rolled and rolled all the way down to the fence next to the busy street, where his parents would stand waving as he drove off to college.
“I got it!”
With a shout, Randy was sprinting back up the long hill with all of his might, his small legs flying. He smiled up at his father. “I got it, Daddy!”
Book burning didn’t destroy every book.
Voice recognition did.
Printed words vanished.
People still spoke, of course. And viewed pictures. But the pictures were always in kaleidoscope motion. Exact words were unnecessary.
Spelling was forgotten. Grammar was forgotten. Structured truth was forgotten. That made life easier.
. . .
Tracy took a wrong turn because a machine had catastrophically failed. Walking a great distance was strange enough, but now she was walking where no flesh-and-blood legs walked. The city’s Forgotten Zone.
Even the machines disregarded this place, she observed. She slowly turned her head, looking about. The deserted streets were lined with broken windows, broken doors.
Above one broken window hung a broken sign. The remaining word: LIFE.
What’s that for? Tracy wondered, staring at the old sign with blinking eyes.
. . .
Fortunately, a functioning machine soon located Tracy and retrieved her, returning her to her proper place.
“Thanks,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” replied the polite machine.
You’ve probably seen Elvis–with that ridiculous hair, upturned collar and sequined jumpsuit–riding his Time Machine up and down Main Street every single day. I’m not sure where in town the guy lives. But he’s out there riding the Time Machine up and down the street and, I’m positive, savoring every minute of it.
Everyone laughs. Many shake their head. That absurd Time Machine is impossible to miss.
Bright silver-painted cardboard panels envelope the rickety little bicycle. It’s like the rocket ship dream of a child–with fins, and a whirling red police light mounted behind the bicycle seat, and flying streamers on the handlebars, and a galaxy of painted stars, and spelled out on the cardboard on both sides in big glittery letters: TIME MACHINE.
Veering with abandon, good old Elvis steers his Time Machine up and down Main Street all the live-long day. Pedaling forward, moving through time.
First Street.
The traffic light turns green.
Second Street.
The church clock strikes the quarter hour.
Third Street.
The sun moves higher above the horizon.
Fourth Street.
A woman opens the window shades, breathes in and gazes across the land.
Fifth Street.
Secret lovers behind the gas station kiss and part.
Fourth Street.
A boy forgets his school books and sprints back home.
Third Street.
A man remembers how his uncle burned the casserole the night before and laughs.
Second Street.
A wrinkled hand wipes away sudden tears.
First Street.
A nearby dog barks.
Second Street.
A rocking chair rocks.
Forward through time Elvis travels, his preposterous Time Machine shining brightly like a shooting star.
Back and forth, up and down Main Street he pedals.
The old man appeared very frail. From the few white hairs on his scabbed head . . . to his watery eyes . . . to his trembling hands.
“Good morning,” he said politely as he boarded the city bus.
The driver ignored him.
The old man nodded and struggled down the aisle to get to an empty seat. His feet shuffled. Slowly, painfully, he turned his body, grabbed the rail, bent like a skeleton to sit. The passengers on either side did not look up from their phones.
The bus started with a sudden jolt and the old man tipped into a neighbor. “I’m so sorry,” he laughed with embarrassment.
No reply.
Each stop on Fourth Avenue brought a fresh tide of riders. The old man sat without moving–except trembling hands. All eyes avoided him.
Until the arrival of a young man.
“You’re really, really old,” said the youth, who sat across the aisle and stared directly at him from behind dark sunglasses.
“I am.”
“Doesn’t life suck when you’re old and about to die?” The young man spoke mockingly.
“It does.”
“You have to be at least a hundred years old. Don’t you worry someone like me might beat you up?”
“I can tell that you won’t,” smiled the old man.
“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because I can see you’re just an ordinary person.”
The youth turned his head and laughed at the window. Outside the city blurred past.
The old man said: “I know you’re an ordinary person because a long time ago I was exactly like you. I thought I was something special, nothing could touch me. I could insult the entire world and nothing would happen.
“Nothing could stop me. I would beat up every person that stood in my way. The future was mine.
“Now what do you see?”
The young man saw in his window the old man’s smiling reflection.
At the next stop the young man jumped up and hurried off.
Kayon seldom spoke. He preferred to draw leaves with a ballpoint pen.
Sitting in Lakefront Park under an old maple tree, he drew the veins of living leaves on clean bits of paper he found in the garbage. His hand was patient; his eyes were sharp.
Looking carefully from tree to paper, tree to paper, Kayon sat quietly. First he drew the stem of a maple leaf, which was easy. Then he drew the distinctive lobes. Then he drew the veins. Hours passed and people passed, and shadows in the park gradually shortened . . . lengthened. His pen moved. The leaves that he formed with thin lines of ink were so close to perfect they seemed to come alive on the scraps of paper.
They became more than alive.
Whenever someone walked past the place where he sat, Kayon held up one of his beautiful leaves. “For you,” he’d say.
Many of the people cautiously, greedily took the small piece of paper. As they quickly hurried to the other end of the park, they glanced at the paper, wondering about that odd, useless man. All they saw was a simple leaf. They crumpled the paper in their hand, tossed it onto the grass.
And the fallen leaves of many trees, and the crumpled drawn leaves, were gathered by the wind. They tumbled and cartwheeled into in a hidden place between the park’s bed of roses and the old brick wall. Layers of leaves, damp with rain, collected, mouldering, returning to the deep heart of the Earth.
. . .
Linda had brought the drawing of a leaf home. A magnet held it to the refrigerator.
Her young son stood gazing at the leaf. His eyes were bright and unusually wide.
“That’s really amazing.”
John walked slowly toward his parked car. Sixth Avenue was just another street in the city.
Without thinking, he searched the sidewalk with downcast eyes. Cigarette butts, rotting food, a discarded bottle, a dead cockroach, bits of toilet paper. Disgusting stains, crushed things.
A plume of smoke up ahead caught his attention.
As he neared, John noticed a crowd of people had gathered close to the rising black smoke. Excited faces were staring down at the freeway from an overpass.
A van was on fire below. Traffic on the freeway had been stopped by a police car with flashing lights, and two firemen with a hose were getting ready to put out the flames. The empty van, alone on the concrete, simply burned, nothing more.
At least forty people on the overpass leaned forward to stare down at the freeway. More were arriving, drawn by the smoke, as ants are drawn to sugar. Every person in the crowd held up a phone, carefully framing a photograph. A photograph of an empty van on fire.
The people checked their phone, appeared unsatisfied, changed the angle, held it higher. Needing to capture destruction, meaningless and distant. They watched with perfect fascination and took a second and third picture. A hundred identical photographs.
John kept walking. He’d never before felt such a wave of disgust.
That night he couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t purge from his mind that crush of people. Gawking, predictable, animal humanity, eagerly recording flames and black smoke, because flames and black smoke seemed exciting. Why? For what reason?
People were shallow and disgusting.
But what in the world is new?
And so John walked from his parked car up Sixth Avenue the next morning, a remnant of that dark shadow in his mind.
The sun was up. At the overpass there was no smoke. Cars passed in a blur on the concrete below. The incident was erased. Time swallows everything. Just different trash on the sidewalk.
“Good morning,” said an approaching person. The stranger’s eyes were wide, directly meeting John’s own eyes. A sincere, friendly smile was on the stranger’s lips.
“Morning,” John half-smiled.
And the passing person was gone.
The sun rose higher.
A small miracle had saved everything.
…
This short story originally appeared here!
Short Stories by Richard 