South of Main Street

by Robert Gately

  “Stop, stop,” he chastised himself out loud. “I’m digging up your garden, Mary. I’ll rototill and plant grass there until I can’t recognize that it was ever a garden. Then I can stop thinking about you every time I look out the window. I’m giving away your sewing machine too, and all the thimbles and threads and fabric you left behind.”

  Henry thought for a moment and then continued. “You fell asleep right in the middle of our last conversation, did you know that? You didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye.” He slapped the table one more time and continued as if she was sitting there with him. “You said you didn’t want me to be angry or sad. Well, okay then. This is the last time. I’ll only think about happy things from now on.”

  Henry started writing again, one sentence after another, then pounded a bold dot onto the page, and raised the pen into the air feeling like a maestro who had just finished his Magnum Opus. “You’re the only one I ever loved. Good-bye, my dear.” He closed the journal, and tucked it away in the cabinet, behind the soup bowls.

  Henry proceeded as if the day had a new beginning. He opened the pantry cabinet and took out a can of cat food. Hootie jumped up at the ‘snap’ sound of the lid popping, and then quickly dashed to his food and water bowls and patiently waited. Henry fed him and watched his companion scoff down his breakfast, like he hadn’t eaten in days. The litter box sat behind the bowls, which didn’t contribute very much to the culinary ambiance in Henry’s mind. But that was where Mary had wanted it – a convenient one-stop living arrangement where Hootie could take care of all his worldly business.

  Henry reflected on the day Hootie became a member of the Wolff family five years earlier. Driving home from a Hootie and The Blowfish concert, Henry had spotted the abandoned kitten on the side of the road.

  “We nearly ran you over,” he said, watching Hootie eat. “But we stopped and I ran after you, didn’t I, boy? You didn’t want me to catch you. Remember? You ran into the woods and I chased you for over a half-hour. You finally let me catch you. And when I got back to the car with you in my arms, she fell in love with you instantly. Yes, she did. And I named you Hootie ….” He chanted Hootie’s name several times, like a rambunctious cheerleader at a football game. Hootie kept his head buried in one of the bowls, ignoring his master, as he usually did when eating.

  Henry bent over the sink, opened the window overlooking the backyard and filled his lungs with fresh air. A thermometer hanging from the old oak tree spelled out the day’s temperature – a nice, comfortable fifty degrees. He sang while he washed the dishes, but the serenity was short-lived. Angry yelling from next door was abrupt as it was unsettling. The voice belonged to Henry’s forty-two-year-old neighbor, Charles Petzinger and it was directed at Danny, his son. Henry held his arms up high, touched his index fingers to his thumbs and sent healthy incantations out to the cosmic consciousness, hoping to improve Danny’s karma. “Ohmmm … Ohmmm.”

  From the window Henry saw empty beer bottles scattered on his neighbor’s porch. Some stood straight up, others laid on their bellies pointing in different directions. An empty Seagram’s bottle protruded from the middle of Charles’ lawn with its neck imbedded in the ground as if someone chucked it from the porch.

  Henry couldn’t remember exactly when Charles began drinking so heavily. He wasn’t always such a recluse or so nasty, either. In fact, Henry and Charles had always been cordial until this year. Before then, when Charles worked on his car in the driveway, he would always wave hello to Henry. Sometimes they had a neighborly chat while Charles had his head buried in the car engine and asked Henry to retrieve a crescent wrench or some other tool he couldn’t reach. Those were peaceful times back then, when Stephanie Petzinger still lived with Charles and their son, and Mary was alive and healthy. Stephanie had always been friendly with Mary, popping over to visit a few times a week. Then, over a period of a month or two, her impromptu visits became less frequent until she stopped coming over altogether. She always had some place to go and her casual ‘hellos’ became forced and hurried. Then, one day, Mrs. Petzinger packed two suitcases and left her family and Coalsville forever.

  Right after his mother left, Danny and Henry began talking by the chain link fence that separated the two properties. In the beginning, Danny looked at Henry with empty, searching eyes, as if the older neighbor had the answers to life’s bigger questions. Is there life after death? If yes, is there a hell? Or, why did my mother leave? At times, the boy’s mouth would bravely sport a smile, but his eyes always gave him away. They searched for comfort, but Henry didn’t have any answers. And as time passed Danny’s body drooped, like he was carrying the world on his eleven-year-old shoulders. Then he stopped smiling altogether and developed permanent corner creases on his mouth, like he was frowning all the time. And he would stand at the fence and stare into space with a glazed, uncaring look.

  Charles quit his job as a financial analyst a few months after Stephanie left. He told Henry that he had invested wisely during the bullish nineties and didn’t have to work for a while. But he began drinking more, while becoming less neighborly even though he had more time on his hands to socialize. No more waves from the porch. No more chats in the driveway. The ‘hellos’ became nods, which turned into undecipherable blank stares. Eventually, Charles communicated with moans and grimaces, and an occasional glowering, face-tightening frown that was directed mostly at Henry for talking too much and too long to Danny by the fence.

  At first, Henry noticed Danny spending a lot of time by himself in the back yard, picking grass or tossing rocks at a tree while he was reciting lines from a school play. Henry would go outside and pick up a rake or make believe he had to clean up the shed. It was hard getting Danny to come out of his shell. A casual ‘Hi, how are you? Why do you look like a sad sack today?’ didn’t work very well. So, Henry reverted to quoting useless trivia to loosen the boy up a bit.

  “Did you know that Walt Disney was afraid of mice?” Henry would ask. But sometimes it would take more than one try.

  “The sound of E.T. walking was made by someone squishing her hands in jelly.” And sometimes it would take more than two tries.

  “The average lifespan of a major league baseball is seven pitches.” More silence.

  “A toothbrush should be kept at least six feet way from a toilet to avoid airborne particles resulting from the flush.”

  “Ooooo!” Danny finally responded, scrunching his eyes, nose and mouth all at once. That started their first conference by the fence. They talked about moving their toothbrushes far away from the toilet. The next time Henry tried to talk to Danny was a little easier, and when Henry said, “Bad day, today?” Danny was less tight-lipped.

  “Dad wasn’t this way when my mom lived with us,” Danny said one day. “He blames me for my mom leaving and I don’t think he likes me very much.”

  “Sure he ...”

  “And I think my mom left me because I got a bad report card and …” And there was a sad quiet for a brief moment. “… my dad thinks I’m stupid. Everyone thinks I’m stupid.”

  Henry was taken back. He had nothing to give Danny except a weepy interjection to the contrary. “Oh, don’t be silly. All moms love their children,” was all Henry could say.

  Then one day, his young neighbor told Henry about the letter he had written to his mother. He didn’t know where to send it because no one knew where she lived. Henry told Danny to save the letter and write another one, which he did. And after that Danny wrote another one. He had five letters written to his mother while waiting for her to write him, which she did, eventually. He was so ecstatic and read it to himself over and over until he almost memorized it. Then he read it to Henry. She explained she was very sad leaving him in Coalsville and was now living in Seattle. She said she loved him so very much, but she couldn’t live with Danny’s father anymore because she felt trapped. She went on about how people sometimes grow apart, and so on and so-forth, but Henry knew the real story. Stephanie told Mary about t
he ‘other man’, a manager of a bookstore, or a drug store, or was it a novelty shop? Henry forgot exactly what Mary had told him, except that the man moved to Seattle and Stephanie packed her two suitcases and headed out with him. So, maybe it was partly true Danny’s mother felt trapped with Charles, but she didn’t tell Danny the whole story.

  Danny mailed all five letters at once, and for a while he and his mother wrote to each other regularly. In fact, she wrote almost every day for the first month and he wrote back every day as well. Henry watched Danny bolt from the school bus and run to the mailbox each day. In the beginning, he’d find a letter or postcard from his mother. Then the correspondence became less frequent. But he still walked out to the mailbox, even though there were no letters or postcards to greet him. Over time, she stopped writing. So, he stopped looking.

  As Henry talked to Danny by the fence, most of the time he noticed Mr. Petzinger was watching them from the kitchen window. That’s when the chats and casual hellos from Charles became more infrequent, until they stopped altogether, as if the elder Petzinger was jealous of Henry’s relationship with Danny; as if Henry was responsible for Charles’s deteriorating relationship with his son.

  As time went on Henry and Danny conversations by the fence became more personal. Danny told Henry that it was hard for him to listen to his friends complain about their parents because they got grounded for something stupid. They complained about silly things like their parents were ‘out of touch’ because they didn’t know who LL Cool J was, or because they didn’t like them wearing their pants too low on the hip. Danny wished he had a mother at home he could ‘diss’ from time to time because of silly stuff like that. He wished he had a working father who was being a ‘jerk’ because he was too busy sometimes to pay attention, and a mother who complained about wearing his pants too low. No, those friends didn’t realize how good they had it. He retreated from them. Eventually, he had no one to talk to, except Henry.

  Henry knew the Petzingers were carrying an emotional boulder or two, and needed help. So, he began chanting and sending vibes Danny’s way. Charles could take care of himself, Henry felt, and didn’t need any special incantations. But Danny was a whole different story.

  A loud crash interrupted Henry’s thoughts at the opened kitchen window. Then other sounds: the scrapping of a kitchen chair on the floor, maybe, or someone stumbling or falling. Or worse. Henry knew that this kid needed a little more help than just chanting, but he didn’t know what to do.

  * * *

  DANNY PETZINGER ran out of the house dragging his schoolbooks behind him in a shoulder pack, and holding his jaw as if he had an abscessed tooth. He bolted straight to the chain link fence that separated the two properties, threw his books down, and buried his head in his folded arms on top of the fence, sobbing.

  “Ohmmm … ohmmm,” Danny heard Henry’s voice as if he were standing close by. The boy looked up and saw his neighbor peering through the opened kitchen window. “What a beautiful day, Danny!” Henry bellowed through the small opening.

  The young Petzinger grunted and kicked the fence. He was not in the mood for an up-beat spirit so early in the morning. He didn’t want to hear that Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise, or that donkeys kill more people annually than plane crashes, and the last thing he wanted to hear was someone touting what a wonderful day it was when it was a perfectly horrible, stinkin’ day.

  “Life sucks, Mr. Wolff,” Danny said just to let his neighbor know it would take more than a weather observation to change the desolate conditions in his life.

  * * *

  HENRY OFFERED a soft smile, but this seemed to aggravate the boy further. Danny just picked up his books, rushed off along the fence, down the driveway and out of sight to the bus, which was waiting for him out front.

  A solitary groan came out of the Wolff house and dispersed into the universe. It was Henry’s way of praying for intervention of some kind. For divine guidance.

  The dishes done, Henry dried his hands and walked over to the calendar where X’s marked the days gone by. He grabbed a pencil, but before he checked off Tuesday, December 2nd, he noticed a note in the box for this day. ‘Wake – 11AM.’

  “Oh, my God. How could I have forgotten?” he bellowed.

  Just as he said this, the doorbell rang. He rushed into the dining room, stopped and looked up at the solitary family portrait that served as a centerpiece on the wall. Reflecting on the people who surrounded him in the picture - Mary and his two daughters, Sharon and Robin – it offered a momentary feeling of comfort.

  He walked past a mahogany table, which crowded the dining room, opened the top drawer of the china cabinet, pulled out a bag, unzipped it and removed its contents of eighty dollars in fives, tens and twenties. He crammed the money into his pocket. On the wall in the living room, an antique mantel clock told him it was eleven-ten. He straightened the knick-knacks on the shelves next to it, a small porcelain cat and little bronze booties from when his children were infants.

  The doorbell rang again. He continued into the living room past a couch with puffy cushions and a walnut-stained coffee table that showcased Henry’s coin collection which was complete except for a 1913 quarter.

  Henry finally reached the door just as the bell rang for the third time. Mrs. Aldrich, the retired teacher from across the street, stood confrontationally close to the front door. Henry stood a foot taller and looked down at her slumped back – the evidence, Henry presumed, of a career-long posture of bending over children slapping their knuckles with a ruler. He remembered when Sharon was a child, she had asked him why Mrs. Aldrich was always leaning forward as if pushing a boulder up a hill. Henry told Sharon it was Mrs. Aldrich’s large breasts that kept her off balance. Mary didn’t like that answer at all and told Sharon the real reason. Henry had forgotten what it was. Scoliosis, perhaps.

  “Hello, Henry. I was getting ready to go to the wake, and I saw you outside before, so I decided to stop by.” She pronounced each word carefully, like a Mother Superior talking to an incoming first grader. “I promised Robin that I would look after you,” Mrs. Aldrich spoke slowly and in a tone that suggested to Henry he better be good or else there would be some behavioral obedience training in store for him.

  “Yes, Mrs. Aldrich,” was all that Henry could say, feeling intimidated by her matriarchal presence.

  “It’s after eleven. Shouldn’t you be at the wake, dear?”

  “Oh, my,” he said. “I’m late. I’m late, for a very important date.”

  “Yes, well …” Mrs. Aldrich said as if it were a question. Henry knew enough not to say anything and just stood there with no intention of making a response.

  “It was terrible, Henry, the way Mary suffered in her last days.” She paused. Still, no response. “You dear man. What’s going to happen to you now? Hmmm?” She paused and examined Henry up and down. “I can take you to Duffy’s, but you can’t go looking like that. Shake a leg, Henry.”

  I shouldn’t’ve answered the door, Henry wanted to say. He was trying to think of something nice. Mrs. Aldrich and Mary spent many hours on the porch talking about … whatever women talk about, and he figured the least he could do was act civil, for Mary’s sake.

  “Henry,” she said loudly. “You go upstairs and change, right this minute.”

  With that, Henry slammed the door in her face. He peeked out the window and saw her shaking her head. She looked up and, as if she were talking to someone above her, “Mary, I hope you made arrangements for him.” Then she put her hands on her hips and knock on the door hard. “I’ll take you to Duffy’s, Henry. Hurry up and change.”

  Henry ran out of the house through the back door and snuck around to the front from the side walkway. He peeked out from the side of the house and saw Mr. Aldrich was preoccupied trying to look through the front window. He took the opening, scooted down the driveway, loped down the street without detection and swung his arms in exaggerated motions as he walked. “Nothing like a brisk walk
in the morning,” he said to no one in particular and then frowned, because he remembered where he must go.

  * * *

  DIXIE SWANSON sat on a bench on Main Street across from Duffy’s Funeral home and pondered for a few moments on what she wanted to do. She rose from the bench with her CD player under her arm and a headset draped around her neck. She pulled down on her shirt as if it would make it fit better. It didn’t.

  She walked down Belmont Avenue to an old stone bridge and glanced down and saw movement. The bridge could barely fit two cars across. It was thirty yards away from Main Street on a road that connected the north side of Coalsville to the center of town. She slid down the embankment and joined Joe and Wheeze by the riverbed. Joe, shoeless, wore socks that had more holes than toes and seemed to be asleep wearing a dirty undersized overcoat and a couple of plastic bags as a blanket. He struggled to get comfortable on a weather-beaten mattress. Wheezy sported a dressy hat and wore a tattered trench coat. She wheezed while she arranged aluminum cans in bags. The deeper the breath, the louder the wheeze. By all appearances, they both had taken refuge under the bridge for some time.

  Dixie sat on an old, smelly couch cushion under a two-hundred-year-old stone bridge that hovered over a dried-up riverbed, and watched Wheezy and Joe which, in Dixie’s mind, was slightly more exciting that watching grass grow. Dixie carried a small portable CD/tape player, which had a strap to carry it on her shoulder. The music through the headset swept her away, temporarily, from her squalid reality.

  Large-bellied flies buzzed around Dixie, taking aim at food crumbs and half-eaten fruit cores close by. She swatted wildly and hit one sending it sputtering over to Wheezy and Joe who were giving Dixie ‘the eye’ for invasion of their privacy. Dixie was familiar with looks of disdain. These particular deadpan stares were coming from two homeless people who had set up house, under the bridge, and were claiming ownership, like squatters. Joe leaned back and shrugged like he stopped caring Dixie was there. But Wheezy seemed insulted by the intrusion on their home.