prose

"Piece" by IceSabre

The legs of the chair scraped over the vinyl as he pulled on it, quickly sliding it from beneath the battered table.  Once out, he lowered himself onto its unforgiving surface, stretching his legs full length in front of him, his arms crossed defensively.

The light was dim and he took his time studying the puzzle.  It was complete, the pieces locked together in a perfect fit.  Still beautiful, but it was gathering dust and he wanted something more.

The new one sat in its cardboard cube, inviting, ready to be opened and explored.  He carefully slid the old one to the side before slipping the cellophane off the new box.

Such a nice picture.  He ran his hand over the glossy photo before prying the lid with his fingernail.  This one would take time, but he had lots of it now, more than he knew what to do with in fact.  The other one was finished and it was  a lovely sight, but he was restless, always, always, looking for more.

He picked up the first piece and laid it down in the center of the table and quickly reached for another.  He could smell the newness.  The beginning was always the best, the freshness almost intoxicating.  It was the journey that mattered.  To him anyway.  The first pieces always went together easily and this one was no different.  He came to life again, like a plant being watered.

Out of the corner of his eye he spied the one he had willfully pushed to the side.  It was still beautiful and he liked it, but it had lost a bit of its luster and it seemed to be getting in the way.  It was distracting him and he didn’t know what to do.  How could he get rid of something so nice, so perfect.

He held still for a moment trying to harness his thoughts before suddenly removing a piece straight out of the middle.  Ah, not so perfect anymore.  He pulled up a few more pieces and the picture began to fade.  How remarkably easy it was to do this, to alter the image to suit his plan.  Just a slight of hand, a trick of the mind was all it took.  But he still trembled while he pried away at the rest.  He stared at the image and watched it weaken even further.  Before he knew it, it was nearly disassembled.  Once whole, now vestigial remains.  It was easy to change what it once was, to what it is now.  He felt strong and pressed on.

It was nearly gone now, completely unrecognizable to what it really was and he decided to go ahead and do it.  It would be easy to move on with no remorse, regret, or even sorrow now.  “Look at it,” he said to himself out loud, “It’s nothing to me, nothing at all.”  With one swift slide of the arm, the remaining pieces flew across the room landing here and there.

There was a time when he would pick up the pieces, at least attempting to put them back into their box, attempting to put them away for safekeeping, but not anymore.  Now he just let them pile up at his feet where he’d shuffle through them like they never even existed.  Afraid they’d somehow put themselves back together again behind his back if he took too much care.  So he didn’t.  Out of sight, out of mind.  But like a burr on his sock, they lingered.

The bulb in the lamp finally burned out and darkness encroached.  It was done, he had finally gotten rid of it.  In the dimness, he reached into the new box to pull out a few more pieces to begin his new project, his new quest, and without warning, the Brown Recluse bit him.  A network of lines traveled across his face.

(A stream of consciousness memory where periods barely exist)

Grape vineyards, apple orchards, and hills blanketed with endless tufts of green filled the rearview mirror as the concrete ribbon of highway poured endlessly in front of me, yanking me away from the dying rust belt town whose smoke stacks laid fallow, whose chain link fences toppled, whose lights dimmed for lack of green to keep them aglow, whose promise of a future laid in waste amongst the feet of the young who tripped in their search for a reason to stay in the warm September air that was saturated with the scent of turning leaves and ripening grapes.  Young, very, and filled with intrepid dreams, of the pipe variety, I rode in the passenger seat of the blue ’76 Buick Electra, hardtop, south south south to the Promised Land in search of what…I didn’t know.

Old tires rolled through flatlands of other places where decrepit towns laid dormant amongst the cornfields plowed by bankrupt farmers who barely had shoes, whose farms would be lost to the banker with the shiny black shoes, who stapled notices on doors of barns emptied by lack.  The felt headliner of the Electra fluttered in the breeze untethered by its decaying adhesive, to be ripped away soon as frustration mounted in the heat of the sultry air.

I held my purring cat as we drove through another place where ranches wound fences for miles, painted in white around hills and fields of green where horses frolicked and Crosses stood tall on hilltops, shouting the message of salvation over the land.

Then on past cotton fields where sharecroppers sat on dusty porches and half naked children ran over sun baked yards of blowing red dirt filled with broken toys amongst the old tires and rusted trucks, their noses dripping in streaks of brown over their sun drenched cheeks that glistened in the frying sun, sharing their world with the cattle who grazed.

Past ice houses on the side of the road where cords dangled needlessly from booths that held no phones, where men and women met for lunch and held  sweaty bottles of beer and sat around whiskey barrel tables on sawdust covered porches, where juke boxes played and the wind blew the dust and the scent of barbeque through the scorching air, and where men with bolted down southern drawls smoked Lucky Strike’s and waved and tipped their Stetsons high above genuine smiles at the passersby whose license plates wore the names of other places.

Past homesteads that stood isolated against the sides of highways that cut through their lives like scissors through ribbons, dividing the land in half in pursuit of progress that pushed its merciless hand through and wound itself recklessly over homes that now sat at the foot of bridges, where no river ran beneath, just another concrete ribbon crisscrossing the first.

The Electra rolled over overpasses that shaded caravans of  rustbelt refugees whose dirty u-hauls held the contents of their lives as they searched in vain for the land of milk and honey with no skills that fit the land on which they stood, soon to return to the land of which they came, as their funds ran dry as a creek bed in July.

Past ethereal oasis’ of homes standing proud, planted like corn in the middle of the prairie, jutting their wooden bones into the air of the Promised Land where the young and the old shared a piece of the world with a name dreamed up by a man whose money built the streets and named them after far flung places, and where swimming pools surrounded by concrete were filled with children escaping the torrid heat of the sun baked prairie light, and where lakes with fountains were carved to hold floodwaters so homes would stay dry when the rains would fall in buckets over the land in spring.

Then on through the complex thicket of the city past glassy buildings that scraped the sky, whose mirrored facades reflected the world around them, with top floors that lent views as far as the eye and imagination could see, and towered above the hodge-podge landscape that sprouted around them like hallucinogenic mushrooms popping up helter-skelter in the sodden fields of the sandy loam.

Past the rows of shotgun houses that felled their paint and were skirted in oleander and palm, where lines of wet wash hung between trees and the glassy buildings were not far behind, where juxtaposition was invented and defined.

Near tamale stands where women soaked and rolled the husks of corn then wrapped them delicately around the mush that filled their centers that men wearing starched jeans and pressed white shirts, cowboy hats and boots with taps on the bottom, would buy by the dozen.

In eyeshot of the refineries whose lights glowed like cities on the delta and who refined oil for the millions of cars that rolled over the roads, the surface smoking beneath their tires, and where miasma billowed out of their stacks filling the sultry air with the smell of money that wafted in clouds over the East End, near the Channel that carried ships full of cargo and all things useful to the others who want endlessly, and where the goods are loaded onto trucks and trains to cross the country to the insatiable. 

Then on to the final miles with the city in the rearview mirror and the marshy water’s edge laid out before me where egrets fished in the bayous and where shrimpers and yacht owners shared the same salty water.

Arriving at the land of hot and cold, floods and droughts, oil and space age, flat and hilly, all worlds, all languages, all cultures, all economic levels, all wrapped up in one wonderful package.  It is a place where the past has expanded before my eyes and the future will shrink accordingly, and it is where I am, and it is good.

Twenty eight years later, I look out the window at the dawn of another misty balmy December day and I remember the vineyards and the orchards and the snow, and the roots of my life that are still tattooed on my mind,and the people, oh how I miss the people, and  I remember the scent of ham and mashed potatoes and gravy and sweet potatoes and corn and fruit salad and rolls and apple pie wafting through the air on Christmas morning and I remember sitting around the Christmas tree of my childhood home and today; I miss it, I miss it a lot.