The Empty Town

With eyes closed I feel the air moving past me and hear the drone of the box fan perched in the window beside my bed.  My mind is clear, expectant, poised between worlds.  I feel myself bobbing on the surface of time, a small boy at its base, a man at the crest, growing, shrinking, growing, shrinking, like a human accordion.  There is music above the drone, or so I imagine, reminding me of a candle lit Vespers where psalms are sung.

"...as for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more..."

***

The boy's head is bowed and his eyes are closed as the swing rocks him gently back and forth.  He is alone on this playground, alone in this small town, alone in this world.

[My God.  It's me as a child, maybe ten or eleven, the same age as my son.  He looks so small and thin, so vulnerable.]

He looks up when he realizes the world has gone completely silent.  The cars that had just been circling the town square are gone.  He looks around for the kids riding their skateboards on the basketball court, for the teen smoking at the empty fountain, but no one is there.

[Look at those bangs, the freckles, the sunburned cheeks, "Hey!  Aaron!  Buddy!"  He cannot hear me.  I know he is me, but I can't help feeling like he is my son as well.]

He drags his feet in the dirt to stop the swing, then rotates himself on the chains in a full circle, releasing, spinning back and forth.  The birds are gone, the wind is gone, the ants on the anthill are gone, and the sky is a uniform gray.

[This is the town I grew up in and everything is just as I remember it.]

The look of confusion on his face transforms into a curious smile as he heads over to the small circular bandstand on the East side of the square.  It sits next to the main street that cuts the town in half.  A windowed door is in its base, slightly below ground level with steps leading down to it.  This is the police station and he finds the door unlocked.  Inside is a desk, a few chairs, filing cabinets, and a rack of radio equipment.  He plays with the knobs and switches, turning it on with a crackle and buzz.  Keying the hand mic he whispers, "Break one nine, break one nine, this is the Karate Kid.  What's your ten twenty, over?"

[My Dad had a CB radio in his custom van and I liked to call up truckers when we were out and about, asking their location and inquiring about the time using the number codes I'd learned from the back cover of a semi-truck themed coloring book.  Everyone that used a CB had a "handle" they used instead of their name.  Mine was "Karate Kid" which referred to the classes I was taking in a church basement in the town just south of ours.  My older cousin, who was very serious about his handle, came up with "Lost Coin."  Even as a little kid I knew this was an impressive choice and had some flair to it.  The handles I had come up with were prosaic in comparison.]    

There is no reply on the radio, so he heads out of the office and across the street to the corner drug store.  His bike is leaning against the front plate glass window and just inside the front door and to the left sits a rotating rack of comic books.  Every Wednesday the new ones come in which gives him some time to collect empty pop bottles and exchange them for a dime a piece at his local grocery store.  His favorites are the X-men and Daredevil.  He has seen the rise of the Dark Phoenix and the destruction of an entire planetary system.  He has seen Bullseye proclaim that he is "magic" and defeat Elektra with the flick of a playing card.  And at this very moment he is riveted by a panel from the Swamp Thing where a little boy is swimming with friends in a lake.  His head bobs on the surface, a look of frozen terror on his face.  His friends are asking him what is wrong.  Below the murky water a vampire has latched onto his leg, sucking his blood, like a human leech.  The boy shudders and puts the comic book back in the rack.

Outside again, he hops on his bike and heads for the curb, pulling up the front wheel to fly off of the sidewalk and down onto the street.  Just north of the square he catches something moving out of the corner of his eye and slams on his brakes causing the bike to swing around to face it.  The street in front of the library is completely in shadow and the shadow appears to be moving directly towards him.  It is creeping along at a slow pace and he is mesmerized by it as his heart begins to race.  His eyes climb to the sky and he can just make out the outline of a massive dirigible.  It appears to have a reflective surface that is mirroring the grayness around it rendering it nearly invisible.  He does not know what it is or what it is for, but he has no plans to come anywhere near it.

He turns his bike and heads east, over some railroad tracks, and eventually reaches his elementary school.  The parking lot is empty except for one car.  It is a Firebird Trans Am, brown with an orange-red flaming bird emblazoned on its hood.  The driver's door is unlocked, so he opens it and climbs in.

[This is a second grade teacher's car, Miss McClure.  I did not have her as a teacher, but I was in her classroom during our "famous person" project as Astronaut Gus Grissom.  I wore dark green coveralls, black snow boots, and sported an aluminum foil covered motorcycle helmet with matching box on my back to represent the astronaut's life support pack.  I was there to read the report I'd done on the life of Virgil "Gus" Grissom.  I was told, though I don't remember by whom, that I'd been one of the few chosen to present because Gus Grissom grew up in the town just north of us and not because of the quality of my report.  It must have been Miss McClure who told me that and, in retrospect, seems a cruel thing to tell a little boy.]

He sits in the seat and stares out through the space between the dash and the top of the steering wheel thinking about the disappointments and frustrations of his time here that came from teachers who did not know what to do with his energy and inconvenient curiosity.  Almost in a trance he leans forward and turns the key and nothing happens.  Then he remembers the clutch, that odd third pedal that requires coordination with the shifter to make a car go.  He depresses the clutch and turns the key.  The car roars to life and he guns it a couple of times, being careful to keep the clutch down.  He releases the clutch a bit too quickly before the engine can wind down and the car lurches forward, nearly taking his head off of his shoulders, and stalls.

He has seen his Dad drive a shifter and tries to remember the movements.  After several failed tries he gets the car to moving around the parking lot and then out onto the road headed back to the square.  By the time he hits the railroad tracks he has found second gear.  The radio is blaring through the open window as the car catches some air, "Hey!  Teacher!  Leave them kids alone..."  The landing is a bit harder than he anticipates and dampens some of his enthusiasm for carjacking.  Foot off the pedals, it slows, bucks a few times, and dies.  "All and all, you're just another brick in the wall..."

It takes him a few minutes to jog back to the school and reclaim his bike.  Instead of heading back to the town square he skirts the school, heading south, and passes the baseball diamond where he plays third base for the Holland Dairy Cardinals.  

[Boy, what a team that was.  We had the best pitcher of our Little League (the Coach's son) and two back up pitchers that were good as well.  It was an embarrassment of riches.  We won the league championship two years in a row and a few travel tourneys that added some  trophies to my book shelf, trophies that have been lost to time and too many moves.  Also lost were my wooden Louisville Slugger wrapped with black electrical tape for grip and a red leather mitt.]

Looking west he sees that the massive dirigible has reached the square and continues its slow plod southward.  A sense of urgency floods him with adrenalin as he stands to pump the pedals harder.

[Now I am seeing him from a high above, like a bird, and following his progress.  He is paralleling the path of the dirigible and once he is considerably farther ahead of it he turns to head westward again and snakes his way south and west until crossing the main road several blocks below the square near the southern edge of town.  This is my old neighborhood.  The street leading into it is Haney Street, a peculiar coincidence considering that that is our family name.  I always thought it a shame we didn't buy a house on that street.]

Turning the corner onto his street he slows and stops in his friend's driveway.  There is a staccato-type sound coming from up ahead that he can't quite place.  He can see the front of his house a few houses farther down the street.  Movement once again draws his eyes northward to see the tip of that massive structure just starting to  come into view over the trees.  He feels a chill run up and down his spine and begins rapidly patting his thigh in a nervous gesture.

[Our old house sits on a hill with another street splitting off to head south, forming a Y around it.  This street curves around the back of the house and constitutes the southern border of the town.  Beyond it are cornfields and patches of forest.  The driveway descends from behind the house to connect with this side street.  Hidden from view in the back is a concrete pad with a basketball goal that we acquired from the church we used to attend two towns north of us when we first moved here.  There had been a problem with local kids playing on it during church services and so my Dad had agreed to remove it with the help of the pastor and some other men and permanently install it behind our newly built house.]

As he approaches his house, the boy recognizes the sound as a bouncing basketball.  It is his first indication that someone else is around since opening his eyes on the swing.  He stops at the corner where the road splits and tries to stare through his house to see who is shooting hoops there.  He is hesitant to go any further but feels the inexorable crawl of the shadow at his back.

"Hello?"  No one answers.  Just the sound of the ball.  He rolls his bike forward and finally commits to the decline of the side road and whips it up into his gravel driveway.  A backwards punch of the right pedal puts his back tire into a skid and then an abrupt stop, throwing gravel and raising a small cloud of dust.

There is a bespectacled man playing basketball on the court.  His long pants and short sleeved shirt flutter on a thin frame as he makes jump shots that look like hiccups.  Black canvas Chuck Taylor hi-tops finish out the outfit as his sole piece of athletic apparel.  He does not notice the boy at his back as he makes a Cousy-esque running hook shot that banks in smartly.

[The boy's thoughts and my own are starting to meld as I am sure he does not know who Bob Cousy is.  This is his Dad.  Our Dad.  I feel his awe at seeing our Dad playing basketball so enthusiastically.  I feel some of my stubborn disappointments and bitterness melting away in the child's mind, love crowding out judgement.]

A shadow moves over the boy and then covers the man as well.  They look up simultaneously to see the dirigible coming in to hover over them, lower in the sky.  A deck is suspended below it and I recognize my Grandpa Haney in his overalls leaning over the edge unfurling something that is inching its way down towards us.  There are countless faces peering over the sides watching us and I recognize some of them.  They are people I have loved like Caroldine, Roy, and Dorcas along with others that look familiar but whom I can't quite place.  The something is a rope ladder that is now hanging suspended beside my Dad.  He grabs hold of it with his free hand and gives it a tug.

He then turns to me and makes a crisp one-handed bounce pass that I instinctively grab with both hands.  He smiles and nods, then turns to ascend the ladder.  Its swinging motion takes me in and lulls me as I watch him climb. The dirigible emits a swelling drone as it surges to gain altitude...

***

I once again feel the air from the box fan moving past me and smell the scent of flowers and cut grass being pulled in from the outside.  The stars are winking in the night sky as the crickets chirp in synchrony.  In the distance I see the gray outline of a large cloud making its way over the town and hear the distant roll of thunder.  Within minutes raindrops begin to lightly pat at the window.

***