Morsels of Home - Part II

  He keeps nervously glancing down at his watch. I wish he would stop. He’s so at peace when he’s won over by the waves of the fountain, returning to a familiar rhythm that I don’t quite recognize. But I know how it feels to have that intimate memory encoded in my most tranquil of feelings. I just want to go home.

“I just want to go home,” I tell him, out loud this time. This lost, whirling homesickness boils up with the nausea from all these fumes around me. The old man checks his watch before looking up distractedly at me. It makes me twitch.

“Listen, kid,” he sighs. “I’m no free man. I can’t just take you back to wherever you’re from.”

He lifts the clock face to mine, as if the analog display somehow justifies his urgency. There are remnants of an ancient watch tan sitting between two permanently sunburnt patches of his sinewy wrist. “I’ve got to go.” He taps the glass as the showering fountains behind us shut off with a click. “5 o’clock.”

I’m left there, staring down at the fountain. What was a lively stream of water has been reduced to a sterile pool. It reflects a mirror image of more grey, overcast sky. The bench is empty, too. He’s taken the newspaper with him; the one with my home on it.

I turn around determinedly, march past my friend the tree towards a howling voice in the distance. Across the street stands another of the bee-people: just a young boy, waving another paper in the air. A peacock and his display, but his feathers are only the black and white of his print. I need what was on that paper. My feet inch closer to the road. A ceaseless, relentless stampede. Not of a herd, but solely comprised of predators who each believe their prey might be waiting for them around the next corner. I’m merely a casualty, left for the vultures.

“Just two issues left!” Barks the peacock boy.

I’m tipping over the curb. The cars rush on, heedless. Their false wind stirs frantic hairs over my eyes as I push forward into their storm.

Suddenly, lightning strikes. The flash of headlights, the thunder of rubber. And screeches attacking me from every direction. I brace myself for collision, but instead, every rumble and every chirp of the jungle is killed by an eerie silence. I’m standing in the clearing and my objective stands before me. His arms are stiff at his sides in shock but I can still see the picture on the front of the newspaper. I know instantly that it’s me. The wild-looking child with a mousy, perfectly unkempt head of hair and a half-grin that vaguely reminds me of someone and makes me smile.

Peacock boy keeps looking from me back to that portrait. Everyone else is holding this condemning white piece of paper and I realize they’re all staring, wide-eyed, straight at me.

“Kid!”

An unexpected grip drags me by the back of my collar, out of sight and all the way to the safety of an underground metro tunnel. It’s the old man again, turning me around and surveying me for damage. “You’re going to maim yourself out there. You’ve already gone by the board!”

And then he says what I was hoping he’d say:
“I’m bringing you home.”

We walk on for hours after that. Even as each step gets harder to take, our surroundings begin to look more and more like the place I’d grown up in.

“You had to go,” I say finally, probing for an explanation.

It’s a while before he responds. “I didn’t want to.”

“Didn’t want to go home?” I ask, confused.

He shakes his head, revealing his own brand of grin. “That’s not my home. They’ve got me jury-rigged at one of those V.A. nursing homes. But really, they just call it that. There’s nothing ‘home’ about it. All I know is they’re setting it up to be the last house I ever see.” He smiles bitterly. “Sounds like a hell of a lot of fun, don’t it?”

“No,” I reply quietly.

“That was a rhetorical question, kid.”

I stare blankly.

“It means you’re not s’posed to respond because you already know the answer.”

We make the rest of the way in silence. I find my face lighting up when I see those old trees, landmarks in my mind. He notices too.

The birds are still quiet as the man searches the foliage above us. The trail tapers out and we have almost arrived at my house when he stops and squints into the distance. He turns and points to the edge of the clearing.

“That where the old mansion is?”

I nod and we make our way to the edge. It appears that he’s been here before, striding up to the rickety wooden building. His watch hangs loosely from the pocket of his trousers. When he finds that I don’t follow him, standing hesitantly at the edge of the wood, he nods slightly and marches right in.

That house has always been a big, sleeping giant. Overgrown with layers of dark ivy and encaged in dead vines from years ago. I can hear the creaking and see as it shivers with every step the old man takes. I can catch a glimpse of his determined face through the window that leads to the roof. For an instant, he’s outside on the shingles, just long enough for the wind to blow through his hair, and then he burrows inwards again into a compartment that I didn’t realize was there.

Chirping birds come from behind me and I can’t help but turn around to meet them. I can feel the fluttering of their wings in my chest as they lead me back to my own sanctuary. It’s soft and dark in my little soil hollow, where everything surrounding me is alive. I soak in the smell of growing wood and lay against a root until my fingers are damp from the forest floor.

The birds scatter at the sound of footsteps tromping towards us. It’s the man, in his grey and brown loafers, cobwebs stringing across the folds of his clothing. I can’t tell if some of them were there before. In his hand is simply a yellowed square of paper.

“It’s been ages,” he hums, searching for a place to sit. I pat the mulch beside me and reach for the paper. 

Seven young faces look back at me from the photograph. Only one of them is smiling and again, it’s that goofy smirk that’s hard not to emulate. I recognize a second person, this time he’s sitting on a bench and relaxing in a familiar posture. On his arm, the anchor tattoo is almost covered, but bold and strong. They’re all wearing the same sharp uniform and the same little cap but under that, each of them are special, like different flowers in the same field.

We sit in serene silence for a while, but soon I can tell that the man isn’t going to be staying here. His watch falls from his pocket as he stands, but I decide not to mention it. He does better without it.

“Will I see you again?” I ask. He doesn’t answer and my throat catches. “Does that mean it was a rhetorical question?” I wonder hopefully.

He’s turned his attention to the photograph, regarding each faded face one more time before stuffing it into his pocket. Then, with a strange little shake of his head, he pulls it back out and hands it to me. “I wouldn’t count on it, kid.”

It’s a brief parting between us. The last time I saw him in my forest. I wish I wasn’t so distracted by the little creature peeking at me from behind the bushes.

“Take care of yourself, then,” he says. And then he saunters on back the way he came, humming to himself a sweet sailor’s song.