Closure

As I stooped to pick up the box the man had left, a muffled beeping caught my attention. I looked up, my eyes scanning the yard and vacant lot in front of me. Then BOOM! The lot exploded from the inside out. I saw cement and dirt showering the sky surrounded by a thick cloud of dust before I was knocked backward with the force of a charging bull. My butt hit the grass first sending a shock wave of pain up my spine. Then my head snapped backwards and connected with the cement pathway.....

In the blackness I hear people yelling. I open my eyes to the bright sunlight of a summer day. "Where is that yelling coming from?" I wonder. The yells are coming from my right. As I turn my head, I notice little dots moving in the distance around a field of dirt and grass. Walking toward the sound and movement I recognize the familiar set up. Nine people fanned out on a diamond. Approaching the stands I can clearly see the players' faces. Bob Levowitz stands on first, his pudgy face shining with sweat. Bob and I used to be the best of friends until his habit of eating an extra slice of bacon when ever he could stopped his heart. Next to him on second is old Doug Johnson. He and I were college roommates. We decided to start our own sporting goods store straight out of college. We were really successful before he got into a car accident on route 17 on his way home from a business meeting. I managed to keep the store running and made good money, but ultimately decided to sell it because without Doug it wasn't much fun. The man at shortstop I don't recognize, but on third is Scott Dobbins. Scott used to run the old hardware store down the street before it was knocked down and turned into an tavern. He was always willing to come by and help out anyone with little fix 'er up jobs around the house free of charge. Then he started to come around less and less because he was always tired. During a check up, a lump was discovered and he was diagnosed with advanced thyroid cancer. Three months later Scott died. Squinting into the sun, I look into the outfield with the hopes of recognizing more people, but can't see that far.

"Come on Peter! Strike 'im out!"

The voice comes from behind me. I turn already knowing who I will see. She smiles her wonderful smile as we make eye contact. It has been so long since I have seen her, yet it feels like only a moment ago we were standing at this very field watching a t-ball game. Her eyes move back to the game and with them mine. Peter stands on the mound winding up. But, this isn't Peter the t-ball player, this is Peter the young man. He is so tall and handsome just like I remember. His face is twisted with a mixture of concentration and immense joy. He loves this game. Just before he throws, he sees me and winks. It is our little sign. Strike three! The game is over. He runs over to me.

"Hey dad. Did you see me strike him out? It was my eleventh of the game."

"Yeah I saw it. I'm so glad to see you." I pull him into a big hug. The tears come before I can stop them. It has been so long. The guilt is over powering. It is all my fault. If it hadn't been for me, Peter would be in the major leagues with a life of his own.

"Dad why are you crying?"

"I'm so sorry. It's all my fault. If only I had gone in none of this would have happened." I am finally letting out what has been bottled up inside for so long. I am opening the door to the house I had built out of my guilt.

"Dad it's not your fault. I don't blame you. What happened happened. It's like you're always saying after a bad game, 'Son there's nothing you can do about it. Let it go. You'll make the same mistake a hundred times if you can't accept it and learn from it.'"

It feels so good to look at him, to hear him speak. Then, everything around me begins to dissolve. He is smiling, but I can no longer make out the distinct lines on his face. His face is now less real, almost flat. Then I realize it is flat. I am no longer looking at my son, I am looking at a picture of my son. The picture is lying on top of my face. I suddenly remember everything: the box, the vacant lot, the explosion. A searing pain erupts from the back of my head. I try to get up, but the pain in both my head and back make me nauseous. Instead I just lay there staring up at the sky trying to remember everything about the interaction at the field.

Some time later, though it's hard to remember because I blacked out several time from the pain, an EMT came over and put me on a stretcher. As he raised me on to the stretcher I saw ruins of my house. Splintered boards, shingles, and shattered glass littered the yard. Among the boards that used to be the porch I saw the picture I had left on the floor.

"Wait." I gasped, my vocal chords straining with the effort.

"Sir, do you know where you are? Can you remember what happened?"

The effort to speak was too great, so I pointed to the picture. After taking several moments to figure out what I was pointing at, the EMT ran over and grabbed the picture. He put it into my hand.

Clutching the picture I felt, for the first time since Peter's death, free. Free from grief, free from pain, free from guilt.

A Photograph Face Down on the Bare Hardwood Floor

CRASH!

I awoke with a sudden jolt. My reality violently shaken from the surreal dreams that filled my subconscious. "What was that? " As I looked around the room, I pricked my ears for the sounds of footsteps and whispers. Nothing. All was quiet and still in the house. The bed creaked as I carefully got out. I walked down the hall turning on every light as I past. An old metal book end sat in a pile of rubbish in the corner. I picked it up feeling its secure weight in my hand. As I slowly shuffled through the house, I finally came to the source of the crash. A box had fallen from the top of a book shelf. Pictures, letters, and books were sprawled across the bare wood floor. It was the plaque that had caused the crash. As I bent down to pick the contents of the box, my muscles screaming in protest, my hand hit a worn leather bound book.

It was his old journal. He had written in it everyday when he was in the war. As he thumbed through it he recognized his untidy scrawl. Then a picture fell from between some of the pages. It was that of a toddler. The small boy's face was alight with a huge smile full of small baby teeth.

"Oh my god." As soon as my eyes fell on the faded face in the picture, my heart skipped a beat. I felt like my inside were withering in sorrow and pain while at the same time blossoming with treasured memories. I hadn't seen his face in many years. I averted my eyes every time I passed his picture hanging in the hallway. As I forced my eyes to stay on his small face I felt the hole in my broken heart close slightly. After several minutes of studying every feature of his young face, from his bright eyes to his nose too big for his face to the lines of his mouth turned up in a smile, I forced myself to look away. It was going too fast. The pain that had been diminished by adrenaline came to full strength. The picture fell from my hand, landing on the floor face down. I turned and walked away leaving it untouched where it fell.

The next morning carrying the box with its entire contents, except the photograph of the boy which was still lying on the floor face down, I walked out the front door. The streets were quiet as I walked the block and a half to the bookstore. Entering the dusty shop my eyes took in the walls and walls of books. Standing behind the counter was a young man in a beige sweater. He looked up as I entered.
"May I help you?" he said.
Without a word, I left the box on the counter and walked out of the store. I felt as if a weight had been lifted, just to be filled by another void.

Apple, Sun, and Memory

The faint thump of distant drums filled my ears as my muscles tightened. My fingers gripped the tight leather and tingled as the stitching ran beneath them.

Before me lay a field of moments past. In the middle stood a young boy, his face obscured by a cap pulled over his face. He gave me a knowing grin. With a soft whoosh, a baseball came at me. Before my eyes focused on the small ball, a coordinated hand moved in front of my face. Whack! Needles pierced the palm of my hand. As I pulled the ball from my glove I felt the cool leather beneath my finger tips. Every muscle in my arm and shoulder tightened as I pulled back in one fluid motion. Forward, snap, release, follow through.

My stiff muscles ached with the long overdue use. The boy stole the ball out of the air with ease. As he cocked his arm back to give my palm another beating his face was momentarily illuminated by the sun. My own nose stared back at me under his mother's eyes. The ball flew through the air. Once again my hand moved toward it.

The apple hit my hand with a muffled smack. Looking down at the shiny red skin my mind cleared. Instead of a boy with a cap pulled over his face, a young woman stood in front of me. With painful understanding, I turned and moved back toward the half opened door from whence I had come.

In the corner of my eye I saw a man on a roof top across the street. His eyes were fixed on something on the street below. Without a second thought or a glance behind, I went back into the realm of memory.

A Lonely Man's Only Comfort

Sunday.

In front of him stood a man breathing heavily. His eyes darting to and fro in disbelief. Scanning everything from the chipped paint to the splintering boards. Finally his eyes rested on him standing in the doorway with a newspaper clutched in one hand.

"Who is this man?" I thought to myself. "Why is he looking at the house like that? Does he think it's gnarled and unbefitting of the neighborhood? I bet he's one of those flashy youngsters from one of the big cities who wants to tear down my house to build some garish condos."

I stood there for a few moment giving him the sternest look I could muster as if to say "I'm not interested in your get-rich-quick scheme. Go away and leave me be."

But, no. Now I could see it in his eyes. He wasn't one of those condo builders, he was just a man standing in front of an old house.

"I wish he'd say something, anything. It's been so long since I have talked to someone else, I don't even know if I can carry on a conversation, let alone start one with a complete stranger," he thought. We stood there for another split second, but then it was all too much. I felt overwhelmed. I couldn't bear the torment of being so close to a brief oasis from my solitude that I turned and walked back inside leaving the man standing there, my solitude now my only comfort.

A Familiar Face

The day's paper lay folded in the trash can under the sink. He had just laid down for his mid-morning nap when he heard a peculiar sound coming from the street below. Usually at this time of day, everyone in the neighborhood was at work or school, except for the few stragglers who had lost the fight with their alarm clocks that morning.

The sound was that of heavy foot steps and frustrated sighs. His curiosity forced his joints to move through the house and struggle with the lock on the front door. When he stepped outside, his body was hit with the heat of the day. He felt like the combined forces of heat and humidity were smothering him. It had rained earlier that day and the sun was evaporating the fallen moisture back into the air like a thick, muggy cloud.

Searching for the noise, he stood staring out from his porch. In front of him was a barren savanna littered with wreckage from those who stood nervously at its edge, but who would not dare to cross its border. His left ear prickled as a muffled sound traveled down his ear canal, its source still out of sight. As he walked through the crispy grass, he stumbled on empty cans, rocks, and an assortment of balls. "If only someone would come and claim one of these balls," he thought to himself, his heart longing for the human contact.

He was suddenly distracted by a figure diving to the ground out of the corner of his eye. He had reached the sidewalk, and found himself looking at a rather odd boy. After diving into the grass beside the road, the boy jumped up and began looking around frantically. He could see the boy's eyes widen in terror as they darted to and fro from the pale sidewalk to the cracked asphalt baking in the midday sun. Something about the boy was familiar, but he couldn't quite place what it was. He felt strangely drawn to the boy as if they were oppositely charged magnets. He now recalled, from murmurings he had heard around town, that the boy was called James or John. No, his name was definitely James. When James finally spotted a box lying not far from him on the road, his faced relaxed. Suddenly he realized why James looked so familiar. James reminded him of his son.

It had happened what seemed like only a moment ago. A shot, the sound of glass shattering into millions of pieces, and then the worst sound of all, a scream followed by a thud that reverberated like an earthquake. They were out of Coke. He pulled the car up in front of the Seven Eleven down the street and sat idling while his son, Peter, jumped out and ran into the store. Usually they both went in together, but his arthritis was beginning to get bad in one of his knees. In a flurry of motion, as Peter was paying for the Coke, a hooded figure ran up from the back of the store, a gun in his out stretched hand. Without a second thought, he shot both Peter and the clerk, then lunged for the open cash register and bolted out of the store.

It didn't matter to him what happened to the murderer; all that mattered was that he was lost. His whole life had been about his family. Peter was everything to him, especially since the death of his wife a year before due to cancer. Guilt constantly plagued his mind. "If only I had gone in instead. My knee didn't hurt that much, I could have gone in. I should have gone in. Why didn't I go in?" It was a battle every morning to get out of bed and face a new day in his now empty house. Whenever he left the house, he was constantly followed by the pitiful gazes of his neighbors. His posture became more slumped to shield himself from the eyes, all the eyes.

Shaken by the memory, he looked up and found James looking at him as strangely, as he imagined, he had looked at James. Their eyes met briefly and for an instant he thought he could see a glint of the same lingering void that he had had for so long. Then, the look vanished. James, now tightly clutching his precious box, hopped away. He slowly turned, and as he did, the house that had sheltered him for so long, yet left him exposed to the harsh elements of the past, loomed before him.

Daily Routine

Bleak sunlight shown through the dusty, half-opened blinds of his bedroom window on the second floor. Shattered glass sparkled on the floor from where a rock had flown through the window the previous night. The clock on the antique night stand read 6:01 am, a minute late. As he got out of bed his bones creaked in protest. In past years the coffee machine could be heard bubbling down stairs, but now all was silent. Soon a piercing whistle would fill the whole house, invading every dust covered inch.

The floor boards popped as he hobbled down the hallway, its walls lined with photographs of faces long gone. His eyes fell to the floor as he passed. Once in the kitchen, he put a kettle of water on the stove. He then bustled making his usual, Bran Flakes. There was no clean bowl in the cupboard, so he found one in the sink from the day before and swished a little water around in it. There were still some crusty, milk-soaked bran flakes stuck on the side, but he didn't mind. As he lowered himself into the only chair at the table, he heard a faint thud.

It took him a minute or two to unlatch the old dead bolt on the front door. These days it was a Herculean feat to get the lock to budge. Once he got the lock to turn, he opened the front door and found his morning paper waiting for him on the porch. For a moment he stood on the porch looking out at the deserted street that bared his name. A sudden shriek from within the house made him jump. By the time he walked back to the kitchen and fixed himself a cup of Earl Grey to go with his daily dose of fiber, his Bran Flakes were soggy.