Written Dec. 2020
“I shall bring you snickerdoodles.” Her voice echoed through his head, and quickly faded.
It was snowing outside again. He had turned the heater up to the sixties, and cracked the grand window to let a little air in. The window overlooked Bill Shower’s old field, the final crop harvested and the soil laying at rest. Next year it would be septic dirt dumped into mounds. The year after that, more bedrooms for retirees and shut ins. The dead corn stalks poised through the latest blanket of snow like pikes of swiss mercenaries standing in formation waiting to march. In a few short years, nothing will be grown here ever again, and the land dutied by the sweat and blood of the Showers’ family for generation will be a mild anecdote told by old men to their uninterested young as they pass by on their way to the Turnpike. He used to watch Old Man Showers till the field as a boy. But the Shower’s themselves have gotten more than their equity of the place. The old can retire, the young have a safety net, and the worry of crop yield and wetness of clay for meagre lives can be forgotten too. They had already moved on and away. He was now alone for miles.
He’s alone again. Elly said she’d bring him some snickerdoodles. That was last year. She was now baking the very same for a man from Carteret. No different than five years ago when Mary said she had to get off the phone to find the Christmas Pickle. Now the same for another. No different than ten years ago, and that one was Sydney and he doesn’t even recall the anecdote. The time of year brings out the same shadows against the light of the present, but their outlines are yielding, pushing gently into each other, losing distinction along their gentle wisps. Time’s curl started long ago, and has been busy twisting them to nothing. Doesn’t help their shapes are drawn only by fickle candlelight.
The chair squeaked a little. Grandpa’s old rocking chair. Grandpa died in this chair. Maybe he will too, he thought. A bit more rocking. A sip from a mug, a mix of pomegranate tea mix and Kahlua. Tasted terrible. But he was never much of a mixer, more of a cobbler. The shirt he was wearing had patched holes, the pants darned and restitched by hand and a few sizes too big.
A year ago, he had the home, the girl, the car, the family, the life. Then life’s natural path destroyed him. Complacence. Weakness. A sickness spread. His family’s good fortune had soured, and the world with it too. He didn’t weather the storm well. His parents got sick and went. Others turned their back, a few off uncles and even a niece. The tethers binding him cut in bleary eyed strokes that rendered him where he is now at the time of cheer. Young, but old. Alone. Poor in spirit. Poor.
He dug the old mothy coat from the closet. It had seen better days. His right hand went right through the pocket. A wad of singles in the front breast, for tolls. A ruined pair of galoshes sat in the bottom, the soles corroded into smooth nubs. Good way to die on ice, but they beat his sneakers which had holes in the upper and the soles. He wandered around the old house, it’s bones swaying from the storm picking up outside. He thumbed the only photo left in the hallways, a simple portrait of an elder done by a child. It resembled him, he thought. He drew a half finished cigarette he found discarded days before from his pocket, and lit it with a match. The canvas went into the fire place along with some balled up magazines, Shoprite adverts and real estate flyers. He found some wood dried and molded in the basement. He brought it up, dusted it off, and traipsed it into a little triangle. With the flue shook out, and a poker in hand, he nurtured a flame off the last ember of the squalid cigarette. Some stoking, and he toasted himself up by the fire, or rather, the poor excuse for one. He moved the beat couch forward, smelling mice shit and scraping the already scraped wooden floor as he did. He stoked it from his perch. Shower’s old place wasn’t much, sparse as it is now notwithstanding. But with the family gone, it wasn’t a bad place to lay his head until the world simmered down. As the fire rumbled on, inside and out. For the first time in a long time he smiled. He almost thought he could smell snickerdoodles.