Bitter Dregs

“Little Sarah had her third daughter last week,” said the old man. He sat with his back against the stone, patting the earth, twiddling leaves. It was late September, early for the carnelian foliage. He was glad for it. Summer had nearly done him in.

“She came into the world with fire on her head,” he said.

“Can you believe it?”

“Never in our line, not that I know of, and she came out red-headed as a rose.”

The sun filtered through an oak and he allowed the pattern across his face, warmth on the cool morning.

“Sarah’s fine,” he said. “They both are. She has your strength, you know.”

“You should have seen that room, Ruthie. It was brighter than heaven.”

He fingered at the sun, dropped his head as his thoughts turned.

“I know,” he said. “I did drink. A little burned by it this morning, too. But trust me when I say that you are nearer when I do.”

He grinned at the thought of her, how she was always right.

“I know what you’d say about that,” he said.

“Closer to hell is no closer to me!”

“I know, Ruth. I know,” he said. “But what is here if you’re not? And where is hell if this isn’t it?”

A car drove by, and its driver noticed the man but turned away, sparing himself. They know her body is in the earth, the passersby, but so, too, does the man have her soul through the backlit imagery of mad love gone. 

“This damned yard, Ruth – I swear. We shoulda thought more about development when we settled these plots.”

He smiled along a worn path.

“I don’t even know that I oughta tell ya. You’d be downright sick to know it.”

“Do you remember that day?” he said. 

“We bickered all the way here. That was on me, I reckon’.”

“We were too young for such things, then.”

“Or I was. I was too young for your old wisdom, even five years your senior.”

“What did I say? – ‘We’ll never die, my love, not you and I. Plenty of time, plenty still. Why waste a Saturday lookin’ at dirt, when just any ole patch’ll do?’”

“Yes, that’s right – and what said you?”

He patted the ground to the rhythm of his words.

“‘You’re the only one I know, Sam! The only one I know that don’t expect to die!’”

The man let out a hearty laugh, as only she can bring out these days.

“You were right, too,” he said.

“And here I am, wishin I was – ”

“ – I know. What’s that you always said to the kids?”

He raised a finger.

“You buy the ticket, you ride the ride!’”

“That’s it.”

“But the ride is old now, Ruthie. It’s slowed now, and I’ve been ‘round and ‘round and ‘round.”

The man wiped his face and straightened himself off the stone.

“I was sayin’ about all this progress goin’ on around here. It would just kill you to know that not twenty yards from you now is a damned road. And down it a ways is a mall.”

“A damned mall, Ruth. It would just kill you to know.”

“Don’t you see what I mean?”

The man shook his head, tired of the same point, losing it to the vows.

“I know you do. I wear it plain.”

“You would say I’m here too much.”

“I know, I know. But the stone glows like you in the mornings.”

“Every morning may be too much. Maybe to others.”

“I know. You would say that the nice folks in the cars that drive by on their morning commute will notice me, what with you right here next to the road. You would say that it will make them sad to see an old man here every day when they already have to go to work.”

“Some of them wave.”

“And that’s just it, isn’t it?” he said. 

“They know, too. I wear it plain.”

“Would it not make them happy?”

“What if they drove by and after all these days they saw me being laid down next to you?”

He smiled, rested his eyes.

“I know, the girls.”

“I won’t, Ruthie. I won’t.”

“I won’t today.”

The man stood and once more let the broken sun through the oak across his face, imagined the backlit medallions on their embroidered sheets from the wedding.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he thought. “With any luck.”