Mark Cassidy
CHUCK AND MEREDITH WHERE ARE YOU?
A man browsing in a secondhand book store on Westheimer, a short distance west of the Sam Houston Tollway, comes across a book which has, inside the front cover, a handwritten dedication, a note from Chuck to Meredith. The book is a retrospective compilation of poetry and song lyrics by a once famous entertainer who has, coincidentally, recently died. The edges of the pages have started to turn brown. The note, undated, says:
Meredith, Sometimes a song, or a poem, says it best. But then, I suppose, sometimes it doesn’t. Or it’s too late. Anyway, either way, I loved you! A thousand kisses, Chuck
The man buys the book and, along with his groceries and dry-cleaning, takes it home to his second floor apartment on Rogerdale, where he makes himself some tea, sits down at his dining table and flips through the pages. He discovers several small scraps of paper. He goes through the book again, more slowly, and counts thirteen markers.
The number of poems or songs put into play by the markers is twenty-three. Since the note speaks to love (and the loss, or neglect, thereof) this number could be reduced to seventeen, possibly as low as fifteen, depending upon interpretation. Even so, he realizes, an impossibly wide selection. He glances up from the book to look out through his patio doors. A large woman in sparkly shorts and a hoodie is walking a tiny dog on the pathway on the far side of the courtyard, beside the barbecue pits. And it looks like rain is starting to come on again. Of the fifteen, nine are poems and six are song lyrics. Song lyrics, he knows, rarely work as poetry. But still. He begins to hum the melody of the song he is looking at. In fact, he knows the chords and words by heart. He goes back to the first marker and starts to read through each poem and song again. It quickly becomes obvious that the man was trying too hard. He wants to cover all the bases, which leaves the sentiments he seemed to be aiming for jumbled and contradictory, self-indulgent even—which might explain why Meredith, puzzled and then exasperated, tossed the book into the box marked to go. He should have gone with no more than a pair of choices. Keep it simple, keep it sharp, target clarity. Possibly the mist and scar thing.
Splotches of rain begin to hit the window glass. He looks up again. The woman and her dog are gone. The courtyard is empty. Runoff from the rooftops is already puddling on the pathways. The room is growing dark. Wind and hawk. Maudlin, certainly, but plain, straightforward. No spite, no sarcasm, no double-jointed cynicism. He yawns. He’s tired. A long morning of progress and strategy sessions at the office have drained him, plus then the groceries, and he still needs to consider and prepare something to cook for his dinner. Cooking for one is as much work as cooking for two. His phone rings. He closes the book and pushes it away across the table to make room for his chopping board. He reaches into his pocket.
"Hello?"
He stands up from the table holding the phone at his ear and steps across the living room into the kitchen. Lightning flashes at his back. Thunder booms close.
"Yes. Hi there. Yes, this is Charles." ◊ ◊
COUNTING TREES WITH MR. GILLSON
Gone quiet now at last, no more noise, no more shouting. What’s had to be said’s been said, the front door slammed, the car started and gone. Mr. Gillson stands at the edge of the deck in back of his house, in the rain coming on, and looks out over the yard which slopes gently away to the fence at the alley. He takes a long, deep breath. The dog, having heard him step out from the kitchen, creeps from beneath the deck and jumps up to sit at his feet.
Mr. Gillson’s yard, for being in town, is a big yard, pie-shaped, contains twenty-four trees. He’s counted them plenty of times, usually over coffee or beers with buddies, neighbors, whoever else might stop by. Tall poplars down the west side fence, blue spruce either side of the RV gates and pines mixed in with spruce and birch up the east side to the street. It’s a fine-looking yard, what it is, well kept, nicely tended and improved across the years all through the family growing up and heading off to wherever. In the far southwest corner, in back of where the vegetable patch used to be, is an apple tree and it’s a beauty, branches hanging wide and low. What they’d do, back when the kids were kids, they bought a stack of plastic pails and they filled them every year, they had no trouble filling all of them, no trouble at all, and then they’d leave them at the bottom of the driveway out front of the house, folks come round, walking in the evening, and take a bucket home with them. Got to be a thing, going by the Gillsons' and get a bucket of apples, the juiciest, sweetest tasting in the neighborhood. Be sitting out front, on the steps, with the newspaper, folks would say, Hi! and ask when the apples going be ready. And almost always got all the empty buckets back! Put the hose on them, clean them out, put them away until next year. Plus all type of pies heaped in the freezer all through the winter, ready for putting in the oven or giving to folks they come over for dinner, for a beer here and there.
In the northeast corner is a mountain ash, a spray of red against the rooftops round about, and another one up close to the house, tight in beside the deck, intended for shade and privacy. The problem there, of course, was always having to clean up splotches of red berry juice from the decking, from the rails and off the furniture, having to dislodge berries with tiny tails squeezed into the gaps between the boards. The kind of work you bitch about to the neighbor but actually, secretly, you love doing it because you love the darn trees. And the yard.
Down in the middle of the lawn is a steel pole twenty feet high was topped, originally, with a wooden nesting box shaped like a little house, bolted to a steel plate. The kids called it Sparrow Cottage. All the way back up from the pole, over the lawn and the flower beds, the steps to the back door, is the wash line. On windy days you can hear the wheels squeaking as they turn and swivel on their hubs, the line dipping and swinging, shedding raindrops like bead curtains over the grass. Thing with the bird house was that it rotted over time and fell into disrepair and had to be removed. And wasn’t easy to get up there in what he considered to be the correct and safe manner, which was his way. Ended up he rented scaffolding.
In wintertime the silver birch catch light off the low sun and the snow and the whole yard can come over a pale pink through the afternoon into the early dark. Melancholy sometimes, but pretty too, looking out from the kitchen window a Sunday afternoon with a little shot of something. Along at the end of the birch trees, towards the corner of the house, other side of the path, is the shed. It’s old now and needs work, needs pulling down if he’s honest. The paint on the siding boards is peeling and the shingles are curled and stuffed full of leaves and pine cones. But a stalwart is what it was through decades of yard work and the kids growing up.
Inside the house the telephone rings. Stops. Starts ringing again. Stops. The rain comes on heavy. Mr. Gillson stoops and picks up a greasy slick ball, been hanging round the deck for years, long as the dog, and leans back, throws as the dog leaps from the edge of the deck and takes off hurtling down the length of the yard. The ball bounces in front of him, bounces again and then rolls in under the trees to the foot of the fence. Mr. Gillson steps down off the deck and crosses to the shed, pulls back the sliding door and steps inside, into the musty smell of years of oil and metal and ancient wood shavings. He stands at the work bench and glances round at the rows of pots and dead plants, window boxes, cartons of tools, empty beer bottles. A wheel barrow. A pair of old mowers and a hedge trimmer. A rototiller with the dirt still on the tines gone rock hard. The ladder is hitched up on hooks against the back wall above the bench, the coil of rope, brand new, silky white, on another hook at its end. The noise of the rain on the roof of the shed is deafening.
Before he reaches over the bench for the ladder he takes another long, deep breath and turns to look back out at the yard. Between him and the gleaming steel pole his old dog sits waiting in the slanting rain with the sodden ball at his feet.
Mark Cassidy was born in the UK and presently lives in Texas.