Wanderer by Wednesday Klevisha

Originally Published in August 2021

Labored breaths filled his frail chest.

Fading eyes staring at the painting on the wall. I didn’t put that there he thinks. The painting was bought in bulk and depicted a beach by the ocean. To the old man it was a vague blue blur.

He was seated at the corner of the room, fitted in a green bath robe and big brown slippers. Eyes wandering along the featureless room.

His back hurt but it was old dull pain. Easily ignored. Easier anyway.

My name is.. It was.. think!

It’ll come eventually.

Beside him, a tray of unappetizing food cools. Mashed colors. Mashed orange and mashed white with a bit of green in the corner. He used to eat so much. Always ravenous. Not one to savor. He begins crying.

He reaches for the spoon but forgets why he wanted it. Rubbing his chest weakly he begins to calm down. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Someone comes. And they go. And the tray is gone.

Margot. .

The man who owned the convenience store. .

Falling from a tree..

Gunfire..

Kisses..

The wind..

These images crossed the old man’s reeling mind. He sat there in the corner. Eyes like unfocused cameras. Playing a mix track of memories. Names occurred to him. Antonio. Laura. Jann. Friends and enemies. And sometimes people who used to occupy the periphery. The clerk at the store. The person who comes and goes. The grandchildren.

I’m going for a walk.

After a great deal of time he managed to get above his feet, hovering a bit before taking the first step. And then the second. Arthritic fingers clasping gingerly the brass doorknob. Warm. It turns.

The hall is dark and disrendered. His fingers rely on the wall to go forward. He goes forward.

A fresh coat of paint. It feels like top of chilled tapioca if you were to graze it ever so slightly.

I shouldn’t be here. I should go back. To the room.

He stands there. Just stands there. For a very long. Longer than most would bear. And then he goes forward. And as he goes he passes the doors of other rooms. Full of other people. Full of fantasies. He remembers the wind.

He goes forward and encounters a wall. No a door. This is one you can push open. And so he awkwardly positions himself, and with sysiphusian effort pushes through. And pass through the next one. And pass by the sleeping man at the desk who had a long day. Passing by all these past things.

And then he felt it. The wind. And it was dark outside. But there were pricks of lights. And this place felt familiar. Familiar enough anyway.

He continues to walk. And as he walks he remembers places. His favorite diner. The hills of Paris. The woods nearby. Standing outside with his sister. After they got kicked out onto the streets. Waiting for someone to save them, like in the movies.

A couple notices him for a moment but go on their way and think little of the smiling old man. His steps are awkward and slow. His breathing, more of a wheezing now. But there’s energy in the steps. And every hour or so he let’s out a sharp cackle. Crawing about his great escape. Mischief. Such mischief.

Margaret. That was his wife. A real piece of work he would say. He could hear her even now. Reprimanding him. He scowls walking a bit faster, away from the scolding. He falls and scrapes his legs and arms. His head hits the pavement. He remembers being punched. Being beaten up in school for being something. What was it? Lying in the school parking lot next to a broken camera. And so to avoid such shocks, he gradually, especially after joining the army, became much more normal, and found that he didn’t have to think as much. And if he needed to, he could make his own worlds in his mind. And let the present fade.

He gets to his feet and catches his breath feeling fatigued and lost even though, at this point in the night, he is currently next to his favorite diner Nighthawks. He was a real regular. He would order a large egg and cheese omelet with with diced peppers and onions with a side of extra extra crispy bacon and baked beans. I stopped getting them after the price increased a dollar. Ridiculous. And I would get a dark coffee with cream and sugar, but I never used the cream.

He remembers his daughter’s name. Angela. How could he forget. Yes Angela. And as a young girl, she would tell him her stories while he ate ravenously. Washing down his food with coffee. Worrying about rent. Staring out those large windows. At the women walking by.

He hugged close to the diner windows still unaware he was touching the very thing he was remembering. Walking along the building, his fingers traced something wrong with the wall. Not a wall. A door. A door into the diner left inexplicably ajar.

This door was very hard to grasp because his fingers were so very numb. But he pulled out of curiosity. Repositioning himself twice, he finds an angle where can effectively pry the door and squeeze in. His skin began to vibrate, a buzzing sensation going all along his body from head to to just before the toes where sensation began to taper off.

His lung hurt but there was fresh eagerness with each breath. Though he hadn’t the physicality to express it, he felt alive. When was the last time he felt alive? Not since the war. Or when Allison was born. That was a good day too. The lights came on.

Is there someone there? And then the old man realized that they were automatic lights like the ones back at that place. Folks are getting so lazy they can’t bother using a switch. The old man began getting very angry before he forgot why.

Bored of being confined to the walls, he takes a step toward the center. And then another, often bumping into tables and chairs. He knocked over a jar of salt and it broke on the floor. It was thrilling. He knocked another one over and shattered the salt on the ground. He took a bottle of ketchup and slowly squirted the contents onto the table. I should have been a painter.

Continuing toward the center of the diner he found himself before a wide staircase. At the top of which was a large ornate mirror. A different animal on each corner. An owl. An elephant. A horse. A bear. And while the old man could not make out the exact details of the mirror, it was the most his eyes had strained to focus since his daughter Annabelle last visited.

And while he didn’t voice it in his mind, he lurched forward with every intent of breaking that mirror.

So then

The old man found

Himself clinging to the rail

Hoisting himself from one step to the

next step. Remembering the his sister and

The men he fought alongside with as well as the waiters

From the restaurant. And burning his feet on the sidewalk during a

heatwave in 1964. And the last chapter of his most favorite book: Moby Dick

And he remembered kissing a friend from his childhood and all the hell that wrought

My name is Jonah.

And Jonah began laughing big croaky ha’s and tittering like a school age boy. He looked from the middle of the stairwell at his kingdom. The foggy city of memory that lay before him. The fluorescent lights from the inside spilling out the windows along the dark downtown. And as his laughter settled, he remembered one more thing, in a great white flash.

I’m petrified of heights.

————

A lady without a house was walking outside in the middle of the night. She was going to find some trash pizza behind Santomango’s Pizzeria but got distracted by a commotion going on down the street. She found a chucked butt on the ground and picked it up lighting it with a match. Maybe it was a firealarm? She heard it from all the way down the street. When she went down a block or two she saw it was coming from Nighthawk’s Diner. It was all lit up. A sun-faded sign by the door said “Temporarily closed for two weeks. We hope to see you soon :)”

When she looked through the large glass windows exploring the interior. There might be some good stuff in here. Her eyes climbed the stairwell and saw a statue and past that large beautiful mirror. And she thought about combing her hair. And then she noticed the statue was actually a living old man in big brown slipper. He was in the middle of the stairwell, clutching the railing with a death-like grip. Her cigarette burned her finger and she flicked it away.

Returning her focus to the old man, she sees that he was bleeding from the head, a thin line of blood running down his wrinkly face and crooked nose. She began formulating theories of how he might have gotten there and how long he’d been standing there. She knew though, that even though he was standing there, he was somewhere else all together. The automatic lights flickers off plunging the street into darkness. And an audible gasp is heard through the glass.