The Cobblestone Journey
A man leading a disjointed, simple life
The Street
“I am a man.” He pinched the scars on his wrist a second time. “Yep, and I am still … alive.” He was not sure if merely being alive made him a man. He wondered if there was more to life than just being. He drifted through life for many years, unaware of who or what he was. There were times when he did not even know where he was. “I am here now.” Was that a statement of fact, truth or opinion?
The streets were quiet this early in the morning. The gaslights were still lit, the lesser lustre of a burgeoning new era, allowing the shadows to dance in their anaemic light. The horseshit piles, fresh from the early morning deliveries, were steaming in the frigid air, making their own partisan puffs of putrid morning mist. As he walked along the gritty pavement, mindful of each step he took, he let his mind drift along the gaps and cracks of the roadway’s cobblestones.
Gaslights flicker on cobblestone streets,
reflecting light in morning mist’s embrace.
Echos of a past linger, adventures untaken,
a life once vibrant, now frayed and shaken.
Copious quantities of dreams reduced to ash,
littered memories whisper of that past.
He could not bring himself to walk down that street. Brownstone buildings, tightly packed together like a loaf of sliced bread, with barely a difference between them. It was not the brick’s sameness or the street’s length. It was the memory of it. He saw children playing. Boys with their tops, whipping them down on the pavement. Girls jumping rope to schoolhouse rhymes. His children.
He slowly turned his head away and looked up the deserted street. Wrought iron fences, placements and awnings glistened on either side of the street, like prison bars. A momentary lapse in thought brought back the thought of that little bunk and bucket. The bedbugs were crawling on his skin, and the cockroaches were fleeing from his footsteps. The grit and grime on the back of the neck and hands. He shook his head, and the memory was gone.
In that dark world of disappointment and failure,
where dreams faded into the abyss of time,
betrayal whispered in the ever-present shadows,
where conflict and despair danced their jig;
in those hard times of isolation and regret,
imprisoned by mistakes, paying their debt.
The sun was inching closer to the distant horizon. The faint glow of dawn was looming larger with the promise of a sunlit day. His breath froze as it left his bristle-lined lips, falling unconsciously to the ground. A cold shudder went down his spine. Chilled, unsympathetic air crept down along his loose coat collar. He reached up, shook his collar and pulled it tighter around his shoulders and neck.
The first of the many shops that line this part of town was now coming into view. The painted words and images on their large windows were indecipherable, details lost in the obscurity of dull darkness. But he knew every word from memory. The first shop he came to was the bakery shop. The bakery’s alley bins were a favoured stop for street shoppers. It was rare not to find discarded bread and pastries there. His destination.
Melancholy reigns where laughter once echoed,
darkened shops silently bear witness to past’s plight,
Auld Lang Syne haunting like ghostly fissures in the street,
time slipping through shabby fingers like dry sand;
wealth cannot buy back what has been lost …
Screams an abandoned soul examining the cost.
His darkened silhouette catches his eye as he is about to pass the bakery window and turn the corner. He turns, facing the image before him, a reflection. The figure before him is but a matted outline. A cutout, a paper doll, pasted onto the window. Details are lost in a haze of sables and greys. He raises his hands to adjust his old, tattered Brixton, its navy blues washed out long ago. “Am I that man?”
Moving gently from side to side, twisting a bit to see if his movements could be detected in the reflection, he is unfazed. There is no difference between the moving image and the still-life image. He smiles, but it is no reflection. He blinks and widens his eyes. His ageing, out-of-date glasses hide his eyes behind scuffed and cracked lenses. Nothing to see. As he focuses beyond the image and into the shop, he sees canvas bags and heavy sacks on the floor. Empty shelves. The kitchen … dark. The Baker is late this morning.
In the reflected darkness, light seems so far away,
navigated alone, the journey reveals nothing of itself,
lamenting life’s hand and what was given,
filled with whispers of what might have been;
merely an illusion in a sea of hopelessness and despair,
there is not a glimmer of that which can be compared.
The sound of approaching, shuffling footsteps breaks the still reflection of the moment. He must round the corner and get to the bins. Someone was coming.
The Box
He remembered turning the corner that day. It was a cold morning. Very cold. His fingertips were numb. His nail beds were pale, bloodless. The last few days were filled with snow flurries and freezing rain. The undisturbed ground was layered in a thick carpet of glistening, unbroken white. The utility pole wires were coated in ice. The ageing, silent sentinels that lined the street with their naked limbs and dormant primordial nodes stood frozen underneath a lazy, chaotic fringe of tiny prismatic icicles. The cloud, covering with its frosty white and grey hues, dampened every light source. Why am I here?
Look at him — such a waste of a man. You’d think he was always this way: alone and wandering a barren landscape. I have to wonder how his life would have been if he had made better or different choices. Just look at him. I can barely watch him for more than a few seconds before feeling his loneliness. What a jerk. Idiot. He should not have been in the cold. He should been in a warm place, enjoying a life of comfort and ease. I will never understand him.
He had not gone far before coming across a couple of playful neighbour kids. The bakery and its barren shelves a distant memory. His mind wandered to the once-green grass that probably lay beneath all that wintry white and their feet. They couldn’t care less about the cold and ice. They were dressed as if it were just another cool autumn evening after a very hot day. Made sense unless, of course, you were a stranger to these parts. Ice angels still lay as they were made. The kids were now making small circles in the ice-encrusted snow, breaking it down into a manageable slushy consistency like shaved ice. Once they had a sufficient amount, they would scoop it up, try to form a ball, and throw it at each other. Their squeals of laughter echoed off the silent landscape as if they could awaken everything from their frozen slumber.
I never really knew him. Seeing him now reminds me I should have been closer. Years of mistakes and trauma had left such an obvious mark on him. You can see it in the wrinkles on his face. Those telltale crow’s feet etched into the skin around the eyes from years of smiles and laughter were absent. I want to weep, not at his predicament but at my own callousness and aloofness. Alone like that, watching other people’s worlds go by, wishing he could be part of theirs. Poor man.
He had to be careful with every footstep. The icy pavement reeked of unsympathetic injury. He wished the clouds would part, if but a little, so that some of the light that must still be present above them could reach out. Of course, he forgot his clip-on magnetic sunglasses, so maybe just as well. His numb fingertips were starting to bug him. He wore fingerless gloves because, in the day, he wanted to feel the keyboard when he typed. Dumb. Out here, there are no keyboards. If he put his hands in his coat pockets, it would unsteady him, to be sure, and the pavement would undoubtedly claim another victim.
I loved him … at least at one time. Love sucks anyway. It really serves no purpose in life. Shit, yeah, it has a purpose: to cause endless amounts of pain and misery. You should have reached out to me. Damn you. I never let him know I loved him. I don’t understand what that love was anyway; it could have just been a combination of curiosity and infatuation. Stupid bastard, now he IS alone. Then again, he was always alone. He never let anyone in, not really. He’d hug me, but I knew he was miles away. Stupid fuck, be alone, see if I care.
Walking past his old church reminded him of a belief he never fully grasped. He read books, commentaries and histories about this faith, but it never really sank into his heart. There was that one time, though briefly, when he thought he had figured it all out. A time when his prayers did not seem hollow or shallow … when they did not fall from his lips like he was in some padded cell. But that time had passed quickly. This large brick building stood before him like a monument to his failures and lack of faith. A handmade tile was laid into the brickwork on the side of one of the buildings, along with a few dozen others. It was made by one of the students. It had his name on it in appreciation for his donations to the school and the rebuilding of the church after the fire. Obscured now by some graffiti artist’s handiwork.
He loved to tell stories while we walked together. I loved his imagination. Oh, he lied a lot. I never let on. I knew they were just part of a misunderstood life. Why I loved his stories. I never really knew if they were real or imaginary or some mix. His stories were full of the brightest imagery. I felt like all the characters were speaking to me personally. When I looked into his eyes, I could see the words flashing out of them like sparkling diamonds. If he is speaking now, I cannot hear him. I have no idea where he is walking now. His silence disturbs me.
It was time to turn around and head back home. Home. No, not a home, just a dwelling place. A place to park his stuff and collect dust that he could not wipe off. It could have been a cave or some hollowed-out tree stump. Home lives in the heart. Home is where the people you love and that love you await. Home is where the memories live. No, he was not walking home. Turning another corner and crossing the street to the other side, he saw the murky, cinereal shadows lengthening across the frozen landscape. The shop windows with their washed-out words were now dark and uninviting. The day’s rimy light was waning. It would soon be dark. He quickened his pace.
She looked at him there without a tear. “Look at him, he looks so serene”, she said more loudly than she wanted. Her daughter scoffed, “That is just dumb, mum; they always look serene in a coffin. They make them look like that on purpose so you don’t freak out”. “Perhaps, but he does look at peace”, mum responded. Her daughter just rolled her eyes and walked on. She stood there in silence. Thinking about what might have been … what should have been. The pallbearers were ready. After saying a prayer and giving a blessing, the priest closed the coffin lid. Only the gravediggers and pallbearers remained.
All was numb. All was darkness.
The End
©Written by Thomas Crandall, November, 2021
I’ve come a long way.
This is brilliant Thom. So well written, like everything you write. I really love the mix of poetry and prose. Thank you 💕