Ghost Town, 1
Everywhere you walked, the streets were empty of people and filled with trash. The corner liquorstore — usually bristling with the local drunks who stood shoulder to shoulder every Saturday night, arguing and telling tall tales while they waited for their brownpaper bags — sat quiet for weeks on end. No dogs ran after frisbees in the park. Not even stray cats crawled over the downtown alleyways. The sun looked like a fuzzy orange when it rose and a bloodsoaked ball of cotton when it set, gauze settling into a familiar wound. Even the sky’s wispy clouds resembled the paledirty fabric of a hospital gown. Everyone was sick. When you walked outside your nose burned and tears sprung to your eyes. The city air cured flesh like smoke.
I was old enough to remember the good old days, back when green plants sprouted through sidewalk cracks and it didn’t hurt being alive. That was a long time ago. I envied the young people, of course, but I still felt sorry that they never knew how it was to inhale something good for us, when the planets were aligned and rainwater brought old people back to health. They ought to be mourning for the life that never was. The world was rotten and they had never known otherwise. The wellbeing of children was wasted on this town, which left them washed up high and dry, like jellyfish on the upper reaches of beach. Southern degenerates in a seaside resort. They were full of life and drying out quickly, a ticking timebomb. Piece by piece, layer by layer, the juice that fills the veins of June flowers and adolescent foreheads was running into the rubble of sheetrock and crushed gravel. The milk of tenderness was a slow drip not much in attendance, with few prospects for keeping its store in stock. Green lights were turning to empty.
Our whole neighborhood trembled like a cold leaf in wind and great houses wallowed in the midst of large empty yards, like orchestra halls with no one playing and no one listening. Colored sheets on clotheslines bleached gray in the sun. I remember them lying warm on people’s beds. Here and there a cloud of dust spun in hazy spiral, caught at its edge by the wind and sent twirling down the street like a dancer.
When I was a kid they closed down the main thoroughfare every Thanksgiving and held a parade through the middle of town. With any luck the frost burned off the sidewalk benches by midmorning. Fathers lined the streets with daughters running underfoot and tiny sons perched on their shoulders to see. Arms wrapped around his neck and hands on his cheek. Squads of firefighters and reserve soldiers marched to backing music, and clowns zigzagged inbetween peddling bicycles and funny men darted wearing masks. Brightly colored floats passed, rolling smoothly on invisible wheels, and tissuepaper blossoms fluttered in the cold November air. I saw dozens of families turning in place and holding court, and I knew they had homes to go to. Fortunate. I would picture them siting around dining tables, silverware shining, glossy handrails, glass stemware gleaming, pictureportraits and polished wooden floors leading a straight path to the kitchen, spic and span. Come summertime the picnic tables filled up with fruitbowls and beerbottles. They were well off and happy. I wanted someone to be happy.
My aunts and uncles were pleased to report the news every time a wealthy patriarch kicked the bucket. Luckily my own parents had already died: they coundn’t watch me now become a pariah. My sister was still missing. Somewhere out of state. Absent members of the family lay mute and it was all in the past. Stagnant, longgone like those ancient insects frozen in amber on display at the museum of natural history. It was a relief to get that business out of the way, to get the dogs off my scent and get down to brasstacks. The realness of real life only hit you when the chickens came home to roost.
The great houses sat deserted now, and the more goods they held the higher the flames climbed in the night sky.
