POTTER’S FIELD
By m.s.wardrip
Our town has a sixty-five year old ex-cop still making fart jokes,
A balding Historian, wasting my time trying to convince me things happened here that I didn’t know about and that they are of great interest and are of intense local import, writes on, leaving a history of his own in the wake, not that anyone is ever going to read it. It belongs on some anonymous blog filed under obscure and uneventful happenings of yesteryear. That is a good resting place for the whole town of the past. I mean to say, “What history is worth preserving?” “We all busted our asses to barely scrape by and many of us didn’t even scrape by.” Hard work and futility, a likely pair in the negative sense but on the other hand, hard work can get you what you want. In this case, whitewashing one wall, gave us a chance to make payments on a new wall. We whitewashed a lot of walls so we could come home and look at a whitewashed wall that someone else whitewashed. The appliances were nice too. They made life easier. Life got so easy in fact, we were living life on the sofas in front of the TV. Alana and I were getting to be very physically inactive. Sometimes we would try different things like turning on the radio or reading a magazine. We spent weeks and years on the internet surfing. Pizza was a staple, cheese balls go well with large amounts of assorted chocolate candies. We had the munchies a lot from smoking so much pot. A buzz was mandatory. We were living on our savings and the government. Occasional weekend booze was readily available to discerning tastes. Yellowbirds to Black Russians. Sam Adams to San Miguel to PBR to Bud, beer always flowed freely in Greely. Then came the diagnosis and the operations, hospitals, doctors.
The nursing home has bingo everyday at 9am. “Be there or be square”, they say. I have a wheelchair and I’ll go anywhere I want. I’ll go out to the sun room and talk to a Ficus tree if I want to. They can’t stop me. Anyway, they are always too busy dealing with the old ladies and their diarrhea, nausea and pain. All they ever have to do with me is change the dressing on my operation wound. They took out my mainspring, now I have to wind myself manually. Alana lives somewhere else now. She comes by to see me sometimes, but not as much since she moved to Florida. Maybe every six months, come to think of it. That’s okay. I’ve got a swinging relationship with one of the gals from the North wing. We have lunch together sometimes and I held her hand one time at the movies. I can’t remember the name of the movie but she wore a pink sweater and smelled like strawberries. Her name is Arlene. She is from Potter’s Field too. She is cousins to my ex-boss’s wife. They own the biggest granary in town now. The Parsons are big in Greely. They own half the town. That’s it! That’s my solution to my dilemma! Why didn’t I think of that before? I need to ask the old man Parsons if I can come live there in the Parsons community. I know it was set up as a charity for people like me in wheelchairs in nursing homes. I’m calling him now.
I peek out the window at the curtains edge as I lean forward from the sofa. We just finished our tea and crackers. Arlene is happy here with me. There is a note on the big screen TV. “Alana is coming to visit today around 10am.” scrolls across the bottom of the screen. Arlene stands up and says, “I don’t feel like visiting with Alana, so I’m taking the Mercedes to the farmers market for a while.” I agree that it’s a good idea and she heads out, leaving me to visit with the ex. The ex still wants money from me and is determined to get it. I don’t mind giving her what’s hers, but it’s costing me too much to give it to her. It all has to be handled legally and legal fees are prohibitive. It doesn’t really matter anymore anyway. She has given me an ultimatum this time which can’t be met. She said have the cash or else. If I know her, that can mean only one of two things. Prison or death.
It was death. She made it quick and clean. She asked if I had the money. I said no. She called me loser and shot me between the eyes and then in the heart… twice. I died instantly. Arlene came from the farmers market and dropped the farm fresh country brown eggs all over the entry foyer. Alana went to prison and Arlene lived out her days in the Parsons community. I was buried in the rose garden far away from Potters Field. There is a small farm outbuilding near the rose garden. They keep it whitewashed all the time.
