Five Months Seven Days

Gone Now


Now don’t tell me. I’m waiting here on this park bench for the surprise, and I would hate from some do-gooder like you to spoil my fun. I watch the joggers, the dog walkers, the other old guys feeding pigeons, those dirty birds crooning songs for food, and then men like me, who have connections to things unseen, waiting for the surprise. I’ve been coming here for five months and seven days; I mistakenly thought that last Thursday would be the Time, but I was too early. And the other five months? Merely a primer, strictly an evaluation period, a kind of probation. Since I’m still here, sitting on this park bench with naughty words carved into it, I’m assuming I passed. Not like Darrell, who used to sit on the memorial bench over that grassy stretch over there, you see it? The empty bench with the name on it of Douglas Farber. Mr. Farber, he owned the flophouses down Firestone Street back in the forties, even stayed in one of them myself for a time; died in eighty-seven, colon cancer. Anyway, Darrell used to sit on that bench waiting for the Time, but he wasn’t up to grade. Gone now. But I don’t think you’ll see any park benches springing up in his name around here. He’ll be in the watershed, somewhere, I imagine. I wonder if he’s fully decomposed by this point; no, weather’s been too cold this fall. No matter, he was not up to grade for the surprise, or so They must be thinking.

Now Agnes, she’s the one in the tall weeds out by bike path, looks like she’s peeing in the park again--doesn’t like public toilets, you know. Agnes is a prime candidate for the surprise; she converses with Them in the early mornings. Then around lunchtime she’s in a catatonic state, Transporting she calls it. Just lays down in the grass, eyes rolled back in her head, and doesn’t respond to nothin' for about thirty minutes. When she gets up, she’s just got this expression on her face--total relaxation, peace, love--whatever you want to call it. She says she’s guessed what the surprise is going to be, and it’s got to be something wonderful, I’m thinking. Dear woman, a far cry from when she was twelve and used to lift her skirt for our gang during recess on the playground. A number of years gone by since then; can’t say I wouldn’t like another peek, but I’ll bide my time.

You might be wondering how I got the patience to come back each day for five months and seven days now. A few reasons, I suppose. Not much else to do since I retired and my wife passed on. You’ve also got to be a man with gumption, a cause greater than yourself to serve. And of course, who don’t like a surprise? I been excited for weeks now, knowing the time’s getting closer and that I’d passed several tests already. Like the locust storm, that late summer day, grasshoppers crawling all over everything, driving most folks out of this park screaming. Not me though. And there was the Gay Pride parade. That was a tough one for me. More freakish clowns in the park that day than I thought existed in this town. Now I can tolerate a couple of fairies holding hands, but dressed up like harlots and dancing in broad daylight? I persevered, however, all for a greater cause. And that cause is today, my friends. But don’t tell me nothing. I don’t want to know what the surprise is going to be until I see it, there before me in all its glory, and my days on this bench with the naughty words is over, and I might even see Dolores again. Oh damn, hold on a sec. That wasn’t my loved one’s name. Now let me think . . .