The man walked down the street. As he walked, he stuffed his
hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. A scraggly looking cat with long gray
hair stared out at the man from underneath a pick up truck. The truck had chrome
wheels and a dented side panel. The street was grey as well.
The wind was always strong in the morning, and the man
lowered his chin to his chest and hunched against the cold air. He hunched and
hunched until he no longer resembled a man, but rather a shapeless moving pile of
clothing. As he walked, small drops of water began to hit the sidewalk. This
was a spring rain, but it was early spring, and it was too cold to be pleasant.
The man continued to walk.
He turned onto a quiet street with houses on both sides. In
this area of Queens, cars were allowed to park on both sides of the streets,
and so the man walked down a tunnel lined with houses and cars on both sides.
The cars began to look like houses, and the houses disappeared.
Over his left shoulder, the man carried a medium sized khaki
bag. The only notable feature of the bag was a water bottle sticking out from
underneath a folded cloth cover.
As he walked, the houses changed gradually. At first, they
were well kept and orderly. As he walked, they began to fall into a state of
disrepair. The houses seemed to stay in place it was just the quality of the
houses that changed. As he walked, the houses grew worse and worse. Finally,
when it seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, they started to get better.
Now these houses were covered in blue and white paint. And
they seemed much better than before, and the small weed-covered yards were
filled with cracked clay planter jars, and there was at least an attempt to
grow flowers. And the beauty of this short row of trying-to-be-nice houses
stood in stark contrast to the not-trying-so-hard houses on the previous
street. The man stood straighter as he passed these homes.
Now, more cats were staring at him. And a few children were
staring out from between the blinds on the windows facing the streets. The
children looked briefly and then, without removing themselves from the window,
would turn their necks and look inwards and some unseen figure, most likely
parental. And this unseen guardian or legally responsible individual would say
something to the children, although it was impossible to hear. And the children
would say something back, also impossible to hear. But it was easy to see their
mouths moving.
Actually, the response of the children affirmed the possibility
of the unseen parent inside the house. And this possibility solidified into a
probability and then froze in place as a reality. The man did not turn to see
this. The man had seen it many times before. The children used to look for longer,
but now they only glanced outside of the window briefly when the man walked
past. And then they turned back into their homes.
The only people left watching the man were the cats. The
cats never turned back into their homes because their homes were underneath
cars and pickup trucks. It is hard to imagine turning around in something that
has no walls.
