The white noise of the early morning enveloped the old man as he moved down the street. Starlight etched the tops of the trees in the distance. The cold jet of his breath invigorated him. The cab, waiting a block away consistent with his instructions, chugged a stream of white puffs under the halo of a flickering streetlight.
While he’d not thought his early morning bolt from the nursing home would pose insurmountable difficulty given his advance scouting, he hadn’t expected it to be wholly without opposition either. He turned back to the low square building feeling a modicum of regret over what would ensue. The nurses would have impossible questions to answer. He resolved to insist on the security guard’s rehiring Monday morning should it come to that. The poor boy’s vigilance, he would say, was overcome by gerontological treachery. He knew he was storing up trouble for himself, as well. There would be considerable friction all around upon his planned return Sunday night.
His sons would surely worry after him when they were informed, but would also know that he had proven immune to foul play all his life. His fortunes in terms of survival against poor odds were invariably described as feline in nature. While either of his boys would’ve carried him south without complaint, they were busy with their own families now, and he had no interest in being toted about like a sack of potatoes in the back seat of a minivan. This way was more dignified and far preferable for everybody. He felt sure in retrospect everyone would agree. Being wholly on his own was rare these days, and he welcomed the space. His residency at the Gardens of Colonial Oaks Senior Living was as unsuitable to his temperament and constitution as it was necessary given his deteriorating condition.
The old man placed his small suitcase in the backseat of the taxi and in a slow scratchy voice that reflected his age, spoke his first words of the day as he removed his hat and settled in.
“Springfield bus station it is then,” the driver repeated.
The old man placed his hat on his luggage and stared ahead, his mouth slightly open, his tongue suspended between his thin lips as occurred naturally when he was in deep concentration or physical pain. They moved out. He exhaled, glancing back.
“You ain’t on the lamb there from the old folks’ home there, mister?” the cabbie asked. “You got your fare, right? I’ll turn right around if you don‘t got your fare.” He looked back in the mirror at the old man for an extended period of time. No reply was forthcoming, but there was something in his passenger’s self-possession that satisfied the driver. “So long as you have the fare then,” he finally said, his eyes returning to the road as the ticker advanced.
A congregation of long silver huffing boxes rumbled in dissonance in low registers at the Greyhound station. Half an hour later, the old man’s bus lurched out onto the highway. He had broken out of the city’s limits and began to pass the time in counsel with a young man with long blonde hair who’d announced suddenly from across the aisle a half hour ago that he was a poet, “but not the kind you’re thinking of.”
“I wasn’t thinking of any particular sort,” the old man confessed. “I’m not aware of the distinctions anyhow.”
“My poems don’t rhyme,” the young man told him.
“Well, it’ll take practice.”
“No. They’re not supposed to.”
He waited for incredulity to register on the old man’s face, but was disappointed. “The rhyming can be restrictive, I suppose, though I‘m partial to it. In what pentameter to you compose?“
“In what? You sure talk slow, mister,” the young man observed, removing a necklace made up of a sequence of hollowed out colorful beads on a worn leather strap from his neck. “I’m Troy.”
“Tate,” the old man replied offering his hand across the aisle.
“I want to give you a bead, Mr. Tate. It’s good karma,” he said. “I make ‘em my self. Made this one in Spokane. This one in San Francisco.” Tate shook his head expressing a cordial appreciation as the boy went on. “Sacramento. Denver.”
Tate pointed to a green one.
“Seattle,” he answered.
“That’s something else,” Tate said.
“Each one represents a higher circle.”
Tate had made the mistake of assuming they represented American cities, but kept this to himself. He had found it a good deal easier to avoid condescension after he’d begun, some time ago, to understand that everyone he met was under pressure to find validation for the state they had found themselves in. He was no exception himself. To this end, he found himself leaning in mildly curious about these circles.
“What’s that scribbling going on about on their sides?” Tate asked, pointing at the Seattle bead.
“Those are what I call inscriptions. You know like words.”
Tate adjusted his glasses and examined the beads, but his prescription, any prescription it turned out, was useless for this purpose. There were only a series of squiggles and lines with no repeating sequences he could detect.
“I can’t read them,” he said squinting.
The young man laughed for a long time before apologizing sincerely and reporting he carved them into the beads in a tongue as yet undiscovered. No one, he explained, could hope to translate them unless under the appropriate sedatives. The young man struggled mightily with the knot of the leather strap, which suffused the bead presentation with anticlimax, then changed his mind several times about which bead to give up to his new friend, each one in turn apparently becoming his favorite. He finally settled on a red and yellow one with thin black rings on it. It reminded the old man of a harmless garter snake.
“This is a really good bead,” the young man proclaimed, tying the necklace back up and replacing it around his neck. “Portland,” he reminisced.
“Oregon or Maine?”
“No, Portland,” the young man said.
Tate couldn’t think why it had made a difference to him.
“I even think I know what yours says,” he offered.
The old man’s instincts won out over his better judgment. “I thought no one knew.”
“Except that one,” the young man said.
“And?” Tate asked.
“What?”
“What does it say?”
“Oh. It says, ‘Life is hard and then you die.’” He laughed again and flipped his golden hair. “Or maybe it’s ‘then you live.’ I can’t remember.”
Tate inspected it, holding the bead up between his thumb and forefinger, thanked the young man, but said nothing else so as not to perplex the narrative further.
An hour later, as they both disembarked, Tate thanked the golden boy again, and wished him luck. “Much obliged for the souvenir.”
“Yes, sir. You going to be ok here.”
The old man nodded as he cleaned his glasses with his handkerchief, put it way, replaced his glasses just so, then took up his suitcase. “I’m gaining ground.”
The young man moved one way from the bus station along the street as the old man went the other way, toward the sculptural fountains adjacent to the tall clock tower and the large red-roofed building a few blocks to the west. Tate paused in front of the fountains reminiscing. The sun was up now and a rainbow arched through the jets and sprays amidst the blocky bronze figures.The Meeting of the Waters, it was called, if he recalled.
“Gaining ground,” he repeated as he crossed the street and entered the building. Walter Tate was relieved when his train was called shortly after his arrival as he considered the lost glory of St. Louis’s Union Station most regrettable.