Spaces In My Thinking

Spaces In My Thinking

Spring green against black trunks of trees, the smell of wet bark and last fall’s leaves is the spring of my mind here in Northern Mississippi. There is not so much a winter here, as there is a lack of summer; one needs to prepare for it just the same. I still feel pale from the season prior.

A shovel into soil sends spores searching for new, fertile ground, carried by the moist breeze. The city is a long way from here.

Mist covers me, covers the rosebuds. Covers the windshield of my Dodge resting against the timber at the end of the gravel with fine, Gaussian droplets. The chill is gone from my winter-white bones and I can move again, slowly. The loud blat from a motorcycle beats down the soundlessness of the mist as it roars past. I’m too far from the road to see it through the fine veil; my head turns toward it though, and I find I can move my body and so I do, moving to the rose bushes, gingerly squatting down to inspect.

Through the lower section of my bifocals, I see a small mayfly perched on curved, thread-thin legs. All of the insect’s parts are arched. They combine in French curves and ellipses. Its furry tongue stabs at a dewdrop, drinking from it on the pale pink bud and I want to taste what it tastes. I think that the dew covering a flower so beautiful would be about the purest water one could ever sip.

I forget myself and kneel closer, dirtying my pants knees and almost losing my balance. I reach out and pull the pristine bud closer, disturbing the insect. It gives up its perch to me as a matter of course and flies off to another part of the plant. Almost without shame, I lightly run my tongue down the length of the rosebud. All the while I am cognizant of my memory of my first young wife and the pleasure and reverence with which I touched her in the same manner.

“To hell with shame and guilt!” I think, as I purposefully run my tongue up and down the length of the pink beauty, remembering. The fragrance carries with it a taste imagined of the rosewater used in young Naomi’s pastries made only for me to eat on the stoop out back of the kitchen in that eastern morning light I liked so well.

“Old man, what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m doing what I want. What damn business is it of yours?” I reply, as if in answer to my own conscience.

Suddenly, I am touched on the shoulder roughly and all at once I realize someone has seen me and I rush to stand up. I am startled out of my skin, it’s all so much.

That’s when I felt the ripping in my side; the heat and pain traveling up under my ribs into my armpit and shoulder, forcing me bolt upright and falling down at the same time. I wanted to throw up. I remember seeing sideways the shovel lying next to me and the muddy brown boots of Tommy Rose and then his knees and then his hands coming to my face, turning my head up toward the sky, seeing his unshaven face all screwed up and then a wash of light and that’s it.

As I lie here with my eyes closed, I can play all of it back slowly and add details that I didn’t catch when it happened. I think I’ve been lying here a long time and I haven’t particularly wanted to be a part of anything out there yet.

Although, it’s too much time to think. I’m tired of thinking. I’ll think myself to death, I think. There seems not enough spaces in between, where you can just sit and look at things, not thinking anything about them like they’re pretty or dirty or old or big or a color I don’t like.

When I first came to, there was a space where I wasn’t thinking. I just laid there and watched what was going on underneath my eyelids. I guess it was just sort of imagining, but there were shapes that I manipulated into scenes and people that I found it amusing to see. I dressed them funny and put funny makeup on the women. I created my long passed-on father as a Mario Andretti kind of man in a car racing outfit and had him racing around the track until I wanted to drive so I put him in the passenger seat next to me as we hit over one hundred and fifteen together. It was not fast by today’s standards but it was plenty fast for us.

I found time to give myself any experience I wanted and what I discovered was that I could really get wild. I found myself chuckling quite often, lying there… where? I hadn’t even bothered to wonder where the hell I was yet.

And with this thought, the rest of the world (which world?) came seeping back into me (or I into it?) and I opened one eye. There was Tommy Rose sitting, face still screwed up, staring at me. When I opened the other eye, I saw that it was only half of his face, the rest of it bandaged up, and I felt I had done something with that shovel. I tried to rise up toward Tommy and found all of the tubes connecting to my arms and a mask strapped to my face and I could only groan, lifting and pointing my chin toward him.

I was thinking and thinking and thinking myself saying to Tommy that I was terribly sorry and asking him what had happened and how bad was it and that I would make it better for him if he would only tell me how. I was feeling helpless to communicate with the outside world.

Tommy recognized this and came closer to me. He began saying how sorry he was, that it was his fault for walking up so silently, scaring me, and his fault for being stupid on the gravel with his motorbike and what could he do for me and it seemed like the exact same thoughts I was thinking.

When it all came out, I knew all that had gone on and that nothing of it had anything to do with the shovel. Tommy’s motorbike went down on the gravel and he came to my place for help and simply startled me. When the doctors said I was through with the hospital part of recovering from the heart attack, someone called Tommy to come take me home. He had been using the Dodge since bringing me to the hospital and would drive me back in it. The hospital had made arrangements for a nurse at the house, so home I went.

It is later in the spring now, and most of the trees are in full leaf. There is not so much moisture in the air, but it’s humid enough to smell the sour mulch from underneath the two big magnolia trees out front. Tommy’s bandages are off and he drives down the driveway now and then and I was relieved to see that the scarring is not so bad as anyone thought. I see the sun glint off of his Harley-Davidson when he drives by and I know I have no desire to hop on that thing with him. Not that I could, physically.

I can’t use my right leg at all anymore and, heck, it wasn’t in great shape to begin with, so I’ve had the house fixed up to accommodate me. I had to borrow money against the house but I think, goodness, I’m not going to live to see the end of that banknote anyway.

The thing for me was the big planters I had made by a big burly fellow named Robert Buckner. He charged me an arm and my good leg for it but he did a fine job of it. I had him put them all along the inside of the porch railing and he painted them forest green so they wouldn’t contrast with the foliage out beyond the porch.

I called the local nursery and they sent out this sweet young college girl and she spent enough hours out here to give me pictures in my mind I can live with a long time. The roses she transplanted onto the porch turned out to be real beauties that I can get over to in my wheelchair without too much fuss.

So I have time enough now to find spaces in all my thinking, time enough to see things and look at things that I only heard about and things I can only imagine. I’ve created whole cities and new inventions and even created a life beyond this one for myself.

And Mr. Buckner was kind enough to build those planters with legs so I don’t have to lean too far down to those beautiful, precious, roses.

The End.