Versatile Pages

It was no secret to John that Olivia liked oranges. She had told him this once, furtively, as she had glanced, and double-glanced, at a homeless man, huddled and half-asleep, leaned up against the stall wall of the bus stop where they waited to travel downtown. She was training as a data-entry clerk at a local hospice center and had hopes of one day managing her own clinic, where they would specialize in veterans with addictions care, something he knew was very near and dear to her heart.

He knew these things because he had written them down. In jolting jots of splashed ink. Incomplete sentences, dotted lines to divide concepts, blurbs, chicken scratches, and scribbles, his journal was a mess of bits, hodgepodge and cobbled, full with all the knowledge he could cram into its pages.

There was Dave, who drove the bus. Dave was 63, and tired. He had worked as a union pipefitter for 43 years since he was sixteen near Pittsburg, and had finally given it up to spend his retirement around his grandkids, up by Atterbury. Dave did not have to do this, he would tell you, he could have quite comfortably retired to his workshop, his dogs, and his granddaughter Millie, five, and grandson Jason, six and a half, seven in March. Except, it had turned out that forty years of practice is hard to beat. Each morning at five a.m. sharp Dave would find himself compelled to leave his bed, let out the dogs, and find his coffee. Once so armed, he would invariably begin his assault upon the day. First, devouring the news as he ate his breakfast, scanning for deals, sales, and upcoming community events. And then, the bathroom. On a nearly related note, he wasn't keen on politicians either. But he watched politics like a hawk. Said he wanted to be sure of what policies his grandkids would be facing since they were too young to know yet.

John always sat up front when Dave drove, he had a rich deep voice and was well-spoken. His heavily callused hands rested softly upon the over-large steering wheel as he plied the roads with his tale of what life was really like for a working man in the 80s. Not for the first time, John was thankful for the path that had brought him here. Always a man of modest means, he had expected to pass much of his life as Dave had, with dirt under his nails, busy building the American Dream, in hopes of one day living it. And it likely would have been the case, had one moment of serendipity not changed his life forever. He never knew her name, or why she would have chosen him in particular, but that twenty grand had been his, and he had put it to good use.

Stepping off the bus, a light breeze tossed John's brown hair, kicking a tuft over his cowlick as he stepped promptly towards the basalt-grey building, across the parking lot from the bus stop where he had arrived.

"Good morning Mr. Denny," he said to the man behind the counter on the other side of the door. What sounded like an ahem, or hmph, issued from the laconic security officer as John had come to expect, he himself passing on to the next aperture without missing a beat.

Daisy was not at the front desk as he entered into the largest room, but flashed him a quick glance and a smile from its far side, where she diligently arranged her space. Phillip started talking to him before he realized that he was there and John turned with a start and stared at the mousey young man. He didn't have any problems with Phillip, quite the contrary, he liked Phillip, he had high hopes for the young man, bookish and a bit naïve though he might be. Get a little life outside of these walls, and a bit more confidence, maybe some skin in the game, and he could be somebody someday.

"They're ready for you in four-eleven," the clerk was saying, gesturing to one of the noise-proof rooms along the north wall, nearest to them.

"Good, good. Thank you, Phillip." John gave as his reply. Turning, he could hear the mumble of suppressed conversation seep through the carpet at the base of the door.

"A full house," he thought to himself, as his hand reached out and grasped the doorknob, turning slightly. An avalanche of voices crashed over his head as the conversations of a tightly packed room overflowed and spilled into his mental space, careening off rocks and walls before subsiding into a silence that looked at him with twenty-three sets of unwavering eyes.

"Alright, Mrs..." he glanced down at his book, "..Kitwell's Seventh Grade Readers' Group, are we?" He glanced around the room, they nodded effusively at him, arms wrapped tightly around knees, hands grasping wrists. "Okay, well my name is Doctor John Ernest, and I teach writing, what we call Composition, at Springfield University. Today your teacher Mrs. Kitwell has asked me to come here and talk to you about books, reading, and what words can do for you. To start, I am going to begin by reading to you from my new story, about worlds and people, written down in a little, black, book.