The clerk behind the counter at Allmart waved cheerfully to Julia as she stepped over the threshold of the store. She nodded an acknowledgement and headed straight to her office. She nodded, because that was what was allowed. If she had waved, it could have been interpreted as something other than a greeting according to the manual adopted by the coop three months ago. Heaven forbid she stop to chat. Julia stopped the thoughts strolling through her mind. No, she told herself, she would not be negative about a regulation intended for her own protection.

It had been exactly six months since her first meeting with Caesar O’Swiffy. The first delivery of chocolate had been wonderful, and it really perked up the entire staff. Julia was glad she had joined the business coop. Mr. O’Swiffy, their accountant, seemed like a dream come true.

The fourth week after that first chocolate delivery had been icy, and three employees were in fender benders; one, a rear end bump at a stop sign, and the other two, minor crashes on side streets. Julia, herself, had had a near miss. So when their accountant had suggested providing transportation to workers who faced some difficulty getting to work, everyone in the coop had agreed. It was worth it to keep their employees safe and, besides, it would minimize hours missed due to taking care of car repairs.

That icy week had made everyone hesitant to make the short run to the McDonald’s down the street over their lunch breaks and those who hadn’t packed a lunch had gone without. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was chocolate in the break room, and some of them had a few pieces. The next coop meeting had resulted in a lunch provision to employees. Breakfast soon followed.

With the provisions had come more paperwork, though. Julia had found every increasing demands on her time to follow coop regulations and to record any deviations from them.

Julia looked up at the sound of a knock on her door.

“The mail came early,” Julia’s assistant, Lexie, said as she walked into the office. “Umm, let’s see, not much here except a few flyers and something from the business coop. The electric and water bills are usually here by now. Would you like me to make some calls and see what’s holding them up?”

“No, Mr. O’Swiffy said we would get a lower rate if the businesses in the coop were billed all together, so the coop is taking care of it now. You have to admit it’s more streamlined.”

Julia slit open the coop’s envelope with her letter opener. She held the contents up for Lexie.

“See? Here are those bills. We just pay the coop instead of the electric and water companies now.”

Lexie bent over and peered at the multiple lines in small print.

“What’s this?” she asked, pointing.

“It’s the charge for the coop to pay the bills.”

“And this?” persisted Lexie pointing to another line.

“That’s the charge to help any business in the coop should they they fall short a month.”

“Doesn’t that negate your savings?” Lexie asked under her breath.

Julia laughed.

“You’d better not let Mr. O’Swiffy hear you. He’d be offended. This is his baby, you know.”

“Hear what?” asked Mr. O’Swiffy as he entered Julia’s office and tossed a Dove sea salt caramel dark chocolate on her desk.

Picking it up and unwrapping it, Julia thought that she could find it in her heart to love this man.

Lexie quickly left as Julia answered, “I was just explaining about the utility charges arrangement.”

Caesar O’Swiffy massaged his back and carefully sat in the chair in front of Julia’s desk.

Julia jumped up.

“How’s your back, Mr. O’Swiffy? I heard you had a run in with a stack of boxes. Here, take my chair. It’s padded.”

The accountant moved to Julia’s chair as Julia sat in the one she reserved for office visitors.

“Thank you, Julia. Yes, it was at Norton’s Grocery during inventory.”

“Why were you there during . . .” Julia began, but Caesar O’Swiffy cut her off.

“I think it’s important, Julia, that the staff is made aware of expectations. That,” Caesar O’Swiffy waved in the direction of the door through which Lexie had recently left, “assistant needs to be reprimanded for her lack of support for our efforts.”

“Oh Lexie’s fine. She’s always been a great employee and is an excellent assistant,” Julia replied.

“Hmmm, we shall see,” Mr. O’Swiffy countered. “Our efforts here are only because we want to make things easier on everyone. Don’t you want to make things easier?”

“Of course!” Julia assured him. No one had ever accused her of a lack of compassion and no one ever would.

“Everyone needs to be supportive. A house divided against itself, well you know the rest. It’s employees like that who bring everyone else down.”

“Lexie has never broken a rule, Mr. O’Swiffy,” Julia defended her assistant.

“Rules can be broken in thought as well as deed,” Caesar O’Swiffy cautioned her.

He placed a stack of papers on Julia’s desk and stood.

“I’ll be back next week to check on staff compliance,” he said, tapping his finger on the papers he’d brought.

Julia stood as he left, then sat back down, then realized she was sitting on the wrong side of her desk.

to be continued . . .

It was going to be one of those days, she thought; a day when chocolate would be more than a treat. Chocolate would be a necessity. First of all, she had slept through her alarm clock which wasn’t alarming in the least. It clicked on the radio that told her the news and the weather and offered a song or two. Today those voices had seeped into her dreams, and she had dreamed of a train crashing into a burglar and a state legislator who were having a heated argument while it rained sporadically. Then she had burned her ear with her curling iron, spilled coffee on the cat, and stepped in a puddle walking from her car to Allmart, a store her great-grandfather had started.

He had opened it under the family name, but for reasons still unclear to her, her father had decided to change the store’s name to something more generic and all-encompassing. It was an average store, but it was under her management, and Julia felt a sense of pride over the variety it offered and customer service it provided. Sure, there were larger stores of its kind and smaller ones, too. But this was the one where Julia had learned about business. This was the one for which she was responsible. This was the one she owned. She was satisfied.

Caesar O’Swiffy peeked his head into her office as he knocked lightly on the door.

Seeing him, Julia stood quickly, bumping her knee on a not quite closed desk drawer.

“Mr. O’Swiffy! I didn’t realize you were coming today,” she said, surreptitiously glancing at her desk calendar.

Caesar O’Swiffy softly laughed in his low, reassuring voice.

“Please. Have a seat,” she said as he shook her hand and sat in the chair across from her desk.

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a Dove caramel milk chocolate, tossing it on her desk. He had remembered she liked chocolate.

“Actually, our meeting was scheduled for next week, but I happened to be in the area  and thought I’d see if we might go over the books today.”

He said it in a way that sounded like the most reasonable request in the world.

It was the most reasonable request in the world.

Julia made a quick phone call to her assistant and assured the accountant hired by the newly formed business cooperative she had joined that they could, indeed, move the meeting.

She cleared off a table in the conference room while she made fresh coffee and as the lovely caramel chocolate melted in her mouth.

The meeting had gone smoothly and was over in less time than Julia had anticipated. It would be nice to have a second set of eyes look things over, especially at tax time. Mr. O’Swiffy had quickly gone over the store’s profits and losses and commended her on her management skills.

“One thing, Julia,” he said after they had returned to her office and settled into their respective chairs. “I noticed there isn’t much for the staff.”

“Much . . .?” Julia attempted to follow Mr. O’Swiffy’s train of thought.

“Oh, you know, something to keep them happy in the break room. For instance, do you think a few packages of chocolates every week would perk people up a bit?” He laughed and gestured out the window. “Especially on a day like today!”

Julia followed his gaze. The rain was coming down steadily now. It made her long for the warmth of her living room. She wished her cat was there to jump into her lap like a purring blanket. Chocolate would be wonderful. She had thought so, herself, this very morning.

“I agree it would be a nice addition, Mr. O’Swiffy, but I need to count costs here as you saw from the books. I do bring in cookies every once in a while, and the employees seem to like that,” she offered.

“Oh, Julia. There’s no need to worry about it yourself. I’ll just enter it as a regular delivery from the coop.”

“You can do that?”

Julia’s heart lifted in a way it hadn’t all morning.

“I can do anything and I will. For you, Julia. We want to keep everyone happy,” Mr. O’Swiffy reassured her as he stood.

He started for the door, then turned.

“I nearly forgot. You will need to sign here,” he pointed to a line on a paper he quickly pulled from his briefcase, “to authorize it.”

“Of course,” Julia replied, signing on the line indicated.

As the door closed quietly behind the accountant, Julia sat back in her chair and smiled. Oh yes. Necessary chocolate. Just what the doctor ordered. And the rain began to subside while the sky temporarily cleared, just as the weather forecaster had predicted.

to be continued . . .

THE END OF THE SENTENCE

When I first moved onto this street – Plato Street – so very many years ago now, I had no illusions of it being anything other than what it appeared to be: a run down street in a run down part of town whose inhabitants chose because they could afford nothing better. Nothing better. That was what we all believed as we sat in our own raggedy run-down houses sitting on our own weedy, wilting, waste-filled yards perched on the crumbling street that historical rumor and historical rumor alone had said was once something worthwhile. We had taken our assignment, some full of rebellion, others with acquiescence, and lived it because, whether we admitted it or not, we believed it was ours to accept. We lived our days full of an image of our neighborhood and ourselves that said we could not do better. We could not be better. We branded that image into our brains with a thousand little acts and a million little thoughts. No one did it for us.  We did it ourselves.

Then Sally moved in. She didn’t accept that image. She didn’t even seem acquainted with it, and when any of us would attempt – even remotely – to show it to her, she seemed puzzled. Maybe it was an act. Maybe she saw it, the picture of our neighborhood, as clearly as everyone else did and simply ignored it. We’ll never know because we never really got to know Sally. The little that we did learn of her, though, was like a blast of Arctic air on a sweltering day. She treated us like the people we could be, not like the people we had become. She jolted us from our hazy lethargy and sent shivers down our collective spine.

Plato Street: simply the pitiful result of a vain thought that the property could never be improved. We thought that image was as immovable as the street, itself. That image hung over us as faithfully as the sun rose every morning; a permanent presence we’d grown to accept as completely as corn stalks in the summer or dead leaves in the fall.  How strange, how funny, how amazing it is that we lived with that image believing it to be as real as the stars in the sky. It wasn’t.

The End

There was a long silence and I nearly passed out from keeping my breathing shallow enough to escape detection. The screen door slammed, then slammed again.

“Ah,” Sally breathed with a noise that sounded like a very long stretch. “The first lemonade of the season; home-made and sweeter than the law allows.”

She said it with a laugh in her voice.

“What do you think Dad would have thought of what we’re doing?”

“Oh, your Dad would have thought it a great adventure, I’m sure. Though he probably wouldn’t have wanted us here, he would’ve given us credit when he saw we got through safely enough.”

“I miss him.”

“Me, too.”

More silence than I could stand.

“I wish we could go back, Mom.”

“Mmm. Well, we never did get around to selling the place, did we? How ‘bout it? Let’s go back, Court. I’m missing our little mountain cottage more than anything. Of course, there will be a lot of work, you know. . .”

“I know, I know. . .”

“Grass grown shoulder-high, tree branches helter skelter, leaves all over everything.”

I guessed there was nothing more to say because they didn’t say it.

I went back down the alley the way I came, and crossed over to my side of the street.  Sniff saw me coming. I felt her hawk’s eye on me.

“Do you know that boy’s name? Sally’s boy?”

“C.T. That’s what he told me to call him,” she answered. Then she scrunched her eyes at me.

“Why?”

“Just curious,” I replied.

The next week there was a realtor’s sign in Sally’s yard. The place sold within a week.

At her going away party, I cornered her.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why what?”

“Why’d you move here?”

She thought for a minute, then looked me in the eye. “About three years ago my son and I decided to explore our roots. You know, mill through old cemeteries, read faded obituaries, tour places our ancestors lived. We thought we could learn from them.

“The bad and the useless, you know, can’t be undone. A person can’t redo yesterday.  However, we thought that maybe we could continue something of the good they started.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at me.

“But then, as neighborhood monitor you knew that.”

I smiled until my face hurt.

to be continued . . .

OVERHEARD

It was one of those late Spring days when life wraps its fresh sweetness around every tree branch and bud; its tendrils wind through the grass, full of earthy, musky fragrance. The air nearly sings out loud with the intensity of the lushness of hope. No one in his right mind can stay indoors on those days because doing so would be like whacking himself with a wet fish; slimy, crazy, and slightly painful.

After I’d finished my breakfast burrito with hot sauce and two cups of coffee, I sauntered out to the front lawn. I had to cut down since my stomach started giving me trouble.  Coffee used to be my mainstay for breakfast: four cups and a piece of toast with orange marmalade. I suppose, though, after awhile an old leather bag gets so soft it gets loose at the seams. That was my stomach. Loose at the seams. So I had to cut down, you see, from four cups to two.

I turned and looked at my house as I had done every day for the past week. Although I’d grown kind of fond of the weathered look my house gave the property, I had been feeling more than a little pressure to fix it up. The drip that burst the pipe came over a month ago in the form of chocolate. Sally had brought me some frosted brownies without the frosting and some cardboard squares of sample paint colors. Since she had them with her, I looked through ‘em. It’s kind of like buying a lottery ticket, only not as exciting. I chose gray with dark gray trim so it would hide the dirt. Sally said she’d get some neighbors together if I would supply lunch. That was asking a lot, I tell you, but being the generous person I am, I consented. About a week ago now a bunch had come and painted my old house. Sniff had played the lottery, too, but she chose white with green trim. I secretly hoped for a little dust storm.

I started down the street at a slow pace. Being the unofficial monitor of the neighborhood did not require speed. Gladys and Manny and were back from Marv’s Café, already poking in the garden they had planted. Julie was already at work and Ashley was heading out the door. Over the winter she’d gotten a job at the flower shop five blocks away. I cleared my throat in that friendly way I have, and she waved back.  We all started choking on fumes as Sweet Beat rode past on his Harley. I made a mental note in my monitor’s mental notebook. The boy was up before noon. I looked at Manny and he raised his eyebrow (he had just the one that went straight across the top of his eye sockets.). I scratched my chin in response.

I was still puzzling over that when a child’s voice made me stop in my tracks. I was, by now, in the alley behind Sally’s house and could hear a conversation as clear as weak tea with no sugar.

“Do you think they’ll ever know, mom?”

“Probably not.”

He laughed then, and mused, “To think all this could have been mine.”

Sally chuckled, too.

“Yes, Court, in another time and another world it would have been yours. Still, your great great grandpa, my great grandpa on my mother’s side, may not have been the type to care one way or another about the fortunes of his descendants.”

“He did leave the stock. You’ve got to give him credit for that.”

“Yes, Court, for that I would thank him if I could.”

“Why don’t we use it?”

I nearly fell over.

“We like our independence.”

The boy persisted, “How much are we worth again?”

Sally answered without a moment’s hesitation. “We’re priceless.”

to be continued . . .

By the time Christmas came, we were knee deep in mutiny and I moved the bat from under my bed to right next to me where I slept. I started to think Dr. Livesey wasn’t so bad after all, and I grieved anew for Pearl.

Just as the crocuses started poking their heads through the melting snow, Ashley moved in with Julie and, shortly after that, Bud left town for someplace in Arkansas.  That was fine with me. One less person meant more food for the rest of us.

“But why do you think it was so important for Jim to strike the Jolly Roger?” Sally repeated with some exasperation. She was talking to Sweet Beat.

“It’s their colors,” he said at last.

“Right, Kevin. Their colors, as you say, tell who’s in charge. They tell where their loyalty lies. But beyond that . . .”

“Beyond that it tells their future!” interrupted Sniff exultantly.

If astonishment could be described, that moment was an apt description. Sniff had had an original thought. We all looked at her in wonder. Sniff, herself, was so overcome with surprise she started crying. Then Sally started chuckling until the whole room was laughing right along with her, even Sweet Beat.

After we’d wiped our eyes, though, he said, “I just think Hawkins was crazy to give the wheel to Hands.”

“What else could he have done?” Sally asked.

It wasn’t a question, though; like maybe she’d given Hawkins’ decision a lot more thought than she let on. She got up from her chair and started clearing the snack table.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *      *      *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

By the time the church choir down the street was practicing the Hallelujah Chorus, Ben Gunn had led them to the treasure, that traitor, Long John Silver, had cut out with some of the stash, and Jim Hawkins had said all he had to say.

We all stayed later than usual that last night. It didn’t seem quite right to stop meeting every Thursday, and someone said as much. Sally just nodded. We all waited for her to say something; to say we would start another book, for instance. She didn’t. She just started clearing the snack table alongside her boy, calling ‘good night’ to us over her shoulder.

We all just stood there looking at her as if that would change things. No one moved. No one said anything.

“The book club, as you will recall, was for the cold, winter months.”

No one answered.

“It’s officially spring now,” she persisted.

The house creaked.

“Bulbs are sprouting, soon the grass will be green instead of brown.”

She looked at all of us for a minute. Then, with a slight smile, she shook her head.

That shake of her head, that short laugh tinged with a sigh said either that she didn’t understand us or that we didn’t understand her. I guess I’ll never know for certain.

There was nothing else to do then. We started leaving by ones and twos and threes.  Before I left I kissed her on the cheek.

“Thank you kindly,” I said. I meant every word.

Then, as had become my habit, I was the last man out.

to be continued . . .

THE BOOK CLUB

“Halloween is over, thank goodness. Having to sit in a dark house half the night just to keep greedy little kids away is not my idea of a holiday.”

“I appreciate your frustration, Mr. Bingham, but I believe I asked what you thought about Captain Bill’s wild stories and songs.”

I settled back then to consider it. You see, this was the second meeting of the book club and, while I was glad for a night out, I couldn’t make heads nor tails of Bill nor Dr. Livesey nor why in the world anyone would give a motel the name of a person. I mean, for Pete’s sake, call it by a number. There’s nothing wrong with numbers. Or directions, like Eastside something or other. Or even the name of a street or a town. But a person?

Sally cleared her throat.

“What, for instance, do you think of the song that goes ‘Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest’?”

Well now, we were finally getting somewhere.

“That’s my favorite so far. I ‘specially like the part about the rum,” I answered knowledgeably.

“You fool, that’s the only song so far,” spouted Sweet Beat.

“Ah!  Kevin. How astute of you to note that it is the only song to which the author gives words. Yet, Mr. Bingham, you’re right as well. There are more songs noted in the first chapter. We just aren’t made privy to their lyrics.”

I caught Sally somewhere between a smile and a frown. I think now, years later, what I would say was that a look of apprehension crossed her face, but only for a millisecond; like the ember of a lakeside bonfire landing on the water and quenched the minute it hits. Then, however, I was too busy with what I regarded as my triumph.

I looked condescendingly toward Sweet Beat, he smirked my way, Sniff licked her finger to turn the pages of her book as though she was searching for something, and Julie and Ashley alternately crossed and uncrossed their legs and looked around the room.  There wasn’t much to look at: just the sixteen of us scrunched up next to each other in this one little living room and the leftovers on the snack table along the wall. That was really why most of us came, I figured. There’s nothing like free food.

That first meeting, in fact, had been all about food: who was willing to bring something and when. We considered this carefully as we munched on blonde brownies and drank RC cola. After that Sally told us we’d be discussing Treasure Island, passed out books she must’ve gotten from Salvation Armies all over the city, and told us more than any of us wanted to know about the guy who wrote it. After a few snide comments and one or two polite questions from the group, Sally said she’d read aloud the evening’s chapters to anyone who came for snacks in order to refresh our memories. Yeah, right. I, for one, know that Sweet Beat couldn’t read a stop sign much less a book. I guess he lucked out.

“I don’t like he stayed without payin’.”

I started, since the comment came like a shot out of nowhere. It was only Ashley.

“Tell us why, Ashley,” Sally encouraged her.

“I, I just don’t. He like as promised he’d pay, but he didn’t.”

“He didn’t no such thing,” Bud said quietly but with an intensity that made me scared.

Ashley eyed him for a minute, then slumped back in her chair.

“Maybe he didn’t say no such thing, but he made ‘em think he would,” she muttered under her breath.

Sally ran her thumb back and forth across her fingernail for a few minutes.

“I suppose,” she said, “what we’re examining here is whether Captain Bill is a man of truth. The question then becomes not whether he paid, but whether implying something is the same as saying something outright. Can one be accused of lying, of not meeting his obligations when he hasn’t said something, but has rather behaved in a way that said it?”

That was really too much for me. I got up for some more weenies in barbecue sauce. I could feel Sniff raise her eyebrows at me clear across the room.

to be continued . . .

“What’d you say, ol’ man?” he yelled, jostling me with his shoulder.

I looked at him and spit. I was tired of that fool of a kid. Well, he pushed me against a tree and caught my throat in his hand and pulled back the other for a good punch when we both heard a whistle pierce the air.

Sally was running full tilt our way, and when she got within a couple of yards she slowed, bending over double to catch her breath.

She walked up to us, spit on the ground, and said, casual like, “I was wondering (pant) if (pant) you two would be (pant) interested in a book club this fall?”

“Why’d you spit, lady?” Sweet Beat frowned.

“Kevin. Have you forgotten my name? I’m Sally. Sally Cortland. And, although I’m grateful you think me a lady, I prefer you address me less formally. At any rate,” she continued as Sweet Beat squinted, trying to figure out if he’d been cut down or not, “I’m going to host a book club in my home during the cold winter months. A lady (as you so ably noticed, Kevin) must plan ahead, and I need to know if you’d be interested.”

“Of course,” she continued as we both began to decline, “I’m only asking those who I think could keep up. You see, not everyone is man enough to take on something like this.”

Well, I wasn’t going to let anyone beat me out. I spoke right up.

“You can count on me, Sally.”

She nodded and raised her eyebrows at Sweet Beat. He shrugged.

She continued to stare at him until he grunted, “I’m more a man than he is,” and walked off.

“We’ll start the first Thursday in November, then!” she called after him. “7:00 sharp, 6:30 if you want snacks.”

She turned to me, then, and said, “I suppose if spit remained in one’s mouth, one might retain more of one’s teeth. I see today you are that lucky one.”

I had to give her that joke and laughed out loud. I supposed I could forgive her some things after all.

The sticky hum of summer began to be visited by cool nights that extended their arms into evening and morning respectively, until the air was again palatable. Neighborhood tempers followed suit. The neighbors somehow seemed to stroll more; the kind of taking a walk that led to nowhere and was just for pleasure.

I noticed kids walking down Plato Street on their route from school to wherever the heck they lived. I piled up more rocks in my rock pile near the corner of the house. I’ve always believed in planning for the future. A man who doesn’t take care to plan for the future, well, he might as well wear a skirt to a penitentiary, that’s what. I’m no fool. Who knew when I might need to hurl one of those things? And where were those kids coming from, anyway? I got so mad thinkin’ about it, I selected a small projectile from the pile and threw it at Sniff’s geranium pot. I was standing where the porch column didn’t obstruct my aim.That thing went as straight and true as ever any guided missile did. It whistled through the clear, fall air and knocked that planter smack against the siding faster than you can bite your lip. Which is what I did when Sniff came barreling out of her house like a moose on a rampage. Not one to be discourteous, I got out of her way.  She chased me around to the back of my house and down the street until she tripped on a jut in the sidewalk. I didn’t turn to look at her. I just heard the sound of her large thighs slapping the cement. Well, I thought. Well maybe she’d learn her lesson about letting her temper fly like that.

Later, though, I got to thinkin’. It weren’t her fault the sidewalk was stickin’ up like that. I slipped into my house for a Coke and came out with two.

“Want one?” I asked just as she was limping by.

She stood in front of my house for a full minute, then kept walking. She could suit herself, I thought, leaving the Coke on my porch railing. I went in to get my paper. When I came out, there she sat in one of my metal rockers on the porch drinking the Coke, so I graciously handed her the business section. I figured she could use it for her parakeet, Fred, if she wasn’t inclined to read it. I know I wasn’t. I read the obits until the sun set. She got up in the fading light and slowly walked to her porch where she sat until the stars came out. I went inside.  After all, something was bound to be on the TV and I don’t much like sitting in the dark.

to be continued . . .

Photo: www.goodfreephotos.com, plants-25622_640-pixabay-CC0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

CHANGES

By Labor Day weekend Sally had planted a vegetable garden of a respectable size in front of the apartment building. Gladys and Manny tended it like it was their sacred charge. Manny would pick up his hoe the minute they got back from Marv’s, and Gladys would sit in a lawn chair and tell him what to do. Then he would do it while she talked to the bean plants.

The Wangs had pulled out the overgrown jungle in their backyard and a few other neighbors up and down the block started mowing more often. It was the “keeping up with the Jones’s” thing and it disgusted me. If a man can’t be who he is, it ain’t worth livin’. I said as much to Sally one day when she brought over some sugar cookies without frosting.

“I agree, Mr. Bingham, a man should be who he is, but. . .”

I coughed and spit then. I hate ‘buts’, large and small. The only ones I ever liked were in an ashtray, and even they get stale after a time.

Sally stopped.

“I’ll be heading home now. Nice to visit with you.”

She started toward the porch steps.

“You didn’t finish your sentence, missy,” I remarked.

That threw her, I could tell, for she just stood and looked at me for a minute.

“It bothers you, Mr. Bingham? An unfinished sentence?” she asked.

I squinted at her.

“Maybe an unfinished sentence bothers you like an unfinished man bothers me.”

She smiled, waved, and left.

Now I ain’t dumb. I resented that woman, Sally. She tweaked me on purpose, and it wasn’t the first time.

The rest of the neighbors took to her pretty well, though. Sniff copied her like a scribe – not one jot or tittle was omitted. She had a red potted geranium balanced on her porch railing. She got it at K-mart. I know cuz I saw them on sale there for 99 cents. Sniff pretended it was from Bachmans, though; like she was some sort of landscape expert herself.

I started a game of throwing pebbles at it. She caught me at my game, though, and you would have thought Armageddon itself was located on Plato Street and the good Lord sent His angels for the last war. That explosion lasted at least a week. The problem, of course, was that the corner column of the porch was in the way. Otherwise I would’ve taken that stupid geranium out for sure.

I started making a habit of walking down Plato Street every day. Someone needed to keep track of things and, as usual, I could see it would fall to me. No one else was up to it.

Sniff sat out on her porch drinking Coke all day long. There were too many Wangs for them to keep track of themselves, much less of anyone else. Gladys and Manny had their garden to tend. Julie was too scared to leave her apartment for anything but work.  Luckily for her she worked at a grocery, so she didn’t have to make special trips for anything. I rarely saw Bud, although Ashley came out to visit with Gladys when Bud was on his shift. She wore dark glasses sometimes or long sleeves in the sunshine. No one said anything, but everyone knew what was going on. But I’m getting sidetracked.

Anyway, as I said, it fell to me to be the neighborhood monitor. When I was in grade school, the teacher would appoint a hall monitor while we put on our coats. One time she appointed me, and I had them kids in line, no question. A classmate, Martha was her name, started to cry when I yelled at her. To this day, it bothers me. At any rate, I’ve always liked that word. Monitor. It sounds business-like.

It fell to me to monitor Plato Street, and I noticed before long that it began to look, well, for lack of a better word – clean.

The sidewalks, though still jutting up in places for all the world like a California fault line, were clear of weeds and gum. Even the gutters were swept at some houses. That was going too far to my mind. Didn’t people have anything better to do than sweep a gutter?  I said so under my breath. It happened, though, that I mumbled this just as Sweet Beat walked past me.

to be continued . . .

“I’d agree with anything you say, Ms. Cortland,” I answered truthfully. For at the moment that, at least, was the truth. I added the ‘Ms. Cortland’ part to amuse myself, but after I said it, I really began to think she ought to be shown some respect and that Sweet Beat ought to show it. Here she, the newest kid on the block, had invited all of us to her house. We barely fit in there and, even with two fans going, it was one warm party. Then, in addition to the three lemonades being spilled, the uninvited pervert she’d had to ask to leave, her little vase she had rescued just before it walked out the door, and an odd variety of other little incidents, she had Sweet Beat pulling a knife.

I decided I’d had enough then, so I got up to leave.

“Thank you kindly, Ms. Cortland, for the lovely party,” I said, looking at Sweet Beat out of the corner of my eye, so he could hear how it should be done.

I heard someone say that on television once, and it stuck with me, I guess.

“Thank you kindly,” I repeated.

“I’m glad you came, Mr. Bingham,” Sally said brightly. Her smile was tired.

I didn’t leave, though. I thought I’d check out the kitchen. Sure enough, Sniff was in there.

“Eating the leftovers?” I asked.

There was a brownie crumb on the corner of her mouth, which was full. She glared at me.

I stuck some Chex mix into my pockets and peeked into the living room.

Sally was still talking to Sweet Beat – something about the lunar cycle and meteor showers.

I leaned against the archway until he left. I was the last one out.

There are times in the years that count a man’s life that he regards as markers on his journey: incidents of great proportion that all around him notice and which, by virtue of their enormity, stand like a totem pole of meaning. There are other times, however, that are quite inconspicuous to all, and nearly unnoticeable to the man, himself: yet by the insight they spark, inscribe upon his life that indefinable mark of understanding that his Creator gives as pavers along the path of wisdom.

Standing there in the archway, waiting for everyone to leave Sally’s party was such a time for me. Sally could take care of herself. That was obvious to anyone who met her.  It seemed to me, though, as I watched her visit with the leader of a neighborhood gang that life hands us duties to each other: obligations like protection and, if we are unequal to that, duty to “keep company”. At the time, I couldn’t have put into words the feelings that began to force such thoughts into my hard head and harder heart. All I knew was that I needed to be the last man out. I remain amazed to this day that I was.

to be continued . . .