It was a halfway house on East University Avenue
Upstairs
At the end of the long wooden hallway
Each plank seemed to creak out
Some old ill sound
As my small feet walked across them
I was only ten years old at the time
I had been sent to grab some stew meat
From the only working refrigerator
Where all the residents kept what little they had
The community sink and bathroom
Were on the same end of the hall
There were only five or six rooms upstairs
He was standing outside his doorway
His hand bandaged
“What ya doin’ kid?”
“Grabbing some stew meat for dinner.”
“What’d you do to your hand?”
He pulled hard on his cigarette
As he exhaled waves of smoke
He said, he burned it
Fell asleep while smoking in bed
My mother later said, he was a drunk
He had probably passed out
Woke up on fire
She said, he was an ex-con
That he hadn’t been out long
I opened the fridge and grabbed what I was sent to get
Turning around
I asked, “Where’s Mr. Ericson been?”
The man’s brow pulled together tight, “He’s gone, Kid.”
He pulled hard on his smoke once more
His cherry now glowing
“They carried him out the other morning.”
“Gone?”
“He died. Been dead a week before anyone noticed.”
I didn’t or couldn’t understand this at the time
How could anyone pass away and no one miss them?
My thoughts
My questions
Must have been written
Across my face
The man thumped his ash into the sink
Then spoke up once more
“Mr. Ericson was an old drunk.”
“A wino.”
“Not many miss you when you’ve gone that far.”
“He was old and used up.”
I ran into the man upstairs at least once a week
He would tell me stories of losing his friends
In Vietnam
He said, the war was nothing like the movies
And sometimes he didn’t speak at all
I didn’t understand a lot of what
The man upstairs said back then
But his words have become
Transparent over time
Some were lies
Some were truths
Some were just the way it was back then
When I would talk to the man upstairs
No comments:
Post a Comment