As It Ever Was
by
Sheldon Birnie
This old fuck came to the door the other day. Said he lives here.
Sorry pal, I told him. I was expecting the pizza guy, getting ready to settle into some Saturday evening hockey. This is my place. Rent’s paid up, first and last month, bud.
Old fuck goes, get this, I’ve always lived here. I’ve never left. I’ve only been away awhile.
Buddy, I go, I don’t know how to break it to ya. But this ain’t your place. It’s mine.
Buddy just stands there, staring past my shoulder. He’s not drooling, he don’t smell like piss. But he’s old as dirt and I’m worried he’s having some kinda episode. I stick my head out the door, look down the hall each way. Nobody else around. I wanna tell the guy to fuck right off, but I can’t. Respect your elders and all that shit, right?
Maybe you got off on the wrong floor? I suggest. Maybe you’re thinking this here’s 901 or 701?
Old guy, he shakes his head real slow. Like he’s got all the time in the world. I am where I ought to be, he said, standing there on his ancient legs.
Shit, you better come in and sit down, I said. We’ll figure this out.
I bring gramps inside, sit him down on the couch. You thirsty? I got some soda in the fridge.
Water, he croaks. Water, please. Then he just sits there, like he’s staring through the wall.
Only got tap, I tell him. And that shit can be kinda rank. You sure you don’t want a soda?
He waves one of his twisted mitts through the air. Not sure if he means, like, he doesn’t care how bad the water is or he’s fine with a soda. So I rinse out a dusty cup, pipes rattling like the ghost of Bob Marley or whoever, fill it up for him and grab a couple sodas from the fridge. I set the cup and can down in front of him. He reaches for the cup, takes a long, slow sip. He smacks his lips like he’s just in from the Gobi after a pilgrimage or some shit. Then he sits his grizzled ass up a little straighter and just goes off.
My first memories are of ice, he says. Ice as far as you can see, piled up higher than we are sitting now. A world of ice. And so it remained through endless nights and days. The sun shone, snow fell, even rain. But the ice remained, impenetrable. Same as ever. Until, a time of change. The ice began to recede. A trickle, then a stream and finally rivers, cutting ever downward. Breaking up the ice. Shapes began to cross the sky, their numbers multiplying as the seasons changed, the flock growing ever larger. Blotting out the sky even, in both the coming and the going. Soon, beasts began tracking their feathered prey across the ice and waters.
None of them paid me any mind.
One day the ice was gone. The ground beneath was sodden, spongy. Silt. But following the birds and the beasts came the grasses, plants and trees, seeds shat out or dragged along by feather or by fur. The earth grew thick, pungent with plants life.
In time, the people followed.
They were few, at first. Following the beasts and birds into the forest and onto the plains. Before long, their numbers swelled like a tumor upon the land. I became one among them. But I have never truly been one of them.
As the people filled out this space, they drove off or killed the beasts and birds, replacing them with roads and poles and buildings of all shapes and sizes. Not unlike this one here, that stands up from the wastes below, a slab of concrete and glass, parting the winds that blow ever so slightly as they pass by. Even now, outside, the darkness is rent by millions of burning lights from these buildings and their various means of conveyance.
These lights, they burn bright. They blot out the night. But these lights, they only burn so long. Soon, the drought will creep further and further. The smoke will roll. The lights will blink out, one by one, until the few that remain are but part and parcel to the cold lights burning from above, from the depths of the void. What is dead will rot and then freeze. Then, a long winter will come again.
Sure thing, bud, I told the old man. I didn’t know what else to say. The game was about to start. The seasons, they always come around again, right? Turn, turn and all that hippie shit?
Indeed, old guy goes, nodding, the hint of a smile wrinkling his grizzled puss even further. It has happened many times. Many times. Is happening as we speak. Will happen again. And again and again. As it ever was. As it ever was.
Then he closed his eyes, and sat there, skeletal hands on bony knees. Resting, I guess. I turned on the TV. The game had just started. I went into the kitchen, grabbed a couple beers. I offered him one, but buddy just waved me off again, that hint of a smile still haunting his visage.
I popped the top of mine, drank it down as the Leafs took it to the Habs, wave after wave of heavy forechecking. But the Habs goalie kept them in it. Old guy and me, we sat there, not talking, just watching the puck move up and down and around the ice. I killed off one beer and cracked the other, wondering where the fuck the pizza guy was at, when there was a knock at the door.
Hungry? I asked the old guy. Pizza’s here.
Old fucker shook his head, stood up slow. No thank you, he said. I’d better move along.
Suit yourself, I says, then nip into my bedroom to grab some cash. I open the door for the pizza guy, pay up and head back into the living room with my pie, expecting the old guy to be still standing there, seeing as how slow he’d been moving before.
But he wasn’t there. I checked the bathroom, the kitchen. Checked the living room again and then poked my head out in the hall. Motherfucker wasn’t there at all. He was gone, buddy. Pizza guy was there, though, standing waiting for the elevator to come back around. Knowing, he might be there a while.
Yo, I called out to pizza guy. You see an old dude zip by here real slow like?
Pizza guy, he just shrugged, shook his head. No sir.
Son of a bitch. I settled back into the game. But I didn’t feel much like eating. I sat there a while, staring at the empty water glass the old guy had left, couple drops still clinging to the inside. The Habs made good on a dumb turnover at the line and tied the game. Outside, a cold wind howled, small chunks of ice chipping up against the window. By the time I got my appetite back, my beer was warm, the pizza cold and I still didn’t know what the fuck had just happened.
Bio:
Sheldon Birnie is a writer, dad, and beer league hockey player from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is the author of Where the Pavement Turns to Sand, which is available from Malarkey Books. He can be found online @badguybirnie
Punk Noir Press 