Boy With a Bear Tattoo: Part Two
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What have I gotten myself into? Colin wondered for the fiftieth time that morning as he trudged alongside the road leading to the highway, maintaining a safe distance between himself and the cars that whizzed past him carrying their drivers to work, to school, to their jobs and obligations and lives, oblivious to the man walking just to the the side of the asphalt, his demons trailing after him. Not for the first time, he patted the inner pocket of the jacket holding the envelope with his life savings tucked neatly away inside it. His salvation, for the moment.
When he had asked to withdraw all of it from the bank earlier, the teller had looked at him with a concerned expression before she disappeared into the back room and emerged several minutes later with a thick stack of bills, courtesy of the military and his parents’ life insurance.
He left the apartment without saying goodbye to Jordan or Allen; they were passed out on the couches in the living room, likely hungover from the night before. But he had written a note and stuck it to the fridge with a magnet made from a bottle cap. It read simply: Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a while. Took a spontaneous vacation. I’ll be back. -Colin
“At least I hope I’ll be back,” he said aloud, and his feet stopped with the notion. He hadn’t considered not returning to the city that, for so many years, he called home. But since returning from Africa, it no longer felt the same as in his youth. The demons that hounded him at every turn on the battlefield, all the ghosts that were created there, followed him to the city and emerged, taunting him, stalking him, leering at him from dark alleys and shadows.
Home had moved, and unlike him, had left no note.
“Maybe I’ll find it again,” he thought. “Maybe I’ll find a place in the Midwest, somewhere remote, somewhere with stars,” he smiled. “It won’t be long now before I’m out of the city and the stars appear again.” The temptation to close his eyes and recall the memories of the glittering African sky with its brilliant pinpoints amongst the ebony, but the whoosh of cars passing dangerously close warned him of daydreaming. Losing himself in memories risked stepping wrong and in an instant, losing his life.
“What would Sam say?” He heard the old man’s raspy wheeze. I charged you with seven months, and you wind up killed less than five miles from your apartment. No, likely the old man would surprise him with profound wisdom. Dreaming of angels in the darkness won’t bring them to life. The words appeared like fire in his mind, blazing but not burning; it was as though Sam or some other invisible being whispered them in his ear.
It was enough to bring Colin to his senses as a speeding sports car zipped past, too close to the shoulder and Colin for comfort, and darted in and out of traffic. Wary of the highway to his left, Colin edged several inches to his right and continued walking toward the overpass.
For lunch several hours later, he stopped at a fast-food restaurant and ordered a burger and fries, thanked the bored high school student absentmindedly tapping the buttons on the cash register, and strolled across the street to the bus stop. He checked the schedule. The next bus wouldn’t arrive for another hour and fifteen minutes, so Colin settled in to wait and eat his lunch, but before doing so, he carefully extracted the pickle slices from his burger. Although he requested none, the cashier apparently didn’t hear, and when Colin saw the absence of the “no pickles” sticker on his bag, he felt the urge to protest, but decided that he did not wish to speak to another person any more than the cashier.
When he was certain that no pickles remained to taint his food, he tossed the thin green slices to the sidewalk. Almost instantly, pigeons—fat enough to cause Colin to question the integrity of their wings—swarmed the greasy dots, cooing and fighting one another until the fattest pigeon spread wide his wings and flapped them at the others, creating just enough distance and time for him to snatch up two of the slices and with some effort, heave his plump body off the concrete and fly away, his wings flapping furiously. The gargoyles of the city, he thought as the remaining pigeons squabbled for a minute before one, tired of the game, picked up the pickle and ate it before the astonished eyes of the others. Or, at least Colin pretended they were astonished; doing so made the scenario more interesting and amusing for him and diminished the odd sensation that, regardless of where he traveled, as long as he was within sight of the city, the demons would continue to hound him just as the pigeons preyed on the pickle. It frightened him.
All too soon, the squabbling ceased, and when Colin’s entertainment ended, the trepidation rose, forming a hard knot in his throat. Dismayed, and feeling particularly antagonistic toward the ghoulish birds, he tugged a french fry loose from the container and tossed it into the throng of glistening teal-gray feathers. Their ever-jerking heads bowed, eyeing the slender yellow fry, before one lunged for it and the fight began anew.
Forcing down the knot in his throat, Colin tried to curl his mouth into a smug grin, but his lips quivered lightly and lended him no courage, so he bit into his burger, and then grimaced at the grease that filled his mouth. His scowl deepening, he thought, I can’t even taste the meat. He swallowed and shivered as the grease slid down the back of his throat. If this is meat. Colin recalled a time in Africa when he complained about the lack of seasoning, and later on, the shortage of food. Now I’m complaining about the quality of the food I bought at one of the dozens of fast-food places on this street. He reeled at the irony and wrapping his unfinished burger in the paper bag, he threw it into the nearby trashcan and left the remaining french fries for the greedy pigeons.
In the distance, he saw the shadows of the city skyscrapers along the horizon and thought of the people living there, and how every day, they chased their jobs, desperate to ride the corporate ladder as high as possible and emerge victorious above everyone else to tote home a fat paycheck to indulge on whatever pleased them most at the moment. You couldn’t trust anyone; your coworker who smiled at you every morning was secretly aiming to steal your job. Your husband returned home late “from the office” nearly every evening, and your friends whispered behind your back about the pretty girl who worked in the cubicle next door. Even your children returned home from school suffering the gossip and betrayal of the cafeteria. Their gain has made them gluttonous, thought Colin, thinking back to Sam the previous night. The city is full of pigeons and they don’t even realize it.
“Which pigeon am I?” he wondered aloud. “The pigeon who sits around all day waiting for someone to toss him a french fry? Or the one who tries to escape with what he has, running from all the others?”
“How about the pigeon who realizes he’s been around the birds for too long and is actually human,” another voice interrupted.
Colin started and felt the heat of embarrassment creep into his cheeks. In another life he might have chided himself for his carelessness to notice someone sneaking up on him or sitting nearby, but this isn’t Africa, he reminded himself, and it was unlikely someone would attempt to rob him in the middle of the day. Turning, his gaze fell on the only other person standing nearby, a slender man maybe ten years his senior, dressed in a business suit worn with age, but still maintaining some dignity to it, the gray fabric pressed neatly, but faded along the collar and breast. Across his lanky body, he wore a black messenger bag, upon which his left hand rested lightly. The man’s hair was light brown and wavy at the ends, combed in an unremarkable style and held in place with gel. His face, also unremarkable, held a curious expression, and when he offered Colin a welcoming smile, Colin noticed that his teeth were slightly crooked. Despite his ordinary appearance, the fact that the man bothered to speak, let alone to tease Colin as an old friend, and that he smiled after the fact elevated him to a significant place in Colin’s mind.
“Sorry,” Colin apologized, although he was uncertain why. “Do you ever have those moments when you look at something so ridiculous that you suddenly have an epiphany?”
The man shook his head. “No, I don’t believe I’ve ever had an epiphany while watching pigeons of all things, but I’ve heard that they occasionally happen.” He chuckled. “Although one time I did have the thought while eating a breakfast burrito that changed my outlook on the rest of the day.”
“Oh?” Colin raised an eyebrow. “What was that?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe that was it!” he laughed and made to sit on the empty space beside Colin on the bench. Colin scooted over as the stranger continued, “Maybe that it was that sometimes things don’t matter as much as we initially think they do, and that at the end of the day, we can’t remember what we had for breakfast. When we wake up with hunger gnawing at our guts, food seems so important, and all we have to do is walk to the freezer, grab a frozen burrito, and pop it in the microwave for a minute or two. Easy as one two three. We don’t think anything of it again for the rest of the day.”
“We don’t ever consider how easy our lives actually are compared to people across the world,” mused Colin. “Until we experience starvation and watching depleted rations stretching thinner do we realize how privileged we are in the States.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed the stranger, tossing his hands in the air and then gesturing rapidly toward Colin. “In college between semesters I went on several mission trips to various impoverished countries around the world. Never thought I would appreciate a bar of soap in the dollar section at Walmart so much as I did after spending a few weeks there.”
Colin nodded, remembering the sensation of stepping into the shower after returning home from Africa, turning on the hot water, and letting it pour over his body. That first day, he had spent nearly an hour standing in the shower, basking in the blissful steam and warmth, and the feeling of his muscles relaxing.
“I know what you mean,” he said after a moment. “I spent a three year tour in North Africa.”
“You were military?”
“Straight out of high school.”
“My dad was in the navy, and my grandfather was a marine.”
“I was army; just left a couple months ago.”
“Three years is a long time to be away from home. Do you have a family?”
Colin snorted. “Two obnoxious brothers.”
“No wife or kids?”
He shook his head. “Never had the chance to settle down. I’d like to, I think, at some point in time. But I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m looking for...something.”
“Take your time,” the man rested his hands on his knees, massaging them gently. “If you’re looking for something, sometimes it’s best to pursue that until you know what you’re searching for,” he paused. “Kyle Mulligan.”
“Colin,” he shook Kyle’s hand, finding Kyle’s grip stronger than his wiry frame led on.
“Good to meet you, Colin. What epiphany did the pigeons give you?”
“That we’re all hounded by different demons and those of us who escape are never truly free. We still return to the same french fries, the same squabbles, the same company, the same things that haunt and terrify us.”
Kyle blinked, but said nothing for along moment.
He thinks me insane or delusional, Colin internally berated himself for responding.
“What brings you to the bus stop?” Kyle asked, mentioning nothing about Colin’s pigeons.
“My search, I guess you can call it. I come from the city,” he jabbed his thumb over his shoulder toward the horizon, where, beyond the overpass, loomed the spires and edifices that belonged to his former home. “But after returning home, I don’t know...it felt...suffocating. I couldn’t stand it anymore and needed to leave. A friend challenged me to travel the country for as long as possible until I find whatever it is I need to survive.”
“You feel like you’re existing, but not living.”
“Precisely.”
“Then I have an answer to your question, I think.”
“Oh?” Colin quirked a dark eyebrow skyward in silent question.
Kyle nodded in response. “You’re the pigeon running from his demons hoping to find a life as another creature, perhaps, even, a human.”
Silence was the reply Colin could offer Kyle’s insight. The stranger had peered keenly into his soul and perceived the truth in mere seconds. Colin wasn’t sure whether to fear Kyle or thank him.
“I have some experience with that,” said Kyle. “That’s why I decided to leave on those mission trips. I needed reassurance that there was more to life than an office job and climbing the corporate ladder. It changed my perspective about everything. Someday I want to go back and help, but you know, travel is expensive, so for the time being I’m stuck working in finances, but as least there I can help people. That’s what I searched for all those years ago: an outlet through which to help people.”
“I think this is one of those airplane oxygen mask situations where I need to put mine on first before I help someone else,” Colin noted, and Kyle chuckled. “If I don’t know how to live instead of just existing, then I won’t know what to do for someone else.”
“Also understandable. Sometimes you need to get away and to rediscover yourself, especially if you’ve been gone for several years.”
“That’s what I’m hoping, although instead of years, I hope seven months will do the trick.”
Kyle shifted, leaning back to make himself more comfortable on the hard bench. “Seven months, eh? Where are you headed?”
“Away?” shrugged Colin, chancing a glance back at the city over his shoulder. “I actually hadn’t thought that far ahead. You must think I’m crazy.”
“Not at all. Adventure can be fun.”
Or terrifying. From childhood on, Colin always preferred a plan, some vague reassurance of order in his otherwise chaotic life. With his dad in and out of hospitals and his mom working two, sometimes three jobs to support her sons and pay her husband’s medical bills, Colin and his brothers often had little structure of anything. His brothers took advantage of their home lives to run amok and test the boundaries of every rule and law their mother attempted to lay out, but with her often gone and unable to enact her rules, Jordan and Allen disregarded order. When Colin enlisted in the army, the routine life came as a blessing, a relief, and an escape. His mom passed away from a sudden stroke during his first year in Africa. He wasn’t able to leave to attend her funeral. Colin remembered walking away from his SO’s office the day he learned of his mother’s death, feeling listless, absent, numb and confused and unsure of his feelings. The afternoon had been hot and sweltering, suffocating and tense. They expected an attack that night, but none came save the sudden tears that came upon Colin in the dark hours of the morning.
Routine and rigorous training became outlets to repress his grief.
After that, the military and his army brothers provided the ordered family he desperately craved. Home, Jordan and Allen were strangers, and Colin was nearing his limits regarding their nightlives when he left them hungover in their apartment earlier that morning. To take a spontaneous adventure without a plan or destination contradicted every instinct and self-enacted rule he abided by. It was both liberating and frightening.
“I, uh, thought about hopping on a bus and flipping a coin to land a destination, but depending on the bus stop, I might be flipping for a while. But I think I’ll head toward the Midwest for a while. Maybe after that see the west coast and the sequoias. Maybe try to spot an Ewok or two.”
At the reference, Kyle began to laugh. “It’s been forever since I watched those movies.”
“I was obsessed with them as a kid. I had a Death Star bed cover.”
Eyeing him skeptically, Kyle asked, “Jedi or Sith?”
“Jedi,” Colin replied without hesitation. “Obi Wan Kenobi was my hero growing up.”
“Good choice,” acknowledged Kyle, “although I personally favored Han Solo. Fortunately my wife grew up watching them, too. I got no say in what we named our son.”
“Let me guess. Luke?”
“Worse. Lando.”
Colin’s eyebrow quirked up suddenly. “Are you serious?”
Kyle chuckled, “No, fortunately. You were right the first time. It’s generic, I know,” he grinned sheepishly, “but we liked it.”
“Not at all! Beats Lando.”
“That’s a fact. So, sequoias?” he asked, bringing Colin back on track.
“Right. Um,” he thought for a moment, then continued, “after California, I may travel the Bible Belt before heading back to the city.” To see Sam a final time. To tell him I banished my demons, or at least that I tried, and then leave the city behind for good.
“Then what?”
Colin’s mind blanked. “Honestly,” he said, “I don’t know.”
“If you ever decide you might want to try missions, give me a call,” offered Kyle, and he fished inside his wallet for a second before withdrawing a small card. “Here’s my number.”
“Thank you,” Colin said, taking it and studying the simple design and words printed on the front.
As Kyle checked his watch, he frowned, “My lunch break is nearly over. I should probably head back.” Standing, he straightened his suit and dusted off his pants before lifting his messenger bag up and onto his shoulder. “It was good to meet you, Colin, and if there’s anything I can do, give me a call.”
“Good to meet you, too,” he replied and began to slide Kyle’s card into the inner pocket of Sam’s jacket when he stopped, his fingers brushing something thin and crisp. “Kyle?” he called to the man’s back, already several paces away from the bench.
Kyle turned on his heel and started back toward Colin, a confused expression written across his long face. “Yeah?”
“Take this,” Colin withdrew several bills from his pocket, “to go toward your missions projects. It isn’t much, but it might help.”
Kyle’s eyes widened as he hesitantly accepted the cash, widening even more as he counted the bills. “A thousand dollars? I can’t take your money.” He stiffened and shoved his hand, still holding the cash, at Colin, but Colin backed away from it.
“Take it,” he insisted. “It’s a gift. Pray for me, will you?”
Behind Kyle’s frozen and flabbergasted face, the rectangular face of the bus rattled down the street toward the stop. Before Colin, Kyle stood still as a pillar, shocked and staring at his hand as his arm sagged and began dropping toward his side. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound issued from it.
As the bus stopped and wheezed, Colin slipped past the line of people exiting it without another word to Kyle. He paid the driver, and slid to the middle of the bus, finding to his delight, a spare seat beside the window. When the bus pulled out, only one figure remained at the stop. Kyle. Through the window, Colin watched as Kyle waved and mouthed “I will. Thank you.”
Lips drawing into a faint smile, Colin leaned back into the cushions of the bus seat, and promptly drifted off to sleep.
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Thank you for reading and again, please comment your thoughts or criticisms about my writing, this blog, etc. Part 3 of Colin's adventure will be on my blog in two weeks, so please stay tuned and check it out then! Also, any guesses as to what fairytale I am retelling with Seven Months? Comment your thoughts below! Happy Sunday, and I wish you all a lovely afternoon!
Your imagery is almost too vivid with that burger - ew! I have nothing to add, but I'm looking forward to reading what comes next!
ReplyDeleteEnjoying this! But come on... Two weeks?! Ugh...
ReplyDeleteI feel like it's a bit of Ebenezer Scrooge where he meets people along the way who help him realize a portion of what he needs to learn. Looking forward to seeing if I'm wrong!