Unraveling
The man in the blue pinstripe suit wagged his cane to the right, returned it to the pavement, wagged it to the left, and returned it again. He held the elegant white cane in his right hand, so with every right step he wagged it to the left and every left step, to the right. The motion was automatic and was directed from his fluid paunch, aside which the grasping hand clung for support. Bending with each movement like plywood between a carpenter’s hands, the cane dictated the breeze, kept its gusts in tow, and arrogantly swept away the detritus that preceded the faceless man in the blue pinstripe suit.
Smith desired such a splendid cane, and desired even more the unconscious ability to wag it with such concrete sincerity. What obstacles the man must have surpassed in his life to illuminate those shaded corners of the psyche that allow a man to act that way? His hand guided the cane, yes, but who guided his hand in such a manner? Oh the manner of man he must be! Such an air to that cane! He must have been a wealthy landowner with a streak of greed that so overwhelms to the point of making common the peers of his trade. But the cane betrayed more. The man couldn’t simply be of that ilk; he must be a product of it. With little regard for peripheral matters and peripheral people, with such a glaring air of content indifference, with the smugness that is born of sincere insincerity, the man lunged through life as his cane lunged through the crispy, tainted air before him, with few cares in front and fewer regrets behind. After all, what can be regretted when nothing is cared for?
Smith analyzed the portly man from his seat on the cold bench in front of the sign that flagged down the bus every two hours and a half. Leaving his position, with arms tightly folded and one leg atop the other, Smith wandered across the sidewalk and looked about anxiously for a tree with dipping, bare branches or any area that might conceal wooden sticks of some kind. In his mind, the cane twitched and abruptly stopped in a motion that really never reached a point of fruition, for it was far too lacadazical to create any buildup but tense enough to leave its imprint of chalk on his memory. Left and right, again and again, until Smith collided with a stout branch that hung like the horizon across his path. “Here we are, my cane and I. We needn’t any other partner.” Smith gripped the branch and pulled down with all his weight. The further from the ground his feet floated, the tenser the branch became. It shivered beneath his grasp, like a naked arm from someplace hidden in his distant past, but he had left himself behind while concentrating on the paunchy man with the cane. Now, the latter was all that remained.
With a snap that left much anticipation unchecked and echoed only in one set of ears, the branch let go of life, gave up uncertainly like a sickly, aged man whose mind in those last moments drifts upon his burdensome qualities. Although the branch’s width nearly doubled that of the cane, and the length left a few inches to be desired given Smith’s height, the branch became the cane even before it jerked to the right for the first time.
I’ll walk home, Smith thought, as he swayed his polished white cane from side to side and jutted his paunch out with a certain pride. All look at me, he screamed from within. I am a man with a suit and a paunch, and I make gestures with my cane that all should notice. Or perhaps he thought none of these things, and simply tore a branch from a tree and walked home instead of boarding the bus.
As he walked through to the outskirts of town, varying not a degree with his perfected gait and swinging cane, Smith began to hum a tune he’d never heard before but which he didn’t fabricate himself. Perhaps the man in the suit had known it from his childhood or from some ballet that he had attended years ago on the arm of a beautiful, distant woman who never creased her makeup with a smile. But while humming this upbeat tune, Smith, whose paunch had grown drastically since the incident, came across two frightened children, one a boy and one a girl, whose clothes hung from them loosely so that their bodies were nearly identical beneath the coverings. The boy continually rubbed his dirty hands against his bare legs, probably so as not to stain his clothes, while the girl spun between her little fingers a ribbon that had been plucked from some fashionable lady’s hair or given as charity, perhaps, in a tender moment of human recognition. They were quite a sight to Smith, as they hopped up and down and made painful noises of helpless pleading that erupted from an explosive area in the middle of the chest that Smith knew well as being home to such innocent abandonment as was being displayed before him.
“Please help, sir. You must help.” The girl did not stop fiddling with the ribbon, and as Smith approached he noticed that the girl was unraveling it into a long scarlet train that began before his eyes to travel down the length of her gown. Also, prima fascia, she had appeared quite cute, as many girls of that age do, but such judgements did not hold up under scrutiny. Now Smith realized how perfectly ordinary the girl really was. Even the tiny mole hidden by the shadow of her nose worked to illustrate how even an imperfection can portray normalcy.
The boy chimed in over his partner, adding a slight baritone to the symphony. “The cat, sir, do you see the cat?” Smith followed the boy’s finger that directed all gazes toward a worn, green awning that extended from a nearby doorway. “She’s been up there almost all day. Really, you must help us get her down.”
The young calico yawned and stretched her paws across the awning. The screaming of nails against metal reverberated against the side of the building and emptied like a teacup into the air. How perfect an opportunity, Smith thought, as he schemed the feline down in his mind. A way to affirm myself, my humanity, is opening, and I will not let this door close. These children need me; they actually need my help. And the girl, how cute she is again.
“Perhaps the stick that you’re carrying. You can reach her with it, and maybe she can climb down.” The girl was not so cute.
Yes, his cane. In his mind, the branch snapped again and echoed between his ears as if it were trapped in a dark cavern without a miner’s helmet for guidance. The business before him, as simple and ordinary an act as one could delve into on such a bright afternoon, was not worth an iota of effort. How easily he could stain or rip his expensive pinstripe suit. And what if the little girl, still unraveling the ribbon with diverted zeal, escaped with his cane, which would certainly trade well at a pawnbroker. And his ex-wife, that beautiful and distant woman with a penchant for ballet, what would she say? Rightly she would ridicule him for even stopping for these strange children who were so ordinary and dirty. Success as a landowner stemmed not from the behavior that he was now displaying. No, no, these children were counterproductive.
Without a word, Smith rubbed his paunch, scoffed loudly at the sky for placing him in such a predicament, and began walking, moving his cane unconsciously by now, past the absorbed children. Two sets of confused eyes pierced his flannel coat, but were held up at the skin level, which grew thicker as he progressed. Neither child mumbled a syllable, but glared at each other and then back at the fickle man in the flannel coat carrying a large stick.
Smith entered a small shop on the same street on which he was accosted by the youths, who already fogged into mental obscurity. Minutes later he exited with a brown paper bag, and he began humming that familiar tune from so many years ago while fixing his matching blue tie. That man in the store acted as if he knew me, he thought, as he chuckled in that way that only those without a care can make sound convincing. And questioning me about my cane… What is this world coming to when a successful businessman like myself can be treated like any popper, any beggar child on the street?
Rounding the nearby corner, Smith entered his apartment building, which remained the first complex on the right. The floor mat that once shown WELCOME proudly, but now, scuffed and bruised, appeared as an anchor tattoo does on an elderly Naval officer, maliciously tripped his cane on an upturned edge and disrupted his intentionally unconscious behavior. A bullet rang out and entered the cavern of his mind, echoing about and disrupting all activities, as if he had leaped up too quickly after a long nap. What had happened? Where was he? Who was he? And why was he holding a tree branch that… his hand was bleeding from the rough bark.
Launching the branch into the small, unkempt yard with no regard, Smith ambled in a daze up the open wooden staircase that led to his fourth floor studio apartment. Questions floundered about, but that was nothing unusual. His life appeared more as a series of questions than as a chain of actual events. But aren’t all lives, he thought.
The key fit into the hole with the usual manipulation, and, with a slight turn of the doorknob to the left and then a full turn to the right, the door swung open, allowing the stuffiness of his room access to the narrow corridor. Smith flung off his flannel coat in a whirl of fabric and arms and tossed it nonchalantly upon the sole wooden chair that sat adjacent to the small kitchen table. He carefully placed the paper bag on the counter and scrubbed his bleeding hand. After placing two bandages on the palm of his hand, Smith sat upon the chair and opened the brown paper bag. Taking out the scarlet ribbon, he began to get quite excited and hopped around his apartment with childish enthusiasm. Unconsciously, his hands began to unravel the ribbon.