When Fall Comes

With fall coming, old friends spend a new day together.

            Today could be called flawless. At least, no flaw could be had with the weather even with summer ending. The sun kissed everything with long shadows left in the wake of contact. No clouds tempered the sunlight, but a weak breeze kept me cool. The air wasn’t sticky, but too much activity turned skin into a sweaty water bottle. Maybe the weather wasn’t flawless. It could be better; it could be worse.

            Lawns were mostly green with borders defined by dried grass and exposed dirt. The sky was a spotless blue broken by the rare plane. Bees sought the last untapped blossoms. They flew in fury as fall as the dread snap of a cold death neared.

            I knelt at an anthill. One slope ended right at the sidewalk. The other ran down to an expanse of dirt that gave way to a forest of clover and grass. From the castle’s mouth a breath of ants exchanged in and out. Just a little after noon they lived in full sunlight, but a mountainous bush’s shadow threatened to eclipse them in about an hour. I cleared the sweat off my brow and one drop splashed their border. It drew attention and the colony explored the new oasis. Little antennae poked on the salty drop before they dispersed.

            I took off down the suburban street. A light, energized melody came down from the street. An ice cream truck bounced down the street. A chill ran down my spine. I gripped my wallet and made my way for the source.

            So late in the season, this would be the last truck for the year. The floating melody carried on the summertime air. The gang and I always sought the trucks out, even when we didn’t have money. Just to gaze upon the famous hull and think about tasting those cold sweets wrapped me into warm boyhood dreams.

            The truck came to a corner, stopped, and sold to one customer up the street. It finished and barreled to me. I motioned the truck to the curb. The driver stalled the engine and lifted his screen. He looked like Sesame Street’s Count von Count and was old enough to have known him from the Austro-Hungarian Army.

            “What may I get you?” He asked.

            “I’ll want two things. First, I need a popsicle for myself,” I held up a piece of paper, “and do you still have a peanut-butter crunch?”

            “It’s my last one, sport.”

            “Perfect, how much would this be?”

            “Six bucks.”

            I pulled the money from my wallet.

            “Here is the popsicle and,” he bent deep into the freezer, “is the peanut-butter crunch. Last one, I think. They’ve been getting harder and harder to sell with all these kids coming down with peanut-butter allergies. They take up space I’m afraid.”

            “Do you think you’ll restock?”

            He shook his head.

            “That’s fine. I understand your situation. It’s an end of an era.”

            He gave a slow nod.

            I waved him goodbye and stuffed my purchases into a cooler. A familiarly shaped man came down the street. I shifted my head to get a better view of him. He looked to be around my age. His right leg had a large gait; his left leg moved mechanically as if multiple pullies struggled to get it in motion. I stood my ground and waited for him to come. His motion stalled when he recognized me. His shoulders rose and his back straightened. We stood in silence as the wind bellowed between us.

            He walked up first while extending a hand, “Justin, I must say it’s been some, some amount of time.”

            “The feeling’s mutual, believe me, Aloysius.”

            Aloysius lowered his hand.

            “How long has it been?” I asked.

            “Since what?”

            “If I’m only going to get attitude, I won’t bother.”

            “You are really going to be that petty?” He asked, “how old are you?”

            “When was the last time we spoke to each other? When were we last cordial to the other?”

            “It doesn’t have to be this way, Justin. Don’t you remember the date?”

            The wind whistled.

            He said nothing.

            “I’m sorry,” I said.

            “It’s okay.”

            “Which way are you headed?”

            I pointed down the street, to which he followed. The wind ripped and tore at tree branches. Leaves and twigs spilled off. We trampled acorns and kicked their remains. Technicolor leaves laid next to them on the moist black streets. Red, orange, and yellows laid against bleak asphalt. Young, green leaves piled in curbside trenches. Like World War I doughboys dead in the trenches, these leaves displayed a mix of mangling by artillery and scarless death from gas.

            “We’re in this together, right?” I asked.

            “What do you mean?” Aloysius asked.

            “I assumed you were coming to see him, too.”

            “Are you visiting Basil? I thought I was the only one that came.”

            “I purchased his favorite peanut-butter crunch from the ice cream truck.”

            “That’s crazy because,” I reached in my bag, “I also bought one.”

            “This would’ve brought great joy to him. Since there’s no point in giving two, what should we do with the extra?” Aloysius asked.

            “Are you sure we can’t leave both?”

            “A man can only eat one.”

            “Tribute for ants?” I asked, “but can’t we leave a stronger impression with two?”

            “He would enjoy it though if we paid homage to the ants as well.”

            “How about I tribute mine to the ants and you leave yours?”

            He nodded.

            Across the street, six children jumbled through a playground. They played with the wind and not against it. Two siblings raced against the wind. Two kids explored the wind’s rustling of bushes. A fifth explored the palpitations of a puddle. The sixth stood atop a climbing structure and stood against the wind.

            “How’s your life been?” He asked.

            “I am still a barista, but not by conviction,” I said, “I got a college degree along the way if that matters.”

            “And I’m out of the army, by conviction. No idea what follows after that.”

            I looked at his lagging left leg.

            “And not a goddamned minute too soon. The grind, barkers, and idiots were getting to me. Idiots, the whole t**d of them.”

            I nodded.

            “Have you ever heard how dumb the army can be? Don’t get me started at all about it,” he looked me in the eyes.

            I rolled my eyes.

            “Not a fan? Whatever, forget what I’ve been saying.”

            I gave him nothing. The shouts of joy from the playground laid far behind us. Stalled construction jawed around both sides of the street. To the left, a new strip mall with stripped earth foundation was being built while the right had lonesome studio apartments under construction. Pleasant corner stores used to sit on both locations. The left had a pet store filled with diverse, oddball pets from special needs cats to reptiles and ant colonies. Reduced to dust now, it old vending machine laid on its side. The right used to be a convenience store.

            Across the intersection were two parking lots renovated by parallel owners. Aloysius and I stood at the intersection and waited for the cross light. I looked down the street. One light pole along the way had a ring of flowers and stuffed animals tied around it. From memory, those flowers stopped being replaced. The stuffed animals’ fur turned soggy from rain. Farther down the street was an entrance to our old high school.

            “Peanut-butter crunches do not sell well. I’m afraid these will have to tide Basil over,” I said.

            “That sucks.”

            “Is that all you have to say?”

            “No.”

            I nodded and we crossed the street.

            “Since you’re out of the army, what do you have lined up?”

            “My uncle has a job for me. He needs someone on brake repairs. His old guy quit,” Aloysius said.

            “Are you qualified?”

            “Enough.”

            I nodded.

            “You don’t believe me?”

            “Pictures,” I looked Aloysius in the eyes with a s**t-eating grin, “or it didn’t happen.”

            “You,” he stopped to catch his laughter, “you son of a madman. It’s just like the old times now. These were some great times.”

            “Basil would’ve liked that.”

            “Yeah, he likes to see us together. He’s like a kingpin.”

            “One of our teachers labelled him the ringleader.”

            “Which one was it? Having left the army you see, names jumble up. We never did anything criminal with him though?”

            “Actually, Basil had a criminal record.”

            “What the hell? How come I never heard about that? Justin, what are you on?”

            “The first crime was lending us a flashdrive filled with pirated music.”

            “That?”

            “And getting a second soda when Stardust Pet’s vending machine broke down.”

            “The b*****d never shared that soda with us, did he?”

            “How could he? There were three of us and two sodas. Hogging them for himself was the only fair option. Basil had a strange sense of justice.”

            “I know there’s a reason to hate him.”

            I laughed as we turned down a side street. The short brick apartment buildings gave way to smaller houses no bigger than cottages. Gardens grew around them; some were cultivated while others were accidental. Beautiful colors ringed porches and trees with barren branches. On those trees, vibrant leaves of red, yellow, and orange dug above the green. The light and low angling against the branches combined with dust in the air to create a shield of yellow air.

            More impressive than the houses and the micro forest created by the trees was the impending hill. A two-lane road ran at its base. A rickety stream of a street flowed down from the hill where it assimilated into the larger road. Meek as the stream was, it cut two short brick walls. Before the left wall was a granite sign that read: East Edge Cemetery. Aloysius and I headed on the road but kept to the leftmost fringe.

            There was a small wooden toolshed with a metal roof just off the road. A wooden sign said employees only. Next to it was a hand-powered water pump. The wind overturned a waste barrel roped to the fountain. It contained clipped flowers, browned leaves attached to twigs, and weeds. The rope tethering barrel down showed years of strain. Despite the breeze, the barrel remained stationary and too low to be moved.

            We looked up the winding road. Each side had generations of graves only broken by the occasional tree. Thicket of trees obscured the graveyard’s depths. Winding roads branched like a gnarled giant oak. We marched the leftmost path. The generation of graves to our side were worn by lichens and marked the remains of people born before the twentieth century. A few graves flew American flags to commemorate the veterans of the Great War, including some for those that died a century ago in Europe.

            A bubbling brook tumbled over rocky valleys. Dead orange pine needles lined the banks. The wind kicked leaves and bounced branches against one another. The rare bird called. Even rarer cars whined past on a forest path hidden by green pines and a metal fence.

The four sounds, plus the pitter of our sneakers, formed an orchestra timed to an unseen metronome. The brook’s percussion rolled at a constant pace, but its strength waned with distance. The woodwinding of air through trees and hair kept a fixed volume but varied in tempo. Birds and cars added their prickling of sound at a tempo that seemed inconsistent but might have a hidden mathematical logic.

            To finalize the ensemble was the untied stings of my shoe

            I stopped to tie my sneaker. Aloysius looked up, which I imitated to glance at the boundless blue sky blemished by one cloud. A glance to my feet and one sparrow danced on a grass patio. No defined curbs made cliffs between the road and grass alongside the grave rows. Borders blurred as grass claimed the smallest valleys breaking the concrete road. Until one looked farther up the road and saw the pine needles that flowed in every flood now settled on concrete.

            My shoes tied, Aloysius and I resumed our course. The pine needle canyons hid no cigarette butts and remained natural. We found acorns, leaves, and the discarded petals of summertime blooms. Their pink color remained alive.

Discipline was high among the orchestra’s attendees. No sounds disrupted the hall.

            “It started not too long after leaving here for the first time,” Aloysius said.

            “What?”

            “The collapse.”

            I nodded.

            “Hold on, now that I think about it, the signs showed beforehand. We grieve in different ways; you’re vocal and I’m muted,” Aloysius said.

            “As we tend to be most of the time.”

            “So we clash. Or if clashing’s not the word, we don’t mix well under those circumstances. You want an ear and I just want to hibernate and shut down until the weather’s better.”

            “Aloysius, how come you say the signs started before the funeral? We argued the week�"”

            “I don’t want to talk about it.” 

            I pointed to an open-air shelter. The shelter was a series of rods holding up a simple roof. It diluted the wind but gathered the corpses of leaves. Some disintegrated or had chucks of acorn remaining. The picnic tables concentrated corpses like a morgue or medieval crypt.

            “Tell me, how did the original trilogy begin again?” He asked.

            “You mean the three of us? Did you forget?” I asked.

            “How could I forget? Of course, I couldn’t forget. What I want is to hear your side.”

            “It started by random chance. We were waiting for the same bus and all happened to walk into Stardust Pets to kill some time.”

            “You can’t forget the three of us had different reasons to take the bus that particular day. What was the date?”

            I shrugged.

            “Must have faded to memory then. The timing doesn’t really matter when you think about it.”

            “I could dig up some emails. I headed that way for a class project.”

            “I had to babysit my cousin.”

            “What was Basil doing?” I asked.

            “Either browsing for pets or applying for a job.”

            “Did Basil ever buy any ants at Stardust?”

            “Of course not, Basil’s too cheap.”

            “There was the time with the vending machine.”

            “He still owes me ten bucks.”

            I looked across the dirt path. Hundreds of graves stood in one direction. If I had Aloysius’s seat, I could a hundred different ones. The birds flying above could see at least a thousand more. It was quite possible someone else would be buried today.

            “Without interest by the way.”

            “Do you think that’s appropriate?” I asked.

            “Well, what do you mean? It’s true. Messages support me.”

            The wind sounded like a lapping shore. The largest branches were at peace. Only small ones at the fringes with leaves swayed. The leaves arranged in the morgue danced with the sway. The wind picked up with a whimper. Rare brown leaves outside of the morgue trembled and rolled; fallen branches with green leaves attached to one another remained inert.

A squirrel combined leaps and prancing to explore the plains between trees. He stopped every so often to sniff out acorns. He looked at us, prompting me to smile. A tailspin and he ran up a tree perhaps afraid of our size or the fangs that I flashed.

“What makes you think it’s inappropriate?” Aloysius asked.

I spread my arms to empathize the cemetery.

            “Facts still support me.”

            “Shall we get going?”

            “You don’t want to admit I’m right,” he said with a smirk.

            “We should be off before the ice cream melts.”

            “S**t, you’re right,” Aloysius jumped to his feet, “we’ve got to get going.”

            A brisk wind pulled at browning leaves and tossed my hair in random directions. The previous orchestra of songbirds bowed out; a murder of crows called to one another. Like taunting explosions, their squawks followed us. On the chilling wind, the calls carried up and across the hills.

            We passed the Franklin family grave. An American flag flew for the World War II veteran buried beneath. I made a sharp left turn to which Aloysius mimicked.

            “Just one more landmark until we reach Basil,” I said.

            Aloysius nodded.

            We continued along the road’s leftmost flank. The graveyard lacked sidewalks and despite the lack of cars, we remained to the edge to let any drive by. We stayed off the grass lawns for fear of trampling upon buried caskets. Graves with lichen patches became less frequent. Early brown leaves pooled at the base of graves.

            Angled just right to be seen from the road, a family grave had their surname carved onto the side. Aloysius and I turned in sync and walked between the row of graves. A casket-sized pile of upturned dirt and grass laid at the base of a small plastic pole with a photo display. We walked around the fresh patch and turned to face the grave over.

            The grave had a bas-relief bear cub carved onto the surface. Above the wide-eyed critter was a grainy picture from the dawn of the millennium. The child looked up with a wide smile and a blurry Pokémon card in his hand. Centered on the grave were the words �" Basil Dukas, 1997 to 2018.

            I looked up to the sun.

Aloysius focused on Basil’s grave.

            I reached into my bag, “ready?”

            “What?”

            I pulled out my peanut-butter crunch.

            “S**t, you’re right,” he knelt at the grave’s side and pulled out his peanut-butter crunch, “Basil loves these. It really is a shame these may be the last ones.”

            I nodded.

            Aloysius placed the peanut-butter crunch on the grass in front of Basil’s grave. He unwrapped it. Holding the wrapper in his hand, they did not retreat into his pocket. He sighed and threw his eyes to the sky.

            I stood by the side waiting for him to finish his reverence.

            “I couldn’t save him. I’m sorry,” Aloysius said.

“How were you supposed to save him?”

            He looked at the ground, “we were supposed to meet up that day. I was back from the army that day, on leave. Everything seemed set until I came down with a cold. Another day, maybe some other time, do you believe that we thought that? We thought like that; the idiots,” he swallowed, “the idiot I was thought like that!”

            I placed myself between him and the grave, “Al, nobody saw it coming.”

            “Try telling yourself that, I can’t justify that to myself. It had been months since we last talked with his schedule and my service. A cold shouldn’t have gotten in the way. I was selfish, a moron.”

            I knelt at the grave and unwrapped my peanut-butter crunch. Aloysius shoved his wrapper into his pocket. Mine followed into my pocket. I put my other hand on Al’s back. He looked me in the eye, and we rose together. Together, we put our arms on each other’s backs. Before us was a grave with two ice cream bars pre-melting atop one another. Farther down the road were thousands of graves. As fall approached, animals raced to fatten up or see their young off. The corpses of fresh and dried leaves gathered for funerals. Beyond and outside, people went about their lives.

            “Thanks, man,” Al said.

            “Should we get going?” I asked.

            “No, I think we should stay here a bit longer. Want to talk?”

            “What do you want to talk about?”

            “For starters, I want to say sorry. I should have been a better friend. We needed each other when Basil passed. He would have wanted it.”

            “Al, there’s nothing to say sorry about. Just because I needed someone did not mean that you needed to provide it.”

            “Friends should be there for each other. Service, Justin, that is what I am talking about. We need to be there for one another,” he looked me in the eyes, “just as you were here for me just a minute ago. I wanted to lose it. Even if it’s been a year.”

            “For a guy so proud to be out of the army, it seems you took their values very seriously.”

            “Justin, you see, but,” he smirked, “damn, you’re right.”

            “Come on, let’s go. I’ve got a popsicle that I want to eat. I’m not selfish enough to gloat eat it in front of you, but let’s grab something.”

            We walked from Basil’s grave. We pranced down the road. The brook bubbled parallel to us. Our westbound descent paralleled that of the sun as it lowered. Strong, summery light glistened in our eyes. Wind roped my hair into a dancing frenzy and after tiring of the romp, settled over my eyes. This cut down on the glisten but glued my wet mat of hair atop my forehead.

            Aloysius smiled.

I smiled and picked up the pace.

Aloysius switched to a race.

We ran through the earlier symphony hall. With the music done, our romp down the street created a new four beat melody. The arrangement of our four beats differed as one overtook the other in our unmeasured rally. Percussion gave way to our woodwind breathes and beating hearts.

            We came upon the stonewalls dividing the graveyard from the street. We skid to an abrupt stop. I stopped a few inches before Aloysius. He smirked and leapt ahead of me. I rolled my eyes and put one foot back before sprinting forward. He responded with another leap. I jerked my arms forward.

            “I see this going one of two ways. Either you keep going until you wear yourself out to the point of exhaustion or you concede defeat right now,” I said.

            “Me? Conceding defeat? As if anyone could believe that I’d lose,” he said, “even with a wounded leg, I have more vigor than you!”

            “Wounded leg? I knew something seemed off.”

            “Yeah,” he smiled then switched to a stony face, “I never told you. I winded up wounded.”

            “I feel like an a*****e challenging you to a race then.”

            “The pain went away with the race.”

            I nodded.

            “The pain will come another day. That much is certain. Let me tell you, it will be worth when everything is said and done.”

            “Well, bad leg or not, one day we’ll settle this with my victory.”

            The wind rustled the trees. Leaves flung off the deciduous trees. The conifers remained strong without shedding a single green bristle. Fall was coming in the wind and weather. The pine trees would keep living through the chill.

“Justin, let’s do something else. You cannot lose all the time.”

            “To our newfound friendship?” I asked.

            “Our restored friendship.”