In my early twenties, many moons ago, the autumn after fulfilling my active obligations to the military, one of my uncles set me up as a peon for his big-shot tax-attorney friend in downtown San Diego. The work was dreary, tedious, depressing, and nearly voluntary in pay, but it wasn't difficult, and it allowed me time to study for the Law degree that - Thank the Gods - I never completed.
I was able to spend only a handful of lunch breaks at Balboa Park over the three months or so that I worked downtown, but, each and every time I visited, there would be one particular old bench occupied by one particular old man: dark-blue ball cap perched high on his forehead, with USN embroidered in gold letters across the front; light-grey, hooded sweatshirt; white t-shirt; beige cotton pants; skinny right leg crossed over skinny left; white socks sagging loose over white ankles over tan-colored deck shoes. His spotted, spindly hands cradled a book as if it were a fledgling sparrow.
All through the month of September he read from just that one book, with its unmistakable green cover, black binding, and couple hundred or so almond-hued pages. The book and he looked equally weathered. The old man would read for only a few minutes at a time until his right hand would slide a small black-and-white photograph from beneath the book and slip it carefully between the open pages. He would look at the image for a few breaths, brush the knobby fingers of his left hand over it, and gently enclose the photo into the book. Then he would lift his eyes to the sky. The pale folds of skin dangling from his neck enraptured the youthful me.
During the forty or so minutes of my lunch breaks, the old man might follow this same routine five times or more. Sometimes he seemed to observe the clouds, other times his head would follow a passing bird or butterfly or falling leaf; and occasionally his eyes would close for a spell, at various points along the pattern, but never long enough to break his routine.
Sitting against the broad black oak I favored, my view was from only a stone's toss away, facing him, but the manner in which he held the book never allowed me to see its title. Nor could I view the image which so mesmerized him. Until he abandoned her.
On a ridiculously humid day in the first week of October, the ancient man closed his ancient book, lifted his sagging chin to the sky, stared at the clouds for a few moments, and then closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were fixed directly on mine. In my few visits to the park that autumn, this was the first and only time our eyes met, and it lasted only a few brief seconds, but the feeling in that concrete moment is like no other I have ever felt. For so many years I never told this story for fear of sounding overly dramatic, laughed at or ridiculed for some sort of unrecognized homoerotic awakening; and to this day I still don't know how to explain that moment other than to say it was life-altering. My heart instantly swooned and ached, and an anchor dropped into the pit of my stomach. But my feelings were decidedly not toward the old man, which is the crucial part of this story that I've never been able to convincingly convey.
He broke eye contact from me and looked down toward his hands, as he had always inevitably done. Then the man gently set the closed book beside him on wooden bench. He pushed himself to his feet and took a step, then paused and turned back, picking up the book again. He turned it upside down and removed the photo, quickly laid the image by itself on the warped slats of the bench, and walked away, book in hand. He didn't look back.
I watched the old man amble down the asphalted pathway, and watched the tiny slip of printed paper as its corner lifted slightly off the bench with each small breath of unfelt breeze, until I could no longer resist the temptation to rescue it.
The stained and sun-bleached photograph was of a woman, long black hair, dark complexion: she was borne of this land's indigenous people, I'm certain. There was no inscription on the print, no date, nothing. I knew her once. I'm not sure when, or how, but I did know her.
I returned to Balboa Park a couple random times before leaving the city, but I never saw the old man again. I'll never learn what the ancient book was from which he read, but I do have an educated idea or two.
In the couple decades since that day, I've wandered the deserts and low chaparral arenas of our glorious southwest, tumbling from small town to small town, but spending most of my long days and nights meandering through the sparse, humble nether-regions which patiently lie in wait between so many temporary cathedrals of mortal irrelevance. Store-bought nuts and dried berries are my most common meal; I collect whatever edibles I find growing freely in the wild, even lizards and clumsy moths and such, but to rely solely on natural offerings of the scrublands is a stressful endeavor. I lug as much water as two legs and a backpack can feasibly haul, filling up whenever I may find it. I'm almost always hungry, almost always thirsty. The turkey vultures stopped following me some years ago, astutely recognizing that when this solitary fool's luck finally runs out, his scrawny tanned carcass will likely be well within range of their keen sense of smell.
I always camp alone, but rarely without her. I sense her mysterious black eyes peering from behind the rocky crags. Her sly, slippery movements shadow me from one round dusty boulder to another as I walk the rugged sandstone canyons. I feel her smooth, umber skin on the exposed limbs of the manzanita and taste her spare sweetness in its tiny fruit. I hear her softly humming worksongs as she rustles through dangling pods of the mesquite, or spreading her gossipy rumors among the clucks and caws of black-feathered loitering scoundrels. And in the broad rings of the ever-living creosote, I feel a powerful presence of female spirits, hers among them; I purposefully step around their circle, respecting the intimate ancestral secrets held within linked hands as they sit singing between high banks of mouldering skeletons.
I believe when the old man left the park that day, he attempted to quietly render his heaviest burdens onto me. Perhaps he finally forgave his tortured, weary soul, and then subsequently condemned mine. On that particular day, in that particular park, I somehow inherited a sincere love, and a distinct guilt, for the melancholy heart of a woman I may never have personally sinned against. But I hold no grudge against the old man. If his heroic effort that day succeeded, therein lies hope for me.
Our lady still roams this land: somewhere, everywhere. Her ever-mournful wail is echoed in moonlit howls of the lonely gypsy canine, kindred spirit of mankind; my spine shivers with its every cry, and my foggy mind floods with a longing for memories I can not quite remember, yet somehow can not quite forget. There is nothing else. And I know that it will be this way forever, or until my own weary soul finds safe passage beyond her beautiful, sorrowful melody.
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M C R
This work is copyrighted by the author, Terry Rogers. All rights reserved.