Sep. 5th, 2003

katallison: (Default)
So we still have a few warm nights left, before summer dies. This is one of them; and about eight, I looked up from the computer and realized it had gotten dark already, and remembered I was going to walk down to the store and get some coffee and milk, for the morning.

I had to take the long cut around the pine tree to get to the sidewalk, because my upstairs neighbors had run the sprinkler across the front walk. They tend to put the sprinkler on and then forget about it, let it run for hours and hours, and I have long crises of indecision about whether I should go shut it off or just let it run. At least we're not under sprinkling restrictions, since Minneapolis draws its water from the Mississippi, and the Mississippi never runs dry, even in a hellish drought like the one we're having. I think about the drought, as I amble down the dark sidewalk, and worry about the trees and shrubs that won't make it through the winter if we don't get rain before the ground freezes, though it's so warm tonight that the big freeze, the snow, seem as distant as something from a movie I saw years ago.

At the corner, I turn on the busy street and make my way past the arts center, past the vacant lot where they tore down the ramshackle old storefronts and are supposed to be building a martial-arts school, past the coffeehouse with the benches out in front that are permanently occupied by a rotating cast of African men--Somalian, Nigerian--who smoke and talk loudly amongst themselves in a language I don't even recognize. Motorcycles roar by, and cars with their windows down and rap music blasting out. After they pass, I can hear the crickets again, and the air is warm and dusty and soft, soft, soft. It's almost eerie how warm it is, since most evenings lately have been sweatshirt weather, but tonight is a tanktop and sandals night.

I pass the bar where thirteen, fourteen years ago I used to get hammered most nights of the week, where I used to be a regular. There's a whole new cast of regulars in there now, and I glance in the window at them, and keep walking.

When I get to the store, there's a car parked at the curb, a late-50s vintage Pontiac with flaring fins, and leaning up against it a young man who looks like James Dean crossed with Matt McConaughey. He's holding a guitar, picking out a quiet folksy tune hardly louder than the crickets, and he nods at me as I go past, and I nod back.

He looks, in fact, scarily like my ex-partner's brother B., the sweet-talking song-writing bipolar guitarist, who once toured with Emmylou Harris, and who went off his meds and spiraled down, down, down into bad craziness and was lost to us. I don't even know if B. is alive or dead by now, and seeing his face on this guitar-picking young stranger on this eerily warm night unsettles me.

But I go in the store and get my groceries, under the fluorescent lights, and when I come back out the kid is helping a young woman, doubtless his girlfriend, load groceries into the car. I walk on, and now I can see the moon, big and low in the sky, a bit past half-full. I pass the bar, I pass the vacant lot and the coffeeshop--the African guys have temporarily scattered, and the benches are empty. I turn onto my street, and see a police car pulled up at the curb across from my house.

Everything seems quiet at first, but once I've put my groceries away, I light up a cigarette and go out on the front porch, and now I can hear commotion from the house across the street, a woman yelling and sobbing, the sound of bad craziness. A neighbor, standing on the sidewalk across the street, sees me and comes over. She's trying to explain--something about a bus card?--I can't get it all, but then she says, "--and she was drunk, and saying she was going to kill herself, and so I called--" I nod, and just then I can make out movement on the porch of the house across the street, and hear the woman's broken wailing voice and the cops trying to quiet her down, as they move her toward the car. It's too dark to see anything, and I suddenly feel like a voyeur, and step back into the house. Put out my cigarette, crack a beer, sit back down at the computer, open an "Update" window. And so here we are. It's still hot, and soon I'll go to bed.

Profile

katallison: (Default)
katallison

November 2009

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags