A Bench In The Park, Brian Doswell [red seas under red skies txt] 📗

Golden brown leaves crunch underfoot adding their distinctive autumnal crackle to the deeper tones that my shoes make as they drag along the gravel path. A flurry of wind whirls the dry foils into drifts and then, impatiently, spreads them out again.

Autumn colours are everywhere in the park today, warm earthy shades of brown, speckled with yellow and red dots from the exotic bushes that are busy folding their stalls away before their winter rest.

I lean on my cane and pause for breath, feeling the damp air, cold as it enters my throat. My lungs heave as I draw the cool air down inside me and I feel my heart beating beneath the extra cardigan that I put on before my morning walk. In its own way, the rhythmic pulse in my chest is telling me that I am still alive.

Keep going old friend, we have come a long way together. The good book promised me three score years and ten; four score and five is a good bonus. Don’t let me down now.

The scarf around my neck feels heavy. I would throw it away except, I know that my daughter will chide me. “You should look after yourself, you old fool.”

I hear her soft familiar voice in my ear as though she were standing beside me.

When did I stop being ‘Dad’ and become an old fool? Memory plays tricks with me now. I can remember being Daddy when she was a baby and Dad when she became a teenager. I was Pop for a while when she had an 'All-American' boyfriend, but I became Dad again when he went out of favor. I liked him although I can’t remember his name any more. Tall boy - fair hair. What was his name?

There’s a squirrel in those trees. I’ve seen it twice this week. Did you know that squirrels can bury a thousand nuts and remember where every one is? I wish I was a squirrel, it took me an hour to find my teeth this morning.

The park is empty today. Some mornings there are young mothers with babies in strollers, not that they have proper strollers any more. Elegant Silver Swans with big shiny chrome wheels and handles. Never see them any more. Three-wheeled things, with more cables and brakes than a racing bicycle. All very modern I’m sure.

My leg hurts.

I grip my cane in my right hand while my left nestles in the warmth of my coat pocket. My fingers wrap around the remnants of a stale sandwich that I have been keeping for the ducks on the pond.

I feel sorry for the ducks. They are always glad to see me, but I can’t get here so often any more. I don’t know who feeds them on the days that I can’t get here. I doubt that those nice young ladies, with their three-wheeled strollers, ever find time to feed the ducks. You should see the way they rush around. I’ve been keeping this sandwich in my pocket for a week. I know the bread is hard but it will soften in the water. I would have given it to the ducks yesterday, but I couldn’t find the pond. You don’t suppose the park keeper has filled it in? Could be a Health and Safety thing. Ponds can be dangerous places.

I think it might rain later on.

There used to be a bandstand over there. My father played the trumpet. Not in a band, but when he was in the army. He used to make me sit and listen to the band on a Sunday afternoon. It was all right I suppose. He smoked a pipe and I remember a permanent cloud of smoke above his head wherever he went. It was green, not the smoke, the bandstand. The church band played there every week, ‘All things bright and beautiful’, ‘March on, March on for Jesus’, or was that the coalminer's band?

We had a coalminer's band here for years even though we never had a coal mine. My father said that he played the trumpet in the coalminer's band but my mother said he didn’t. I never did find out the truth, too late now.

The wind is stronger now. It whistles across the open grass where us boys used to play baseball in the summer evenings. The sound of bat on ball echoes in the twigs snapping in gusts of the cold north wind.

I played baseball there, or was it further over? I made a hundred homeruns one day. No one would let me play again because it took too long to get me out, and they had to go home for tea.

This park is the only green space left in the town. The city fathers are desperately trying not to come to a decision about the various separate development plans that sit in their ever-deepening in-tray. The arguments are simple and clearly put.

The Greens are for the park. They go on and on about a civic duty to provide leisure space in this day and age, even though it costs seventy-three thousand dollars each year to keep the park open. That only pays for a park keeper and the gardener’s time and materials. The insurance is the big unknown quantity. The last of the swings came down last year in case anyone fell off them and sued for damages. Children never come here any more, there’s nowhere to play just a forest of signs that prohibit, ball-games, roller-skating, skateboarding, walking, talking or just being young and sassy.

Those against the park would prefer an all-year-round bowling alley and multi-screen cinema complex with restaurant facility and car-park. Just cover it in concrete and be done with it.

Half way round the park, I know a place where there are some benches. I’ll sit a while and get my breath back. There used to be a kiosk there, a café that served tea and scones, with strawberry jam and cream, but it closed when Maud died. Maud made the scones in her kitchen and brought them in, fresh each day. I don’t suppose that would be allowed any more. Maud was the high nabob of the PTA. No one made better scones than Maud. After she died, they closed the kiosk. They said it was because there was no running water, but I reckon there was no one who could make scones like Maud.

One of the new development plans is to build a retirement home for the elderly. There would be three stories of cubicles for old folk with nowhere else to go until they die. Each cubicle will have a panic button that you can press if you can find the time before you go to meet your maker. They have special wide doors, wide enough for wheelchairs and coffins. It’s not for me. I can’t see me being allowed to save my old sandwiches for the ducks in a place like that.

My leg hurts.

I did hear the Council threw out the plan for keeping the park wall and turning the space inside into a red light district. I’ve always thought this town could do with a decent brothel. Maud would have made a good Madam. Sex and scones; what more could a man want? I'd have loved to have seen her on a Christmas Calendar.

The knowalls on the radio forecast rain this morning and there's a keen edge to the wind, could just prove them right. The air dampens into mist, and mist into drizzling rain, I pull my collar up around my ears but it does not keep the cold from my aging bones. The old kiosk is only a few steps away, I can sit there till the shower passes.

I remember sitting here with my daughter watching her spread ice-cream over her chin. She had pigtails then. Damn it, what’s her name?

That bench over there, under the wooden arch, that used to be the kiosk, its out of the wind. I make my useless leg carry me to the bench before the rain gets to me. I’ll be dry there for a while.

Rain drips from the leafless twigs around me and my old pitcher's mound seems to be covered by a veil of grey. My coat is warm and I’m dry. The sky is lighter over towards the City Hall. I expect the rain will stop in a few minutes and I will be home in time for lunch.

I remember sitting here with my daughter watching her spread ice-cream over her chin. She had pigtails then. Damn it, what’s her name?

I've never liked mist. It spoils the view and, most of all, it takes away the colors. The best thing about the park is the colors, everything looks grey now. The flowers in Spring are a real joy and the bushes in the Summer have such wonderful textures. I especially like the rich golden tones of Autumn. All those lovely reds and browns, I wish that I could see them through this damned mist.

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Evening News
Obituaries

George Elliott Jones - aged 85, was found dead this afternoon on a bench in the park. It is understood that Mr. Jones died of natural causes.

Publication Date: 04-24-2010

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