A Dark, Dim-lighted Corner (a short , true, story of how the old die)
A Dark, Dim-lighted Corner
It was evening and everyone on the upper three floors of the old folks farm (an old building structure that once was a large farmhouse, a barn somewhat attached to the back of it, on the four acres of land that surrounded the premises) were either receiving visitors, or being attended to by nurses, some of the male patients were down on the first floor, in the pool room, talking, playing pool, spitting in the spittoons, some sitting on the stairways to the second and third floors, selling their leather goods, Ariel Shapiro, a young lad of twelve, went down into the cellar, a dim electric light guided the way down the old wooden cracking noisy stairs. The old lady that in the far corner way in the back of the large cellar, was rocking in her rocking chair by the red hot furnace.
He didn’t remember why he went down those stairs that first time, several months ago, but he did, that is when he met her, and now he’d visit her every time he came to the farm, near North St. Paul, off White Bear Avenue, in Minnesota. It was fall, November of 1959, and it was cold, and Ariel could see the red hot furnace glow from the far-off distance.
You could hear the wheels of the cars racing down White Bear Avenue from deep in the cellar; the road was perhaps a hundred feet from the front of the Farm House. It was always busy near twilight.
Far-off in the corner of the cellar, was the old lady rocking in her chair, a fairly small, thin old woman, with tinted greyish hair, lively little eyes, a turned up nose, pale white skin, a glimmer to her, a serious look on her forehead, her voice not high or low, just the right tone, as if she was used to conversations; there she was rocking away, said,
“Is that you Ariel?”
“Yes ma’am…” he said.
“Then it is best you get on over here and warm up by this old furnace its getting colder by the day, going to get colder come December’s, right around the corner!”
He stood against the wall now, the furnace to her other side,
“Sit down on the stood there, did I ever tell you about Ike and me?”
“Kind of,” the boy said.
The boy told himself: she’s talkative tonight, almost tipsy, been drinking that half-pint she keeps hidden behind the brick I bet, to the right side of her; he then noticed she had her pipe lit, barely lit, so the basement wouldn’t fill up with smoke, and she’d be found out, and the nurses would force her to return to her bedroom. She hated going to bed early.
She never seemed in despair, thought the boy, like so many of the old folks in the home, she was almost above that.
There they sat, like two old pals, in a book clamshell.
“Ike, oh I mean President Dwight D. Eisenhower, you know the president, I met him when he was just a general, the Commanding General of Europe, in WWII, I did a small interview, oh just a few answers and questions, I was a reporter back then, back in ’44.”
The boy knew she was not kidding, he had learned better, she didn’t fool a person to make herself look big, she had a picture of her and Harry S. Truman, together, it was in May, 1945, when they had met, and he had his arm around her, he had just become president of the United States a month before. She had told the boy, how he had created NATO, and used the first atomic bomb on Japan, and how people forgot who she was, but at one time she was somebody, a known reporter, and a female reporter at that.
The boy looked about the place, her corner, it was dusty, and it seemed to settle all around her,
“This place is so dusty,” yelled the boy, knowing she was half-deaf, “I could come on in, say Saturday, and wipe this corner down for you?”
“Oh no, no, leave it as it is, it’s fine. I’m not afraid of the bugs, spiders, and dust; I’m too old to be afraid of anything. This year (1959) I’ll be 69-years old.” She commented.
The boy admitted to himself, it was quiet, and tranquil, peaceful, and as he was pondering these thoughts, she said in kind of a slur of words, “I’d commit suicide if I could find an easy way to do it,” and smiled, not looking at the boy right away, then from the side of her right eye, she caught a glimpse of him, then added, “but I’m never quite up to it.”
The boy did not respond to that, wasn’t sure how to, and had he, what would he have said anyhow, he just looked blank, and listened. Then he stood up, started to walk towards the stairs, some fifty-feet away, he turned to see her, and saw her shadow bobbing back and forth as she rocked in her rocker, saw her reflection as she rocked side to side of the furnace, a glimpse each time she got to each side of the old furnace.
(She was once a young girl reporter, met many important people of her day, it was hard for her to lay down and die, hard for her, that to have anyone remembered her, that if she had living family folks, they never came to visit her, the boy never asked many questions into her personal life, did more listening, and therefore never knew.)
He heard the old lady’s rapping of her pipe on the furnace; he stopped to see if she wanted something, he knew sometimes she just wanted to be alone, especially when she started reflecting on her younger years. She meant no disrespect for the boy, by not talking to him, she just zoned off, and so he simply got out of her way. He looked back, he was almost about to walk up the stairs, and he heard her say,
“Come on back here if you got a minute!”
Then Ariel turned about and walked back to her, said, “What is it?”
“Get me my half-pint of whiskey out from behind the brick if you will, I’m very tired and weak, can you?”
“Of course,” said the boy, and quickly removed the brick. She had a glass hidden in her dress pocket, and pulled it out, wiped it with the cuff of her blouse, then gave Ariel a big smile, “Pour,” she commanded, adding, “it helps me sleep, it’s really just medicine, they often used it in the old days, the bible reads, for sleeping.”
The boy just smiled back, there was perhaps some half-truth in what she said, he figured, and he wasn’t going to argue with her, she was too ahead of him, and she most likely knew it.
Several minutes passed, as she rocked back and forth, drank the double shot down. She stopped rocking, put the glass back into her pocket, and had to boy return the half empty pint back to its abode.
It was now 9:00 p.m., and visiting time was over at 9:30 p.m., and bed check for the old folks was at 10:00 p.m., if not in bed, the nurses went on a hunt for them.
“I should have killed myself last week,” the old lady said, opening up her eyes wider than normal, she had shut them for a few minutes, adding, “this is no way to live.”
The boy sat back down, “Thank you,” said the old lady to the boy.
“I have a few shots of whisky every night, almost every night,” she said, in an explanatory tone.
“Why do you want to kill yourself?” asked the boy.
“I suppose, I did all I’m really going to do, worth doing, I have no one really, life is boring, I get sad, and if it wasn’t for my little corner here, I perhaps would have did it long ago. But here I can think.”
“How would you do it?” asked the boy:
“I guess by a rope, tie it around one of those big beams, stand on the stool your sitting on there, and that would be that.”
“You should go now, not listen to such talk of an old lady, and I wish you’d just go.”
“You should get back to your bed before they come looking for you,” said the boy.
“Oh, I never leave before midnight, I told them I’d kill myself unless they’d allow me this little gift; sometimes they find me sleeping and leave me sleep, wake me up for breakfast.”
“How is it,” asked the boy, “to be old?”
“I’m not lonely, if that is what you mean. I have memories, but my dear boy it is nasty.”
“Why is that?” asked the boy.
“You ask so many questions, and you’re so very young. You see, you drop things, and people look at you, and you drop them again. You pay your bills on time, and people take advantage of you, tell you this and that, and build your hopes up, and rob you when they can, because they can. They threaten you if you don’t do what they say. You forget this and that, only remember things when you were young. You know if you don’t give your things away, they’ll take them before you die by force, have you sign this and that, or not feed you.”
The old woman stood up, pulled out an old quarter from her pocket purse, said, “This is the date I was born,” she gave it to the boy, he looked, it read, ‘1891’ it was the same year his grandfather was born, he then gave it back to her, as she sat back down in her rocker.
It was now half-past nine, “Your friends must be waiting for you, you should go home and go to bed.” said the old woman.
“How about you,” said the boy?
“It’s not the same,” she commented.
“What do you mean,” asked the boy.
She didn’t want to be impolite, she was simply in a hurry to get the boy out before someone came looking for him, and discovered her hideaway, other than her personal nurse.
“Youth needs its sleep,” she said pleasantly, “in time you will have everything I had, and more. I want to rest now, so go!
The boy seemed a little reluctant, but he did stand back up and leave,
“Good night,” he told her as he walked away.
“Good night,” she commented back, then she turned off her radio, pulled the string attached to the light bulb, turned it off, and it was dark, real dark, except for the light that shinned down the steps.
The boy looked back, he couldn’t see her, but he heard the rocking chair go back and forth, and he knew she was alright, and somehow he knew he’d not see her again, a sense, intuition, premonition.
The boy smiled climbing up the stairs, met his friend, Jerome, “What you doing down there?” he asked, “you know you can get in trouble.”
He never answered Jerome, they just whizzed off to Jerome’s mother’s car in the parking lot waiting for her to come down from the third floor, she was visiting someone up there, and all was forgotten, until the following week, when he went to see her again, and she wasn’t there: matter of fact, he went down to her corner, and the rocker was gone, the half pint of whisky, was empty but still behind the brick, and it was like, no one had ever been there.
2-12-2009 (Written while in my library in Lima, Peru, this evening)
It was evening and everyone on the upper three floors of the old folks farm (an old building structure that once was a large farmhouse, a barn somewhat attached to the back of it, on the four acres of land that surrounded the premises) were either receiving visitors, or being attended to by nurses, some of the male patients were down on the first floor, in the pool room, talking, playing pool, spitting in the spittoons, some sitting on the stairways to the second and third floors, selling their leather goods, Ariel Shapiro, a young lad of twelve, went down into the cellar, a dim electric light guided the way down the old wooden cracking noisy stairs. The old lady that in the far corner way in the back of the large cellar, was rocking in her rocking chair by the red hot furnace.
He didn’t remember why he went down those stairs that first time, several months ago, but he did, that is when he met her, and now he’d visit her every time he came to the farm, near North St. Paul, off White Bear Avenue, in Minnesota. It was fall, November of 1959, and it was cold, and Ariel could see the red hot furnace glow from the far-off distance.
You could hear the wheels of the cars racing down White Bear Avenue from deep in the cellar; the road was perhaps a hundred feet from the front of the Farm House. It was always busy near twilight.
Far-off in the corner of the cellar, was the old lady rocking in her chair, a fairly small, thin old woman, with tinted greyish hair, lively little eyes, a turned up nose, pale white skin, a glimmer to her, a serious look on her forehead, her voice not high or low, just the right tone, as if she was used to conversations; there she was rocking away, said,
“Is that you Ariel?”
“Yes ma’am…” he said.
“Then it is best you get on over here and warm up by this old furnace its getting colder by the day, going to get colder come December’s, right around the corner!”
He stood against the wall now, the furnace to her other side,
“Sit down on the stood there, did I ever tell you about Ike and me?”
“Kind of,” the boy said.
The boy told himself: she’s talkative tonight, almost tipsy, been drinking that half-pint she keeps hidden behind the brick I bet, to the right side of her; he then noticed she had her pipe lit, barely lit, so the basement wouldn’t fill up with smoke, and she’d be found out, and the nurses would force her to return to her bedroom. She hated going to bed early.
She never seemed in despair, thought the boy, like so many of the old folks in the home, she was almost above that.
There they sat, like two old pals, in a book clamshell.
“Ike, oh I mean President Dwight D. Eisenhower, you know the president, I met him when he was just a general, the Commanding General of Europe, in WWII, I did a small interview, oh just a few answers and questions, I was a reporter back then, back in ’44.”
The boy knew she was not kidding, he had learned better, she didn’t fool a person to make herself look big, she had a picture of her and Harry S. Truman, together, it was in May, 1945, when they had met, and he had his arm around her, he had just become president of the United States a month before. She had told the boy, how he had created NATO, and used the first atomic bomb on Japan, and how people forgot who she was, but at one time she was somebody, a known reporter, and a female reporter at that.
The boy looked about the place, her corner, it was dusty, and it seemed to settle all around her,
“This place is so dusty,” yelled the boy, knowing she was half-deaf, “I could come on in, say Saturday, and wipe this corner down for you?”
“Oh no, no, leave it as it is, it’s fine. I’m not afraid of the bugs, spiders, and dust; I’m too old to be afraid of anything. This year (1959) I’ll be 69-years old.” She commented.
The boy admitted to himself, it was quiet, and tranquil, peaceful, and as he was pondering these thoughts, she said in kind of a slur of words, “I’d commit suicide if I could find an easy way to do it,” and smiled, not looking at the boy right away, then from the side of her right eye, she caught a glimpse of him, then added, “but I’m never quite up to it.”
The boy did not respond to that, wasn’t sure how to, and had he, what would he have said anyhow, he just looked blank, and listened. Then he stood up, started to walk towards the stairs, some fifty-feet away, he turned to see her, and saw her shadow bobbing back and forth as she rocked in her rocker, saw her reflection as she rocked side to side of the furnace, a glimpse each time she got to each side of the old furnace.
(She was once a young girl reporter, met many important people of her day, it was hard for her to lay down and die, hard for her, that to have anyone remembered her, that if she had living family folks, they never came to visit her, the boy never asked many questions into her personal life, did more listening, and therefore never knew.)
He heard the old lady’s rapping of her pipe on the furnace; he stopped to see if she wanted something, he knew sometimes she just wanted to be alone, especially when she started reflecting on her younger years. She meant no disrespect for the boy, by not talking to him, she just zoned off, and so he simply got out of her way. He looked back, he was almost about to walk up the stairs, and he heard her say,
“Come on back here if you got a minute!”
Then Ariel turned about and walked back to her, said, “What is it?”
“Get me my half-pint of whiskey out from behind the brick if you will, I’m very tired and weak, can you?”
“Of course,” said the boy, and quickly removed the brick. She had a glass hidden in her dress pocket, and pulled it out, wiped it with the cuff of her blouse, then gave Ariel a big smile, “Pour,” she commanded, adding, “it helps me sleep, it’s really just medicine, they often used it in the old days, the bible reads, for sleeping.”
The boy just smiled back, there was perhaps some half-truth in what she said, he figured, and he wasn’t going to argue with her, she was too ahead of him, and she most likely knew it.
Several minutes passed, as she rocked back and forth, drank the double shot down. She stopped rocking, put the glass back into her pocket, and had to boy return the half empty pint back to its abode.
It was now 9:00 p.m., and visiting time was over at 9:30 p.m., and bed check for the old folks was at 10:00 p.m., if not in bed, the nurses went on a hunt for them.
“I should have killed myself last week,” the old lady said, opening up her eyes wider than normal, she had shut them for a few minutes, adding, “this is no way to live.”
The boy sat back down, “Thank you,” said the old lady to the boy.
“I have a few shots of whisky every night, almost every night,” she said, in an explanatory tone.
“Why do you want to kill yourself?” asked the boy.
“I suppose, I did all I’m really going to do, worth doing, I have no one really, life is boring, I get sad, and if it wasn’t for my little corner here, I perhaps would have did it long ago. But here I can think.”
“How would you do it?” asked the boy:
“I guess by a rope, tie it around one of those big beams, stand on the stool your sitting on there, and that would be that.”
“You should go now, not listen to such talk of an old lady, and I wish you’d just go.”
“You should get back to your bed before they come looking for you,” said the boy.
“Oh, I never leave before midnight, I told them I’d kill myself unless they’d allow me this little gift; sometimes they find me sleeping and leave me sleep, wake me up for breakfast.”
“How is it,” asked the boy, “to be old?”
“I’m not lonely, if that is what you mean. I have memories, but my dear boy it is nasty.”
“Why is that?” asked the boy.
“You ask so many questions, and you’re so very young. You see, you drop things, and people look at you, and you drop them again. You pay your bills on time, and people take advantage of you, tell you this and that, and build your hopes up, and rob you when they can, because they can. They threaten you if you don’t do what they say. You forget this and that, only remember things when you were young. You know if you don’t give your things away, they’ll take them before you die by force, have you sign this and that, or not feed you.”
The old woman stood up, pulled out an old quarter from her pocket purse, said, “This is the date I was born,” she gave it to the boy, he looked, it read, ‘1891’ it was the same year his grandfather was born, he then gave it back to her, as she sat back down in her rocker.
It was now half-past nine, “Your friends must be waiting for you, you should go home and go to bed.” said the old woman.
“How about you,” said the boy?
“It’s not the same,” she commented.
“What do you mean,” asked the boy.
She didn’t want to be impolite, she was simply in a hurry to get the boy out before someone came looking for him, and discovered her hideaway, other than her personal nurse.
“Youth needs its sleep,” she said pleasantly, “in time you will have everything I had, and more. I want to rest now, so go!
The boy seemed a little reluctant, but he did stand back up and leave,
“Good night,” he told her as he walked away.
“Good night,” she commented back, then she turned off her radio, pulled the string attached to the light bulb, turned it off, and it was dark, real dark, except for the light that shinned down the steps.
The boy looked back, he couldn’t see her, but he heard the rocking chair go back and forth, and he knew she was alright, and somehow he knew he’d not see her again, a sense, intuition, premonition.
The boy smiled climbing up the stairs, met his friend, Jerome, “What you doing down there?” he asked, “you know you can get in trouble.”
He never answered Jerome, they just whizzed off to Jerome’s mother’s car in the parking lot waiting for her to come down from the third floor, she was visiting someone up there, and all was forgotten, until the following week, when he went to see her again, and she wasn’t there: matter of fact, he went down to her corner, and the rocker was gone, the half pint of whisky, was empty but still behind the brick, and it was like, no one had ever been there.
2-12-2009 (Written while in my library in Lima, Peru, this evening)
Labels: Awarded Resolution for Outstanding Literature works by Continental University
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 8:39 AM
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