Wintering Over

I like to look at people and try to imagine what they're about. What's their story -- what's their line. I think there's nobody who doesn't have a story, and it's usually a pretty good one at that. I've been around the track a few times, myself; really had a hell of a time to get so damned burned out. But it's sort of been worth it -- just to see the expressions on their faces -- I mean the rest of them who used to know me back when I was a young buck. Of course, I don't get to see any of them any more, nor would any of them really want to see me -- at least not in my present state -- which is to say that I have devolved into the kind of person most normal people'd rather not know.

I didn't plan it this way -- it just sort of happened. I made that one mistake back in the days of my youth -- fell in love and got a girl pregnant in the twelfth grade and she felt so degraded that she killed herself. That was sort of it for me. I mean, how do you recover from something like that? It was a real bad scene, so I became a shiftless oaf who roamed from place to place and never really had a home. It's not the way I planned it -- it just sort of happened.

These days, with winter drawing near, my goal was to find accommodation for the cold weather -- to get a fixed address so as to qualify for the welfare money -- because the welfare money was an important component to life in the winter. It's not so bad to be on the street in the spring and summer, but it's not any fun at all to be out for the winter. I know kids who brag that they been out on the street for three and four winters, but let them say that when they've been out for twenty-four winters. No, I had need of a bed these days, else I'd end up dead on a grate some winter's morning.

I picked apples up in the orchard country to the north of the city to pick up my stake. I had bad need of that money -- the upfront cash to be used to secure protection against the inclement winter. Seven hundred dollars, collected through hard work bringing in the year's crop, glistening cold and wet in the early morning dew, feeling the damp in bones gone old. I had come the long way into the city, knowing it was the better place to winter over. With the cash pinned up under my jacket, I was careful who I came upon and who came upon me.

I sat at the counter in a coffee shop in an older part of the city. I'd been up and down the want ads, but most won't rent to a decrepit bum intent on a winter of welfare, then out on the road come spring. But I wasn't complainin'. I'd got some money in my pocket, a full belly, and the weather was balmy for a fall night. Good sleepin'-under-the-bridge weather. A little risky these days, what with all these snotty-nosed kids on the streets, but there'd be few who'd suspect what I carried under my coat.

I crawled down under a railway trestle, where I'd spent a few nights, and unfurled my great coat -- the one I bought at army surplus -- and, soon, I was snug as a bug in a rug. I'd done this a few times. I know it's not the Waldorf, but it does in a pinch. I got woken up about three times by the rumble and roar of the trains, but it was an okay trade-off for the shelter the trestle offered.

I came back up onto the street at the crack of dawn, 'cause if I've learned one thing in life, it's that you don't want to waste a minute. I seen too many people snatched off this globe with scarcely a whisper. I don't figure I'll be passing on too soon, though, because I'm a survivor -- that's what a shrink told me back in the days when I was still tryin' to fix myself, thinking I could be part of the big picture for a while. Of course, that wasn't possible, and I finally came to that realization and was the better for it.

That day, I had better luck searching the city for my winter digs, and I soon came upon a rooming house where they seemed to know what I was up to but didn't give a damn. At least that's what I figured. They could see I was travelling light. It wasn't like I was trying to hide anything.

Once I got the room, I went out into the city and scavanged a few necessities at the Good Will. There were few things I really needed, but I sunk ten bucks into an old radio so I could keep up with things as the winter winds howled away in the great outside. The room had a dilapidated easy chair that had seen better days, a lumpy old single bed in the corner, and a small dinette wedged beside an out-of-shape, battered-up dresser. I had no sheets or blankets, so I picked up an old sleeping bag that would serve well in the cold ahead. I was ready. I settled in to await the winter.

It came with all its fury the first week of December. I awoke early one morning to hear the ice pellets tapping furiously on the window, and crept out of bed and parted the curtain, peering outside into the first serious weather of the season. I wrapped the great coat about me and sat deep in the easy chair. I'd stashed a few non-perishables on the window ledge -- I could hole up for a few days. I was glad I'd been able to amass my little grub stake.

I'd already registered my claim with the folks at welfare, so now I was waiting for the money to flow amd keep me out of the cold 'til spring. Cheatin' the system ain't a noble profession, but when it's all you got, you better know how to play the angles. I had to make seven hundred bucks last for five months, so I borrow a bit from the folks that have. Better that than I knock them over the head and take what I want -- because that's the alternative -- and they better all know it.

That first storm lasted for the better part of a week, so that even I was getting the cabin fever by the end of it, and the shoppers were going crazy with Christmas creepin' up and the streets all plugged up with snow and ice and such. Finally, I ventured out for a meal at the mission and decided on a little celebration for afterwards. Now, some may wonder what one such as I would choose to celebrate, but I learned somewhere back in my distant past that sometimes you just need to celebrate and never mind the reason. So, I picked up a couple of bottles and headed back to my room.

Sometime the next day -- or the day after -- I recovered from the haze. I sat deep in my easy chair and wondered that I had survived another celebration. I felt grievously ill, and the room's small wall sink was already a smelly, putrid hole of puke from sometime earlier in the binge. The smell almost made me retch, and I marveled that I continued to live a life of personal abuse even understanding that one time would be the last.

It was then that someone knocked upon my door. I wondered if I should answer. Likely no good would come of it -- no good ever comes when I answer the door. It's just the way of things with me.

Another series of knocks. It was probably the welfare lady. I'd likely lost track of the date, and she was here for her monthly meeting. Christ, I thought, if she finds me like this, I'll be cut off and out in the cold. I decided to lay low, not answer the door, and hope the smell from the room didn't seep out into the hallway and give me away.

The knocking stopped.

I decided I should clean the place up a bit -- just in case – and that maybe I should clean myself up a bit, too. I went about this and soon had my room about as respectable as it gets. Then I repeated things with myself, including working up the courage to head to the communal bathroom at the end of the hallway for a quick shower. There was no one in the hallway, so I guessed the woman had given up.

It actually felt good to come back to the land of the living, and I felt about a million times better. So good, in fact, that I decided I should head out into the crowds of pre-Christmas shoppers, just to restore my contact with the rest of humanity and to make sure it didn't forget about me.

I descended the stairs from my second floor accommodation and broke out of the rooming house and into the street. It was a bright, brisk winter's day, cold, but somehow refreshing. It felt good.

"Excuse me," said a female voice, just as I stepped out onto the street. An attractive young woman walked in front of me, blocking my way. I tried to step around her, feeling she could have no business with me, and must be confused concerning my identity. She maintained her position in front of me.

"Excuse me," she repeated. "Can I have a moment of your time?" I stopped trying to escape and stood feeling most unsure of myself -- the way I always do when confronted by one of the respectable people. I shifted nervously from foot to foot.

"Are you Josh Knight?" the young woman asked.

"No," I answered somewhat gruffly. "Never heard the name."

"Listen," she said. "If you are Josh Knight, I'm not here to cause you any problems. I just need to know."

"Who told you I might be Josh Knight?" I asked.

"It's taken me two years to track you down," she answered. "I missed you last winter. The welfare people had your name and the address of the room you were staying in."

"Why does it matter?" I asked.

"Are you Josh Knight?" she asked.

"I might have been," I answered. "Why does it matter?"

"You might be my father," she answered matter of factly.

This information stopped me short. "It couldn't be," I answered.

"I was born the night my mother died," the girl said. "She killed herself, but the doctor saved the baby. You were the father."

I stood stalk still. I was unsure what to say. "Why did you come?" I finally asked.

"I needed to know you," she answered.

"I'm a bum," I answered.

"You loved my mother with all your heart," she said.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"My grandparents told me," she said.

"They hated me -- everybody hated me -- after your mother died," I answered.

"They know now," the young woman said.

"They killed her," I said bitterly. "They drove her to her death by making her so ashamed -- making her think I'd foresaken her. I would have made everything right. I left to get a job. Your mother was waiting for me -- she told me she would wait until I could send for her."

"She loved you," the girl said. "She thought you'd forgotten her."

"I wrote her every bloody day," I said angrily. "Things didn't go real well for me at the beginning. I was a young guy with no experience trying to scratch out a living."

"My grandparents hid your letters from her," the girl said.

"I called a few times and your grandfather always told me she was busy or out," I said.

"He wanted to discourage you," she said.

"He did a helluva job," I answered.

We stood on the sidewalk outside the rooming house in the cold. There was an awkward silence between us. I wasn't sure what to say. "Can we go for a coffee?" she finally asked, obviously feeling the cold, but wanting to continue to exchange.

I consented, not knowing why, and soon we were just down the street in old Saul's Corner Grocery and Deli; an establishment that was left over from another era in the city's life and that looked all rundown and decrepit in its old age. We sat in a corner booth. I always like to sit with my back to a wall -- just in case.

"So, why search me out?" I asked, fiddling with my coffee. "I didn't even know you existed. Thought the baby died with the mom. Didn't think there was a baby."

"That's the way they wanted it," she answered.

"I think it destroyed me when I heard she was dead," I said, and there was a hurt feeling in me when I said the words. "I did love her."

"Grandma found all your letters about three years ago – after grandpa died," the girl said. "She didn't know about them, either. She thought you'd abandoned her daughter to her shame."

"Christ, those were the days, eh," I more said than asked. "God, we made a mistake -- if it even was a mistake -- and she paid with her life."

"After Grandma read the letters, she knew how much love there was between you," the girl said. "She finally told me what had happened to my mother and you. She finally told me the truth."

"Why search me out?" I asked again. "My parents know what's become of me. They're not proud, but they'd likely tell you."

"That's how I almost found you last year," she said. "They told me where they'd last heard from you -- a rooming house just over a few blocks from here. You're a creature of habit it seems." She offered up a slight bit of a smile with this last comment, perhaps feeling she'd made a small joke.

I felt myself return the smile but kept it guarded. I studied her for the first time since she'd come into my life, wondering that she was actually my daughter and that I might have made her all those years ago with my sweet Diana, under the softness of the moonlight at her father's boathouse out at the lake.

We hadn't planned it that way, but it was like we got started with the serious petting that night and couldn't make ourselves stop. And neither of us had been together with a member of the opposite sex ever before in our lives, but what happened that night, happened so very naturally, that we had no need of any instruction or experience. One minute we were sitting on the dock, necking. She suggested a swim. We started to remove clothes while we kissed, and it was over before it began. Was the high point in my life and lasted but a brief moment or two.

When she found out she was pregnant, she totally panicked. Her parents would kill her -- she would be thrown out of the house and her life would be over -- all she could think of was her father and the belt she'd been raised to fear.

I decided our best strategy was for me to strike out for the city to try to make some money so we could start a life together. To hell with her father -- that's what I bravely told her. I'd get a job and put some money aside and send for her as soon as I was able. I was sorry, but she'd have to tough it out at home until I had somewhere for her to come to. I promised her I'd write often and we'd be together again soon.

So, I ran from responsibility for the first time in my life. I should have stayed and toughed it out with her in front of her father, but I ran, somehow reasoning that I was doing the best thing. I can't imagine her shame through those final few months of expecting, knowing that the whole town was looking down on her.

There were no letters from me. I found out later that her father knew a guy who worked at the post office, and it was easy enough to buy him a bottle of booze to intercept them.

Then, death. I never even wondered about the child, thinking it dead also. My parents never mentioned it -- perhaps sworn never to do so by the girl's father and agreeing to such an arrangement for some unknown and unrevealed reason. I knew I would likely never know the full truth. But the girl was here. That was real enough and proof that there had been an outcome of that night in the boathouse.

I could see the resemblance between mother and daughter. The eyes. The cut of the chin. There seemed to be none of me, and she was the best for that.

"What are you thinking?" she asked, reaching over and touching my hand.

"I was just seeing a bit of your mother in you," I answered truthfully.

"Do you think there is?" she asked.

"Oh, to be sure," I answered. "You're every bit as pretty." I smiled. She blushed and returned the smile. "So, why search me out?" I asked. "You still haven't answered my question."

"I wanted to know you," she said. "I've talked to a lot of people about you, but I couldn't really get to know who you were."

"Well, here I am," I said. "Not a pretty sight."

"I disagree," she answered. "I'm pleased as punch." This time it was me who blushed -- I could feel it. "Grandma wants you to come home," the girl suddenly said somewhat abruptly. "Would you come back with me?"

"I don't know," I answered, shaking my head. "There's been a lot of water under the bridge."

"Come back," she said.

"Let me think about it," I said. "I'm kind of overwhelmed just now. I didn't even know about you an hour ago."

"Sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to put pressure on you, but I've spent my whole life without a mother or a father. I'm excited to find you."

"Give me some time to think," I answered. "I need some time." We finished the coffee and made plans to go. She paid the bill, then we were back out into the winter. Just as she was about to go – she said she had a hotel room downtown -- she turned back and gave me a slight, little kiss on the cheek. I blushed again -- smiled.

I ended up sitting in the big easy chair staring out the window of my room. This had been my whole world until earlier today. Nothing to worry about, but to work in the apples each fall and save a stake for the winter -- now there seemed to be more -- a family. But how could I go back? I was the epitomy of failure - had failed at life itself, let alone at some meaningless, droid-like job. Surely, they would mock me and laugh at me for my failure and the way I'd lived my life.

I avoided people in my life; despised most people for the ordinariness of their lives. There was no excuse for the way they lived, hurtful and spiteful toward others, and seeming to think they had some special place in the cosmos other than being a mere speck of dust on some universal being's coffee table. I truly admired how most people managed to plug away at life, given the fact that they had no real purpose, other than the gettin' of hard cash from an onerous and unfair system, and the poppin' out of babies to keep the species somehow muddling along.

Now, I was being asked to again come in contact with a society I had long ago cast off, unable to cope with its uncanny ability to humiliate and humble even the most noble of men. What should I do? I went to the liquor store. I needed help with this decision. This was a big one.

I sat and admired the bottle I'd bought. I set it on the window sill and sat in my big easy chair. What to do? Perhaps, disappear.

"It's a hard one," said a voice.

I looked about me to see who had spoken. I saw her sitting on the edge of the bed, fair and radiant even under a veil of ghastly death. "Diana," I spoke her name without thinking.

"Josh," she answered.

"Our daughter," I said, hardly realizing I was speaking aloud.

"She's come to you," the figure said.

"I can't go with her," I said.

"You must," said the vision.

"I'm a bum and a miscreant," I said.

"She needs family," said the vision. "You may redeem yourself. Time heals all."

"I'm lost, my love," I said. "I was lost all those many years ago."

"You can be of help," she answered. "Even you can be of help."

"Why didn't you stay with me?" I asked, and it was really the only question I wanted answered. We sat and watched each other. Nothing was said. "You were the love of my life," I finally offered.

"And you of mine," she answered.

"You left me," I said.

"I thought you'd left me," she answered.

"And now we're both dead," I answered. "What a mighty tragedy."

"You still live, my love," she said.

"I feel deader than death," I answered. "I cannot forgive you." She sat in quiet, and, as I regarded her, a silvery teardrop traced its way slowly down her face. "You weep," I said. "You find this sad."

"I stole your life from you," she said. "I've come to give it back."

"How can you do that?" I asked. "What is taken is taken. You can't go back -- even I know that."

"I will take you back," she said, and she stood up from the corner of the bed, rising above me in all her radiant beauty, and, for the first time, I saw that she was unclothed -- naked before me. "Come," she said, gesturing gently to me.

And she led me onto the bed in that seedy, scum-infested rooming house, and we made wondrous love, and the room became transformed into a royal bedchamber with velvets and silks hanging about, and the bed was the most luxurious of any that had been seen. We frolicked and played and loved for what seemed an eternity. And, in that time, I became alive again.

"I must go," she finally said, speaking words I had known must come.

I lay quietly, my head propped up on my elbow, regarding her. I had wanted to spend my life with her and had been given but this brief time.

"You must look after our daughter," she said, rising from the bed, now fully clothed in a long, shimmering garment that told of her unearthly presence. I continued to say nothing.

"I love you," she said. "But you must get on with your life." She was fading from me. I reached out toward her with my hand and she reached back to me. Our fingers extended toward each other, until, finally, they touched ever so slightly. A surge of warm comfort went through me. I closed my eyes. And she was gone.

I awoke some time later, now sitting in my easy chair. I looked about the place, but there was no sign that another had ever been here. I remembered the bottle. Surely, I had drank it and dreamed her in a drunken stupor and that she had never visited this vile habitat. I climbed from the chair. I felt good. I saw the bottle still sitting on the windowsill, and I wondered. Surely, I had to be drunk.

The girl, my daughter, came to the room later in the day. I welcomed her into my humble abode.

"Have you decided?" she asked, coming straight to the point.

"You don't know me," I answered. "You don't know where I've been or what I've done or what type of person I am."

"I don't know where you've been or what you've done," she admitted. "But I know you just the same -- better than you think."

"I see her in you," I said, and it was true that at that moment I could again see the mother standing before me. I felt tears coming over me. I'd not wept for all these many years, at least surely not from the pain of living as I did as this moment.

She came forward to me and wrapped her arms around me. "Give me a chance," she said, her voice almost a whisper. I held her close, but said nothing. Finally, we parted from each other and stood. The silence persisted. "Will you come?" she finally asked.

"In the spring," I answered.

"You'll come," she said.

"In the spring," I repeated.

"How will you get there?" she asked.

"The same way I've travelled for quite some time," I answered. "On the wind."

"I could come and get you," she offered.

"Let me do this my way," I answered.

"Okay," she said.

And we went out into the day and walked through the bright, blue coldness of the winter with no care about whether it would nip and bite at the fingers or not. We held hands as we walked, fingers intertwined as though we might be young lovers on our first stroll in the gentle moonlight. Mostly she talked and I listened -- but that was fine -- I had little to say, wanting only to savour the moment -- to know that I was re-born again.

Finally, we said our good-byes outside the rooming house, after I'd sworn to come back to the small town of my youth and to again join the society of others, even if only to try to accomplish this difficult task and fail in the trying. I must try to recover my life. I would try.

That was a tough winter. I got a Christmas card from my daughter, and I was tempted at that point to journey immediately to where she was and to try to start my new life on the spot. But I didn't. Instead, I stayed in the city and worked to improve my situation even in some small way, so that I would be better able to cope when the spring came. I was nervous and worried at night when I slept, and I felt the panic of responsibility often through the winter's snows.

But I didn't drink. I stayed sober, and it was perhaps the most difficult time of my life. I fought that demon with all my might, even through the sweats that came in the depths of the darkness while I lay in my bed, bundled under the sleeping bag and the great coat because I was freezing. Surely, the landlord of the place and my fellow tenants must have thought me gone mad, as I cried out from the pain that tortured my soul. I prayed for her to come and take me. I needed her soft breast for a pillow for my beaten head.

One morning, I woke from a deep, sound sleep, and there was contentment inside me. I saw the bottle of liquor still sitting on the windowsill, where it had been for the past several months, untouched. I climbed from my bed and retrieved the bottle from its ledge and walked to the small wall sink where I poured the contents down the seemingly bottomless drain. I thought that perhaps I could do it -- rise from the ruins to live again.

Whether I could actually stay on the straight and narrow was another matter, but I would try. I felt at this moment that I could – it was really the first time in my life that I'd even decided to try.

It felt good when I came out of the rooming house with my sleeping bag over my shoulder and my few meager possessions tucked inside of it. The winter was over. Spring was in the air. I smiled as I walked back toward my past.