____________________________________________________________________
The Many Deaths of Anthony Petrano
A chill tickled the air to attention. It was a good chill – the first autumn chill – and it brought with it the smell of dying leaves and snow that was yet to fall. The glow of the living room light bled onto the lawn from the open front door. Anthony Petrano stood under the transom taking the chill into his nostrils, into his lungs, into the blood of his muscles and veins. He appreciated autumn. He loved and respected it in a way that he knew few others did. His wife, for one, and his grandchildren. So resentful of the end of summer, the inevitable return to raking and math tests. They didn't understand autumn the way he did. They didn't understand the life that burned at the edge of the chill. Anthony took another deep breath and hefted the black garbage bag in his hand, walked out of the warmth of the living room light.
It was dark outside, but light enough to see that he would have to rake the leaves soon. Next week, probably. The Monday after at the latest. The grass between the leaves bristled against his bare feet. The ground was cold and a little wet from a late afternoon shower. The feeling reminded him of when he was younger – when he used to wear a beard – and what the frost felt like when he rubbed it off his face after coming in from the winter.
The streetlight on the other side of the road ticced on and off. Alice called it, “The neurotic lamp.” She'd written letters and spoken in town meetings about it. It wasn't that people ignored her, it was just that you can only fix the same streetlight so many times before you give up and go deaf to any more complaints about it. Anthony told her that when her latest letter to the editor of the Schenectady Gazette was returned with the words “Cease and Desist” stamped in red ink across the body.
Anthony dropped the trash bag on the corner of asphalt that wedded driveway and roadway, and he watched to light wink on and off in rapid succession. He tried to find a pattern in it. As a child, he'd learned Morse code with his neighbor, Louie Carvallo. They could each see into the other's window across the street, and they used to send each other messages at night by switching their own lamps on and off. D-A-N-N-Y-I-S-A-B-O-O-B when Danny, Anthony's older brother, had gotten him grounded for breaking the vase that Danny had been tossing around like a football with his friend. And M-O-N-A-I-S-A-M-O-A-N-E-R when Louie had finally lost his virginity. And B-A-C-K-B-Y-X-M-A-S when Louie left with the rest of the 1-A boys. The streetlight flickered dot-dash, dash-dash, and then fizzled and went black entirely. It would turn on again, Anthony knew, in an hour or two at the outside. From around the bend that led to Route 7 he heard the engine of an approaching car. He turned toward the sound instinctively. As it came into view around the curve of the night, Anthony noticed it only had one headlight.
“Padiddle,” he said, as his daughter had done when she saw such things back before she knew how to drive. He laughed at the word, and at the thought of his daughter, still just barely post-pubescent, scowling at the music on the radio, touching her finger to the roof at the sight of a one-lamped car. She did it to, “Ward off evil spirits,” she said. And he would do it too, if he knew what was good for him. Anthony watched as the headlight swung around to point at him. He waited for the breeze the car would bring with it.
It was dark outside, but light enough to see that he would have to rake the leaves soon. Next week, probably. The Monday after at the latest. The grass between the leaves bristled against his bare feet. The ground was cold and a little wet from a late afternoon shower. The feeling reminded him of when he was younger – when he used to wear a beard – and what the frost felt like when he rubbed it off his face after coming in from the winter.
The streetlight on the other side of the road ticced on and off. Alice called it, “The neurotic lamp.” She'd written letters and spoken in town meetings about it. It wasn't that people ignored her, it was just that you can only fix the same streetlight so many times before you give up and go deaf to any more complaints about it. Anthony told her that when her latest letter to the editor of the Schenectady Gazette was returned with the words “Cease and Desist” stamped in red ink across the body.
Anthony dropped the trash bag on the corner of asphalt that wedded driveway and roadway, and he watched to light wink on and off in rapid succession. He tried to find a pattern in it. As a child, he'd learned Morse code with his neighbor, Louie Carvallo. They could each see into the other's window across the street, and they used to send each other messages at night by switching their own lamps on and off. D-A-N-N-Y-I-S-A-B-O-O-B when Danny, Anthony's older brother, had gotten him grounded for breaking the vase that Danny had been tossing around like a football with his friend. And M-O-N-A-I-S-A-M-O-A-N-E-R when Louie had finally lost his virginity. And B-A-C-K-B-Y-X-M-A-S when Louie left with the rest of the 1-A boys. The streetlight flickered dot-dash, dash-dash, and then fizzled and went black entirely. It would turn on again, Anthony knew, in an hour or two at the outside. From around the bend that led to Route 7 he heard the engine of an approaching car. He turned toward the sound instinctively. As it came into view around the curve of the night, Anthony noticed it only had one headlight.
“Padiddle,” he said, as his daughter had done when she saw such things back before she knew how to drive. He laughed at the word, and at the thought of his daughter, still just barely post-pubescent, scowling at the music on the radio, touching her finger to the roof at the sight of a one-lamped car. She did it to, “Ward off evil spirits,” she said. And he would do it too, if he knew what was good for him. Anthony watched as the headlight swung around to point at him. He waited for the breeze the car would bring with it.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment