See you on the other side.
Short Story
“See you on the other side.” He said, with a trace of tiredness. A tired hand reached out from a white button shirt to shake mine. No young man would wear a shirt like that, far too proper and prim. Far too many holes to have been darned. I worked with him in the cinema for too long, too many anniversaries between us, putting signs up and down as flunkies on a roadshow.
Looking out over the oaks and maple to the other side of the garrulous river at the electric city. A river that could never reach the sea. The leaves were not back either in the wood or on the street, so the knotted boughs would scrape each other in the wind. Concrete rising out of the forest. A race vivid cold to the skin.
Of course, in a movie, there would be subtle hints of a world through the looking glass - from the old and roughened noir main to the aged movie sign that clung to the wall. Nowhere would do it that way now - from the bent lines that clung akimbo to the rough slathers on the wall, to the bars on a white sign that we placed the letters on. Everything was ancient but in the same sepia way. An image of a picture on the small Main St. USA, lost in some world not named New York City or Chicago. A poor Main Street. Once upon a time, it was blaring, now - silent.
I turned to look at his brown face, a visage more ancient than mine. It had chased away any loving crafted sign of beauty except on the edges. Only his wife, a long way from here, could see their hints. But she had seen them almost every day. Even longer than I had.
“Suppose we will at that.”
“It is a big world, it crowds little towns out of the way.” While he said this, he was also climbing down the ladder, looking up at the sign which said “Closing Down.” “Will we see it again, do you think?”
“Not unless the historical society slaps a historic vista on it.” I quipped.
He shuffles down his ladder, then looked out over the main avenue with its empty stores gleaming. Even the Chinese restaurant across the way could see it. It is now ‘the only’ because was the only retail establishment, especially with aroma. It could no longer huddle for warmth and scent in the late winter with anyone else.
“Maybe they should - there is a lot of memories within and without seen from up there.”
“Only little ones.”
Slowly, up the sidewalk slowly, slowly. slowly came a pasty woman. She was once the primary school reading teacher. The woman who got the hard cases and made them sing with their eyes.
“I heard you back there. Do you know that, across the river at the plant men who lived here, work there? They made wondrous engines.”
The old man turned around, and from the back, I could see that he became wider. It is happiness to every corner of the ticket stands and beyond. “Mrs. Van Corlaer, it is so nice to see you to-day.”
Then he bowed and took off his cap. Cap - not hat and certainly not chapeaux.
She shifted her red purse from left hand to right hand, though no curtsey because she was portly. “There were enough times here as if under a snapshot.”
The old man laughed. “Enough memories and movies.”
The elder woman touched her wide-brim glasses. “I remember when this movie had ‘Gone With the Wind’ on one of the revival tours. The was in the ‘70s.”
At this, I piped up: “You could not have seen the original.”
“Good heavens no, it came out before I was born. My mother saw the original. And in New York. At the midtown movie theater show in the film. In fact, she traveled by the El.”
“El?” A quizzical look on my face.
“Overground part of the subway.” Looking straight up at me with her wide hips.
“Which theater was it?” It was more than a question, it was elocution from the old man.
“Don’t rightly know. My mother did, but it is so long ago.”
I cocked my foot over the ladder, looking down the boulevard, just seeing the bridge, with warping denuded trees wrapped around it. It was the thoroughfare into the main burgh. The one where all of the men used to go. “The new century is consuming the old.”
“You two boys must excuse me, I have to get going.”
“Why don’t you let me walk you down to your place?”
“That would be kind of you.”
“Could you hold the fort while I walk Mrs. Van Corlaer home?”
“Certainly.”
I watch the two of them walk away up the main drag, chattering about older times. It was the last I saw of him. The next day his wife showed up. Her story was he had fallen down after he had dropped Mrs. Van Corlaer at her brick building. An ambulance came and got him. While at the emergency room, they gave him a test for the coronavirus. He tested positive.
Two weeks later the was a death in the city paper. Two short lines. I did not know he was a Lieutenant in the Marines.
See you on the other side.