Soaked with Love and Iodine

Let's see this prompt from a different point of view: "Start your story with someone who is willing to let go of their career just before their big break, but they didn't know it was gonna happen until it's too late."

A two-worded warning from the author: Don't. Cry.

Leaf after leaf after leaf.

From green to orange, then bronze to red and to shrivelled up before more sprout from the trees, glistening with dew on the green veins.

Daily and impeccably perfect in his work was a man about sixty. His roughly-cut beard was grey from old age, yet his smile was still as juvenile as if he were five.

One day, the wind was infuriatingly quick, but the old man went about his work as usual, calmly and uncomplainingly sweeping up the leaves, and bending his cranky back to pick up ones that had floated away.

He was used to greeting everyone he met, as they passed by. Whether it'd be teenagers holding hands, adults holding lattes or little children taking their scooters out for a drive, he'd never fail to put on his brightest smile and say, "Good morning," or "Good afternoon," depending on what the time ensued. 

Yet this morning, he found his back a bit more particularly cantankerous than the other days. Sweat collected on his brow as he hobbled on his, thankfully, two good legs into the kitchen, to fill up his hot water bottle.

A picture of his wife, who looked like your stereotypical grandmother, stood on a rickety old table that was placed across the stove.

Like flowers on a marble counter, this framed picture was the centre-piece of his table. Every morning, he'd sit there and sip his hot water, thinking tender thoughts of the wife that had left him.

Some of us youngsters, or at least, I, liked to think about what other people were thinking. For example, if I was eating ice cream and I saw a middle-aged man doing the same, I would've wondered what he was thinking about.

Yet, sometimes, the most often observations happen in the home itself. Like how my grandpa drinks nothing but coffee and hot water. Or how my dad always eat with both a fork and a spoon, no matter what the meal was.

I am now greatly intrigued by what this particular old man was thinking.

I could aim a guess at what he could *possibly* thinking. But still, this was only a guess. Probably something along the lines of:

"Dear, Martha. Why'd you have to leave me like this? Alone, and yes, I can survive. But life seems so painful without you. Every day, I gather up the strength to sweep up leaf after leaf, knowing that you'd love seeing people have a walk in a clean park, with carefree hearts."

Okay, that sounds more like a college student hopelessly in love. But, anyways, he always wore a melancholy look on his face as he stared at his (in his opinion, the most beautiful woman) wife, his eyes bearing the unhealable look of pain; as if there were tears yet to be shed.

Yet, even so, each morning at seven, he'd pat down hs pockets for keys, hobbled out his door before locking it, then walked on to do what he did what he did since his wife had told him to: "Sweep leaves, for it leaves a nice path for people to walk on. And if it's so, even though our own paths are hard, at least we can make it a bit more enjoyable for the next person."

That was what his wife had written in the letter she'd wrote when she was on her deathbed, suffering incessantly from constant coughs, her cancer having disintegrated her (still beautiful) grey hair.

Our old man still keeps a strand or two, carefully set away in the innermost recesses of the bedside table, laid delicatedly in a ring box, which held both his wife's ring and the strands.

The sun had come up, shining down upon the old man's crinkled features, his eyes sunk in cataracts, while unelegant dots had made their way up his cheeks, tainting the once smooth, soft and boyish features.

His old legs carried him slowly, and even so, he was still out of breath. He sat on a bench and drank from his canteen of hot water. His eyes locked on the horizon, the golden light of the sun piercing through the darkness of the night.

His black eyes glistened with a desire that only someone who had lost a loved one could understand. The ache of longing, the hopelessness in the inevitably that we will all die.

As the sun turned hot, the old man pulled himself out of the chair, and started on his work. His grip on the broomstick was still unusually tight for a man at the age of he; but no one knew the motivation behind it.

The natural tradition between him and Martha was to dance along to the cheerful but slightly mournful tune of "Love is the Sweetest Thing" by Al Bowlly. And, sure enough, as his skin and bone fingers grasped the broomstick handle, he hummed it. 

Though his memories had somewhat faded over the years of war, pain, loss, modern technology and the weird revolution of a screen that could show you whatever you wanted, he remembered the lyrics well. 

Love is the sweetest thing,

What else on earth could ever bring,

Such happiness to ev'rything,

As Love's old story..

Probably coincidental, probably not, a boy no younger than eight zoomed by on his blue scooter. To his demise, the scooter's wheel caught on a pebble, and the boy toppled down, punching out his arms to lessen the impact.

And even though his legs were weak, the old man hobbled quickly over to the boy, helping him upward. "Where are your parents, boy?" He muttered, the weight of the boy possible greater than his own.

The younger boy sobbed, pressing his hands to his face to hide the tears as the old man tended to the scratch on his arm. Gently, the old man pried the young one's hands from his red face. "Hey, don't cry, boy," he said, in a voice made tender with concern.

The boy managed to quiet his sobs, but his face was still scrunched up. Soon after, however, the parents rushed to their son, and the father rudely pushed the old man to the side in his haste to get to his son. 

The older one was surprised, but stood up and stepped back. He had at least bathed the wound in water, from his own bottle, then added a drop or two of iodine before patching it up with a piece of cotton, tied onto the child's arm with a string of twine.

It was precarious, but that was what he was able to do with what he had in his little bag.

Just then, the woman, her husband and the child stood up, when they stopped. The boy pointed to the old man. The mother looked surprised, as if realising that that was the man her husband had pushed, hard.

With a warning glance to her husband, the mother and her family approached. The old man put on his usual smile. "The young one's better off to not go out of your eyesight, miss," he said, nodding to the boy, smiling benignly.

"Thank you, sir," said the mother in a smooth, soft voice, like a bird's chirp. The old man's eyes widened. It sounded exactly like his wife's, Martha. The old man's eyes observed how the woman looked.

Bouncing brown hair grew in abundance, and the doe--like eyes were pretty in a simple way. The way she dressed was very modest, and it looked nice on her. A red dress, with matching red dancing slippers. The same shade of red coloured the bow on her hair.

For all the old man knew, she could've been a reincarnation of Martha.

"You're very welcome, miss, and-" the old man would've continued, but the husband gave him such a dangerous glance that he stopped. He changed his sentence a quarter-way through. He bent down and pulled out a caramel bonbon out of his pocket and offered it to the kid.

The boy smiled, and whispered, "Thank you, Mister."

The family went away, but the thoughts of Martha still stayed.

Her words resonated in the old man's heart, "Seasons may change, but a person's good heart cannot."

The old man realised with a shocking revelation that made him think, "Because I had cared for that boy, I got to see Martha one last time."

The next morning, more leaves were scattered in the park. But no one came to clean them. To sweep them one by one ever so lovingly as the old man did.

There was, however, a man who looked like he was in his twenties, wearing a well-cut business suit and holding a folder of documents that he was supposed to give the old man, giving him the word to take position as the park's head of Cleanliness and Tidy Obedience.

The old man had joined his wife, knowing that he had done both his work and his wife good. He had kept his promise to Martha, the one he'd made years ago, that cold September night.

"I promise I'll make the paths more enjoyable for everyone that comes after. I promise, my wife."

And as he lay in his bed, looking up at the termite-nibbled wooden planks that stretched from one end to the other of his ceiling.