The Countdown

It was December 31st, 1969. I was 18, and I had just finished my shift at my father’s grocery store, where I had been working for the past five years ever since my parents died. It was 11:14 PM when I stepped out into New York’s frigid winter. My exhaled breath froze midair as I felt my bones shiver and quake inside of me. I wrapped the strands of my worn winter coat tighter around me as I trudged through the inches of freshly fallen, icy snow. My shoes, barely with a sole, were handed down to me from my brother, 14 years my senior. He was currently overseas, still fighting in the Vietnam War. He left back in ’55, when he was 18 and drafted into the war. He hadn’t come back since. 

But I don’t think of him much, probably because I don’t remember him much. I was barely four when he was drafted and before then, we hadn’t made any memories together. At least, none that stuck anyway.

I watched as my breath swirled and twirled with the snow flurries in the air. It was New Years’ Eve. My father’s store was conveniently located just a few blocks south of Times Square, and my buddies and I liked to watch the countdown. This was one of the few times I enjoyed Manhattan. Other times, I’d be on the Q, headed straight home and avoiding the hustle and bustle that is New York City.

I took out a lighter and a cig that I swiped from behind my father’s counter from out of a half-ripped pocket of my coat and began puffing. I wasn’t a smoker, but I had to whenever I went into crowded places. I felt nervous, anxious, and the cig calmed me down. It kept me sane.

Tonight, I was supposedly meeting two buddies of mine from high school who had left earlier on in the year for college in sleepy towns like Chicago and Los Angeles; foreign places with foreign people.

I started puffing on my second cigarette, I nervously glanced around as I was continuously pushed back and forth by bodies covered with fur-trimmed coats as gibberish sputtered from their mouths. I looked up at the large clock that hung over the millions of heads that have since crowded into Times Square.

11:38:56. 21 minutes and 4 more seconds until the New Year.

My cigarette had burned to the nub but I hadn’t noticed. I began fidgeting. I took the nub and threw it to the ground, squashing it with what was left of my shoe. 

I pulled out a third cigarette and started to light it when I glanced at a man staring earnestly at the stick hanging out my mouth. He sat slouched in front of a glass storefront and I walked over to him to hand him my last cigarette and lighter. He began laughing hysterically, swiping at the air around me with a plastic knife. I stepped back, and placed the cigarette back between my chapped, frozen lips. New York was full of crazies like him. Even cigarettes wouldn’t bring their sanity back. 

Murderers, thieves, politicians: if a cigarette could stop them from acting on their crazy, I think the world would be a better place.

I glanced up at the clock once more. 11:51:43. 8 minutes and 17 more seconds.

My nose felt numb, as the rest of my body did. I watched as faces began melding into one another, as those who held empty beer cups in their hands regurgitated its contents from their stomachs. There were a few men who nervously rustled around their pockets for that special wedding ring, waiting for the right moment to pop the question. Women applied on thick layers of lipstick, hoping to mark the man they loved with a giant smooch that said “he’s mine.”

It was a scene that was all too familiar to me; it was like I had seen this moment a few times before. I took out my father’s old pocket watch from the pocket within my coat, the only pocket that wasn’t torn. 11:59.

I looked past the snow flurries and up at the giant clock for the last time. 11:59:55. The countdown began:

5 years since I was murdered.

4 years old when my brother was pronounced as “killed in action” in Vietnam.

3 cigarette butts smoked on that evening.

2 college friends that never visited.

1 New Year that never existed.