The End of Market Street

Claire stood at the gurgling fountain in front of the Basilica. Voices and perfume and people in black and gray filled the parking lot and courtyard. Somebody had died, but the tourists kept coming. Kept posing in front of the fountain. In front of the statues of Mary, Jesus, and Saint Francis, taking selfies with all their slick smartphones. Laughing and making faces and gestures among the mourners. 

   Claire wanted to yell WTF? Can’t you see somebody died? 

   Instead, she focused on the fountain and the chubby angels in the center. 

   Why did she care? She wasn’t even Catholic. 

   But she often found herself at the end of Market Street, at the old stone church, rather than on the riverfront downtown or on the beach with all the summer lovers. She’d go just to think. Secretly hoping for something. Like in the movies. Like when a kind old priest invites someone to sit on one of the mossy benches under a shady tree and offers a reason for things. A bit of wisdom. Something true. 

   She could wander downtown and get lost for awhile. She could go to the other side of Market Street. Watch the stately horses standing dutifully by the buggies. They always looked sad to her. Lonely. Bored. And to be so beautiful! Day after day, in the hot summer town, magnificent creatures trot up and down uneven pavement and centuries-old brick. The same brick streets that hosted slave auctions. Their blood and history in the mortar.

   Only the massive oaks preserved all those secrets. Secrets that became the shadows along the antebellum walk. They are still in the wind, Claire believes, and perhaps in every storm that shakes the earth.  

   Claire was haunted by it. The history. Her own bustling, prosperous town. And she saw it in the horses' eyes. They, too, were haunted. 

   “Why can’t you just chill like your sister?” 

   Claire could still hear the exasperation in her mother’s voice.

   Well, why couldn’t she?

   One doctor said she was bipolar. Another said depressed. And her mother, well, she called her “a strange child.”

   None of it really fit. Claire wanted to chill. She wanted to be a surfer girl, like her sister. But it felt unnatural to her. She was born into it, but she failed miserably in Beach Life 101. She was an awkward bookworm who found no comfort in grainy sand and undertows. If that made her abnormal, so be it.  

   Claire leaned over and splashed the cool fountain water on her neck. 

   Probably the closest I’ll come to baptism! Ha!

   She’d gotten a summer job at a soup kitchen, near the Basilica. Run mostly by volunteers. They’d hired a few students at minimum wage to clean. A byproduct of Covid-19. 

   A soup kitchen! 

   “You could at least try for Market Chocolates,” her sister had suggested. “All that free fudge? Damn!”

   She had a point.

   But something had drawn Claire to the soup kitchen. 

  After giving up online learning, experiencing one crappy technological malfunction after another, she’d dropped her classes and wandered around town everyday. A town that appeared to tell Covid to go to hell.

   Sunburnt children with ice cream mustaches crowded the streets. Over-parked jeeps crammed with surf boards, fishing gear, Coleman and Yeti coolers blocked views at intersections. Coconut-scented lotion and beer fragranced the air. Cyclists weaved in and out of traffic and around joggers, walkers, and dogs. Bars kept their doors opened and music blared into the street. People chatted and drank and sampled; they occupied every sidewalk space and corner under the blazing sun.  

  Nothing had changed. 

  Here was her town, her life. A nice home on stilts. Somebody else’s dream.

   She’d seen the sign a million times. 

   AGAPE SOUP KITCHEN: OPEN

   Not sure why her feet had led her there. It was like they had walked ahead of her and pulled her inside the early 1900s renovated building. One of the town’s projects. 

   She’d nervously entered the dining area. Cream-colored paint and house plants brightened the room. Young and old sat at long tables, social distanced. She noticed water pitchers, napkins, and artificial flowers. It was very loud and busy, like high school lunch. Lots of movement. That had surprised her. She’d imagined all heads down, heavy-laden with despair.

   No, she saw wide smiles. No one hiding their poor dental work or missing teeth. 

   Some shook hands, offered hugs, and punched each other in the shoulders. It was more like a party.

   Claire had read the bulletin board. Part-time help was needed, both paid and volunteer.

   The supervisor had been friendly and open. Claire had accepted a cleaning position and walked out thinking she didn’t know herself at all. 

   “That’s up to you,” her mother had said. “You could do better.”

   She instantly felt defeated. 

   Something inside of her had dropped, like a book from a high shelf.

   “Oh, right,” she’d whispered back.

   “Your father and I have no problem with you just being a kid for awhile.”

   “I’m nineteen.”

   “You’re a kid. Trust me. Stop moping around.”

   Claire had let her mother go on and on again. It was easier. 

   That was the day she knew the fountain with the little angels made more sense to her than the other side of Market Street. Not the religion and the Mass and all that, but the water. Water itself.

   Pitchers of ice water atop every table at the soup kitchen made sense. All those hands reaching for the water. Hands thickened and scarred and tattooed by life. No matter why or what or how they got there. The water was for everyone. That image comforted her.  

   Claire thought of those horses. Did they get enough water? It worried her. It worried her that it worried her. What was she supposed to do about it? 

   Maybe she was becoming one of the oak trees.  

   Maybe she’d plant herself somewhere on the end of Market Street.

    pen name: K. S. Evans