A Dead Man's Smile

(Trigger warning: graphic character death)

It had been an average day with the usual phatic expressions and meaningless content. My pounding head required air and space to release the monotony, so I decided to walk home, my mind full of things worth forgetting.    

I turned down Marut Road, it was quieter and there was a good view of the Northern Downs. At this time of year the heather and gorse is thick like broccoli and covers the magnificent hillside with wild flowers. I like flowers, I like to see them in profusion in the wild, and often find myself distracted by the sight of a thousand blooms swaying as one in the wind. 

Marut Road is a family concern, with semi-detached square houses built from red brick. Children can be heard in the summer playing, heard but rarely seen, confined as they are to the safety of the back garden. There are alleyways all over this town, running along the backs of the houses of most roads and streets. As a child I remember using these alleyways with my friends to play hide and seek or kick the can, to ride our bikes and generally make mischief. But now the alleyways are over grown with thorn and thistle to prevent undesirables using them for nefarious purpose. It’s a dread instilled by a fear mongering media and paranoid neighbourhood gossips. 

Suddenly I became aware of a small animal or child running behind me, this was instantly followed by the sounds of screeching brakes and a car skidding across tarmac. It was loud and incredibly close so I instinctively moved out of the way. Turning to assess the danger visually the smell of burning rubber and metal and brake fluid assaulted my senses.  

When I was younger, preadolescence, I saw a man knocked down by a lorry. I say knocked down, but in truth he was thrown into the air, his limbs flailing as only a birds should. The memory of that moment returned as I stood on Marut road and suddenly I could remember my mother’s hand tightening around mine, and the jerk of her arm as she pulled me away. I remembered the smell of the brakes and the tires and the strange metallic aroma which filled the air as the man’s body crashed into the tarmac. But most of all I remembered the look on the man’s face as he flew into the air, the serene smile and knowing eyes. There was a level headedness to his facial repose, and an acceptance of his fate. He even appeared pleased by its finality.    

When my mother told the story she always concentrated on the sounds of screeching breaks and snapping bones, and the fact she held me safely out the way. She said she thought he worked at Imperial Insurance, it was a big employer in the town and we were only a couple of streets away. As he’d smashed against the tarmac I saw his briefcase and umbrella lying in the gutter, the case was open and on the road nearby there was what I thought to be a toy gun, and a smashed bottle of something I now know to be whisky. I was sad that the man’s son would not receive the toy his father had bought him. The smell of the liquor burned my nose hair. My mother said he was standing in the road goading the traffic; she said that he wanted to die.

The police and ambulance arrived within a few minutes and I remember a paramedic shouting at a dirty old man, with a wire trolley, who was trying to move the bloodied man out of the road. Traffic was backed up and the commuters were getting antsy.      

I remembered my mother blamed my witnessing a vehicular fatality, for my being afraid of the man in the moon, believing wrongly that both occurred at the same time. This wasn’t the case, but it was she who pointed out ‘The Man’ a few years before, revealing a darker character to our satellite, with blackened eyes and a bottomless mouth. My mother had a turn of phrase that often caught me unawares in my youth. From that day to this I can only sleep with the curtains drawn, moon or no. It was one of only a few instances where mother’s long term memory failed her, usually she was infallible with dementia sharp memories, particularly when it came to me and my siblings. We lived out the epochs at the whim of her fading self. And even over the distance of fourteen days, or three hundred and thirty six hours, we continued to converse in the same cycles or circles. Each visit ended with her asking,

“Where is your father? I haven’t seen him in days!” But this was impossible to answer without fracturing her reality, so I told,

“He's living it up in Barbados mum, with an Air Steward and our fortune in bearer bonds.” It made her laugh enough to forget what she was talking about.

The crowd around us was spilling into the adjacent roads. People were sitting on their doorsteps smoking and chatting and pointing at the apparently lifeless body. The traffic was moving again but in reverse, some were trying to turn in the road, or make other diversions. After a while the Police began directing people around the incident. I remembered thinking, as I stood at the curb watching the chaos unfold and trip around me, that if man was more like a dragon fly he would be able to avoid vans and cars. Dragon flies, I knew, accelerate from naught to fifty miles per hour almost instantaneously, making it easy to avoid traffic. At that time I believe I wished I was a dragon fly.

My mother was talking to the old man with the wire trolley who had tried to move the body out of the road. He was dirty and smelled like rotten cabbage. His hands were grimy and his nails black. He winked at me a couple of times. I thought it was he who had picked up the gun, as it was gone when I looked a little later not wanting a toy to go to waste. There was something hidden in that wink, something stowed away. I remembered I didn’t like him, and I didn’t trust him. 

Leaving mothers side this child wanted to see blood, we had all heard the bones snap and crack, and I’d seen his light coloured suit darken around the crotch and arse as he released his bladder and bowels. But there was something in me back then that wanted to look into his eyes; I’d want to see what he looked like, or rather what a lack of him looked like. I’d wanted to see if death was visible. The opportunity had arisen previously in my young life to satisfy this curiosity, before my grandfather’s funeral. Unfortunately I became so wrapped in the tears and tragedy of the situation I couldn’t look in the coffin and missed my chance. But now, without consideration, I would look at deaths glassy eyes and see what I could see.

The man was about my father age, I remembered judging this by his bloodied greying hair, and I immediately thought of the son who wouldn’t get his toy gun, and then I’d thought of the smile and the man’s bloodied features. I remembered questioning whether my father would have smiled had he been the victim of an accident, would he have looked so serene and accepting, would he have looked pleased at its finality? Then, standing on Marut Road, I questioned my own motives for life and the choices made. Would it be a relief to die rather than continue as I am, as a human, a parent, confined to the life as set out by decisions made? Would I choose this route again, if I had the chance would I choose humanity? Of course I knew nothing of the dead man’s life, or his personality. Perhaps he was a sensitive type, maybe he was a drunk or an abuser, perhaps death was liberation. And then again maybe he was pushed? There were many possibilities. 

There was blood running from his nose and ears, but the blood was changed to my childish eyes, thicker than it was when I cut myself, and blacker than what I had seen on TV and in films. There were streaks of blood in the whites of his eyes too, bright red spikes and blots like the ink spilt on a page. Further down and the dead man was protruding bone and cartilage where bone and cartilage should not protrude. I remembered thinking it looked like the carcus of a roast chicken, the bone all broken and split and forced through his skin. I remembered the goo and gore over the road, over everything. The man’s head was split too, a gaping crack separated his skull and deep red blood, yellow with cerebral fluid, matted his hair. I stared at him for quite a time, until I was moved away by a WPC. 

“Come on kid.” She’d said grabbing my arm roughly, “Where’s your bloody mother?” she then asked, dragging me back toward the curb whilst scanning the crowd for my errant parent. I can remember the Police Men were dealing with the traffic and the victim while the WPC dealt with the public. She released me when an older man toppled off the curb in an ill-fated attempt to view the scene more clearly.

“Stay back. Sir...SIR Stand back!” She’d barked. 

I do not know how long we were crowded at the roadside, but it felt like hours to this young mind. I recalled that my mother finally relented and allowed me to go and buy a can of fizzy drink from the shop. I was also required to purchase some cigarettes as she was busy chatting to the man with the wire trolley and another older woman. Between them they had smoked the last of her ‘Knights’ brand cigarettes. 

“And if they haven’t got Knights,” she instructed with a smile I’d recognised, “I’ll have Crusader Red.” and winked. Sometimes it was impossible to judge her true meaning.

The cool fizzy liquid ran down my throat, both inside and out. It was much needed refreshment; the day was hot in the reflected heat of pale flagstones. It was the last time I was legally able to buy cigarettes for my parents as a child.     

I heard a gospel chorus singing loudly to the left, my bad ear and I remembered where I was, standing in the garden of house number sixty four Marut Road. Looking around and the scene was getting busy. The car remained in the road where it had stopped, but now sitting on the curb, uninjured by all accounts, was a child obviously scared and ashamed of its misdemeanour. Adults fluttered about admonishing the appalling behaviour. Everything was moved in fluid motion, the liquidity of time ever present and I was not prepared to leave the safety of the garden and so remained where I was.

When I’d returned to mother the man with the wire trolley and the woman who were smoking her cigarettes, had vanished. I didn’t know how long it had been, she was however, deep in conversation with another woman, one with huge breasts and large arse. She took the cigarettes and shooed me away; it was adult talk and not for my young ears. I wandered off in the crowd. 

People were gossiping, chatting, talking and shouting, about everything and the accident. It was not considered improper to infer that the victim was mad, crazy, bonkers, twisted, Looney Tunes, psycho, depressed, or carrier of any other verifiable mental condition, and on the surface most considered it an accident. 

Moving deeper I saw the WPC haranguing another child, a girl with a deliciously cheeky smile. She was viciously dragged away by the Officer and, not wanting a similar fate, I quickly moved in the opposite direction. 

Then I saw another face I knew, the smelly man with the wire trolley. He was mooching around the bystanders, talking to some, smiling at all. He made like a friend but again there was something unclean about him. Then I saw him pick the pocket of a young father and pilfer the purse of an old spinster. He turned and looked back over his shoulder, I don’t know if he was looking at me or not, the sun was bright and directly overhead, but I would swear that he smiled and winked, before he moved off to pilfer and pick some more.   

When the fire engine arrived at Marut Road I decided to continue homeward. Paramedics, Law Enforcement and now the Fire Service were all present when I left the scene. 

The dead man’s smile haunts my memory to this day, his smile, his serenity and his acceptance. Perhaps the gun was his all along.