Cross On a Hill

She told me she lived at the end of the block. There was only one house at the end of the row of what had once been an assortment of homes and apartment buildings, now a nearly vacant island. I assumed from what she'd told me, it had to be where she lived. The cities need for more highways brought about the acquisition and subsequent demolition of homes that had been turned into rental units as the cost of heating and maintaining them escalated, and individual owners couldn’t afford the cost of living in them any longer. So they made them into duplexes. Some converted the garages to make a little extra. All gone now except for that one building.

Penney’s apartment a reminder of what once was, stood alone, trapped in an eerie state of isolation brought on by a legal dispute. Hermon Heinz refused to sell despite the eminent domain status inflicted on the area for the highway expansion. His name remained legible on the eviction notice of door number one.

I walked towards the lone apartment building, smoke snorting from a chimney, giving it an appearance of being alive. Two lighted windows on the upper floor looking out at the urban graveyard of what was, and the promise of what was to be.

The once elegant home now resembling a forgotten memory sat alone in disrepair. The front porch railings resembling a face with missing teeth. An abandoned sofa rested beneath a large picture window accented by a colored glass ensemble of sun flowers.

I climbed the stairs, a railing spindle seeing no reason to continue waiting for its fate jumped to its death, making sure members of its community knew it had done so on their behalf, as it echoed its farewell before disappearing into the darkness below.

A radiator on the landing belched steam that condensed on the window above it, turning the glass into a crystalline oasis in the middle of peeling wall paper and bubbling paint. Four apartments in the building, Penney's the only one occupied.

Her door, adorned with an upside-down number two, sported the physique of once having been more of an outdoor kind of barrier. Its faded blue paint reminded me of robins eggs and spring for some reason.

I knocked, not so much seeking recognition or permission to enter, as I knew the apartment was supposed to be empty, but one never knows. I was to water a furry leafed plant with purple flowers, is how she’d described it, a violet I think she said. And there was a cat that could come and go as it pleased, that she felt somehow spiritually connected to. I didn’t ask.

The plant sat by the window, its leaves curled and brown, the soil around it an ashen gray sprinkled with vermiculite pellets, aeration or litter I assumed. The cat was nowhere to be seen, a dish of molding whatever, and an empty water bowl, the only evidence the cat had ever existed.

The kitchen was bare, but for a bulb that hung from a twisted chord above a three-legged table. A single chair rested beneath it, as though it had given up hope of ever finding usefulness again.

There was one other room, guarded by a missing door and occupied by a single mattress that lie alone in the center of the room amidst an undulating ocean of warped boards and peeling paint.

The walls, dissimilar to the decay and want of everything I had viewed to that point, had been newly painted a light pumpkin color. The room glowed with an aura of Cinderella’s past. One particular intrusion into this world of mad hatters, were messages of some kind seemingly woven into the painted canvas of the slopped walls and low ceiling. Words that covered, as far as I could tell, the entire rooms walls and ceiling surfaces. Upon closer examination, I realized they were not singular words, but a chain of words melded together by apostles of a past, and reintroduced in this modern rendition of Penelope’s Bible.

I felt as though I had been in that room before, even though I knew it was an impossibility. I could feel the pumpkin color and hear the pen scratching at the walls surface. It may have been the hours spent in the church basement of my youth, surrounded by cloaked worshipers and air laden with the magic of incense that pulled me back to the memories of a God I used to know. I had watched, as He pulled a cross from pillar to pillar, having to remember, relive his own persecution and death, and being condemned to repeat the ritual for eternity, or until people no longer cared.

Above a window covered with colored strips of tissue paper resembling the sun setting on the skyline of a city, was a faded birthday card taped to the molding with duct tape. I lifted the cover embossed with lambs and daisies. Inside the inscription, “to me, from me, for me, because of me.”

I had no idea as to the meaning, nor did I care. I had begun to feel as though I were not alone. I turned the card over out of habit to see if it was a Hall Mark Moment, or simply another exaggerated days exposure to life in January. 

My name was printed on the back in blue ink, obviously of the fluid variety, as each letter had taken on a flowery appearance as it attempted to hide beneath the papery façade.

“I have gone to South Dakota to look for the truth. I had a dream of a white cross on a hill, emboldened by flood lights of another time. A voice spoke to me telling me I must follow my dream no matter the sacrifice.” And then there was a pen and ink sketch, poorly done I might add, of a hill with a cross perched on its crest. The body of a woman lay beneath it, along with the words, “please feed the cat.”

I had a feeling much like the one Penelope must have experienced. I felt the compunction to rummage through the empty shelves in the kitchen in hopes of finding, if not the grail, a bag of sustenance that would suffice. 

I had nearly given up hope of being able to conclude my mission, when I opened the refrigerator door. I don’t know why, just felt I had to. It was as if I was following a directive from someplace, out there. And in the space below the blackened light bulb was a can of Nature’s Feast. God does work in mysterious ways. I removed the can, a spoon remained embedded in its contents. As I peered into the container I saw a crumpled ball of paper. 

I removed the paper from the can and unfurled it, laying it on the table and attempting to rid it of wrinkles by brushing it with my hand. Words of disappointment jumped out at me. “This is not cat food.” I crumpled the paper and replaced it and the can in the refrigerator, whose motor began to pray as I closed the door.

When one is confronted with circumstance, and opportunity one does not understand, it is often best to pretend it had all been a bad dream. But being of a more inquisitive nature, I spent the remainder of the evening reading Penney’s Bible, discovering that madness is not always what it appears to be. "Often it is far worse," Luke: 42-11.