The Playground

The Playground

I don't remember much about my childhood. The first third or so of my existence is shrouded in a haze occasionally broken up by flashes and flickers of remembrance, small hardly-anythings that barely illuminate the darkness of forgetfulness. But there is one thing I remember with crystal clarity, that I continue to treasure; when I first met my best friend.

We met at a playground in an older part of town, an area once wealthy but had long since fallen on hard times and had been left almost completely abandoned. Empty houses and buildings, cracked and rotted with neglect, lined the sides of the gravel road that led to the playground.

The playground was as archaic as the area of town that surrounded it, as sharp and broken and rusty and decrepit. It was also tiny, made up only of a slide that may have once been bright red but was now brown, a swing set with four swings, two flat and two bucket-shaped, and a rounded-out jungle gym that had most of its parts broken off or missing. 

It was a day in late October, and the crisp scent of mid-autumn hung strong in the air. The sparse trees surrounding the playground were ablaze with vibrant yellows, oranges, and reds. The large gray skyscrapers that made up the metropolis skyline were barely visible above the trees. The sky was a ceiling of gray, and rain seemed to threaten to fall at any minute. The sun left no imprint on the clouds and could have disappeared without anyone noticing. I was stationed on one of the swings, careful not to touch the chains. Rust caked the swing chains so heavily that it looked like one would contract tetanus just from touching them. Mom had always told me to be careful around rusty metal. I was swinging slowly I heard the distinct sound of sticks and dead leaves crunching. I looked up to where the sound was coming from and saw a boy, who looked around my age, emerging from one of the abandoned houses bordering the playground. His eyes were locked down on his feet as he exited the house. He walked without rhythm or reason, pausing and speeding up frequently, turning back over himself. He didn’t seem to notice me.

He stopped suddenly at the base of a tree. The tree, a dark oak, was twisted near the top, and balanced on the knot was a small wooden platform I hadn’t noticed before. A red squirrel that had been asleep in the tree jumped from a branch to an adjacent tree once it heard the boy approaching. 

He put his hands on the tree and began to climb up. Bark came off in flakes as he ascended. He climbed as erratically as he walked. He was almost at the top when he grabbed a branch that suddenly snapped clean in half. He fell slowly, gliding through the air like a leaf, before he finally met the ground with a muted thud. 

I jumped from the swing and ran over to where the boy had fallen. He was rubbing his head and groaning softly when I got to him. 

“Do you need any help?” I asked, reaching my hand towards him.  

He jolted slightly at the sound of my voice. He pounced to his feet. He wiped the dust off his clothes, picked a dead leaf from his hair, and started climbing the tree again.

“What are you doing?” I yelled after him. Within seconds, he was several feet above me, scrambling up with the same erratic style as his first attempt up the tree, but this time he reached the platform without incident. He peeked his head over the edge and stared down at me. 

“Hey! Come up here!” I heard his voice drift down from the platform. I put a foot against the base of the tree and felt for a foothold. Finding one, I reached up for a small branch. I awkwardly scaled the tree, far slower and more carefully than the boy. Once I finally clambered onto the platform, the boy was lying on his back, eyes closed and seemingly asleep. The platform was empty except for a wooden footrest, a small pile of old paperback books, and a beanbag chair. The boy was sunken into the beanbag chair.

“Hey,” I said awkwardly. I wasn’t sure what to say to him. I had just started school the previous month, so the concept of being around other kids was still alien to me. “Hi there," the boy said, with much more confidence and gusto. "And welcome to my humble abode. My name’s Arnold. Arnold Everett. What’s yours?” the boy said, his voice smeared with boundless energy, confidence, and haste. 

“I’m V-Vincent Porter,” I replied. 

“Jeez, listen to yourself. You’re stiff as a robot! Loosen up, Vincent Porter! Come on, repeat yourself, but be natural about it. Be confident! Carpe diem, as they say in France.” He talked at a million miles per hour like he was moving at a different plane of speed and was trying to slow down to match me.

“Uh… I’m Vincent.”

“You can do better than that!”

“I’m Vincent!”

“Great! Listen to how much better you sound, Vincent Porter. How d’you ever expect to do anything if you can’t say your name without stuttering?”

“T-thanks… I mean, thanks!” I responded.

“There you go. Sorry about being... kind of meek before, I was embarrassed you saw me fall. But anyway, y’know, you don’t seem like too bad a guy, Vincent Porter. D’wanna be friends? I live super close to here, so you could come over pretty easy?” He held out his hand to me. He beckoned me and drew me into his orbit. I brought my hand up from my side, momentarily contemplating if I rejected his offer of allyship. If I left him alone on the platform, if I abandoned him to his own devices in a bad area of town no one lived in by choice. It wasn’t something I felt I could do, to be so callous toward anyone. To be heinous toward someone who had shown nothing but warmness to me, which had been completely absent in my interactions with other kids my age. I realized Arnold had been more accepting and kind than anyone I had met before him. And wasn’t that enough, in the scheme of things? Someone who cared?

I shook his hand. His face lit up more than before as he plopped onto the beanbag chair, and some of the stuffing slipped through a scratch and fell off the platform. I watched as it tumbled to the ground and was carried away by the wind and out of sight.

“So…, what is it friends do, exactly?” I questioned.

“Y’know, I’m not too sure myself. I was hoping you knew.”

The sun peeked its head over a distant cloud and bathed us in one of its beams like a divine promise of something to come. The world seemed to take on a new meaning at that moment.

-----

I find myself thinking about this moment now, more than ever. A few days ago I found out that Arnold had passed away. I saw this through Facebook, through a post his sister had made. Announcing his death, and some extra parting words. The post had zero Likes and zero Comments. It didn't say how he died.

The two of us had grown apart after high school; me going to a local community college and him traveling internationally. Despite moving in separate directions, we kept up some contact on social media. Our occasional messaging, the sending and receiving of messages with week-long gaps between them, had taken on a dry spell once I saw the post.

I was in shock, at first. This man, my best friend, the one I'd met when we were both children when the world was made up of a few city blocks, was dead. My eyes were glued to the blue screen, reading the same words again and again. Dead. Dead. Dead. It never truly hit me, even now, that Arnold was dead. But I can feel something building on top of me. A weight slowly being pressed onto my shoulders. Pushing down, trying to make me buckle. Is this grief? No one particularly close to me has died before; my parents are still alive, and my grandparents died before I was born.

Grief is something nearly everyone has gone through; it is by no means a unique experience. But that doesn't make it any easier to endure.

I think back to that playground, in a bad area of town no one lived in by choice. It's likely long gone now, replaced by something newer and shinier. I remember how resilient Arnold was, how enigmatic. How he was dead now. How he will never come back. How he will never stand up again. And I feel all the more confused. All the more sad. All the more lost.

I wish I had reached out to him. I wish that we could have reconnected. I wish that we could have made more memories together. I wish I had done anything before it was too late.

But now I'll never be able to see Arnold again.

Now, there was nothing else for me to do. Nothing at all.