Park Bench

To a child’s eye, the park bench loomed.

I was that child. I was told I was small for my age, and in turn, all I knew was how large the world was. Dust motes and specks. I remember the grass, the way it tickled my knees. The way it smelled, forest-y and sharp after a good rain. Needless to say, it rained a lot. Above my wide eyes would soar the horizon of dark trees, imposing and impossibly rooted, a tapestry of greens and ragged browns. The only light would often be the sun threading a gold lining in between the thicket of grey.

There were three fixed constants in the gaps of my aging memory – the grass, the sun, and the bench.

Because on that bench there would be a man.

He was young. He was always sad.

Even as young as I had been, I could see it. He smiled with dim eyes at me, and we all pretended not to see the way Mother’s hands tightened on my shoulder. The shade of his hair as the light caught on the matted strands was as discolored as the bark of the trees that he was silhouetted against. His face was uncreased, but I remember seeing the crisscross of old scars across trembling fingers once, before he started wearing gloves.

Ours is a small town. And I decided that I knew him.

The man was not a stranger. Not to me.

The weight of those eyes tickled as light as a feather’s pressure at the edge of every happy memory, before he left the house one night, and she started drinking. A family of three reduced to a thirteen-year-old and the specter of two ghosts, one fading and the other already long since gone. Money was sparse. Mother tried. She really did. But the house drifted out of her grasp like the fading specks of ash, and it was just another change in the big bad world that I was beginning to resent.

I found myself going back to the park. Of course, I did. The last place of sanctuary that I told myself that I would ever really truly know.

There was the bench, and then there was the man.

It felt more of a fever dream than anything else. Like I couldn’t be quite sure if it was real, or if it was my mind creating this vivid figure and sticking him to the edge of my vision. My very own shadow. Two ships passing in the night, and only things that I scrouge from memory is the nine, or maybe ten, conversations that were exchanged in the quiet of the evening.

One.

“Hi.” I walked right up and stuck out my hand in greeting. The silence had been killing me, the awkwardness hanging in the air like a noose every time I leaned against the largest oak and attempted to write down the words that swam in my mind – words that sounded nice in my head but was ugly on paper.

He stared.

I stared back with all the intensity that I had, determined not to blink and lose ground.

He looked away first. “Hello.”

His voice was like gravel. Hoarse, in a way that meant he hadn’t used it in a very long time. Either that, or he had spent the last thirty minutes sobbing noiselessly and had cleared away every scrap of evidence in the time it took me to decide, what the hell, and scrape myself off the ground and walk over.

“I’m not telling you my name.” I added.

“I’m not asking.” He replied cautiously.

“Good.” I said, and then went back to my perch.

And that was that.

Two.

He was still there the next time. Part of me was relieved. I didn’t particularly want to be alone.

Three paragraphs into the story I was weaving – a rather gory affair of a ghost and a janitor set in an abandoned school – the stranger cleared his throat and said, “Good weather, huh?”

I looked up. An up. The sky was still grey.

“Right.” I said, after a dry pause. “Do you like the rain?”

To his credit, he just shrugged. “Maybe. It makes the world fresh.”

“Fair.”

The birds continued to chirp.

I wondered if they hated the rain as much as me.

Three.

“Favorite color?” I ask, once.

“Blue.” He said wistfully.

I thought of blue clouds and blue water and blue rain. Figures.

Four.

“Cats or dogs?” I ask.

“Neither.” He smiles, then more quietly says, “Birds.”

“Is that why you’re always-“ I wave my hand. “Here.”

"Who knows?" He tilts his head, expression already distant. “Perhaps.”

Five.

I wrote about him, then kept that particular entry in my journal folded away in the sock drawer. I’m not stupid.

Telling him about it however, was. My mouth moved faster than my brain, and the next thing I knew, I said, “In case I get murdered, you know. It’s like having a back-up. My very own fail-safe. But if I did get murdered, and you didn’t do it, then it would be very, very awkward. I mean, I hope you’re a perfectly normal person and everything, always sitting here, looming in the background and you know when I’ll be here, and statistically, it is very probable-“ I clamped my mouth shut.

He was laughing at me, and-

Huh.

I remember thinking he had had a very nice laugh.

Somehow, I did not have that on my bingo card.

Six.

I ended up googling ‘killer conversation starters’.

“So,” I asked. “What’s your favorite movie?”

He stared blankly.

I took that to mean a resounding ‘no’. “Wow, you have no life.”

“Series.” He corrected absent-mindedly. “Don’t have a favorite movie, but I did binge quite a few series. I have Netflix.”

“I’m pretty sure everyone has Netflix. But, fine. Favorite series?”

“Breaking Bad?” He tried.

“That,” I said, thinking about this guy’s whole shady, kicked-puppy vibe. “Explains a lot.”

He sounded way too chirpy. “Thanks.”

Seven.

Gravel crunched like bone. My eyes were still red, hands raw and stained with soil from when I had just buried my dog. Feather had just been six months old when-

I shook my head angrily, still tearful.

I told him about it. About the speeding car, about Feather.

“I’m- sorry.” He says, looking genuinely stricken.

“If I ever see them again,” I said. “I’ll kill them.”

His expression was completely serious. “And I would help.”

I snorted. Then burst into tears again.

Eight.

“Andrea.” I held out my hand.

He returned the favor. “Arthur.”

Nine.

“What happened to you?”

What happened to me, I don’t say.

I think he heard it anyway.

Ten.

I remember the quiet. The branches rustling. The grass, the sun, and the bench. And him. Too long in my mind he’s simply been ‘The Man’ that to call him by name tasted weird in my mouth. He was real quiet that time. Not that he’d been a particularly enthusiastic chatterbox before.

I remember his eyes. That same, sad shade of brown.

Before I left, I gave him a salute.

“Good luck.” I remember saying, not entirely sure what I was even saying it for.

Then I went home, and tore up the paper.

But the next time I went to the park, he wasn't there. Just... gone.

And the week after that. Then the week after that week. Still the next week and-

Like I said, two ships passing in the night.

---

There is a man on the bench.

I have grown. He has aged.

I sit on the bench next to him, and watch as he glances up, eyes widening in faint recognition. “Nice weather, am I right?”

He stares at me. Then looks up and up.

The sky is still, always, grey.