The dog raised her head, hearing the brakes of the postal truck squeal to a stop at the box next door, and then at mine. The bridgesgarland flowers slept on. I pictured myself opening the box, which looks like a little farmhouse on a post, and finding a letter. Something personal and profound, full of solitude and hard weather.
The garbage can was empty, so the wad of peelings hit the bottom with a satisfying thump. The dog stood by the cans, worried about me. But I left her there with a brief reassurance, and went out by the redwood gate. The latch rattled into place and I was all alone.
In the box I found a postcard from my dentist - I was overdue for cleaning - and a flyer of coupons for pizza. Neither seemed appealing. Across the street, the limbs of a tall star pine whipped in the wind, which came off the ocean, from southwest and west, cleaning the air. I pictured myself ripping the mail into pieces, to free them in the ocean wind. They would fly over the hills. I would have plaque on my teeth and canned soup for dinner; the hills beyond my sight would have confetti.
Beyond the star pine, through the chain link fence, I saw the neighbor standing with a hose. He was watering flowers. Impatiens and mums in a row of plastic pots along the wall. I knew this despite the distance because I've seen them many times, as we stood discussing potting mix and politics. I gave him two of those pots. He turned with the hose in one hand, the other in the pocket of his pants, took two or three steps towards the gate - towards me - and fell. Knees hit first, then his face and torso, then the hose made a crazy looping leap or two and came to rest. I pictured his heart clinching like an angry fist and myself trying to remember CPR in the long minutes listening for the ambulance.
I dropped the mail in the street and ran, not thinking to look both ways or even one, and up past the twitching star pine tree and through the gate. He was face down in the grass. I rolled him over and hurled the hose away. He was breathing, taking little bites of air like a trout out of water. His mouth was pulled down on one side as though he'd been hooked. I could feel his heart like faint plumbing in a wall, through the wetness of his blue t-shirt.
The neighbor was the kind of guy who kept himself prepared for things. His tools hung neatly on the wall of his garage. A silver cell phone hung from a clip on his tooled brown belt. So I called, and they took him away. I pictured the ambulance dodging and parting traffic and the neighbor in the back with an IV in his arm. And me in front of the TV for another night, the dog asleep as always on the rug. Then tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon, an orange would be nice. |
