7th-Ave.-Trolly

The crusty, elderly man sat at the table sucking the last bit of life out of his cigarette, his battered eyes cautiously staring at the man in the brown suit. The man in the cheap suit fidgeted with his petite wire rimmed glass and fixed his nervous gaze on the old man.

"So-what do you need to say to me, Mr. Stenze?" The old man, Mr. Stenze, began to speak after a long moment; his hands in sync with his grinding voice as he snuffed the cigarette out.

Mr. Stenze hands began to fiddle with an unlit cigarette. "To understand what I need to say you have to get who I am-or was-When I was 18 or so. I was a sharp kid standing nervously in-front of a grand world that I knew nothing about." He leaned forward, smiling with his crooked teeth and began to conduct his story with his aged hands. "I met her on a trolley on my way home on a warm, sticky evening. As she stepped onto the 8th avenue trolley, her red ribbon bobbed slightly on top of its auburn perch, her thin white dress glowed in the evening sun-God, she was so beautiful. Her slender body pressed onto the worn solid bench. She sat quietly one leg on the other, eyes wandering from building to building, brick to brick. She knew too, she knew that my eyes never left her." His eyes brightened for a moment as he reminisced, his lips parted to let the rest of the story and smoke escape.

"-She looked at me with fierce eyes; I was like a deer in head lights! I froze, didn't even look away. I guess she felt my panic, because her eyes flickered over me, and her eyes softened again. 'Will you spare one for me?' Her hazel eyes gestured to my freshly rolled cigarette." A grunt escaped the old man’s throat and a slight smile forced itself to the corners of his cheeks. "My hands, shaky with nerves, went through the familiar motions of rolling a cig, and with that, we began to talk. "She helped me lead the conversation so that I could feel more comfortable I guess-" Mr. Stenze turned to the man in the brown suit. "I figure you didn’t realize I would have a love story for you did ya? Anyway, we ran into each other here and there. We had cafe con leche and before I knew it she was mine. One day came and when she stood, all done up in white, across from me in front of the few people we knew. I was so nervous - well, I guess more excited, anyhow--where was I? We married that day, in her simple hand-me-down dress, her eyes level and steady above her confident smile."

Mr. Stenze inhaled a deep breath through his whining nostrils. As he slowly exhaled, his left hand beckoned to the bottle of murky brown liquid on the crumbling counter. "Why don't you pour us an eye-opener. There’s some glasses in the cabinet." After a moment, the younger man reluctantly rose and walked through the thick grimy air to the bottle.

With another drag, the old man thought back on his life. “At this point in my life I am alone, I am dying, I am poor and-I'm tired. I spent years trying to find the reason why-but I came to understand that I did it all to myself. It wasn’t some turn of fate but simply me.

The best day of my life was the day I met my Beth on the 8th ave trolley. That day was also the count down to a life of misery. After our--wedding, I helped Beth get a job at the cigar factory I worked at and we scraped together enough money to live in one of those white shotgun houses over on Palm. It was nothing special, a simple frame house, white paint blue shutters and a blue door; always had dirt on the screens and a tin green patio set out on the porch-Ha!

We spent every night on that porch and long days in that hot factory working to the pace of the reader, all so I could walk that brick road home with Beth, and plop down on that porch for the evening. We smoked and laughed and dreamed of what the yard would look like once our..." His brow line fell as his brain racked though its vocabulary in search of a name, but instead he finally uttered "blue flowers" with defeat. “Took root... We never had money or a real plan but we were blessed with the young love and endless dreams."

The young man choked back the whiskey in his throat, nursing the drink with un-experienced and soft hands. "This durning the time of the depression?"

Before Stenze responded, he polished off the last of his whiskey with a mocking smile. "Ya... We planted the yard the spring before the Japs bombed us...I would say no more than 2-no 3 weeks after that day, I enlisted and was shipped off to live in green bunks and sweat. Opening my first piece of mail to read a letter from Beth, I still remember the feeling - I could faintly smell her perfume and it took me back to her arms- I had to fight to keep the little composure I had. Her letter began with a punch to the gut, 'I miss you dearly, and I'm pregnant.'" He ended his sentence with a grunt that might have once many, many cigarettes ago resembled a laugh and held the bridge of his nose in a pinch to hold his memories in place. In a moment, the smile slipped away and his eyes steadied again.

"Time went by, training, work, frustration, and then war. Beth’s letters kept me going just like every once else’s loved ones letters kept them going, writing and smoking was about our only pastime. Sometimes I would get a whole letter of just names for the baby and in return, she would get a letter of just reasons why I didn’t like them-It became like a-a game! ya a game we played to pass the time. The more into the war I found myself the more I focused on the baby and the greater the angst I felt build inside of me to see my Beth. With war raging all around, I spent as much time I could in my mind focusing on every detail I could remember of her..." His eyes stared at a worn photo on the wall with the ruble of a town somewhere deep in Europe, his battered fingers traced the sticky rim of his empty glass. "I took that picture with my friend's camera...he died soon after that. I saved the camera- it’s around here somewhere...where....what was I saying before?" His bottom lip quivered and his somber eyes twitched as he attempted to review what he had been saying.

"You had been talking about the war." His glasses bobbed slightly on the edge of his nose, and his voice had the false confidence provided by the amber liquid in his mug.

"Yes. Yes! I had been talking about the war in Europe. The war is another story and bigger bottle. However, I was stationed somewhere outside of France, I think. I often got the guard watch at night, I liked it. The night lay like a blanket on the hills in the distance, and stars glimmered in the sky. It gave the illusion of peace, as if there were no war in the distance. I would sit at night and let the bitter coffee warm the inside of my mouth. Standing out front, I would let my eyes close and picture the curves of her face, the scent of her body, the dimple on her cheek when she smiled. Those thoughts and visions were what I saw when I felt the sharp bite low in my shoulder. I got off one shot with my rifle before the pain radiated up though my shoulder and into my head, blinding me. I no longer saw Beth’s face or the blanked hill side, and finally I didn't hear gun fire-" A heavy silence fell over the room for a moment before Mr. Stenze continued. “I-don't remember much while I was under the morphine, and much of what I remember is the inside of trucks and of hospital ceilings. One after the other all alike, all different. Faces and voices; tears and whimpers. I finally landed on a freighter, heading back to the states and many miles and hours after that I found myself walking down that familiar and missed brick road, up through the small yard with our blue flowers and onto the small porch. I can remember the excitement I felt, the joy that bubbled and swelled readying itself to explode in my chest as I reached for the tarnished door-knob. But when I entered the house was empty- except for a note on an old lopsided lamp-table. ‘In labor at clinic. Love, yours' I ran right out of that house and straight there, not stopping once till I was in that dark, stale waiting room." A small, shallow smile surfaced for a moment as he set his trembling hands on the paint chipped table and let a saddened breath escape from his cracked pail lips. “I found a doctor who seemed more concerned with my white-knuckle grip then with my pleading questions about my wife. That’s when I got the news-Sh-she died." He stopped once more to breathe, letting the thick air fill his lungs to aid his efforts at keeping tears at bay. With his eyes shut weakly, he continued in his gravely voice. "She died in labor before I had gotten there. Some kind of unforeseen complication." His hand swatted at the air trying to brush the painful memory away. "I...I never said good-bye... I stood in a blur, staring at the crib that held my child. All I could think was that child-took her from me. I left the hospital, crawled right into a deep dark bottle. I stayed there, too, until one day while I stood in our-my empty house and stared at the nursery she had painted for the baby. I suddenly realized that this child didn’t take Beth from me... Beth left it here for me. Guilt-ridden, I searched for my child. It was a boy. I sunk every cent, every second into finding my son." Mr.Stenze groped the table till he found his last cigarette and held it for a moment. "I had always hoped these would get me one day." He held it as steady as he could and fumbled with the cheap plastic lighter for a second before dropping it back on the table un-satisfied. "O-hell!"

With the unlit Camel firmly clamped in his fingers, he muttered, "I tried to find him, but by the time I had realized what I had done, he was lost to the system and found by a family. His room remained untouched for years, just the way Beth had last seen it. I just couldn't bring myself to..to-" His voice faded away in the yellowed walls of the house.

"Did you ever attempt meet him?" The young mans voice was still slightly sluggish from his drink, but rapidly returning to normal.

"I sunk my life into that goal. Never had a steady.. well anything, not a job, not a relationship, not even a friend other than my bartender, but no I never met him. I found him long ago. his name is-was John Mooris. He died relatively young."

"That’s why..." the young man was lost in thought, his shoulders slouched into the worn chair. His hand slowly eased off the table taking a flake of the paint with his modest wedding ring.

"Yes, that’s why I called every day asking for you to come take down my story." The old man’s voice was filled slightly with hope as he confessed the truth. Slowly, the old man stood and trudged to a bookcase off to the corner of the room. He fished a wooden frame from the back of the shelf and turned to the man in the cheap suit." That is your great, great, grandmother and me on the porch, the week after we moved in...please take it."

The younger man rose slowly and took the picture; in it were two young and blissfully happy kids in faded and cracked black and white. The picture looked as if it would crumble in his hands. The man looked Mr. Stenze in the eyes for the first time that day. "My name is Stanly Hopkins. My mother was Debra Morris. Her father was John Morris the second. I would love for you to come with me to dinner to meet my wife and your great-great-great? granddaughter. If you have no plans that is."

With a crooked smile, the old man opened his mouth to speak but nothing seemed to leave his swollen throat, so his tearful nod accepted the invitation for him.

THE END.