A Phantom Broken

A Phantom Broken
By
Joseph Timothy

         The wind sighed a long hollow howl that sharpened into a piercing whistle before flattening into a long dry moan.  The gate resounded with a clack, clack, clacking as if mercilessly thrown into convulsions by the mad autumn wind.  A phantom of dead leaves and dust, disturbed from the earth by the chilled air, swirled to the lulling dirge.  Then – a momentary hush in the wind betrayed a long, drawn-out, splintered creaking, as if a ghost reared its head from beneath the lid of a long forgotten crypt.
         The man sighed.  He paused, teary eyed, from his long silent watch of the gate, the road, the dust.  He resolved to fix the gate and put an end to its moaning.  He rolled his weight forward.  The wood of the rocker and his bones creaked as if one.  Half propelled, half-stumbling, he reached for one of the dry wooden posts of the stoop.  Grievously it bore his frame.  The one-story farmhouse had long lost its color.  Its windows were now bandaged with newspapers and weeds grew in its scars.  It neither farmed nor housed anymore.  It just waited, gradually fading into the barren landscape.
         The man stepped off the stoop with heavy steps and shuffled into the balding courtyard, strewn with litter and patches of dry, yellow grass.  He paused, tugging at the straps to his overalls.  He eyed the wailing gate.  He moved to, hesitated, and then pushed through.  As if in protest, it swung back and snapped at him, sinking its wooden teeth into his hand.  Biting at the wound, he cursed the gate.
         Along the way to the shed he stumbled over a tattered baseball mitt.  Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, he stooped down to examine the frayed webbing, the faded name.  With one hand he rubbed the stubble on his chin.  He dried his face with a knotted handkerchief which he balled up before shoving it deep into his breast pocket, wincing as he tugged at the overalls as if to ease some invisible weight.  Carefully, he stepped around the glove and pressed on to the shed.
         Bony, yellowed, knobbed knuckles dueled with a rusted padlock.  The key slipped.  Stooping, he noticed a small brown hare, first darting through the grass, and then pausing by the fingers of the prone, palm-up glove, sniffing the air and returning an idle stare with a single glassy, black marble.  The man paused.  He smiled.  Then, just as suddenly, a darkness fell like a shroud and the creature’s body writhed for life within the talons of a great black bird leaving a wake of dust and broken straw.
         The man charged after the disappearing shadow, “Let him go!  Let him go!  You son of a bitch, give him back to me!”
         He watched helplessly as bird and prey disappeared into rolling, oily clouds.  Slouching over, hands on knees, he breathed hard and shook violently.  He straightened up, the loose flesh of his face still flushed and quivering.  With slump shoulders and bowed head, he turned for the shed.
         The dry, splintering door yielded defiantly to the old man’s efforts, its rusted hinges crying in pain and protest.  An eerie light stole in through the one window, casting and amber glow on a suspended cloud of dust.  Beneath the haze was a workbench lined with an aged collection of plastic and glue aircraft, relics of a child’s toys and a man’s game.  On either side of the window patched with yellowed newspapers and cellophane, tinted baseball cards covered the wall, their faded faces hovering above the dust and cobweb-shrouded warplanes, like specters haunting some long forgotten airfield.
         The man bent down, knees cracking, pulled an old toolbox from beneath the bench, and lifted the chest onto the edge.  With one arm he cleared a wider space, carefully moving aside an F-4 phantom and an American flag folded into a neat triangle.  A cough, a raspy gasp, and a wipe of his handkerchief over his face revealed the strain of a great weight on his frail body.
         The man sorted through the contents slowly at first and then with more urgency.  “Goddammit!  Where is it?  Someone must have taken it.  It was my only one, and now he’s gone!”
         In a frenzy he raised and slammed the toolbox.  Plastic popped and cracked.  His face paled and his jaw dropped when she saw the broken phantom lying lifeless amid a debris of missiles and wing flaps.
         “No!  No!”  He cried, his fingers fumbling with the pieces.  “What have I done?  How did I let this happen?”  He rummaged vainly through several cans of dried glue and paint.  He coughed and stammered.  “I’ve got to fix this before he re – “ Tears welled in his eyes and rolled down pallid cheeks.
         He stopped and looked up at his paned and distorted reflection, staring back at him from the window.  At first the image was the face of a child who had been crying, clutching onto a hollow, plastic toy, which he was not willing to give up.  He drew it close to his body as if trying to hide behind it.
         Then, in the shifting light the image resembled that of a mother cradling a child to her breast, her face draining of color and withering with age before his eyes.  Finally the darkened and cracked glass revealed and intensified the sallow features of an old man, fear and apprehension in his eyes, his color fading with the dimming light.
         The man set the model down and returned the tools to the box.  He turned to leave.  Above the door was fixed a tattered kite, its frame exposed under a gaping wound, trailing in its wake a flame-red tail.  It hung there as if frozen in time and space, perpetually plummeting to the earth, but never hitting ground.  He wiped his eyes once more, tucking away the handkerchief, tugging at the invisible weight pressing against his chest, and walked out into the chilly night, leaving the wailing gate to wait yet another day.