Moving day was complete before noon, thanks to early rising on all parts, a lack of pickiness from Nate, and the overwhelming desire of the movers to be finished with Friday. Now the dust had settled, the sun was bright, the new apartment was full of old things and one of the old things was Nate.
Oh to think, just scant weeks ago he’d been sitting moribund in his house, buried under layers and layers of torpor and moribund with rigid apathy. Retired in all senses. But then had come the brochure, and with it the message of hope: come to Creaky Creek. Live among your people, the ones like you that have seen it all and done everything and been everywhere and now just want to be nowhere in particular.
Thank god he’d gotten some snacks today; he was famished – and what a beautiful day to eat on the porch! God, he wished he’d spent more time appreciating this sort of weather when he was younger.
Nate sat down on the warm, aged-weathered wood, pulled out a live rat, put it in his mouth, and bit down until he tasted vertebrae.
***
There were his new neighbours, new friends in the making. Across the way puttered Emilia Scarborough, ripping out weeds and pouring fertilize – she mixed her own at home in a bonegrinder, and had already offered Nate some advice on setting out traps and appropriate baits for squirrels and rats and rabbits. Next door lurked Robert Murgatroyd, nursing his afternoon whiskey and his limp and watching the clouds for signs of trouble and tumult; he’d advised Nate to move in today for good luck and a lack of storms to be. And upstairs and downstairs from him were Janice Beauregard and Milton Thurmond, who were no longer married but just good friends who chattered like monkeys and fought for possession of the garden tooth and nail.
They’d shaken his hand. They’d spoken carefully. They’d searched each other’s eyes and found what they were looking for and who they’d hoped to find and had welcomed him with careful and liver-spotted arms and hugged him close to parchment skin over brittle bone.
And they’d given him a coupon for the local grocery. How kind, how thoughtful, how NEIGHBOURLY in a way that was hard to come by these days.
Those days too, come to think of it. You had to watch who you opened up to. Some people just didn’t understand, especially when you were younger with all that time to fuss about what-was-right and what-should-be and how-things-could-be. Well, where were all those busybodies now? Fat lot of good it had done them. A fat fine lot indeed, indeed, indeed.
Cold air from the freezers made Nate’s hairs prickle as he inspected the sausages. 100% pure. Didn’t say pure what, and his mouth watered a little. He deserved a treat, yes he did, to celebrate the moving. But why not live a little? He could buy these sausages another day. He could buy these sausages ANY day.
Why not live a little, after living so long?
So he bought charcoal and coffee and nodded pleasantries to the cashier, who grinned back at him with all six of his teeth and put the items in a bag and didn’t even charge him a nickel for it.
Not like the city at all. Uptight bastards there, fussing and whining and whinging when it was just a little plastic. What harm could a little plastic do? You learned to let these things slide at his age.
***
Nate took his time brewing the coffee. He was staying out late and wanted it as strong as possible. Deep black, true black, hard enough to blot out the stars and keep his night vision sharp. He drank it on the porch and rubbed his forehead watched the sunset bruise the horizon and felt warm, truly warm inside, like he hadn’t felt since the day he’d married Eleanor. God, she would have loved this.
He rubbed his cheeks as he thought on all those years gone to pot, slaving away at the shop and the factory and the office, raising the unbearable into the ungrateful and seeing them slouch out his door without a by-your-leave. Ah well. They’d come to understand the way the world was later on, yes they would, when all that spite and energy drained away like the colour in their hair.
When you were his age, Nate thought as he rubbed his arms and legs, you learned that what kept you going was love. Do what you love and you won’t stop. Stop, and you’re done.
He rubbed his legs and tossed the charcoal back in the bag. Just in time; here came the ten o’clock bus. His legs shook as he boarded, but it was from nerves, not muscles – aha, aha, he was ready. He’d been ready forever. Robert Murgatroyd waved him to a seat; Emilia called hello from behind her portable bonegrinder; the cashier was driving the bus and his moustache was dwarfed by the fire in his eyes. Everyone was there. Everyone that mattered.
The bus made three more stops before the highway, but there was room for all. It would be a ten-minute drive to the duplex sprawl on the south side of town, and it should be spent in open space and joy, not crammed in like sardines.
They’d all had to put up with that nonsense for years. This was for pleasure.
***
The duplexes had been laid out for the folly of youth from the inception. Come to us, they sang. We’re the affordable face of suburbia, we’re mortgage-friendly, we’re community-ready. Far enough from the city core that your children won’t grow up with sirens in their ears; close-knit enough for sociability; ready to be resold for a modest return on investment. The mayor is the lead developer on this project. Don’t you trust your mayor? Don’t you?
Then, well, affordable turned cheap, mortgages never stayed friendly, and a community based in unexpected desperation turned sour at the root. And the city core stayed far away and the sirens never came closer but neither did the buses or the schools and everyone stayed locked in their little pens, fretting late into the night over rising costs and lowering wages and the inflation of the bills with no end in sight.
Maybe they hadn’t voted right, they surely thought as they hunched over their desk, excel files scattered, bank accounts open and bleeding. Maybe if they paid less taxes? Yes, that sounded right, the mayor had sounded so sure when he said it. Pay less taxes. That might help, that might help. Oh why hadn’t they gotten that good solid job at the factory like their father had? Walk in the door and say “I’ll work here,” that was all it took, that and a firm gaze and a steady handshake, but oh no such power lay within their sad limp-wristed young hands. Lazy gadabouts! Authors of their own miseries; how wretched a stew they bubbled in.
With a head full of worries like that, it was almost too easy for Nate to creep up behind the frazzled thirty-something and snap his neck the wrong way round. Oh how he relished that crack! That crisp sharp crinkle of a supple spring-fresh spine gone to seed and put to pasture decades before its time! Ah, he felt better than young.
A scream tore the night from next door. Robert must have lost the element of surprise – that limp of his would do him no favours if he stumbled over a stray lego or a discarded tie or a lost phone. Ah well! The game was afoot! The lights were on and everyone was stuck at home, trapped like rats in their cozy little over-mortgaged dens! Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide but the night, and it was full of retirees, sensible fiscally-conservative well-deserved retirees with sober clothing and careful plans and managed finances and a lot of time to kill.
Nate pulled the young pup’s neck into his mouth and bit down until he tasted vertebrae.
***
They left the duplex sprawls at dawn with full bellies and red smiling mouths. Emilia licked her thumb and rubbed the blood from the driver’s moustache. Milton had eaten so much he’d become sick, which Janice was teasing him mercilessly for. Nate laughed and laughed and laughed until he was almost sick himself, and might not have been let off that easily if the bus hadn’t reached his stop first and he departed, still-chuckling, for his own bed.
Saturday morning and he was dog tired, yawning and stumbling as he wiped the charcoal camouflage from his body. That was alright. He could sleep in. There was no weekend to waste; his life was a weekend now.
Granddad was right. All that hard work really did pay off in the end.