Still no completed ghost story, but I found something you might like that I wrote February 4th, 2018, when I was trying to see myself as something more than a broken down old man.
I'm still a broken old man, even more so, but I do have some focus of will left. With that thought came this bit from almost four years ago:
This
Old Man (2018-02-04)
I’m not sure how it happened.
Usually I’m very aware of my surroundings when I’m out. Especially when I’m with my little girl. My ’little girl’ is in junior high, and nearly the height of her mother; not so little.
Maybe that was it; she was not a ‘little’ girl at all, anymore.
Minding our own business at a table in the park, eating a Mickey-Dee’s lunch, a group of - no a gang of boys came up and casually surrounded our table. The boys were not much older than my granddaughter.
One of the bolder youths came closer, saying, “Hello, little chicky, leave this old man and come with me, I show you some fun!”
“He’s not an old man! He’s my grandpa!” she shouted back.
“Even better! You come with me and my boys will keep your old grandpa busy.”
The gang had us circled. As casually as I could I move my legs over the bench so I was half-facing away from the table. One of the other boys came close to me and leaned in. I could smell the cigarette odor, and the smell of marijuana, on his breath. “Don’ get up, ole man, Rickie – he take goooood care of your girl for you.” He leered a half-focused grin at me.
Someone behind me poked my shoulder, “An’ we gonna take gooood care of you, too. Don’ worry about nothin’.”
The first boy reached his right hand out and placed it on my left shoulder, the shoulder nearest the table, “You jus’ sit right there, an’ ev’ry thing will be fine.”
“Pa-paw?”
One of the circling boys said, “Maybe we can take turns.” The rest of the boys chuckled, their laughter low in the throat. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the first boy (“Ricky?”) take my girl’s arm to pull her away from the picnic table.
The voice in my ear said: This is the moment.
Leaning back against the hand behind me; the boy behind me, irritated, shoved me forward. Grabbing my cane from the table with my left hand, and leaning forward (unwittingly assisted by the boy behind me), I punched the boy in front of me’s solar plexus, putting as much of my weight behind the blow as I could. This boy’s leer disappeared as his eyes and his mouth went wide, gasping for a breath that would not come.
Standing and stepping away, and twisting to face the boy behind me, I got both hands on my cane, spaced wide, pushing it at the boy’s chest, stepping in to shove as hard as I could to knock him down. He couldn’t back-pedal fast enough to stay standing and went down.
Stepping on his chest to the most direct path around the end of the table I saw Ricky dragging my little girl away from the table. Two more boys were between Ricky and me, the one on my left waved a knife. I think he meant to scare me.
I stepped left, putting the other boy slightly behind the knife wielder. I swung my cane hard down on the wrist with the knife, and he screamed. He also dropped the knife.
I brought the cane back up, and grabbing it with both hands as I had before, I shoved it into this boy’s chest and he went down. I stepped on him and went at the fourth boy. He came at me like a defensive line-man, ready to push me back. I met his charge, shoving him with the cane held as a bar in front of me, then twisting to the right, I stepped left, and let him slide past me. As he went by, I kicked him in his rear and he went down on his nose.
That was four of the .. five? six? boys in the bunch. One of whom was standing to my left, holding on to my little girl … holding a knife to her throat.
“Stay back!” he said. He spoke through clenched teeth, his own breathing as ragged as mine was; I was near the end of my effort.
I have to wrap this up.
“Baby Girl,” I said, using a name from her childhood, “Baby Girl, do you trust me?”
Her eyes flickered to a long-ago memory, and she nodded.
As the boy was saying ‘Shut UP, Old Man’, I said, “Ess-Dee-Are.”
She blinked, widening her eyes. I gave a slight nod in reply.
She became dead weight on the boy’s arm. The boy, not expecting it, let her fall. Finishing the ‘Stop-Drop-Roll’ she rolled as fast as she could away from the boy. The boy stood watching.
As soon as she was clear, I stepped in and raised my cane, still gripped in both hands by its ends, knocking his knife hand up.
“Run to the car, child! Call the police!”
Letting go of one end of the cane, and reaching into my left front pocket I grabbed my keys and started tossing them to her. The boy took advantage of my distraction and slashed downward with his knife. It missed my face but cut open my shirt. I felt the slash like an electric jolt through my chest as the blade bit me.
I dropped the keys as I focused on the face of the boy. His eyes were wide, his mouth open. I growled, like bear or a jungle cat, ready to pounce on my prey. This boy-predator didn't think he was so big any more without his friends. He was back-pedaling, as if he no longer wanted this fight.
I certainly didn’t want this fight, but I couldn’t let the matter rest and have him regain his courage when his friends recovered. I was sure boy #2 and boy #4 were already doing so. The cane was still in my right hand; I swung it at his knife hand, intent on breaking his wrist, breaking what was left of his spirit for this fight of his own making, my own vision tunneling.
The fight would be over in a moment, one way or the other. The shock I was feeling from the cut was combining with my shortness of breath from my exertions. I felt like a puppet whose strings were being cut, one at a time.
I saw the rubber tip of my cane hit his knife hand. It was the last thing I saw: my tunnel vision narrowed to nothing, the roaring in my ears became a roaring silence.
Except, I seemed to be someplace. I was talking to someone. Or they were talking to me. It was dark, and largely noiseless, apart from the conversation. It was one of those ‘what-to-do-next’ conversations.
I found
myself saying, “For myself, I don’t care, but please make sure my wife and
granddaughter are taken care of.”
The reply:
“Your family will be taken care of – you’ll take care of them.”
I expressed
my doubts in wordless thought, that none-the-less was answered, “You just need
to rest a while. Then you will be strong enough to continue.”
My wordless
thought continued to the shortness of breath, the pain in my chest that had
nothing to do with the cut, and the general feeling of exhaustion I felt. I
mentally tried to raise my arms – and could not.
The voice,
if it was a voice, returned with the sentence, “My strength is made perfect in
weakness – you know that.”
And with that, the dream, or whatever it was, ended.
Oddly
enough, the next thing was noise, the roaring in my ears was back, and pains
all over were telling me I was still interfaced with my body, and the world at
large was starting to make its presence known: shrill sirens, accelerations and
decelerations, not to mention the ‘come-over-darlings’ of sharp turns, and
things rattling with each bump. Unfocused light was sneaking in under my
eyelids, and on the next bump I heard a groan. My next thought was that person sounds like he’s hurting.
The
following thought: that groaning person was me!
The pains,
instead of just nebulous ideas, started coming in from my chest, my hands and
wrists, and an ouchy spot on my left pectoral.
As I
wondered what this was all about, dribs and drabs of ‘the last things I
remember’ slowly snuck into my mind.
Then I thought, “Oh. Yeah.”
And decided to go back to sleep.
And there you go. Fiction is as fiction does, but if it ever comes down to cases, I hope I do as well as my dream self in this story, and end up finishing the fight before I run out of steam.
I don't have a lot of steam left.
But I do what I can.
Yes, I Can.
Yes, You CAN!
