Friday, February 7, 2020
No snow remained anywhere I could see around the trailer park. But you
could tell from the gray and the withered growth to either side that the world
was still embraced by winter.
The sky promised rain and maybe even flurries. And yet, amid this, a
dirty yellow Jeep with municipal license plates made its way from trailer to
trail, much in the way a honey bee from flower to flower in season, an old man
with a tilted hat seated behind the wheel, surveying the landscape with the
same diligence.
He pulled up the jeep in the driveway next to Jimmy’s, got out, carrying
a large yellow toolbox with the name Dewalt written across its side in black
letters. He eyed some of the other trailers and then moved on to another across
the gravel road, the toolbox weighing down, tilting him to one side to make him
look like a drunken sailor.
Gray hair poked out from under his baseball style cap. He had a large mustache
that made him look how Thurman Munson might have looked in Thurman Munson had
lived to his age, reminding me of those days when Jimmy lived on Pine Street in
Montclair and invited me over to watch the New York Yankees lose on TV.
On the old man’s second trip around the trailer court, he paused to look
at me, clearly wondering what I was doing there.
When I told him, I was an old friend of Jimmy’s, he relaxed, but also
seemed to grow sad, even weary, as if he carried the burden of Jimmy’s death on
his shoulder.
He told me had been there when the police it comes to break into the
trailer after Jimmy's death, and then later when Maureen arrived, and a short
time after that Patty and John, recalling their ashen faces, and the look of
pain each bore.
He said he was likely the last person from the trailer court to have spoken
to Jimmy before Jimmy’s death.
He had come over to look at the sundial Jimmy had posted on the stump
of an old tree, the old man had cut down some time earlier, but was never able
to remove the remains.
“I told him he had installed wrong,” the old man said. “I can tell the
time just by looking at the sun and I could tell that the Sundial was wrong. He
told me that someone must have been messing with it because had set it right
when he put it out here.”
They talked briefly about the struggle to deal with the dead tree, and
the trouble stumps cause when trying to move them, at which point, Jimmy said
he had to get something from the supermarket and drove off.
That was the last time the old man saw or spoke with Jimmy. He learned
of the death two days later when the cops showed up to break into the trailer
in order to find someone they could call to inform about Jimmy’s passing.
Like the rest of us, the old man seemed to think he might have said
more to Jimmy if he had known at that time that it would be the last time,
something wise about the life and death struggle of trees, and how stubborn tree
stumps can be in keeping their grip on this world, and perhaps thinking maybe
Jimmy’s spirt was like that stump still had roots here even if we could not see
them.
Then, the old man moved on, carrying his toolbox to a trailer across
the street, mumbling something about always having something to fix somewhere.
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