STREET ADDRESS

Phil was minutely aware of the eyes boring into him from behind curtains in the building in front of him. He could feel cold water running in torrents down his face. Distantly, he could hear the crying of his six-month-old daughter in her mother's arms, as they sat on the drenched couch next to him on the sidewalk. He was stone cold. All that his family possessed was piled in the parking lot getting soaked in a torrential down-pour. His consciousness was fading, his mind flipping back like an open book to the wind, turning and turning, but not catching on any page. The curtains slowly filled his vision, expanding like a camera moving toward close-up, the white rustling curtains, and the heavy rain…

*****

The mist was a thin veil that danced before the eyes, then slowly descended. Philip had awakened to find the morning, clothed in a wet, grey overcoat, skulking over his balcony. A vagabond-dawn outside, waiting to ruin his day as he stared into the adjacent park. Were he in England, he’d have long since died from one too many days like this. With coffee mug in hand, he stepped onto the bare glistening balcony concrete and sourly sighed. Then he was caught by the sight of the newly budding trees across the way and the light crystalline blanket that enveloped them. Tiny droplets of water, like Christmas tree ornaments, hung from the tender sprigs, creating a menagerie of natural artistry where no two trees where alike. “Beautiful!” he whispered to himself, ‘You’ll miss it’ suddenly intruded upon his thoughts. He hadn’t been able to shake the suspicion that they were going to lose the roomy apartment overlooking the creek in Alum Spring Park. He and his wife, Theresa, had honeymooned over the past year at the lovely complex, nestled in the heart of one of the state's oldest historic parks. Until Tabitha, their newborn, had arrived last December, they had lived quietly save for the songs of the neighboring crickets. Fredericksburg had become home and peace for the little family.

*****

He remembered the day he had made the announcement to his parents about his plans to marry. His father was glad Philip had chosen a 'Sunday school teacher', just as he had suggested, knowing full well a church girl would help keep his errant son in line. Although a little uncomfortable with her race at first, upon meeting her a few years later, Terry had changed his mind and won him over completely.

His mother on the other hand, unbeknownst to him, had set her face like a flint against Theresa from the beginning.

"I knew you'd be cool with the fact that she's black." He had naively told his mom in secret, while his father had walked on ahead of them that day they visited him in the men's colony at America's Keswick, a Christian conference center and treatment grounds, where he had been staying the past three months in New Jersey while he dried out and received help with his drinking problem.

"They can be your friends, but you don't have to marry them!" she had scolded him, after he first confided his decision to her. He remembered quite clearly the fire in his mother's eyes, as she whipped around on him the moment he told her he was seriously considering marrying the Caribbean woman he had met at the Christian conference center.

Her demeanor had taken him fully by surprise.

"No, your wrong!" she spat at him, when she firmly grabbed his arm to forcefully turn him to face her.

"He's the one who's 'cool with it' - I'M NOT!" she exclaimed, pointing at his father, meandering along, a little ways ahead of them.

*****

Then, came the day, his mother died.

Phil had been keeping his seven year relationship with the beautiful woman from St. Thomas, Virgin Islands in a holding pattern and he knew, he no longer needed to honor his mother's wishes.

So he made his engagement announcement to his siblings.

It was bad enough, the ostracizing he would have to take from his upper middle class white family and their friends, when he told them of his plans to be engaged, but Philip would never forget his brother John's reaction, snorting through his nostrils like some cattle ranch's prize bull, sneering down upon him "...Pffft, black Schmohls!"

Unlike his eldest brother Ed, jubilant at the news, who would throw an engagement party at his home in Langhorne, PA., warmly welcoming Terry into the family. She had come down from Brooklyn, N.Y. and stayed the entire weekend. Philip had breathed a little easier. They were married a year later, settling in the historic town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and he supposed the worst of his problems were behind him...

*****

The lay-off from his job two months ago in March now threatened that peace. Fear of eviction without a place to go, loomed in his every waking thought. The past two months were fraught with anxiety and sleeplessness, but Phil kept prowling the thoroughfares of his quaint city, his ‘five dollar an hour town’, as he liked to call it – all at the sword point of overdue rent. At night, he wrote to dispel the ghosts and the dread that haunted him, as he wrestled with his personal demons. Although, at this juncture in his life, drinking was no longer one of them. The deepening love he had found with Theresa had become the balm that had healed the wounds of his soul, filling the void he had previously, throughout his aimless and discontented young life, tried to remedy with alcohol.

"Who am I kidding - living off my writing, really?!", he told himself, his discouragement riding him like a surfer the waves. One editor confirming his doubts, after submitting a story about his eldest brother's experiences during the war, wrote in his rejection slip: 'People don’t want to hear about Vietnam anymore. They want to hear about this popular war. Do you have any family who served in Desert Storm?'.

Kissing his wife goodbye that morning at the door, he lingered with the baby in her arms a moment longer, borrowing his face into the soft flesh of her neck gently, closing his eyes, he yearned for the moment to never end. He kissed her sadly. Tabitha's outburst of ticklish laughter lent strength to his downcast heart. Turning to touch his tie one more time in the mirror at the door, he exited. “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of jobs!”, he jokingly sang, as he tried to buoy his mood, getting into the family's old, green 1975 Dodge Coronet. This morning would be like the others. He drove, filled out applications here and there, then drove on to the next department store, business or factory, blanketing the little town as best he could. Although it usually did, the work of searching for employment didn’t relieve the gnawing in his stomach today. A specter colored the thoughts at the back of his mind. Maybe I can outrun them, he thought as he trounced on the gas peddle and the big 318 V-8 engine lurched the car forward, blurring the white lines that shot at him, disappearing under the front hood of the Dodge.

The rusty green Coronet slowly turned into the wet parking lot at day's end, and at first, Phil thought Alum Spring Park was having a yard sale. Then he realized, his thoughts frantically back-peddling over the events of the days and the months as they all fell together solidifying into the scene before him. The articles on the parking lot sidewalk were not arranged, but piled, thrown about. A siren went off in his head as he locked eyes with his wife’s deadened stare and he recognized the little child crying in her arms on the couch outdoors. But she hadn’t recognized him, or the sound of their big old car, or the baby crying. The monster was unmasked, the one that had been haunting him all day. As he stepped out of the car, sleepwalking over to where his family was huddled. Suddenly, the smell of the air changed. A wind came up carrying the scent of condemned, derelict buildings strewn with old papers and wet must. It filled his nostrils. He almost fell over, a light sweat breaking out all over his body and the wind whipping the mist over his neck gave him a deep chill. Adrenaline poured into his bloodstream and his heart hammered as it broke. He drifted over to the mound of pictures, lamps, furniture, and assorted papers stacked indiscriminately in the parking lot. “Wha….” was all that tumbled out of his mouth. His jaw hung in space and his facial features started to glaze over as each gouging scream from his infant daughter’s knotted red, wet cheeks stabbed into his heart deeper and deeper. The scene of how they probably hustled her out of the building, auto-played itself out across the theatre of thought that he now had no control of. The pain drawn on his wife’s still face, the emptiness of her eyes, was maddening. His mind spun out of gear, as the surroundings grew dim. At that exact moment, the fine curtain of mist broke, turning with malice and without warning into a violent cloudburst, a waterfall crashing on them, out of an opaque sky…

THE END