George Ruth

George Ruth

    A lone, lean shadow is seen in the autumnal dawn, ambling slowly towards a slim spot of sun. The bright, blessed day breaks free to bring in the light, and then the shadow shuffles to a silvery gray bench and stoops down to sit. The light passes over him, and his true visage is revealed, and it is one of worry, and one of being alone. His deep-set eyes are made more tired under the sun, and his wrinkles come out, and the valleys of his face are exposed under the shutters.
    His life begins daily anew at the first sign of the purple returning to the painter’s palette, and the red and orange and blue taking its place, when he gently jolts himself out of bed, so as to arrive with the sunlight and the breadcrumbs for the birds, so each won’t go to waste without the other’s company. He gathers himself gingerly from the indent of his solitary body on the bed, staggers into his fraying sneakers, slips on the old corduroy coat, and steps out, strolling into the city of shoulders broader than his own, relaxed and yet restless, seeking and yet shy. Each day he spies the silver, and each day he sits, and watches, and hopes.
In his lap lies a faded copy of an old book which he has read time and time again, yet has never fully understood. He carries this copy with him every time he brings himself over to the bench, as if he were to read it, as if he intends to read it, but every time he tells himself he will read it, he ends up staring at the same pages for the same amounts of time with the same amounts of sheepishness, a lamb to his own internal slaughter, as the words swirl around in his head and lose all of their understood meaning and relation. He brings the book with him in hopes that someone will recognize it from its faded state, in hopes that someone will come down to his level and fill the empty space beside him on his bench and ask about it, and praise it, and start a conversation about it; in hopes that he will make for once a new friend, having not made one in so long. Yet hope is all he has, and at his advanced age, hope seems like all he will ever forever be.
He has been an eternal optimist for as long as he can recollect. As a child, he would cower in the far corner of the bright garish yellow school bus and think that if he could slip just enough from sight, that he would be safe today, and that he would be able to step off the bus safely with satisfaction and arrive home without any concerned questions of where that black eye came from, mister, or why his nosebleeds have started up again. Instead, his face of warm and cool colors would remain, black, red, and blue, all coalescing and coinciding with each other, united in the fight against his clarity and his vision.
And then on arriving, later, at another school, he would try his tongue at the initial sweetness of puppy love, basking in the soothing qualities of his desire’s soft features and silky black hair, the reassurance of her deep, dark eyes and full lips, watching her rise and fall with the sun, and wishing he could fall into her arms and stay still and see how graceful she was with the golden halo he had placed and held above her. Yet to talk to her was even more a fantasy than his own, and to even look her in the eye seemed more difficult for him to see than any possibility he had then known. So when he did, at last, try to say something, anything more than “Hello” to her, he first tasted the caustic, acidic bitterness of love in vain, of a door left closed when he wanted nothing more than for it to open.
This pattern had continued in more or less the same way, with different people, for the remainder of his life thus far. He would notice someone’s good and place them on the proper pedestal, then not have the courage to act on his desires, inevitably crawling back under the soft shell from whence he came.
Engrossed in his introspection, he catches a man coming to his bench from the corner of his eye; wearing sunglasses, suit, and tie, radiating the confidence the old man never had. But now the old man feels lucky. He sifts through the cobwebs of his mind, looking through the dust, so as to stumble upon some nice, juicy bait with which to catch this stranger’s interest. He notices the newcomer gazing at his book with unusual concentration, racks his brains and nerves some more, puts his worms on the hook, and casts his bait out anxious into the sea, hoping for recognition. He thinks of how he should word his introduction to this man, piecing it together just so, so as to leave a good, strong impression, then raises a weak, wrinkled finger to his right, and speaks, sharp, shrill, sudden, “Have you read this book before?”
The new man gives him a glare, its brilliance blazing through the old man’s blush, points a finger to his headphones and back at the old man, and walks angrily away. He was wearing headphones! He must be a busy man, the old man thought, to be able to dismiss me like that without any consequence at all. Headphones, a universal symbol of self-imposed isolation, of wanting some time for oneself to just sit and listen and think. How nice it would be - to know so many people that you have to make time to be alone, instead of such time, such loneliness, being the only thing you know.
He brings out the breadcrumbs from the bag kept in the pocket of his coat, scatters them around his seat, and watches the birds come in all of a sudden, coming in for the crumbs, desperate for a peck more of nourishment before flying to the bath for a drink. And here, just as their thirst is quenched, so too his his, for he, for the time being, has companionship in his flying friends. Yet just as those friends could come into a life out of the blue, so too could those friends swoop away after sweeping him off his feet, and so they do, using their gift of flight to their advantage, as the old man makes out little M’s small and smaller in the sky and assumes them as proof that he is incapable of holding either the interest of a person or a bird.
For he has grown accustomed to being a part of the shadows, with his work as a janitor at an underfunded, urban elementary school, where everybody would know everybody, but nobody would know of him. He is sick of being seen as nothing more than a silhouette, but he doesn’t bring himself to say so, wherever he goes, for he feels certain that nobody will listen. Nobody had listened to him during the school day - clean up your trash, don’t get dirt in the hallways, flush after you go - these reminders were so rudimentary in nature that they were taken for granted. So, too, was he taken for granted. His complaints and requests, no matter who heard them, were ignored. Students would be sure to step around him; teachers, trying to set examples for their students, would show him their smiling eyes while overlooking him, as if to think they were better than him. And yet he had always assented to working overtime without pay, letting the dark days and dreaded nights drag on mindlessly into oblivion. He had always agreed to any request of theirs, no matter how impractical it would be or how unimportant a purpose it would serve. He had always allowed his will to weaken and his confidence to erode - what other answer could he have given besides “Yes,” after having given so much to the school that he became part of its shadows, no more a “he,” but an “it”?
Had he said no to any of that, would he be sitting on the strip of silver, tossing out breadcrumbs to the birds, staying with the soul of the sun, hoping for a friend, begging with his sagging eyes, smiling wan with desperation, thinking this time he could stick out of a crowd, and yet realizing it was a ruse before he even began, waiting for his Godot, waiting for something that would never come?
But look, he doesn’t need to think of that at all; the dusk is falling, and his flat is beckoning him back in for some dinner. He knows he must go back, however much he will regret it come morning. His life has been one long game of tug-of-war - introversion pulling against an ever stronger desire to be needed; a need to eat versus his wishes that he could drive out the loneliness from his mind and for once be satisfied with himself. Come on in, George, his shelter seems to say, you know you’re tired, you’re hungry and yearning to breathe free; I’ll lift and light my lamp beside your golden door….
And so into the wretched night he wanders, wishing for a genie or the existence of some god whose name he could praise, for some name he could make known to all who would listen, for some name he could whisper lonely in the dark of his bed beside his own.