Invisible Lines, part two

 

Here are the second set of stories in the series. Katy chose Edward Hoppers 1940 painting 'Gas' and our interpretations are below.

Thom Kofoed

End of day

His wife was dying.

The sky was turning pink to violet to grey and his wife was dying.
He put the coins into his pocket and wiped his oil slicked hands down his overalls. They had been a brilliant blue once but now they were streaked black, days and weeks and months and years painted across his chest.
The wind sighed and took a struggling breath behind him and Eddie coughed and spluttered like an engine and weaved the chain through the door handles and buckled the padlock and shook it three times. A light shone from inside the building and cast a shadow onto the gravel that looked like a Cathedral. The trees whispered and then shouted.
He heard music as he pulled into the driveway; Irving Berlin or Cole Porter or someone. His wife was singing and stirring a pot of something and the sounds and the smells tumbled out of the open window. He felt a lump rise in his throat. She was singing. Even now.
He threw his keys down onto the sideboard and sat on the stair, untying his boots as if untying a corset, each movement gentle and caressing. Slow.
His wife swished through the kitchen door and into the hallway with one hand above her head and the other across her stomach; her dance partner an invisible man. She looked at Eddie and pirouetted on the spot. It made him dizzy. Fred Astaire wouldn’t be dizzy, he thought; a pang of guilt like a punch in his stomach as Judy Garland sang through the open door, her voice heavy with woe. 
She pointed at Eddie’s feet and then at his face and danced over to where he sat and grabbed at his hands and pulled and he was a dead weight and she pulled and he was a dead weight and she pulled and he was a dead weight. She made a face like a small girl and he buckled and stood up and they held hands above their heads and wrapped around each other and she laid her head against his chest and they swayed from one foot to the other and back again.  
“It only happens when I dance with you” sang Judy, sang Eddie, sang his wife; their voices filling the room like vapour and then disappearing.

Robert Dennard

 The air felt hot, too hot, with an uncomfortable stickiness. A dense wind came up from the South and caused the Old Man to gasp in its humidity. Nobody should have to work in these conditions, especially when few ever notice the effort made. The Old Man’s tidiness and proficient upkeep of his business holds one in a pitiful thought, as he is only ever at the sport and sight of circling crows. Positioned too close to city, yet not far enough into the forest for most travellers to need gas or refreshments; his days were quiet and poor, but thankfully peaceful, just the way he wanted it. Oh sure, everyone desires plenty of money to live comfortably, and even treat oneself now and then. But for the Old Man, who runs a gas station, easy hours and peaceful surroundings suited him down to the dusty grey concrete ground of the garage forecourt.

                To the local’s in the neighbouring towns and villages, from all corners of the forest, he was somewhat of a household name, though nobody could ever decide on what his name actually was. None could settle on one, even told from the same tongues his title changed as often as the moon moves the tide it would. Jackson or Jimmy, Old Tom, Gareth at the gas station, Mickey or Mervin, Paul, Peter, Pat even Pablo – which was still feasible, in our highly integrated modern society, but realistically, his years rendered it unlikely. Some said Stu or Sal, Oscar, Richard, Dickie, Dustin or William from way down yonder; the list goes on, but for you, dear reader, it matters not. The Old Man at the gas station cares not for your title, or what others name him. For he is content, sweeping the dust from the front step, the fortnightly polishing of the nozzles, organising stock and making orders, which sadly gets more and more difficult for the old boy by the day. His mind isn’t as keen as it once was; he makes mistakes. Along with that his legs are bowed and his back crooked. His hair has thinned, leaving a sparse grey halo round a peeling and sunburnt scalp. The unrelenting heat pierces into his energy more easily as he no longer has the head of hair to shield him, thus sometimes leaving him dizzy and exhausted. Nowadays, when he looks eastward along the road, he can just make out the green channel of the woodlands tapering down into a dark indistinct hollow over looked by a blurred blue sky. Nowadays his hearing is muffled so that once he hears a passing vehicle, all he can register is the dust it leaves behind in his lungs, and the fading tail-lights as it heads into the forest. Nowadays he often forgets things, and under orders stock, leaving the odd empty row here or there in his refrigerators or on the wooden shelves in the shop – shelves, might I add, he built with his own two hands, even after they’d started to succumb to arthritic kinks in the knuckles, like that of an ancient trees roots. This makes him angry as he has always taken pride in his work and can’t suffer insubordination. All throughout his long years, in all the various and exciting jobs he’s had, he has always done so with the upmost care and attentiveness; good old fashioned pride in the work place, stemmed from his working class roots down in Dixie.

                The last few days leading up to this one have been, to any onlookers, absent as they might be, entirely repetitive; though to the Old Man who runs the gas station, he has started each with a vital new task every morning.

“My O my” he says walking out to the pumps, “Those nozzles need a right good polish; I haven’t done them in weeks.” Hobbling back out into the September haze, after fetching his polish and cloth, one thing puzzles the Old Man: how can he be running so low on polish? He’d only used it once, months ago. It’s as though it was used yesterday. Even the lid was slightly loose and as any good worker knows, if the lid of any tin has been left on for a good long while, it’s a right chore to prise it off. But the Old Man’s feeble arthritic grip managed to pop the lid off no problem, none whatsoever, which he wasn’t expecting.  And even queerer was that, though they had not to his mind, been cleaned in so long, the pumps nozzles shined up something wonderful, after barely touching them with the cloth.

“How odd?” the Old Man thought as the humid air and sun’s strength bore down upon him, causing dizziness and a sudden nausea. A sharp pain stabbed him in the chest, as if his heart were now a pin cushion for hot pokers. This is a very odd morning the Old Man finally thought as a near empty tin of polish fell to the floor, gently followed by the flutter of a dust cloth which had been used daily for the last few weeks; “very odd indeed!”

But at least the sun was shining on that morn, and it shines still. Rather a lot in this area of the state. Harmful to productivity or not, the weather is always beautiful down in Dixieland. What a beautiful day to leave a business. Left untouched until the lawyers can find another poor sucker to run a gas station, in such an ill advised location, with its former owner now buried in the yard behind the shop.

Katy Park

This place is a fucking waste of time. My hands press and screw and hang useless. Screw loose. I'm done with it. How can anyone get past the mundane humiliation of walking, talking, shitting, fucking. People that say they have are lying.

I had an idea once. A great fucking idea that I liked and wanted and gave a shit about. Ideas mean nothing unless other people think they do. I'd buy a giant ship in a bottle if I had a million bucks.

I have this recurring dream that there's a fire big enough that it burns through safes, leaves the sea an ash map with curled edges, doesn't stop until everything is dust and fucking grey.

I read a book about 'mindfulness' once. Some American bullshit. It's all about learning how to make your mind aware and focused on the present moment, not letting reality slip by unnoticed. I hate it. I hate that we are born with such inept mechanisms in our minds and no way of knowing how to deal with any of this. Joy is something I scrape from the dirty fucking windows I can't see through.

I think I've worked it out though. The point of everything. Fuel. Fuel, consumption and emptiness.

It's not all bad though. I really love my cat. His dumb face makes me smile.