Leonard Greenwood

The worn rocking chair creaked against the splintered wood of the porch. It was all but background noise to the kids screaming playfully in the next yard over. Leonard sat slumped in the chair, his liver-spotted hands on top an old-age belly that spilled over the top of his pants. He rocked the chair slowly, nonstop, like a resting heartbeat; it still moved as he ate, as he napped.

Such green grass, such beautiful laughter, thought Leonard as he moved all that he could without every joint in his body aching.

The humidity of the summer day fell like a blanket over everything. Leonard’s usual wisps of white hair were matted to his scalp with sweat; the kids next door in bathing suits ran in and out of their inflatable pool. Such energy, such joy.

Leonard dressed like he was going to church everyday: an undershirt, a white button-down shirt with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, black pants with permanent creases on the front from sitting all day, and dull black loafers – everything always in a disheveled manner. Today they smelled of sweat and dirty laundry, but no one would know except for the day’s Meals on Wheels deliverer who may not even stay long enough to hear Mr. Greenwood say a gentle, raspy Thank you, never mind get to know how he smelled that day. And Charlie Faire, the father of the kids next door, never went farther than his Good Morning and Good Evening waves.

His porch was his living room; his television was the neighbor’s yard full of childhood memories. Every day he saw himself as a boy running barefoot through the grass, knees and fingernails caked with dirt from digging for worms to fish with. It hurt to think all he could do was watch the kids.

He longed for those days he was an explorer in his backyard, when he was an acrobat on his mother’s couch. His vegetable garden now overgrown with weeds; bone rubbing on bone, the pain too much to bend down, never mind doing flips.

All the old-people medicine in the world wasn’t enough to ease the pain. The most it did was cause nausea and dizziness; sometimes he had to close his eyes to stop the spinning. He could still hear the children. Sometimes they fought, their high voices screeching at each other, the evil eye bouncing between them. Leonard smiled; he knew they would forget about their disagreement within the hour.

Seventy-eight years since I was a boy… seventy-eight years… sev-en-ty…eight…years, he sighed deep with the thought pressing down on him. His life deteriorating, all he has left are memories of the freedom he had as a child.

Death waits patiently in his bed, in his heart, in his bottle of vodka. Leonard goes to bed at night welcoming the thought he may never wake up, welcoming the thought that maybe heaven is his childhood, is the laughter of children. After taking his dentures out for the night, placing them in dirty disinfectant, he drinks a shot glass of vodka and three of his nighttime pills that keep his heart beating.

But it’s strong. Everyday for the past five years he woke up and shuffled onto the porch, into another day of remembrance. For a few years he found delight in watching the kids, but lately his eyes want to cry and his mind spins too much with memories that hurt. The doctor visits, more medicine, but nothing helps. He takes it anyway, doubles the dosage. He tells his doctor he drops them on the floor. The doctor brings him more. He starts throwing out a meal each day. After a week the kitchen rots with stench, and his mound of a gut goes down an inch.

Today Leonard sits wrapped in the heat and humidity; sweat trickles into his ear, his hands on his stomach move up and down with his heavier breathing. The sun hurts his eyes, the children’s laughter bounce off his hollow bones.

He goes inside. The children don’t notice his struggle to stand up, to push open the raggedy screen door.

Maybe this is it.

He stops to catch his breath as he leans on the doorframe of the kitchen, the brown linoleum floor reminding him of a sandbox. The half empty bottle of vodka sits on the counter. He pushes himself off the doorframe, his feet drag behind him creating a shuffle noise in slow motion. He reaches the vodka and pours himself a shot glass. Leonard drinks it with his afternoon medicine. The floor is a sandbox, with brightly colored pails, shovels, and fat earthworms.

Memories of playing as a boy spin in his head; he falls to his knees.

The pain…. Maybe this is it.

+ + +

The next morning Leonard Greenwood lays in a sleeping fetal position on the kitchen floor; his right hand loose around the empty shot glass. Early sun comes through the window above the sink and rests across Leonard’s face. The week’s worth of thrown out food reeks worse than that of Leonard.

A soft knock is heard from the screen door, and in walks the Meals on Wheels deliverer for the day.

“Leonard?” A fit man in his twenties looks down at the paper of addresses to check the name, “Leonard Greenwood? …Are you here?”

+ + +

The children next door see Leonard leave his porch this time. They stop running and laughing to look with awe at the ambulance sirens and lights, they’ve only seen them on television. The clean men in white wheel Leonard out on a stretcher; Charlie Faire waves one last time as a quick thought flashes through his mind, That’s where I’ll be one day.