Crazy Ed

Usually when you saw him he was pushing a battered grocery cart loaded with cast-off pine boards and cardboard boxes down the sidewalk. He always wore a skirt, and sometimes women’s shoes: doubly odd when you considered his men’s flannel shirt and full beard.

Back then we didn’t know about post traumatic stress disorder or cross-dressers or mental illness, so we just called him “Crazy Ed.”

“Hey look,” someone would say as Ed’s cart squeaked past, “Crazy Ed’s got an old fender from the junkyard!”

Ed didn’t make much sense when he talked, and sometimes kids were mean, but he never seemed to notice.

He’d go to the coffee shop downtown and slap his $0.50 down, mostly pennies and nickels, telling anyone who’d listen about the people he knew in the Army. Then, instead of a tip, he’d leave a matchbook or a few pebbles and be on his way.

Old Boy

His smile is more yacht party than business meeting as he greets me with a loose handshake, the mild crinkling around his blue eyes the only evidence of his age. My senior by at least a few years, the way he runs his fingers through his sandy hair reminds me of a self-conscious boy.

We talk business—he’s in charge after all—but the conversation quickly drifts to his children’s prep school and his own days at Deerfield. They just put a new roof on the family house on Nantucket.

When I bring the subject back to the matter at hand he reclines in his chair. He’s clearly comfortable in his blue blazer. His shirt is unbuttoned at the neck.

He seems preoccupied for a moment and says, “I’ll have Ann draw up the papers. Let’s get some lunch.”

I realize then that he had intended to agree all along.

Tattoo Artist

When he finally stands I notice that he’s hunched in the shoulders, his tall frame bent inward from decades of huddling over living bodies. An elastic bandage circles his wrist, its tendons long ago frayed by the vibrating gun. Like slender roots, strands of gray invade his long beard. Only his eyes, clear and smiling, betray his cleverness.

The walls of the tiny shop are covered with his artwork: powerful Samurai warriors holding aloft drawn swords, magnificent lotuses, birds-of-paradise on the wing. An air conditioner gurgles above the front door. The scents of stale coffee, wet ink and fresh blood hang in the air.

He returns smelling of tobacco. As he contemplates my arm, the music of an unknown concerto drifts from the radio, and for the first time I understand that it’s not a tattoo he’s etched into my skin. It’s part of me I didn’t know was there.

Farm House

When I step onto the porch I can tell that things haven’t been well. Peeling paint and sagging floorboards are all that’s left of the spot where we once had so many good times. Inside, the kitchen walls are worn away, revealing slats of wood and crumbling plaster.

My friend stands at the stove frying potatoes, her toddler son clasped to her hip. It’s been too long since I’ve seen her.

The dog is gone, the yard choked with weeds, the old truck a rusting hulk in the driveway.

“So how have you been?” I can’t think of what else to say.

My friend smiles a crooked smile. She sits down at the kitchen table and lets out a heavy sigh. “Things could be worse,” she says, pointing to the fireplace where several bricks have come loose. “By the time the bank takes it they’ll have to knock it down.”

Junk Man

Jimmy “Two Wheels”—a name he’d picked up in the Army that he couldn’t seem to shake—inched his orange Dodge pick-up down Collier Street. Lined with stately old homes, it had the some of the best picking in town come trash day.

Bob, Jimmy’s retriever, sat in the passenger seat, upright like a person, as Jimmy pulled over at number 629. Out front was an old three-speed Schwinn, a 1960s model, with a black frame and white-wall tires. He’d had one just like it when he was ten.

Energized, Jimmy hopped out of the Dodge and snatched the old bike. The chain was rusted stiff but it didn’t matter. He had everything he needed to fix it.

Jimmy tossed the bicycle into the back of the truck alongside the stacks of old hubcaps and bundles of wire he collected for scrap. He whistled a tune all the way home.

Orchard

Ellie hiked the grassy hill into the orchard, where she and her brothers played as kids. The leaves had gone with the November rain, the apple trees gnarled, black claws against the pewter sky. Under her left arm was the plastic box from the funeral home.

Bill wanted to spring for the urn in the catalog, but their father would have thought it frivolous. He’d asked Ellie spread his ashes among the Roxburys and Pippins, the antique trees he’d spent his last 20 years tending like infants.

At the crest of the hill Ellie saw the entire orchard, all of it hers and her brothers’ now. Inside the house the lights flickered on. The funeral guests had gone, leaving behind lasanga and sympathy cards.

In the heirloom grove, Ellie pried off the lid. Like gray sand, she spread her father’s ashes around the trees like fertilizer, nourishment for his apples.

Coffee House

A university couple sat on recycled kitchen chairs at Martin’s Coffee House—once an old machine shop—studying Russian literature. Their heads bowed toward one another’s cups.

He’d be graduating soon, just weeks, and she hadn’t yet told him: every minute she spent without him drained her soul dry like Mohave sand.

How could she say it? He was older. Brilliant. His girlfriend was stunning.

The tattooed barista steamed organic milk. She bit her lip. Across the table her friend—were they just friends?—looked up from his book and smiled.

Feeling courageous, she reached out for the back of his hand. She opened her mouth to speak.

The flyers on the wall fluttered when the door opened. One of his friends—out of breath—said he was late for something. He’d have to go.

Alone, she remembered his brown eyes.

“Dear, Charlie,” she wrote. And the barista steamed on.