People Around Us
Drafting blogs to hone my writing skills is like sharpening knives in preparation for cooking up a masterpiece in the kitchen. Tonight seared scallops on a bed of spring greens will be joined by crescents of citrus and cucumber dressed in a blood orange vinaigrette to grace my table. Recently I wrote a short story about a writer, his dream, and a love that reaches past space and time to share with you in lieu of a typical blog entry.
Themes in my blogs about thrifting, cooking, words, and people focus on those things I enjoy best or find most inspiring. This is especially true of my fellow human beings. When I rode the subway in New York City for the first time, I was struck by the realization that every life has a story, each person is a main character in an unfolding tale.
I humbly hope you will enjoy the story, and that we will all truly see the people around us, even the invisible ones.
Invisible
A short story by M. M. Kiehn
At two in the morning, Hank Davis, clad in navy blue coveralls, a red ski cap pulled down over his close cropped hair, stood for a minute slapping his arms across his body in an effort to warm himself. He was a writer, but could not think of a word cold enough to describe February in Wisconsin.
Hank jumped into the seat of the blue delivery van branded with the image a winking dragon, the iconic logo of Apollyon Distribution International. He hesitated to crank the heater too high knowing it would use extra gas. The newest green initiative at ADI called for docking drivers’ pay for wasted fuel based upon some all-knowing algorithm cooked up in a think tank in sunny Silicon Valley.
Hank checked his roster on his ADI issued tablet and headed out. Six days a week he’d drive across the city for hours, delivering packages. Between stops he composed and memorized story lines in his head, whole chapters sometimes. He had finished two novels so far, and was working on the third in a series he believed would need five to do justice to his envisioned saga. Most of his long days would conclude by one o’clock in the afternoon if he was really lucky. Afternoons filled with writing became evenings fueled by strong coffee. He would work until he needed to get to bed to be back up in the wee hours to start it all over again.
Hank dutifully spent Sundays sending out queries for his books, researching publishers and literary agencies from an old desk that bore a coffee mug of pens, a notepad, an aging laptop, and a framed snapshot of a middle-aged woman and a boy. Once a month he checked the balance in his savings account. Hank saved as much money as he could, hoping he would have enough if he ever took the plunge and self-published. It chafed a bit to know that if he did, his best bet for distributing his books was ADI, and that smug dragon would share in the fruits of his labor of love.
As the day wore on, the temperature sank further, hovering just above zero. The weak winter sun feebly climbed the southern sky like an old man. Hank hated to stop, but he needed something hot to drink. He cursed himself for getting stuck in line at a trendy, uptown coffeehouse, but a spot had opened right in front, and parking was scarce in this gentrified part of the city, all glass and steel and converted warehouses. Ahead of him in line an entitled creature in designer frames, a Louis Vitton messenger bag slung over his shoulder, was lighting up a poor barista over a real or imagined error in his order. She politely fixed him a new drink, but the whole time her eyes said, “Fuck you.” Though Hank mocked the inhabitants of the upscale neighborhood in his head, he secretly dreamed of one day writing for hours in a loft of his own overlooking the river. Someday, he smiled to himself. Hank tipped the beleaguered barista extra and hurried back to his van.
Hours later he had tapped his tablet five times in as many minutes to check the time. It was a quarter of one and he was stuck in traffic on the 43. He had thought he could make up lost time taking the freeway when the last delivery on his list turned out to be north of the city. Dammit. That package shouldn’t have even been on his route. Somebody screwed up in loading again and just figured it didn’t matter. Honestly, to anyone else it wouldn’t. It’s not like he wasn’t going to get paid for the longer day, but every minute spent working just to live and not writing, he could feel distance growing between him and his dream. Hank dismissed the thought, cutting off a Mercedes in a dash for the next exit, shrugging at the angry scream of the horn. He had avoided more lost time and by ten after one he was finished.
After his last stop Hank glanced at his tablet to make sure all the scans had cleared. He sat staring at the screen in disbelief. There was one more entry. It couldn’t be. He went to the back of the truck and sure enough there was a small package, a 2x6x8, the smallest they carried, too small even for the winking dragon logo to show beneath the label.
Glancing at the address Hank swore again. He’d have to go back into the city, just northwest of downtown, his old neighborhood. In fact, there was something weirdly familiar about that particular address. Hank shook off the strange feeling. He needed to hurry if he was still going to have time to write. Fortunately, he knew the streets well enough in that part of town to allow him to skip the clogged expressway, despite the urging of the van’s GPS for the “fastest route.” The snarky voice had to keep recalculating as he took shortcuts he could have found in his sleep.
The street name, McKinley, conjured images of his life from just after his sixth birthday until he started college at eighteen. His grandmother’s house had become his home after his mother died. Now Granny was gone too, having passed unexpectedly nearly a year ago. She was really all he had known in the way of family, despite the fact he had not seen her in over two years before she died. He had not been able to bring himself to attend the simple graveside service. He had gone months later, just before the first winter’s snowfall, to the cemetery. The little stone held only her name and two dates parted by a hyphen. That little dash contained all the love he’d known and let slip away.
As Hank turned off 39th Street he recalled what he had read about the new urban planning utopia necessitating the demolition of most of the old bungalows and duplexes on McKinley. With the pandemic of ’19 and the economic strain that followed, the work had stalled. Hank drove slowly down the street, checking the numbers on the few residences that remained. Sure enough, a massive vacant lot stood where the address should be, buried under ice and snow, behind high fencing, looking like a stitched up, ugly wound.
Hank felt uneasy as he looked at the tablet to confirm the street number, and then at the package, only to notice something he had missed. He read and reread the impossible return address. It should have been the originating distribution center or even a vendor’s address. Instead, it was the same as the delivery address. That made no sense.
Hank got out of the van and went to each of the four original buildings that still remained on the block looking for help identifying the correct location. As he walked the sidewalk, his brain was awash in memories of his best friend, Willis Montgomery. The two of them had been inseparable from first grade through high school. They had parted ways after Hank had gone away to college in Whitewater. Willis had been shot not long after during a robbery at the gas station where he worked as an attendant, just four blocks from the front stoop where Hank now stood, remembering. He rang the bell once, then a second time.
This last door was answered by an old woman with neat, graying hair above foggy, brown eyes behind glasses with mended frames. Though she was much older now, Hank recognized Willis Montgomery’s grandmother.
“Why, Henry Morgan Davis, it is just so good to see you. Your grandmother, Esther, she was my dearest friend. We were kids together growing up not far from here, you know. We were so close, just like you and Willis…” her clouded eyes misted with memory and loss, as she stepped aside, welcoming Hank into her front porch out of the cold. “So what brings you here this nasty cold day?”
Hank smiled. “Well, I deliver for ADI, and it’s strange, Ma’am, but there’s this last package on my route. GPS and the map on my tablet confirmed the address, but it’s not there.” He gestured down the street at the empty lot.
Mrs. Montgomery seemed to be searching his face with her overcast gaze. She pulled her sweater closer about her bent frame against the cold that had snuck in with him.
“Hank, she missed you. I didn’t see you at the service last May.”
He was taken aback by her frankness, taken back to the last time he saw Granny. It had been right after graduation, the only time he remembered an angry word between them.
“Well, I work a lot.” Hank began, unable to look into her vague eyes. “I, uh, she didn’t want to let me have the upper flat, you see. I could’ve saved a lot if she had just let me stay there. It costs so much to rent, and so I have to work…” His words froze in the chilly air of the tiny porch, falling helplessly at his feet. How could he tell this woman who had known him as a boy about the driven man inside, someone he did not understand himself?
The old woman reached for the box, squinting at the address. “You know, Hank, 307 N. McKinley, I, I, think that was your grandmother’s duplex. I heard when she died the bank took it or something. It was one of the first sold to the developer, anyway. Yes, I can’t say for sure but that lot, that was all those odd numbered houses on the east side of the street.”
“I never even knew what happened to her place to be honest, Mrs. Montgomery. I guess I just thought…Well, I didn’t think anything. I’ve been…” What could he say? That he had been too busy making ends meet and still trying to find his dream? Too proud to come back and sort things out? Too lost when he got word that she’d died to even face the loss of…her?
Hank looked from the package to the face so like his own grandmother’s. “I, I guess I’ll have to take it back. It’s undeliverable. I sure thank you.”
“Well, I don’t know that I helped much. Hank, you come back to see me maybe, sometime, hmm? I can fix you a home cooked meal. You look a little like you could use one. Esther wouldn’t like to see you so thin.”
Hank smiled sheepishly. “Mrs. Montgomery, I will surely take you up on that. Right now I have to take care of this package and get the van back. I write some, you know, kinda on the side, kinda.” Why did he always feel like a fraud saying out loud that he was a writer?
“Why, I think that’s very good. Henry Morgan Davis. Yes, that has a nice sound for an author. Esther was always proud of your way with words, son. You know, workin’ while you chase a dream is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Despite her failing eyes, Mrs. Montgomery saw all the way into him just like Granny had always been able to do. Hank thanked her again and left. It was almost three by the time he got home after dropping off the van and completing the form on the undelivered item, a UDI, as they were called.
Hank struggled to write that afternoon, eventually settling for just jotting down his ideas from earlier that day in his journal. By eight that night he was all in. After a bowl of soup he went to bed. But he didn’t sleep. He kept thinking about the package.
The next morning his delivery van struggled to come to life. The famous rodent’s annual prognostications of an early spring were mocked by the plummeting thermometer. Hank’s dream seemed as distant as springtime in minus two degrees. At least his roster looked shorter that day. In fact he was finished by half past noon. As he neared the distribution center garage he glanced at a notification on his tablet. It indicated one package had not scanned and was yet to be delivered. Hank slammed on the brakes, pulling the van off into a fast food parking lot, to the tune of a corporate blonde in an Escalade standing on her horn, flipping him off for good measure.
As Hank read the address he felt his stomach sink like an elevator with a broken cable. He climbed into the back of the truck which he was certain had been empty after his last delivery. Laying there in the middle of the floor was the little package he had dutifully placed in the UDI bin, wrapped in its paperwork, secured by a rubber band. Somebody was messing with him. It had to be a bad joke, but why? If he turned in another UDI, even if it was the same package, it might mean a trip to HR, and he didn’t need a write-up on his perfect work record.
Hank thought of turning the van around, going back to his old neighborhood, scanning the little box and throwing it over the fence.
“That’s half a good idea,” he said out loud. Hank scanned the tiny package and then tucked it into his coveralls. He made quick work of dropping off the van and getting home. The little box sat next to the picture of his grandmother and him while he worked. He wrote until well past ten that night, only stopping because he needed sleep before work the next day.
Hank fell into deep slumber, reliving the best of his childhood with Granny. Memories spilled across his subconscious like a box of old snapshots. At one in the morning he sat bolt upright, wide awake.
Hank knew he needed to get ready for work. He could not resist going to look at the little package as he sipped his coffee. He had every intention of taking it back to the neighborhood, visiting with Mrs. Montgomery, and trying to solve the mystery of where it belonged. Hank hesitated a moment more, then he went to the kitchen and got a small knife. What followed was something he likely would not have done in the clear practicality of daylight. Reasoning he could always tape it shut again, Hank slit open the end of the box.
As he shook it, a stout little envelope slid onto the desk. It was not sealed. Hank gently opened it, taking care with the aging, yellowed paper. He removed a little black book. The cover was cracked in spots, a faux leather finish embossed with the name and logo of a local credit union.
Hank held his breath as he opened the little book. Inside he saw his name, Henry Morgan Davis, and the date of his birth above an account number. Entries in the old-fashioned savings passbook were added every couple of weeks, for years, since he was small. One entry each month was in the amount of the rent for the upper flat at Granny’s duplex. The balance, compounded along with interest, grew larger with each page. His shaking hand turned to the final entry. The balance was $226,372.61. His head swam with possibilities on a tide of hope.
Hank humbly looked up at the framed photo on the desk, his eyes spilling over with loving gratitude for the only person he had known who really believed in him. Looking back at the little black book that had come to rest in his hand by means he could not explain, he knew somewhere, somehow, she still did.
