Guardian Angel’s Dirty Job by Parris ja Young
One spring night it snowed and the snow stuck to everything. Frank found a pigeon struggling to stand upright. He thought it had hit the big plate glass window and was only temporarily stunned. When he set it down on its feet it did seem somewhat recovered. But it died of Asian Avian Flu H5N1b and Frank was rendered accidentally immune.
However, around him, for entirely too long, friends and relatives fell like sparrows, dead in mid-flight.
When we met on the broken sidewalk he was happy, jaunty-spirited, but the fact he had spent the night sleeping in the empty shell of a dead beetle — an old VW, I think — was too objectively reported by his clothes. His hair.
We walked together to his job interview.
The sun came out warm and snow dripped into clear puddles. Chunks and mesas of cement began to steam. The new grass in the cracks glowed clean and fresh as a salad, turgid with ice water.
It was the morning after the end of the world.
The sun was clean and the light was white.
On the stone sill of a low window Frank found a little pool of lively water and he washed off his face with his hands. He toweled off with the sleeve of his tired shirt.
“Your face is clean as an Ox-Eyed Daisy,” I said.
“Ah, you've a flatterin' tongue, my friend,” he replied.
Running his wet fingers through his hair, he innocently styled it in the way of bad boys and street lovers, and the eye of the girl at the bike rack studied him and drifted from this world to gaze, I know, on a small, clean, homey kitchen filled with fresh air and light as bright as a smile full of strong white teeth.
On the bush smoldering steam by the post office he found a pale blue shirt, clean as the sky. It fit him perfectly of course, and he gave his old damp shirt to a street kid who would remember him, and on this date, three years hence, will give Frank the key to the vault down in the basement under Oberon’s Bone Palace.
Today though, no one notices his jeans have gone a little too long without a good washing.
He jokes about cooking a sentence that is so nourishing that it feeds his inner wisdom and makes his coat healthy and shiny. He says it causes a little flatulence which smells like early lilacs and sounds like distant laughter.
Between the google eyes of a parking meter he finds a comb and as a further joke runs it through his hair. The street bohemian disappears and in his place stands a happy, confident, recent graduate seeking his first job on the upward ladder of prosperity.
Soon enough he finds a ring in the middle of the sidewalk in a puddle of crystal water that is popping with the breeze. When the ring is playfully on his finger he becomes a newlywed, hopeful, eager to prove himself to his beloved.
It will be hard to do what I must do, come the time.
He mimes tipping his hat to the cop leaning against the mildly battered patrol car and the cop accidentally bends his face into a smile, surprising even himself.
I wait on the sidewalk and watch through the big window as Frank interviews for the night watchman job. He thinks he wants the job. The boss smiles. The boss laughs. Looks like Frank will get the job.
I assume a Portent of Darkness. I hold up the back of my fist, thumb down, and when the boss looks up and catches my eye, I jerk the thumb down and shake my head slowly twice. No.
Frank doesn’t get the job.
And although he will be disappointed the rest of the morning, I will not, for I cannot bear to see the Luck of the Living bound once again to the Wheel of Babylon.
_________________________________
Parris ja Young, fourth generation Montanan, says, "I feel that the soul trip often occurs at home. I normally live off the grid, writing by daylight, kerosene or battery. If I could turn the distant interstate off, it would be silent here except for the birds and the wind."
One spring night it snowed and the snow stuck to everything. Frank found a pigeon struggling to stand upright. He thought it had hit the big plate glass window and was only temporarily stunned. When he set it down on its feet it did seem somewhat recovered. But it died of Asian Avian Flu H5N1b and Frank was rendered accidentally immune.
However, around him, for entirely too long, friends and relatives fell like sparrows, dead in mid-flight.
When we met on the broken sidewalk he was happy, jaunty-spirited, but the fact he had spent the night sleeping in the empty shell of a dead beetle — an old VW, I think — was too objectively reported by his clothes. His hair.
We walked together to his job interview.
The sun came out warm and snow dripped into clear puddles. Chunks and mesas of cement began to steam. The new grass in the cracks glowed clean and fresh as a salad, turgid with ice water.
It was the morning after the end of the world.
The sun was clean and the light was white.
On the stone sill of a low window Frank found a little pool of lively water and he washed off his face with his hands. He toweled off with the sleeve of his tired shirt.
“Your face is clean as an Ox-Eyed Daisy,” I said.
“Ah, you've a flatterin' tongue, my friend,” he replied.
Running his wet fingers through his hair, he innocently styled it in the way of bad boys and street lovers, and the eye of the girl at the bike rack studied him and drifted from this world to gaze, I know, on a small, clean, homey kitchen filled with fresh air and light as bright as a smile full of strong white teeth.
On the bush smoldering steam by the post office he found a pale blue shirt, clean as the sky. It fit him perfectly of course, and he gave his old damp shirt to a street kid who would remember him, and on this date, three years hence, will give Frank the key to the vault down in the basement under Oberon’s Bone Palace.
Today though, no one notices his jeans have gone a little too long without a good washing.
He jokes about cooking a sentence that is so nourishing that it feeds his inner wisdom and makes his coat healthy and shiny. He says it causes a little flatulence which smells like early lilacs and sounds like distant laughter.
Between the google eyes of a parking meter he finds a comb and as a further joke runs it through his hair. The street bohemian disappears and in his place stands a happy, confident, recent graduate seeking his first job on the upward ladder of prosperity.
Soon enough he finds a ring in the middle of the sidewalk in a puddle of crystal water that is popping with the breeze. When the ring is playfully on his finger he becomes a newlywed, hopeful, eager to prove himself to his beloved.
It will be hard to do what I must do, come the time.
He mimes tipping his hat to the cop leaning against the mildly battered patrol car and the cop accidentally bends his face into a smile, surprising even himself.
I wait on the sidewalk and watch through the big window as Frank interviews for the night watchman job. He thinks he wants the job. The boss smiles. The boss laughs. Looks like Frank will get the job.
I assume a Portent of Darkness. I hold up the back of my fist, thumb down, and when the boss looks up and catches my eye, I jerk the thumb down and shake my head slowly twice. No.
Frank doesn’t get the job.
And although he will be disappointed the rest of the morning, I will not, for I cannot bear to see the Luck of the Living bound once again to the Wheel of Babylon.
_________________________________
Parris ja Young, fourth generation Montanan, says, "I feel that the soul trip often occurs at home. I normally live off the grid, writing by daylight, kerosene or battery. If I could turn the distant interstate off, it would be silent here except for the birds and the wind."