Thorn Bridge

10Nov09

Mid morning was a cursed time to be awake and tromping through the summer heat. An observation lost on those not in the moment. An observation that would be to familiar, however true, to be nodded at and recognized by those who also had felt the heat as they plodded through the garbage streets of The City’s south west corridor to the outside world and lands beyond.

Natty Nape Truit was working his way through that blighted open suburb of The City in the bald heat of 1955. The skyline behind him a mirage of heat lines and traffic noises. A place so close and so far that it might be a dream and it might be a reality but it would never be reached. And he was headed south away from the center, away from the savage realities that he refused to meet. Refused to lean into for support. He would walk on his own two legs no matter how hot and tired and parched he became.

Which is about where he was. Marching to his death on his own fragile legs. Hours since his water supply had grown from thin to gone. Hours since he could last feel anything but the heat of the world surging up through his feet and taking to his knees with hammer blows of strain and fatigue.

He searched his canteen with his eye then his tongue. Finding not a single drop of collected condensation he tossed it over his back and heard it rattle and clatter to the scorched pavement. He grimaced as the neck step burst the blister that had been forming over the last day. The pain of it was concise, necessary. Not like the pain she had left him in. That pit and well of burning recrimination.

She had told him off, thrown him out, claimed that she would never have anything to do with him. She tore his heart out and roasted it in the sun for everyone to see. They say that we might be blown to hell any time now, the Reds had bombs, we had bombs. Natty Nape Truit was just as happy to see it all blown to smithereens.

His heart had already been nuked. His life long commitment to her dashed against a wall with the force of it. He would not shed a tear for her, for what they had. Not that he had any tears left to shed. He was headed out of The City now to Thorn Bridge, a community to the far south. A place where those that had been battered and rejected by The City and its vices and vile were said to cluster.

It was a long trip, and he had packed poorly. But there was so little left after she had crushed him. He had given her everything in the end, the severance stipulated that she received everything but the clothes on his back and the money he had on hand. Money that was now as useless as the hands that could not hold on to her or the lips that could not comfort her. If he had more time he could have purchased more supplies. Lasted longer. Maybe found a new life in Thorn Bridge, far away from Morning Oak where they had shared a life for such a brief time.

A voice shot out into the baking day, “Nate? Honey, its really warm out here, get inside and have some lemonade. I heard you had a little fight with your friend Samantha, I just talked to her mom and we both agree that you are too young to be getting all mixed up and dating. You’re only nine, there will be other girls. And stop putting your toys in that bramble patch. When your father gets home I’m having him rip that thing out once and for all you are covered in welts.”

Dames, Natty Nape Truit thought, they just don’ understand how a man feels out here in the baking sun of oppression and loss.

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Tags: Morning Oak, Natty Nape Truit, Thorn Bridge