The Rural Voice, 1978-06, Page 29Coming home,
discovering
A short story
by Ronald Kirby
The trees flashed by as 1 looked out of the car window. The
train was gathering speed now and with every telegraph pole
that disappeared behind me. my spirit floated higher.
The lushness of the countryside soothed a craving inside of
nie. yet made it even more sharp. Such a contrast. I thought. to
the barren filthy junk yards and coal yards we'd gone through
only minutes ago.
That half hour between leaving Union Station and finally
clearing the last of the sooty railyards, had been an agonizing
eternity. The depression of it all threatened to overwhelm the joy
that we were escaping.
1 hated that city, God. how 1'd hated it. For the five years I'd
lived there had become one long, tortuous nightmare. It wasn't
so bad the first while. There was an air of excitement to the city
that was refreshing to a smalltown boy. There was an
exhilarating feeling looking at the huge skyscrapers and
realizing they had been built by common men; a feeling of awe
that two million individuals were gathered together in one place.
I enjoyed the nightlife there. The theatre engrossed me and
the museums and art galleries provided the kind of sites I'd
always wanted.
But after a week I began to wander off the main streets,
discovering the poverty of the backstreets. Then I saw through
the glitter of the tinsel of the nightlife to lonely people among the
crowd and the strangers who took over the streets after the "in
crowd" disappeared back to the suburbs, to the hookers and
drunks. 1 watched the walls of the skyscrapers blacken with soot
and wondered if anything would ever be clean again. 1 choked in
the heavy, carbon -monoxide of the rush-hour. I walked the
concrete and tar until I craved one blade of grass. one tree
growing straight and tall that wasn't in a planter box.
So the days grew to be like one long toothache, dreading going
to sleep at night because it meant getting up in the morning and
joining the swarm of ants scurrying along the concrete and into
their fifty -storey anthills. Trapped inside, without even so much
as a window, 1 lived for the noon hour when I could escape even
though momentarily and then for five o'clock when I could join
the ants again rushing home. I don't know why I was in such a
hurry. 1 didn't enjoy life anyway when I came home to my
twenty -storey -anthill, to the little cell of my own with its concrete
slab balcony overhanging the city.
But finally this morning it got to me. 1 quit the job and sublet
the apartment to some friends I knew who needed one. Then I
packed two suitcases and headed for the station. In one swift
gesture I had severed all ties. The relief was the most powerful
feeling.I had ever known, like waking up in one of those dreams
where you're falling, falling and just about to hit the ground.
The train took so long getting out of the city it prolonged the
pain but now I was free. Two more hours and I'd be home in
Benedict. The thought did my heart good. Back to the green
fields, the tall trees and clear cool streams. Back where poverty
meant having a car that was more than three years old and
hunger meant not having the money for a hamburger after the
movie.
It was dark by the time the train pulled into the station. I
turned down the offer of a lift downtown so I could walk in the
fresh air. My parents had moved out of town recently so I'd have
to stay the night at the hotel.
That night. clerk Tom Monahan, at the hotel, registered me
without recognition. Once I thought I saw him looking at me as if
trying to place where he had seen me before but couldn't put his
finger on it. It didn't bother me since I had only barely known of
him as a child.
The room was drab and chilly. What a first view of the town a
visitor received I thought. I wasn't tired enough to go to sleep
and couldn't stand the dull environment so went downstairs
again. 1 wandered into the bar, although I wasn't really looking
for a drink.
I bought a beer and sat at a little table back in one darkened
corner.
The bartender was a stranger to me, probably new to the town
1 thought. But the man he was presently talking to wasn't.
Jack Mortimer had become a fixture in the town's bar -rooms
even before 1 left for the city. Only 29 years old, he had five
children at home or had when I knew him before.
Jack had a fine mind and back in high school had been
considered one of the most clever young men to enroll. But he
fell for a girl named Marion when he was in grade eleven and the
first thing you knew they had quit school and married and their
first child was on its way.
His father was happy enough to take Jack into his clothing
business. although he had always ennunciated the value of
higher education, he wanted his son in the business and was
afraid education would give him bigger ideas.
The. Mortimer family grew quickly as a girl followed the first
boy by less than a year. After the ".qrd came along Jack came to
THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1978. PG. 29.