The Caboose
Posted: Monday, December 15, 2008
by Michael Ramzy
delusionthread.com
He sat on the fence with his small body squatting on the wooden beams. He leaned forward with his face held in his hands and looked at the cleared field across the street from his house. He thought of how he used to come here to play during the summer, how he used to walk down the small trails that wound through the thick trees, taking in the endless days of summer. He looked across the street at where the trees had been cleared. The brush swept aside, there was only bare, dusty earth. The bulldozers sat idle, the large yellow machines streaked brown and green along the sides from winding through, then cutting through, the small forest.
He also remembered how, three years earlier, he climbed one of the taller trees. He was six then, and he climbed through the thick branches, worked his way through the tree until he perched on the highest branch. He remembered the way the wood swung gently in the breeze and the smell of the other trees. Suddenly, his small body would seem to much for the branch and he would crash through the leaves, went tumbling through the tree until he lay at the base. He had landed with his arm bent under him at an awkward angle, broken.
He smiled at this, the pain now only a dim memory which echoed soundlessly through his healed bones. He remembered another time when he walked through to the small brook which ran through the trees. He sat on a large rock that diverted the brook, sat for hours and watched the summer light reflect through the leaves overhead.
He smiled at these memories, dimmed by the reality of the destruction he saw across the street: the small forest leveled in the name of progress. They had, generation after generation, taken the Earth. Taken everything. He thought of it like a long train passing, as if each car was a separate, though connected, generation. And he was seeing the end of it. Finally, after all the destruction, the end of it.
He hopped off the fence, answered his mother's call to dinner, and walked quietly to his house. He walked on the grass, careful to avoid the walkway. He felt the grass under his small feet, the blades tickled his toes, and realized he would no longer be able to walk this way in the woods which had faced his house. The yellow machines had seen to that.
He entered the kitchen and slowly climbed onto his chair. He looked at the small meal of soup and sandwiches his mother had prepared for their dinner. He watched his mother reach into the refrigerator for the milk, set it on the table, and suddenly thought of the destruction of the woods. He thought she had seen something similar countless times, in countless places.
He shrugged and looked out the window, where he could see in his mind the last remnants of nature which had lived and thrived so abundantly for so long, right across the street. The bulldozers were finished now, he knew. The next day, the men would return to cart off the rest of the brush and debris. To burn.
And then, of course, the construction of new houses. Always new houses.
He looked up expectantly as his mother slid into her chair across from him, his face suddenly sullen. She saw the look and leaned forward, looked into his eyes. She noticed he was crying silently, the tears welling up and slowly trickling down his small face.
"Honey, what's wrong?"
He sat there quietly, not clearing the tears that now ran freely down his face. Unashamed, he shook his head and tried to put into words his feelings. "Mom," he started, only to drop his head to look into the dark bowl of broth in front of him. "Remember you said once the meek will inherit the Earth?"
She looked at him warmly, seeing the small face uplifted to hers, his tears shining his face.
"That's what the Bible says, dear."
He looked across the street through the window, looked at the machinery that had destroyed a small forest; a forest that had been alive for countless generations. Destroyed in a week.
"Why?" she asked, watching his eyes as they scanned the empty lot across the street. "You'll inherit the Earth one day, dear. And all nice, meek little boys just like you." She offered a smile.
He turned to her with a look in his eyes she had never seen. No longer innocent, that look, more of a look of someone who has seen the road up ahead and wishes he could take another path.
"Well," he started finally, still with that far-away look. He turned and looked back across the street and thought of nothing but that one sentence in the Bible. The meek shall . . .
"I refuse it . . ."
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