It's the rainy season.

I remember when I was young we had all gathered around the television to watch the last game in the semi-finals. The WINGS had just tied the series a result of lazy final periods and bad ref calls made for an uphill battle. The city was in an uproar and we all walked taller as we watched ordinary men became something more. We sat and glared at the screen, a silent mass of people trying to will the team into victory through glass and radio waves. We sat there and tightened at each shot, you could nearly hear our bones grinding as the tension in the room grew.

The final minutes were winding down, with seconds left and a power play for the DUCKS we had the puck in their zone. There was some smart passing and the captain was winding to shoot the puck.

Just then from the blindside

CRASH!

…

 

 

I was heading into work on a cool rainy morning; the type of morning that I had secretly enjoyed all my life. Wet, grey, cool, all things that made me feel sharper and more alert than usual. Only close friends knew of my fondness of such days. Perhaps I liked them because I felt like the world itself mourned my losses with me or that God himself would give me these days to unleash some pent up emotion. Either way this weather was my favorite.

On days like this people would always ask how I was doing or how I felt, typically with more genuineness than usual, I suppose they saw a sadness in me.

 I was never very good at hiding it, a curse from my family line, emotional but unable to mask it.

I would always answer; "I'm fine, just tired" or any myriad of other excuses that you come up with over the years.

Sense no one ever really cared what your answer was such a response would usually suffice.

 

I was driving home stuck in traffic after a long day. It was long perhaps because I felt like more people than usual asked what was wrong and I had run out of answers and excuses.

Poor Graham, I didn't even answer him on my way out, too fed up with the nagging question and tired of telling little lies, those mount up and begin to feel like big ones after a while.

 

Before I got home I liked to stop for a coffee and since the weather was getting worse I decided to have it at the coffee house. I picked a window seat so I could people watch and look at the rain fall. People were running in so as not to get wet but it didn’t work.

As I sat quietly going over the events of the day, something I did religiously almost as if I was looking for some missing clue or reviewing a play with careful precision, I thought about the numerous colleagues and friends that asked me what was wrong today. The last few such encounters caused me to wonder whether anything really was wrong. I continued over the days mental notes trying to find an answer to this question. WAS SOMETHING WRONG?

As I was wrapping up the overview and tried hard to remember the first few memories of the day, ones lost to the routine as I eased out of sleep, I had a thought that shot straight up my spine. As I sat in that chair I had a thought that hit me so deep I didn't think I wanted to have it and tried to see if I could shrug it off and forget but this one was here to stay.

The thought slowly crept up my person like a slithering snake that finally struck just above my left hip and shot pain right up the middle of my back.

Some thing was wrong I thought to myself. The problem was it wasn't what happened today, this week, or even recently, this something wrong was many years ago.

…

 

I was in college and sitting in the union with my laptop and my music playing, jeans a hoody and my hat slipped just to the left in that way I had trained my whole body to balance it. Everything was crisp about my demeanor and the hat threw in the touch of allure that set the entire thing off right.

I was watching the rain fall over the fountain and watched the late students scramble across the campus trying to make it to class on time… and dry.

I had been talking to this beauty of a girl for some time now. We had gone out for coffee a few times and I took her to one of my favorite parts of town, a place that was special to me because. We walked the long streets lined with trees and lanterns (a nostalgic touch as they were only for the look).  Coffees in hand and arms linked together, as if anything could have pulled us apart, we kept pace with our beating hearts and we talked about everything that mattered to us. She would lean into me and my heart would skip every time we found we had a like minded thought or a shared experience. These little moments where you think to yourself I may not be alone on this heap of a rock we call home. That night we stayed awake long into the dark, I swear it was like our spark had ignited the very lanterns along the road which we walked.

As I sat on campus that rainy day waiting the long hours until my next class I thought about calling her but decided against it as she was probably busy or in class but a part of me hoped maybe I would see her walking by in the rain and I could run over to her and wrap my warm self around her cold one. I hoped she would come in to the room so that we could share a quiet silence together and in so doing link on that spiritual level that many people miss in life because they are too hurried or to preoccupied to even know its there.

 

I didn't see her all week.

It was Friday and I was waking up late as that was the only day I could take my "Saturday." My first thought was her face and it was so vivid I thought maybe I was coming out of a dream with her in it and I swear we had kissed in that dream because it was like I could still feel it.

I decided to call her up in a bit to see if she wanted to meet up again sometime this weekend. First, I wanted to wake up and gather my wits before I could call her though.

I decided to call around noon so I would be sure to catch her around lunch and hopefully not too busy.

*ring*

*ring*

*ring*

*rin...*

HELLO?

Hey.

Hey how are you?

Fine. Yourself?

.

.

.

I was wondering if you were free tonight.

Oh no I made plans to visit my family.

Oh that's great. How bout sometime this weekend?

Probably not I have 2 big tests and a friends birthday I have to be at.

Alright I understand maybe next weekend then?

Sure give me a call.

 

I tried not to let it bug me but it did. I wished she didn't have tests or that she wasn't going home for the weekend. I tried to focus on the possibility of next week.

 

I decided to hit my favorite café that night and tackle a good book with my favorite band and the biggest cup of coffee the barista would let me have. I loved going to this place because there was always a steady flow of people and also because it was where I felt like I was connected.

I had been there a while and was making magnificent progress in my book, despite people watching and writing random snippets of thoughts and poems in my Moleskin.

I'm sure people had forgotten about me by then and I think I had overlapped a couple of shift changes by the employees.

I sat up to take in a new wave of people coming in and also I felt a jolt of inspiration that I was about to jot down…when…

When I saw her walking in.

I thought I had jumped right out of the chair when I saw her or that I had floated up off it all together.

I was just about to jump across the room and say hello with a soft hug and invite her over to my little nook in the café

When I realized she wasn't alone.

Some guy who I hoped was nothing more than her friend was walking in beside her arms locked and smiling together, they stepped in united pace as if they were tied at the hip. Their persons were almost in unison and it made me sick.

I recoiled back to my nook, my lair, my cave.

I racked my brain to find an escape.

I didn't want her to know I was there and I couldn't stand to be there.

This better be her cousin my last grasp at sanity rang out in my head!

Things were blurring and sound seemed to be sucked out of the room.

I could only hear the strong thumps in my chest.

I had made it just inches from the door

And my phone dropped.

I thought about leaving it behind.

Of course they noticed and she saw me.

I thought about just running out but for some reason my courage won over my reason.

We made the awkward dance toward each other and we played the introduction game. I had to ask twice who the guy was because I couldn't hear over my pumping chest.

My salvation rang and the ringtone broke the forming silence before anyone noticed it.

I made an excuse up so fast I impressed myself.

I have to go some friends are waiting for me, it was good seeing you.

I lied.

As I ran across the street trying to focus all my awareness on not getting run over I gave one last glance over my shoulder…

Cousin I think not.

They had found the couch and were locked in the most wretched of kisses I had ever seen.

I went to find a seat in the dimly lit park a few blocks away to compose my thought, perhaps to reason some way in my head that he was not her boyf…

*Nausea.*

I sat there for a long while and the soft warm spring air turned cool very quickly. It began to rain.

I sat there not wanting to take any refuge.

I pulled the tapes in my memory of the nights we shared and walked and talked, trying desperately to see if I had missed something if I had fooled myself into thinking we were connecting.

The scene was frantic as clip after clip was shoved into my recollection and I went over them second by second, touch by touch.

 

I was not fooling myself rather had been fooled.

 

I could feel my chest tighten up as if it was being flooded and could take no more.

There was a pain so strong that for a moment I worried if I was having an infarction.

It seemed the cold grew colder and the park grew darker.

I remembered that tense night years before with everyone gathered around the TV screen watching the final hockey game.

 

…

*

CRASH!

Blood began to pool quickly underneath the heap of man, underneath the wooden stick and the fallen hero. People stood in their seats. There was an audible gasp and some of us in the room were standing as well. It was one of those injuries that you know people don't come back from, maybe heroes do but regular folks… no. This was his true test, his passage into heroism, if he recovered from this he would leap straight into the realm of legend, places few reside and many long to see.

Sweat grew over everyone's brow as we eagerly sought some sign that he would be ok, something to show his real strength.

*

 

 

I could almost feel the blood pooling and I clutched what would be my wooden weapon as I lay there in the cold wet night.

Some men are tried and they are found to be men of honor and valor true heroes of our day.

They come back after a short time to rise above and conquer.

…other men are beaten and battered only to stay down and never recover. Their heroism is tested and found to be lacking.

 

…

*

As they hauled him off the ice on a stretcher lined by his teammates in some twisted scene that resembled a funeral procession he made one last simple gesture. Raising one arm straight up, strong and stiff, he gave a thumbs up. The cheer that rang out from the all the witnesses was like a boom that shook the very foundations of the city. He would make a full recovery and midway through the final round come back to help the WINGS win the cup once more. That year there was magic, with the economy the way it was, with the state in shambles, people seemed to collect as much of that magic as they could. Stored away in little boxes and glass jars, kept snug away for the rainiest weariest of days.

*

 

 

That night I was tested…

And after a short time I got back up…

I recovered.

But not found among those halls of great men, the dwelling places of greatness.

Because in order to be numbered among those…

You must arrive with heart intact…

And I had left mine somewhere in that park that night. It had been washed into some gutter along with the rest of cities rubbish.

 

**

I drove home that night once the rain had let up. I pulled into the driveway of my house. I felt a broken shell of a man and it was all I could do to heave myself to my door and prop myself up against it while I fussed with the keys. I came in sat down and turned on one light.

The feeling that I was nothing crept up around the darkness that remained around the soft flicker of light from the single lamp.

Just then my wife came in the room and broke the melancholy. She found her way into my nook, that little place under may arm right over my heart that seemed like it was made just for her.

She rested under my arm and I asked what was wrong.

She only answered with a single tear, it's better now…

 

 

In my mind the young man in my head walked back in the rain from the park to his car.

As he stepped from puddle to puddle drenched to the bone he saw something pulsating in the sludge at the mouth of a gutter.

*Pick it up* a soft whisper that sounded like the wind as it brushed warm over his ears.

He stooped down to brush it off picked it up and placed it softly in his breast pocket.

 

I didn't believe in magic, at least not that kind of magic. I preferred a more dynamic existence all together, faith that was set in someone who I could interact with and feel, and sometimes in the quiet places even hear.

 

So it was after many years of trial and fire a hero of the truest kind.

For his heart was broken and lost and swept away only that he may fight and win it back again.

Such men are seated at the first seat in that great hall, in the place of honor. For not only do they endure but their hearts are found to be strong and true.