Steckland Russ -- (Chapter III.i)

    (x) -- 




    The past weeks have seen my care of recollecting the days slowly vanish. As such I feared my previous chapter would conclude our one-way correspondence, Future Steckland. The passing moments don't feel as vivid as before that tale, the words I seek to describe are lost before they are even spelled. I've been in a funk and I know exactly why, and yet I don't know why.
    Everyday when classes end I hop aboard my bike and try only to get as far from Highview Collegiate as possible. As west is towards the home I avoid, south is a Fool's Downhill and north is weird and unknown to me, I point my wheels east and go as far as my sense of adventure will take me. Every time since my second trip I stop at a parkette on Coxwell Avenue just south of some railroad tracks. I lean my bike against a tree, take a seat on a bench, put my hands in my jacket pockets and stare into nothing until the sun goes down several hours later.
    I never leave this place at any consistent time and the ride home is so forgettable I question whether it really happens. My father is unresponsive to my coming home at these late hours, only once asking loudly if I had been at the library and then returning to the television. Never have I eaten a proper meal on these days, my hunger relying only on a box of cookies I keep atop my bedroom dresser. I'm in a funk and I don't know why, and yet I know exactly why.
    The past weeks have been forgettable and the future promises to be the same, except for a curious incident just a few hours ago. I admit to not fully understanding any meaning or significance about this experience: it was only a simple but interesting encounter, worth a retelling in what likely will be my last chronicle to you.
    On my familiar bench I sat, staring into nothingness. The honks of the cars and the children hand-in-hand with their parents and the dogs wagging friendly tails and the toddlers in strollers and the five o'clock ice cream truck and the teens throwing a frisbee behind me and the skinny man with a fedora carrying a Top Notch pizza and the baseball fans cursing the Yankees and the police officers glancing my way and the pretty girls and the unpretty girls and the fast walkers and the dawdlers and the setting sun right over the roofs in front of me, I noticed none of it from inside my bubble.
     The sky was inbetween dark blue and black, the final shift change of twilight into evening, when a man walked towards me. Somehow I sensed right away he meant to encounter me and I thought of making an escape, but he was upon me before I could shift my backside.

    'Mind if I join you?'

    He sat down beside me before I could protest. He smiled as he looked over me, which you will understand made me extremely uncomfortable. After a slight nod he put one hand in his jacket pocket and used the other to light a cigarette. He was an aged, physically unremarkable sort, yet by the way he lit his tobacco or the polish on his jacket buttons or his immaculately styled balding hair, this clearly was someone who despite his surroundings viewed himself as a king. I resisted the urge to be in awe of him and he sensed that.

    'What's your name?' asked he.
    'Steckland.' I quickly replied.

    The man closed his eyes as he inhaled a long puff of his cigarette, enjoying it thoughtfully. Once the puff escaped his lips he turned back to me.

    'I have a belief, would you like to hear it? Of course. It is that our names that are hung over our heads at birth are only empty wine glasses that we spend the beginnings of our lives trying to fill. Our real names are the incidents that shape and change us. Before them we are invincible, afterwards we are flawed and human. So I ask again, what's your name?'

    I wanted to make up something but failed.

    'Galvin.' I answered. 'You?'
    'Leipzig.' said the man, exhaling more smoke.

    Any blue colour that was left in the sky had now been overtaken by blackness. The lights of this parkette were fairly bright and many aspects of this area that had been dull in daylight now glowed under artificial light. A solitary cloud hung in the sky against a backdrop of a dozen scattered stars. My bicycle caught my attention for a moment as I noticed a drunk fellow eyeing it as he walked by, so I followed his movements until he vanished under the bridge. Leipzig noticed this preoccupation with my wheels and took a final puff of his cigarette.

    'Do you live far from here, Galvin?' he asked, flicking the butt to the ground.
    'A good ways away, yes.' I answered.
    'Interesting. I have seen you come here everyday. Do not be alarmed,' said Leipzig quickly, seeing my increased uneasiness. 'It is only because in my present arrangement, I have nothing better to do than watch from my window the happenings of this small neighbourhood around me.'    
    'Right. I guess you're out of work, then? Retired maybe?'
    'Forcibly retired.' replied Leipzig.
   
    Three teens in large yellow sweatshirts walked past our bench and chuckled to each other once they were a few metres away. I was embarrassed to have strangers laughing at me, yet Leipzig was so unaffected his self-determination was contagious. He looked at me for a moment and then reached into his jacket pocket for another cigarette.
   
    'Are you fine? You seem lost in the devil's work.' said my bench companion.
    'Yeah, I'm... I'm good. Just kinda lost in, my... situation is all.' I explained. 'It's good.'
    'Yes, of course.' said Leipzig, afterwards taking a long puff of his smoke.

    There was a short pause before Leipzig inhaled again, and then spoke:

    'You've said you live far away, so I don't understand exactly why you come here. What is so special about this small and dirty parkette, so distant from anything interesting?'
    'I don't know. Something must've pulled me here.' replied I.
    'Does it still pull you?' asked Leipzig.
    'Seems like it.'
    'But it is not wind or storms that do so. Nor do I see a look of terror on you that I've seen in the eyes of many enemies. No, no, no...'

    I could hardly see Leipzig's face through the cloud of smoke that now covered us both. The shine of the streetlight through the cigarette fog gave his face a wickedness found surely in the shadows of men. Here was a natural schemer, a man who was constantly planning his next glorious move and by the quick movement of his eyes this moment was no different. Yet the sense of danger such a man could brew around him was not there. Leipzig perhaps sensed my growing comprehension of him and tossed his smoke to the ground still lit.

    'You could say I am here against my will, that I am placed here by those who had finally bested me. But your exile is self-imposed. You can leave your island and never look back. That's what I do not understand.'
    'I don't understand it either.' I said softly.
    'Hmmm.' said Leipzig, reaching into his jacket pocket again. 'Sorry, do you smoke?'
    'No I don't.' I replied.
    'Foolish of me not to ask.' said Leipzig, pulling out another cigarette. 'And rude. Well young man, this has been a most enlightening conversation but these autumn gusts are too much for my old bones. Perhaps we will meet again.'
    'Perhaps.'
    'Until then.'

    Leipzig rose from the bench and lit his cigarette while he walked away, a wispy trail of smoke following his path. I sat for a long while, entranced by thoughts until finally I lifted myself from the bench and stumbled towards my bicycle, still against the same tree as before. As I prepared myself for a long and tiring journey home I began wondering about the feeling of being trapped. I had done this to myself, all of it, and these feelings and reactions were the result of me and no one else.     Still I do not know what to do, only that I don't want to be trapped any more.



    (x) --  No Time To Meet Napoleon