The Man on the Park Bench

Carl Nichols eased his tired legs out the taxi's back door.

  "Take it easy, old timer." The driver grabbed his arm and helped him out. He removed his green Bettr Way Feeds cap and scratched his head. "Sure this is it? Just an abandoned house here and a lot of country."

  The stooped old man eyed the two story gray house.

  "Used to live here. Born here, in fact. Ninety-two years ago."

  The old place mostly looked the same. A dented oil tank showed the wood burning furnace had been converted, though, and a rusted 1950s Chevrolet pickup chassis lay in the side yard. Weeds covered everything, even the once worn paths to the outbuildings.

  Nichols pointed back behind the house. "If you could—could just help me to that there fence? I'd be grateful."

  "Sure thing."

  The old man put a gnarled hand on the other man's shoulder, and they slowly flattened a curved path through the goose grass and foxtails. Nichols took halting steps with feet more used to shuffling on a nursing home's tiled floor.

  "You sure this is where you want to be? Standing here by this old fence?"

  Nichols looked across it, over a fresh plowed field. "Well, I figured I could climb it. Where I really want to be is—over there. By that big oak tree. Out in the middle there."

  Bushy white eyebrows tented under his bald forehead. He looked up at John—John something, the taxi license had said—something foreign looking.

  "If you could just help me through this bob-wire fence and—and maybe across that plowed land. Don't know if I could make it on my own."

  The taxi driver put a booted foot on the bottom wire and jerked hard on the next one, popping staples out of the rotting posts. He spread the wires apart and Nichols stooped and half walked, half crawled through. John followed, noting the distance and the rough ridged furrows. He smiled.

  "Carryin's easier'n leadin'," he said. He picked the old man up like a stack of firewood. "You're not very heavy, you know. Not at all."