Author: Ellen Bell

The town is a mass of newly fledged gulls, their keening richochets off the roofs and walls. It is a heartbreaking sound. The loneliness of their abandonment is palable.

They are drops in the ocean, as they say, tiny amounts, and given more to help us to feel better about another’s pain and loss than anything else. I know this. But I suppose if everyone gave a little it would soon be alot. Yet, there are so many disasters, so many war-torn countries crying out for help. How do we assauge all, help all? Can we? Or does the futility of even trying render us immobile, useless? I have no answers.

The rain came but not the cooling air.

I saw him again this morning. I’ve seen him a few times in the early hours. He’s always carrying a plastic bag, usually full, and walking very slowly, his head sunk into his chest. I don’t know where he is going or where he has come from. I hope he is okay and got home safe.

I like what I see in the dark, coming into brief contact as I do with wildlife that is usually sleeping in the daylight hours. What have I seen? Foxes, a badger, moths and I’ve heard owls. Yesterday, I saw a hedgehog, not my first, but a delight, nonetheless. They seem such gentle beings.

He keeps scratching himself, or at least that is what it looks like. His feet, elbow and shins have countless scabs. Is it that his skin is getting thinner or is it something else more sinister? I had to wash the blood off his elbow in the kitchen sink yesterday. The reek of iron was overpowering. And I thought one’s sense of smell was supposed to lessen with age.

Generally, I don’t mind it. Though extreme heat can take its toll. It’s just the way in which it throws out one’s routine. What to wear, for instance. Silly problems, considering the grand scheme of things, but when anxious they do unsettle. And then I feel ashamed for my pettiness… But the sun is lovely though…

I’m not sure why I find it so comforting seeing him arrive in his pick-up truck so as to deliver milk to the couple we call Hank and Deidre. I think it must be the regularity of it, though usually he comes in the early hours, his miner’s torch clamped over his baseball cap. I remember milkmen in floats, and the gentle whirring sound of their motors. And then there was the one would come in a horse and cart, deliver to Nanny C.. I loved the sound of the hooves and the clink of bottles. Such detail helps. Always.

I am so sorry for you. I know that you have worked hard, done what you thought was right. You have given what you could. Must you go? Probably. I feel for you. We are the same age, the same kind of persona, though I wouldn’t have shown the strength that you have. I wish you well.

I know it is only fiction, but it is hard to witness, nevertheless, and their stories get under my skin. Is it because I experienced the same, albeit only briefly? No running water, no sanitation, no heat, and the shame of it. It’s all there in those stories. He tells me to forget it, to not revisit it, that it was a long time ago. And it was, but it is never far away and my fear of its returning is ever present.