The Midnight Run of 64

MERRY MARY IS MARRIED TO TIM, a Jungle Gym Jumper Constructor.

Tim is tall and thin while Mary is unwise. Tim sleeps on his back without a sound like a hickory stick but dreaming of new-built Jungle Gym Jumpers, brown and scented with creosote. As Tim dreams deep, Mary creeps from her bed to ride the midnight bus with Henry, who is bald, roly-poly, talkative and lonely.

No one rides number 64, so Mary sits up front near Henry and the swishing windshield wipers. Henry talks of bagels and Hegel and cream cheese. Mary would like to have children. So would Henry. So would sleeping Tim. But Mary is unwise. Henry is lonely and Tim is a hickory stick.

Mary and Henry both love mashed potatoes cratered with salty, yellow lakes of melted butter. One night Mary brings Henry an egg salad sandwich with tiny sweet dices of chopped pickle and lettuce leaves, the edges of which Henry nipples away, as, one-handed, he plows 64 though sheening pools of rain water. Mary laughs and admires the thick strength of Henry's wrist covered with black hair. The next night she brings salami and lettuce sandwiches and a spinach dip with assorted vegetables: cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, celery sticks, sliced red peppers, cucumbers, and then a few nights later she adds a bottle of red wine with a fine deep punt and some white German bread, unsliced. Mary and Henry eat and laugh and drive number 64 madly through puddles.

One night, as they picnic, Henry roars past a forlorn teen, wet with his guitar, waiting for the bus. They laugh and think it funny but soon feel remorse and shame. Hastily, Mary packs up the bottle opener, serviettes, wine bottle, dip, butter, salad dressing, dates, bread basket, salt and pepper shaker, knives and spoons, vegetable bowl, glasses and goes to the fifth seat back in the bus. Henry swings number 64 through dark and narrow streets back to the sad and sodden teen.

Imagine Mary's surprise when she sees the teen is little Jimmy Chutney, her neighbour boy, now grown into a Jim.

The next night, as Mary creeps from her bed, she hears a brick hit the outside of the bathroom wall. Going to the bathroom she turns on the light and sees a large note taped to the outside of the window. "If you would like to see me please come into the back yard," it reads. Mary opens the window and takes the note but it rips away and is dragged around the corner of the house by invisible hands pulling on a long string fastened to the note. "Oh, you think you're so smart", Mary calls out into the soft darkness of moonlit shadows.

Jimmy is surprised but very excited and happy when Mary comes to him and they make love in the moonlight. The next morning Jimmy's Mother thinks that girl Mary is so foolish, to sit all dolled up in her back yard. Mary smiles, musing if she could have a baby with orange hair and studs. Tim whistles as he sorts through weather treated six by sixes at the lumberyard. Henry rolls over in his bed wondering if Mary will ever come back to the midnight run of 64.

Tags Processed