Friday, December 23, 2016

9006. STANDING EVIL

STANDING EVIL
My foot came through the window,
but I didn't recognize it. Me and 
Kenny Meserve just gawked. He
lived over behind the firehouse.
There's a little street that curves.
It doesn't do anything much, just 
connects to Route One North if
you want it. There used to be an
old house on that corner too  -  
small but neat, kept up by two
old folk. Then she died, and then
it was just the old guy alone. For
years. He was like the best fireman's
friend; right next door and probably
on land he'd given. Then he died too.
Maybe 1975 or so. They tore it down
and paved over everything in a firehouse
expansion. I would have figure more 
for a controlled, practice, fireman burn,
but I guess that didn't happen. So,
anyway, I said to Kenny Meserve, my
best friend from grammar school, over
on Fifth, 'Hey, you remember that old
house next to the fireman joint?' He
shrugged and said 'Yeah.'
-
There was always one of those 
urban-legend type stories connected to
Kenny, I guess because he was so raw.
It went that he'd had a dead cat, put it
in the freezer for a long time. Then he
took it out one day, in a box, and walked 
it to the underpass, went upstairs, and
dropped the frozen ice block down to
the street  -  where it broke into a hundred
little pieces, cat included, like ice cubes.
That was, to me as a kid, an awe-inspiring 
story, and against all grain, as bad as it 
was. Can that happen? I never found out
 if it was true, or not.




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