The last Dance

The day was grainy, etched from a fuller atmosphere after a heavy overcast and the reddened light of dusk rested like a shallow, distended globe as if hung from the roof of the world, diffusing and dilating in a final, momentary autumn. The click-clack of his shoes on the footpath pavement was a steady report in the darkening night, each stride a long sigh, measured and deliberate. His torso was upright, his demeanour open and as he walked he nodded to passersby in a friendly, unselfconscious way. In his hands he carried a small bag of tools fashioned of raw leather, the handles of turned wood and worn gray, the leather stained and scratched. On his lips he savoured the taste of beer, a gift from Mrs. Wilson for mending her gate.

An hour after dark he arrived home. His wife greeted him at the door, and he didn't fail to see the sour look her sister gave him as he walked through the kitchen to the shed. Her husband had been a nasty drunk. She heard her speaking to his wife, he's been to the pub again Els, I can smell it on him. Oh, he's allowed to Dot, if he wants. They all go, after work, all of them. He stared at the lighted window, then turned to the shed.

On the last day of the year he left early toting his tool bag. The young couple three streets down had a leaking roof and he had offered to fix it. He would be back before dark because tonight was the one night in the year that he and Elsie went out dancing. He walked with a spring in his step as if dancing already.

In the end she had stayed home. He had pressed her, Elsie of all nights, this is our one night. But she had stayed to look after her mother, the old woman. It was only minutes to the New Year when he buckled in the arms of a woman whose name he had not quite heard, his lungs burning and a pain fit to burst his chest.

As the women set about preparing him for burial, Elsie sat in the sitting room, a wan smile flickering on her face, her gaze distant. Strangers came, from all over the suburb. He cleaned out my gutters, an old woman said, every autumn. He mowed my lawns, said another. He fixed my gate, said a third. She had not known.

The day was clear, washed in the earlier shower, the air light and sharpened by the memory of rain. On the doorstep, men stamped their feet, breathed into cupped hands, accepted tea in incongruously fine, small cups passed through the wire door by gravely smiling women, rolled and smoked cigarettes, paced to the gate and back or across the drive, and never spoke. What was there to say?

sjosul