2-9-11
I got off Eastchester Road in the Bronx, walking northeast on Waters Place past the methadone clinic and the Bronx Psychiatric hospital toward the Middletown Avenue subway stop on the local six train. Just before Fink Avenue, I saw the little frozen hill. It was perfect for sledding, sheer ice--dirty ice that is, with scattered ghetto garbage strewn all about. To the left was rush hour traffic on the Hutchinsin River Parkway. Cutting off the sidewalk and walking straightaway up the top of the hill, I stashed my back pack by the beginning of the concrete over pass. Then I slipped on the damn ice--bumping my knee hard into the over pass. Shit! it hurt but I could move it okay.
I picked up a piece of cardboard and slid down the dirty ice hill, hooting and laughing. I carefully walked back up the hill digging my Cherokee boots in like a mountain climber. The sky was concrete grey and pale salmon. I dislodged a fresh piece of cardboard, for there was a loose bundle of it at the top of the hill, filched from some one's recycling. Sledding down, I hooted and laughed again. A pretty Latin woman walked by, ignoring me. I sensed that she knew I was playing. I fantasized calling out for her to join me but didn't. I picked up my original piece of cardboard and walked back up the hill. A heavyset Latin male was walking a rotweiler, ignoring me. The dog was enjoying itself rolling in something over and over again. Feeling like the dog, I slid down the hill again, this time on a wide, black, cracked plastic bread tray--the kind they unload in carts off the trucks in the backs of parking lots for restocking the stores. On the way down, the sled began listing to one side and halfway down capsized. This was fun.
I lay still on my back--deep breathing. Bending one leg over the other and lowering both legs onto the ground, I stretched my back. My knee way tender but okay. I repeated this to the right and noticed there was a huge pile of hair a few feet from me. I kicked at it, partially dislodging the dirty blond mess, then kicked again, harder, with both boots. I stood up then and finding a discarded pen, I used it to lift up part of the hair like on CSI The Bronx. Underneath was just more hair and dirty snow--no head. I dropped pen and hair, then I noticed the tree.
It was about twelve feet high and stood all by itself. The traffic was getting thicker on the Hutchinsin--the air colder and darker. The tree's bark had been stripped and the limbs sawed off close to the center giving it a weird stumpy appearance. It was the only tree in the deserted, trash-strewn field. As I got closer, I noticed the lines, the striations on the thick pale grey trunk. The trunk was like pale stone and the lines were engraved in patterns covering the tree in long wavy outlines, curving here and there, running the entire length of the trunk, all around and even up to the sawed off limbs. As I stared at the wavy lines I felt dizzy--they were psychedelic and appeared to be dancing. I put my arms around the tree and hugged it then. I asked it to take my heart tension, listening for signs of life. Pulling back, at the base of the tree and to the left I saw the black plastic bag. Two pairs of chicken legs were protruding, long, naked and curled with big pointy looking toe clawed feet. The talons were sharp and a dull, dark cold red. Not chickens, I though, but fighting cocks--the losers. Their spurs--the valuable parts--removed, the bet gone bad, their bodies tossed out of a speeding car at night. People...
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