The Leaves
Richard Kim-Hanes, 21, of Long Beach County, Fla. died early yesterday morning of a drug overdose. A lonely man, Richard frequented the neighborhood park to ostensibly find himself - more often than not, it was a chance to see the rest of the world in action while he sat still. I am an observer, he liked to say. To the old men who still shuffled on to the stone benches with their scuffed chess boards, he had a smile. Warm, as if he knew what their secret joy was, and what kept them ticking after all these years to come all the way down to this windy niche when it took them days, even weeks, to work up the nerve to get to the doctor's, or to the social club, and even to the barber. For the bum who slept under the oak tree by his bench, he gave a dollar every day. A creature of habit, one could say. His intention - as he noted frequently to the inert figure on the ground - was to help him rehabilitate, one dollar at a time. It wasn't much, Richard would mumble, but it was enough to keep the guy quiet. Sometimes, a leaf would fall off a tree, and as the wind blew the leaf into the waiting death grip of the street, and cleaning trucks, and gutters, Richard would whisper: it's your moment, so take it. But he didn't feel alone in these times, away from everything. Rather, he felt a great emptiness and sadness, stretching over miles of desolate wasteland in the depths of his heart, when in the center of a great crowd. There for who he was; and he wondered why he felt so insignificant when the crowd had dispersed and the musicians gone home. There was happiness, he could concede, but it was a hollow victory, as if he expected to be forgotten once the lights were off and no one could see his face. On these days, he looked in the mirror and noticed the bags under his eyes, the blemishes, the unruly hair, the sorrowful cleft in his chin. He had had a girlfriend, but she had been a wild child. Joining in his sadness, and leaving when it didn't change; when it continued in the same boring form, day after day, the doubts plaguing his soul and forcing him to withdraw deeper and deeper into a cocoon of embarrassment and lies. She had spit it all out, forced him to hear and see her inequities, and when he did naught but lose the anger behind his eyes, she began to show her depravities. Like a shadow, he melted away with wilted flowers and unanswered phone calls, as if he were already dead and buried. He never saw the men, but he knew, he had internalized this map of smells, movements and sayings of hers that led to one inevitable conclusion. It was over. And in the lengthening gloom that came with night, he turned to ice. Warm tears flowed onto cold, chapped cheeks; light glittered off of stone, and marble, and pale as death in the moonlight. His favorite seat was still there, waiting for its regular occupant; the bum, nodded and fell back into the gaping pit of weary rest and acceptance; and the leaves had gone. Their moment was past; one last thought, before he straightened his pants and sat straight and stiff, rigid, immovable. A quick snap of the elastic, heightening pressure in the forearm, stick, push, out. He sat until daybreak, and followed the leaves.