THE DAY IS THE CRY OF ITS OCCASION

THE DAY IS THE CRY OF ITS OCCASION

During the early morning hours the temperature rose.  A heavy fog settled on the town.  When the sun came up, the air was thick and gray.  Unziker peeked through the slats of the blinds and could not see across the street.  He sat down on the edge of the bed and waited until he could feel the blood in his legs.  Lately, if he tried to walk before he could feel his legs, he would stumble or bump into the dresser or trip on his shoes.  It took a few minutes. 

     “When the fog clears. . . !” he thought, imagining one of those heavenly crystal mornings of winter that gladdens the heart.  But he had no heart for gladness this morning.  Sitting on the edge of the bed, facing the blinds he had just peeked through, he hung his head and shook it.  Then, looking at his white, slender toes on the dusty carpet, he arched them upwards and wiggled them. 

     Walter J. Unziker had a large round belly that stuck over his trousers like a pregnant woman’s and at this moment rested comfortably in his lap.  He was, as all the men were in his family, perfectly bald on the top of his round head but was graced with a rim of curly white hair.  His legs were skinny and terminated in two tiny feet, size seven.  He sat dejectedly, his shoulders drooping, his hands resting in his lap in front of his belly.

     He had few cares.  This was one reason for his dejection.  After retirement, he kept a little office on Main Street where he set his equipment.  Retirement bored him, but he lacked the energy anymore to work regularly.  The few jobs he did were enough to keep him busy when he wanted to be and were never so pressing that he had to keep deadlines.  After a life in advertising, he restricted himself in retirement to making video recordings of the high school plays and the productions of the area community theater.  Occasionally, he volunteered to help out one social club or another, and he was asked from time to time to video a wedding or a reception—and this was all he wanted.

     There was another reason, however, for the dejection that sat so heavily on him as he waited for the blood to return to his legs.  His marriage had failed a long time ago, long before he retired.  His children were still young then.  Keeping in touch with them, working, socializing (he used to be a heavy drinker and spent a lot of time in the pubs), vacationing—all kept him from boredom and loneliness.  In later years, however, especially after the passing of his mother and father, the problem of loneliness crept up on him, and after retirement he began to look for more intimate companionship from among his acquaintances.  There was one woman, part Sioux, named Winnie LeBeau, with whom he much enjoyed going out to dinner.  She was good company and good looking and much acquainted with grief, having had two husbands who left her with both children and scars.  Over time, they had become good friends and spent evenings together several times a week, evenings which he had begun to look forward to as the very reason for getting through the day. 

     Winnie, however, had just moved to California to live with one of her daughters, and Unziker was feeling more dejected than he had felt for a long time.  He rose from the edge of the bed and stood again at the blinds and peeked through.  He stared out and felt more than thought of the emptiness of the day.  He clucked at the fog and bent both his legs.  Feeling steady enough now, he padded off to the bathroom. 

     After last night’s disaster, he was staring ahead at a spate of empty days.  A group of townspeople met once a month at the coffee shop to plan the schedule of showings for the foreign film club.  Unziker enjoyed meeting with these people.  He volunteered to do the advertising, and in return they took him in as a full-fledged member of the inner circle.  At last night’s monthly meeting, however, the president of the club announced they were bankrupt.  Membership had declined to the point where they had no choice but to dissolve the organization.  As it was, it was going to cost the members of the organizing group a hefty sum to bail out.  The sooner they did so, the less it would cost each of them.  With great reluctance, everyone agreed.  And that was the end of that.  Unziker had, for the near future, anyway, absolutely nothing to look forward to.

     As he dressed he thought about what to do.  His heart tugged at him to go to California and find Winnie.  But that was impossible.  Winnie never told him her daughter’s married name, and he never asked, figuring that that information should have been offered as a kind of invitation, and he wanted, above all, to be invited and not impose.  They agreed to keep in touch, but so far he hadn’t heard from her.  If she did not take the initiative, he thought, he would understand what that meant.  Going to California was out. 

     When he stepped out the front door, the fog was still thick.  It felt cold and clammy.  He raised the collar of his coat and buttoned the top button, which made his round bald head look oddly fleshy atop his shoulders.  Then he put his gloves on.  He paused for a moment, undecided whether he should walk to the office in that fog or take the car.  But it was only a fifteen minute walk, and he decided to stretch his legs and walk more briskly than usual.  He had nothing to do at the office.  It would be months before the school or the theater would have plays up again, and he was not working at anything else.  He did keep his computer at the office, however, and he spent the mornings there checking his e-mail correspondence—all anonymous, his having no regular correspondence with anyone he knew.  He also sometimes played around with the DVD.  He morphed images and made collages and produced printouts of these, sometimes in color, that he framed and hung around the office.  He had a flair for satire, and these images satisfied his need to skewer what he felt was the soullessness of the world he lived in. 

     When he let himself in the office, he found he didn’t want to be there.  He looked at the screen of the computer and felt no desire.  He used as a screen saver one of his collages—images of Jeffrey Dahmer morphing into Woody Harrelson on a backlay of twisted and distorted faces of contemporary politicians, Gothic cathedrals, Nazi troops marching in review, Madonna in her Evita garb, the space shuttle, skin heads, Mother Theresa, stretch limos, mushroom clouds, roulette wheels, Ronald Reagan, planet Earth, Dylan Klebold, these and dozens of others, including images of his brother, with whom he had fallen out of touch years ago—each item emerging from another in a continuous and sinuously organic flow of forms.  Its tone suggested sarcasm more than satire, but it pleased him, filling a space in his imagination that might otherwise have been filled by bitterness.  In the lower right corner he added the words Simple Abundance, in italicized New Times Roman capitals.  He scanned the familiar images spreading across the screen with a pang of newly acquired guilt.  Do I really feel that? he asked himself.

     “I feel,” he said aloud, “like I belong in the fog.”  He pushed open the door, locked it behind him, and stepped back into the clammy dampness.  The fog was still dense and the cars on the street echoed noisily as they drifted by with headlights on.  None of his children or grandchildren lived in town anymore, and his ex-wife had moved away a long time ago.  He longed for Winnie.  The longing made him feel purposeless as he walked—or wandered, for he had no destination.  It was early yet, only 8:30.  He stopped and noted where he was.  The fog was so dense, he could barely make out the doors of the Methodist church.  He had been in this church many times over the years, as were most people in town—for concerts, fund-raising dinners, rallies for this and that—though he was not a Methodist, not an anything.  He shrugged and continued walking. 

     The church was on the corner of 3^rd and Rowley, and he had turned north.  He knew if he kept this direction he would soon reach the parking lot of the supermarket.  The market had a café where people in the surrounding shops and stores went for their morning break.  This parking lot was quite large, of course, but it was sort of like a piazza in a European city—except for its being asphalt—bordered on all sides as it was by shops with benches in front of them in the shade of trees.  It was a favorite place among seniors, who, on pleasant summer mornings, tended to congregate along the benches.  In the evenings it belonged to the teenagers.

     He was feeling damp and chill through and through and was beginning to regret leaving his office.  He didn’t put a hat on because he had planned when he left the house to walk out of doors only the fifteen minutes it took to get to the office.  As he neared the parking lot, he was shivering so much he decided to get out of the foggy cold and go inside the supermarket for a cup of coffee.

     The warm air was like an embrace, and he unbuttoned the top of his coat as he strolled behind the check-out counters to the café.  He passed the people on the line and headed for the coffee urn, which was by the cashier.  He filled a cup and dug in his pocket for change.  Looking around for a place to sit, he spotted Arnie Heril sitting by himself and asked if he might join him.

     The other man was a good deal younger but glad to have the company.  He was reading the newspaper and folded it, stashing it on the seat beside him. 

     “What about this fog, hey?” the younger man said as Unziker took off his coat and sat down.

     “Crazy weather for January,” Unziker said.

     “Did you hear the news this morning?” the other said.

     “No, never turned on the radio.”

     “Big crash on the Interstate.  Five dead.”

     “Anyone from town?”

     “One trucker, two from Salem, three from Spencer.”

     “People you know?”

     “All but the trucker.”

     “From Spencer?  They get it one way, then another.  Sorry.  Know them well?”

     “Not well.  I just know the families, who they are.  The ones from Spencer were kids going to school.”

     “Bummer.”

     Disturbed and made uneasy by the news, Unziker’s face and the top of his head had reddened.  He sipped his coffee, keeping his eyes away from the face of the younger man.  They talked for a while longer, and then Unziker, finishing his coffee, excused himself, put on his coat, and left, going back into the fog that drove him there in the first place.

     As he walked, he put his gloved hands into his coat pockets and spread his palms over his belly, as though he were resting his hands there.  The combination of his dejection, the fog, and the news from the café made him feel, now, estranged from all things familiar, comfortable, and reliable, even, if that can be, from himself.

     The fog wasn’t lifting.  He walked the way he had come, knowing more by habit where he was than by anything he could see.  He stopped and passed a gloved hand over the top of his head, listening to the sound of a car passing.  The gloved hand warmed his head a bit, so he left it there.  He felt, standing on the sidewalk, one gloved hand in his coat pocket and one on the top of his head, rather foolish, like a person who has just had a striking idea occur to him.  But there was no idea.  There was, however, a great wailing feeling rising in him.  To avert what he felt was happening, he put his hand back in his pocket and continued walking, determinedly, in his usual short, quick steps.  When he reached the corner where the Methodist church was, he was faced with what he knew was a day-making decision—turn left and go back to his office or cross the street and continue to his house. 

     He stood undecided and again put his gloved hand on top of his head.  And again, as he stood in that attitude of revelation, the same strange wailing feeling began to rise.  It came from deep inside him and rose, like the sound of the ten o’clock siren on Saturday mornings, right out of him, uncontrollably.  Fear came to his eyes as he clasped his gloved hand over his mouth.  The wail decided for him what he should do—go home, go back to bed, sleep, wait till the sun came out before getting up again.  He hurried across the street.  He walked, as before, briskly, determinedly.  When he reached the house he was panting.

     He unlocked the door and let himself in.  Hanging up his coat and putting his gloves on the closet shelf, he felt overstimulated and tired.  He looked at the clock on the lamp table beside the couch.  It was only 9:30.  The day should be bright by now, he reflected, feeling better that he was home, but it was still very dim and gray.  He went to the bedroom.  The bed was unmade and rumpled, a sheet hanging to the floor on the side opposite the windows.  He kicked off his shoes and lay on the bed, at first on his left side, but then on his back.  Although he felt better, he could not altogether suppress the powerful impression that had come over him and the feeling in his gut that occurred in response to it, the feeling that produced the strange wailing on the sidewalk.

     As he contemplated that impression and tried to understand the meaning of it, his eyes rested upon a cobweb hanging from the ceiling.  It was a long, fluffy string of a cobweb, a perfectly ordinary thing, obviously hanging there a long time.  Although he was not fastidious, he wondered fleetingly why he hadn’t noticed it before.  Almost in the same instant, however, as though a chemical bond had occurred, the cobweb and the disturbing feelings in the fog merged into one thing in his mind, and again, in response, almost as though to a revelation, the feeling, familiar now, began to rise.  From deep inside, uncontrollably, incomprehensibly, it rose out of him, and he gave himself to it, wailing.  Wailing, not for himself, or not only for himself, but for Winnie, for his brother, his ex-wife, his children—he wailed himself to sleep.