OF A LATE SEPTEMBER'S BOUNTY

That’s and old place where the rain finally came in the night and stayed the entire day afterwards. Cold, almost ominous, but worse in a way, - vacant, - nobody there anymore and its nothing like it once was. There was a time when it was decades before and the police cars were yellow. On Friday night they used to go travel slowly down what was at that time a gravel pathway beside the ravine’s edge. 

Moving, moving, - and looking ‘round. They would pass a small bridge and then a larger one. Going by the area where the city would let off fireworks in the summer. Suburban roads up the way, and there is a large bridge. The water from all the streets came down in the storms and the whole thing became a fast current then. Not most Fridays though. Most times the cars would come out back to the edge and the police would have taken the cases of beer from the teenagers. It seemed they let the teenagers go, just walk off, and that was that, everyone continuing their night. 

 

There was a house on the end of the ravine’s way. High up on the third floor over a balcony was a small room. One time in middle night, or perhaps what they call the witching hour, the spirit of a small boy came to the resident of the room. The spirit hovered at the foot of the bed and tried to talk, was talking, but no sound could be heard. A spectre in a liminal time, lost, misplaced, - it pleaded with the resident for some kind of help. The inhabitant became startled and began to get up. Again, the phantom child tried to, with much motion of the arms and moving about, ask the resident to stay, to listen, to help….

Since it was not to be, - the previously slumbering child ran down the hallways for help. Soon the ghost boy came out of the room and followed the contour and shape of the stairs, flying, flying, flying. He went through the front door and was never to be seen or heard from again.

Brick and mortar and I-beams and steel usually stay. Ghosts run away. But not the ghosts of memory. The days became warm and cold at turns, and the rustle of leaves became a song if the autumnal winds decided to flare up and throw themselves and those leaves along the wall. They danced in the late September storms, another summer, robust for its flavorful time, hues, songs, people, and other,- had, as the ghost had, receded.

Still, and for a few weeks longer, a yellow car, and sometimes two together, would make a round down the ravine’s way. And sometimes drove even when the rain patted down on the roofs and balconies, on black iron gates well wrought and handsomely painted, on the sour cherry tree, and on the deep purple plums of a late September’s bounty.

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