A Story of the Cosmos

Charlie’s walk home was lonely. Autumn had begun to show its face on the mountain town of Burburry. The cool wind breezing from the lake stirred leaves and threatened the heat of the summer. His eyes were still wet and the wind bit at the moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes, making him blink away both the pain and the tears. The leaves were still green but that would change soon. They would eventually fall and collect in the corners of the town. The larger houses, old farmhouses mostly, would gather up the foliage in huge trash bags and leave them at the side of the road. Those bags would then be collected by the Town and deposited in the town green for the Town’s yearly Autumnal celebrations.

                The trailers, interspersed between the mansions and the farmhouses would just let the foliage sit and rot into the grass. Old broken down cars and busses and tractors would be covered with stuff by late October. The bits of organic fire would gather in oddest recesses of the equipment, stirred only by the brusque breeze. Some of those places had cows or goats or horses and all of those were allowed to feed freely on the grass. During the winter time those same yards would be turned into mud pits. Thick sheets of snow would cover the mud pits, only to be dug out by those same animals.

                Charlie opened the Styrofoam container and looked at the mac and cheese inside. It was yellow, creamy, and the only thing that looked homemade about it was the oversized macaroni bits that Rachael loved to use. The roast beef sandwich was wrapped in plastic wrap far too many times. The wheat bread pressed against dripping bits of roast beef and an oversized piece of lettuce peppered with dark slimy bits.

                He thought the sandwich would hold better than the mac so he took the small plastic fork included with the mac and dug in. It was salty and creamy and also a bit tacky. It tasted like his childhood. Every so often he would stop, look around a take a bite of his meal. Everyone was still busy in town so he was free to walk undisturbed. Usually old man Tommy was sitting out on his porch, drinking Budweiser with his hand down his pants, and rocking back and forth on a poorly home-made swing. He’d leer at Charlie when Charlie walked by, always raising his beer to the sky and pointing off west towards the lake.

                Janice would be out in her garden, snipping and snapping with these pearl white gloves that never seemed to gather dirt. She’d sneer at him and cross her heart with her left hand, drawing an imaginary line from just under her left breast to the furthest corner of her right breast. It was the same sign the farmer’s used when praising the horizon.

                But it was the day before the congregation gathered and each of the residents of Burburry were nothing if not pious.

                Charlie’s shack wasn’t far away from Cynthia’s, but by the time he got back home he finished his meal. He lived on his parent’s’ old property. The original house he left untouched, deciding to live in a small garage his father built before he passed. It took a while, but four years later Charlie’d managed to make the place something resembling a home. It wasn’t his home, but a home.

                Opening the solid steel door he’d pilfered from the local feed mill, he turned around and latched the dead bolt, lock, three chains, and then lifted a two by four and set it across the door. The rest of the shack was compact. A double bed was tucked into the left corner with its sheets askew and tossed about. A small kitchenette sat just next to the bed complete with a sink, stovetop, and old microwave. He built a custom corner shower into the far right corner and set a toilet just next to that.

                He kept the place as clean as he could, but such tight quarters often meant that the filth of living sometimes was too much. Right now it was clean, but for the wrong reasons. Charlie reached into a cabinet just under his sink and pulled out a backpack full of supplies. He took the roast beef sandwich out from the Styrofoam container and deposited it into the bag. The rest of his supplies included a hatchet, a hatchet holster he could wrap around his chest, a lighter, three thirty-two ounce bottles of water, and about four days’ worth of food.

                He couldn’t leave yet, no, the congregation would know. But then when would he leave? They were always watching and he was always afraid. The forest was risky and full of unexpected cliffs and stream beds. The roads were watched. But all he had to do was make it fifteen miles down the mountain. Fifteen miles and he would be free.