Simple Bill liked to sit near the white brick wall by the old bread factory, where the few neighborhood fishermen still around made a path to the river.
The wall had a purpose once, as most walls do, though neither Simple Bill nor the cops nor the fishermen knew what it was.
Bill wanted to see what was on the other side of the wall.
If you watched him, from the first day he sat down...it was 1978, though he doesn’t remember and doesn’t grasp the concept of a calendar...and asked him why he dug at the mortar, he would have told you “I want to see what’s on the other side.”
And you would have said to him, unable to stop yourself or contain the buzzing flies of sarcasm and derision, “stand up and walk around it, dummy, it’s only eleven feet long.”
But no one asked Simple Bill. People said hi, and the ladies from the church gave him jelly sandwiches, but no one asked him why he scraped and dug.
At first, Simple Bill used a key, and he was content with that, until one of the boys with the spray cans left behind a pocket knife.
Bill loved that pocket knife.
If you asked him about it, he would tell you he couldn’t have a pocket knife in the group home, so he stashed it every night before he left the wall.
But no one asked him about his pocket knife.
No one asked him how he remembered he stashed the pocket knife in different places, but he remembered, and every day there was a fresh happiness when he found it.
One day the pocket knife became too short, or the hole in the mortar became too deep.
Simple Bill searched for and found a piece of wire that he could use to scrape through to the other side.
He was scraping at the hole the day the people came to discuss making the area a “Public Greenspace and Pedestrian Promenade.”
A cop told the people his name, and that he was harmless.
He knew his name. He did not know what harmless meant, but the strange new people left him alone to twist and scrape and try to make a hole, so he could see through to the other side of the wall.
***
Delton Peebles had seen a lot of shit as a city cop. Sad shit, funny shit, crazy shit, disgusting shit.
But when he saw the wall was gone he sucked in his breath and whistled loud, inadvertently, on the exhale.
Simple Bill is gonna freak.
A fisherman came north, up the path, that was now cordoned off by surveyor’s wooden spikes and Day-Glo pink string.
He looked to his left, where the wall had been, over to Delton, down sheepishly at the poorly wrapped, open forty ouncer he carried, and back to Delton.
“Simple Bill gon’ lose his mind when he finds his wall gone.”
Delton smiled.
“First damn thing I thought.”
The fisherman nodded and kept walking, grateful the cop didn’t harass him about the beer.
Delton wandered down toward the river, the sun starting to blind from the east every time he passed a gap in the buildings.
He checked the riverfront, skipping his usual loop around the amphitheater.
He wanted to be at the top of the trail when Simple Bill got there.
Delton Peebles had never heard Simple Bill make a noise louder than a belch, but as he walked the trail...the one that would soon be a “promenade”, he felt like he might hear a shriek or a wail, or...something.
Delton crossed over closer to the rail viaduct, the one that had been a shooting gallery and would now be a street art installation,
He glanced over the angled cement, and there was Simple Bill.
He was on his knees.
Praying?
Crying?
Both?
Neither.
Delton, who had spoken to more than one bereaved parent in eighteen years, was afraid to talk to Simple Bill.
If he hadn’t been, if he had worked up the courage--courage he didn’t need--to ask Simple Bill,
Simple Bill would have told him that he was glad to finally see what was on the other side of the wall. It wasn’t exactly how he imagined it, but that was ok.
He stood, holding his pocket knife and the old wire coat hanger, and went looking for another mystery to solve.
***
Photo by Harleen Kaur Sethi on Unsplash
the buzzing flies of sarcasm and derision
Nice!