Subscription

It struck Pearl as peculiar, how purposefully the boy seemed to have come to a stop in front of her home. How, without so much as a glance in her direction he had dismounted his bicycle, leaned it mindfully against the pickets, opened the gate and let himself into her yard.

A blonde boy, he carried over his shoulder a large canvas bag, ink grayed, with the word TIMES printed where it bellied, bold enough that Pearl did not need her eyeglasses to read.

    Coming up the walk, the boy removed from the bag what looked by the heft of its roll to be a Sunday newspaper, which he offered to Pearl at the foot of the stair.

     His eyes were the bursting blue of cornflowers and Pearl leaned forward in her rocker as much to better see them as to make out what the boy was saying.

It’s free, was what she thought she had heard and so asked the boy, ‘Free?’

‘Yes, maim,’ he replied, and one, two, three, up the stairs he came, placing the rolled newspaper into Pearl’s outstretched and unsteady hands.

‘Just this once,’ the boy said. ‘You see if you like it. And if you do, then you can subscribe.’

Pearl looked away from the boy’s cornflower eyes. She studied the newspaper. Felt its heft. ‘I didn’t think ...’ she began.

Hadn’t her daughter told her that newspapers were a thing of the past. That everything was online now and if she wanted to read the News, she would need to get a computer.

But Pearl didn't want a computer. She didn’t want to read the news either. Any part of the paper for that matter. That was Harold’s joy, and Harold was gone. Pearl only wanted to hear the regular morning thump of it on the porch, to witness on occasion the backhanded toss from the street, the paper’s slow arch and spin, the nearness of it to the doormat.

She smelled the ink now, the warmed canvas of the boy’s carrying bag. She wanted to subscribe. ‘Let me get my coin purse,’ she said, and made to rise.

The boy offered his hand, ‘Don't worry about that now, ’ he said, helping her to her feet. 

Peculiar, she thought, how strong he is, and looking over his shoulder, Pearl could no longer see the bicycle, propped beside the gate.

Quick Sketch of a Tall Reader

Charlie had often heard that shorter humans live longer than taller humans do. Something about the addition work required of the heart to get the blood to those more distant extremities. 

Being six foot five, this sometimes worried Charlie and he would have to remind himself of family members who had lived well into their nineties at heights that, while not freakish, would not be considered normal. 

He was a thin kind of tall, with large hands and large feet, large ears and a hawkish nose that seemed bent on removing his eyeglasses whenever he put them on to read, which Charlie did often.
    He had always been a big reader. His mother used to say that it was words that had made him grow so tall, as Charlie ate no more than she absolutely required, only read and read and read. Even at the dinner table. He would fork in his peas, his roast beef or mashed potatoes, never taking his eyes off the book beside his plate. Read, methodically chew and every third sentence, push his eyeglasses back up into place.  

                                                                                                        

A Tidbit About Walks and Flowers and Signs of Pie

Head down, watching his boots appear and disappear, the puffs of dust in their dropping, Carl had not seen the little road and was startled by its sudden presence, as if it had been a snake he had come upon walking and not merely a jog to the west. 

The road was half again as small as the road he walked, converging at a fair angle to make a tight wedge in which clouds of elderflower hung in a thick of thistle and daylilies, a sort of sunset, Carl mused, of lavender and orange fire. Planted in with the growth there was a sign, a whitewashed clapboard on which black letters had been carefully executed to indicate that fresh eggs and seasonal pies could be found up the little road in less than one mile’s time. 

Carl had no need for eggs at the moment, but had never turned down an invitation of any sort for pie, and curious as to what might be seasonal, veered from his northward course, west in the direction the  well-painted sign had so meticulously suggested.