wrong-right

It was an old porch with four uneven steps.  The whole thing was possessed by a heavy slant to the right.  I used to sit out there in the mornings, reading, eating breakfast, watching the world wakeup around me.  It wasn’t good to sit like that, on that type of slope.  Food was always running off the side of my plate.  Drinks tipped over and rolled off the edge into the planter.  Too much blood drained into the right side of my body sitting up there.  When I got up, the next few hours would be off kilter.  It gave me a propensity to turn right.  I was making the wrong-right turns all day long.  During that time, there were plenty of wrong rights, that’s the way life was back then.

I drove by that old house the other day.  I put the truck in neutral and coasted by.  An old sight can dig up memories that would otherwise never be excavated.  I remembered books that I’d read and never thought about again.  I remembered sneaking out there with a joint many a nights.  I remembered that dizzying feeling of standing up after sitting for too long on that slanted porch.

The next morning, before the sun came up, I got in my truck and aimed it toward those old memories.  I didn’t have to think about much.  The steering wheel remembered how to get there without much encouragement.  I turned a street early.  A right turn, but this was on purpose.  I let it run to a stop and took the key out.  I didn’t give myself much thinking time.  I was going on momentum, surrendering to it.

There was a little Nissan in the drive.  It was parked with a layer of morning dew on the windshield.  There was a moment of hesitation like a rock in my shoe.  It hitched my stride, but I ignored it.  I walked up those steps in a way I’d done thousands of times before.  A newcomer might have caught his toe on one of the taller steps and went ass-over-tea-kettle.  My knees knew what to expect.  I was smooth up those steps.  I was up and I was standing back on familiar, tilted territory.

The new owners had a chair out there.  It wasn’t like the one I kept on the porch.  My chair was made of rusted metal.  It was old from the start.  The lengths of the legs didn’t match.  Maybe it counteracted some of the slant, or maybe it exasperated it, I don’t remember.  I adjusted their chair.  It was a wicker one, real light, like you might fall through it if you sat down too fast.  I unfolded the newspaper I had stuffed in the waistband of my pants.  I sat down gingerly.  There was a feeling like I would fall right over into the roses.  They’d planted roses where I had a patch of dandelions.  People don’t consider them proper flowers, but a flower was a flower to me.  I always felt that way, even back then.

I didn’t bring anything to eat.  I did, for a second, imagine a breakfast plate in my lap.  I imagined breaking the yolk of an egg and trying to sop it up with toast before it ran off the edge of the plate.  This little game of imagination made me smile.

The sun was coming up, beginning to change the world, the way it did every morning.  I sat there, leaning back in the chair, watching the sky.  It was like watching a bruise on a time-lapse video.  One second it was dirty purple, the next pink, then it worked its way to peach and finally everything was going blue.

I got through a few articles in the paper.  Most of it was trash; op-ed pieces, tragedies, presidential election propaganda.  I got through what I could and tossed the paper down beside me.  A bird came down and took a nip at the corner of the paper.  It got away with a scarp and perched itself on the railing.  It was giving me sideways bird eyes.  That piece of newsprint hung there like a two-dimensional worm.   Then I got uncomfortable with it staring at me.  I made move for it and it took to the sky with the paper still in its beak.

I went on thinking about old things.  Remembering old days and old nights were everything began on that sloped porch.  While I was down memory lane, the door opened.  There was no warning.  It burst open.  The screen caught me on the toes.  It was a man with a wide behind.  He’d used it to jar open the door.  His hands were full; a pail with a few sandwiches tucked away, his keys in the other hand, a powdered doughnut between his lips.

He saw me when he turned around and almost went up through the roof.  There was a little yell that came through the doughnut.  A puff of powdered sugar rained down.  He put his ass to the wall and watched me.  I found that amusing, being watched so suspiciously, in such close quarters, by a man with a doughnut between his lips.

I leaned down and got my newspaper, stood up, got my balance, and walked down the steps.  I could feel the man watching me.  I went down the steps without trouble.  Made a right turn when I got to the end of the drive.  I gave a look back over my shoulder.  I nodded.  I didn’t notice the face he was making.  The doughnut was still in his teeth, but smaller, like he’d nibbled some.  He stood with one foot out to the side to adjust for the slant.  He wasn’t accustomed to it, not yet.  It takes years to get used to a porch like that.

I made another right turn and had to go all the way around the block to get back to my car.  It felt good making those right turns.  I felt the blood evening out in my body.

I meant to drive by the house on the way out.  I wanted to see if the big-assed man was still standing there in shock with his powdered doughnut.   I made a wrong-right turn and ended up in the opposite direction.  It was okay.  I’d enjoyed my time on the porch.  It was good to sit there and remember for a while.  I made a right turn and headed for home.