No. 120 — Reunion

A dark late-spring night back in the Yard all the lights switched off. Shadows, statues, shapes; grass criss-crossed by ropes and concrete, the moonlight glinting in the puddles. In the maze of paths, nothing is flat. Nothing is straight except those ropes, pulled tight. Time forgot how good I was at jumping fences. One leg over, body sideways. Then, just jump. And run. Ropes and fences. I lay down on the blanket, the wet grass muted by the fleece, but still there to feel beneath me. I waited. And then the music lit up the night. As he emerged through the fog, A Hoop-It-Up T-shirt and cargo shorts, and a pair of those Air Max '97s, the silver bullets caught the light like the water. Headphones. The music swelled as I watched him walk, his lips formed precisely around every rhyme. He bobbed his head. I tapped my bare foot on the dew. 25 years merged into the same melody. And then I saw it. A gray bucket with a white plastic handle, swinging from his arm. I watched his fingers dance on the plastic. Wait. Was he the one playing the song that filled up the Yard, that filled up the night and my mind? I watched him turn his head in my direction, his eyes like small stones in the moonlight. But he wasn't seeing me. He was looking at his classmates in the brightness of a spring afternoon, sprawled across the Yard, frisbees flying, a boy playing a guitar, clusters of girls on blankets. All he wanted to do was sit down and listen. I heard the music rise in the darkness and the light. He walked faster. On his way to clean his classmates' bathrooms. No one ever asked him what that march through the Yard made him feel. I saw him walk through those old gates. I felt the plastic spinning in my hand And our fingers began to dance.