Alki

Bill was on his knees with a pair of old grass clippers, the kind that resembled scissors. He was working away at the grass surrounding an old fire hydrant. Bill was intent. He knew it had to be there. He was pretty sure this was the right hydrant. Alki Beach looked like a completely different place from when he lived here with his young family. Back then every day was a wonder. The city water authority had been working on the bulkhead on the edge of Elliott Bay, and at the same time the City was putting in a new hydrant……this exact one, he thought, but he could be wrong. Their former little house was now replaced by one of nearly a hundred tall apartments and condominiums.

While he was cutting the grass around the hydrant he heard a horse coming up the street. It was a police officer who stopped and addressed him: “Care to tell me what it is your doing?” “Sure officer,” Bill said “Just what it looks like. I’m clipping the grass around the hydrant.” “That’s city property, you know” The officer said. “ And you don’t look like a parks department staff to me.” That much was true. Bill just looked like an old man with very old-fashioned grass clippers that no one used anymore. City staff would likely make short work of this with a weed whacker, but they hadn’t. They had just let the grass grow over the concrete square placed in front of his house back in 1986. They had just let history disappear. “ I used to live right here in a little house. This stretch of Alki used to be full of little old beach houses. You probably never saw it that way. You are too young.” ‘You are right about that, the officer replied, but what exactly are you trying to do here?” “If I am right”, said Bill” On this concrete around the hydrant, we carved our initials. I’m just trying to recover a bit of that dream of a time when miracles were daily occurrences. We had a new marriage, a new baby, everything, was a miracle.” Bill kept clipping grass.

“Back then, in that little old beach cabin that no longer exists Lori and I couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. We would make out on the floor beneath the plate glass window. People strolling by us on the street. We used to call it Home Box Office, back when that too, was a brand new thing. We’d wake up and make coffee each morning and look out at the bay and like clockwork, two small tugs would pass by our window. Know what they were called? One was the Magic, and the other was the Mystery and that’s what life was like back then.”

“But not any more?” the officer asked.

“Well, the house is gone along with the hair on my head. And the tugs are probably long gone too. And Home Box Office has changed its name. It’s different, but let me tell you officer, we still have the magic and the mystery all these years later. Almost 40 years ago we wanted to record the beauty of the time. We were here, and it was good and I think that recording is still here on this slab of concrete, and I just wanted to see it and take a picture of it and send it to Lori, like the sentimental old fool that I am.”

“I don’t know about that.” The Officer said. “I think you are a lucky man. You have a good day, sir.”

“Thanks, officer! All the best to you.” Bill said.

And all of these years later when mystery was more common than magic, his knees were starting to ache, and the arthritis in his hands rebelled as the last bits of grass were sheered away. You could almost see the initials covered with dirt and sand, half broken on the crumbling corner were the 37-year-old lines that you couldn’t really decipher as initials anymore. Bill took out his cel phone, laid down next to the crumbling corner of the hydrant and took a selfie of his love-struck face, and sent it off to Lori over the magical airwaves.

Then, of course, Bill had to figure out how to get back up off the cold ground, which was no easy task, and remember where he had parked the car.

— DanielSouthGate