by Geoff Gouveia
illustration by Geoff Gouveia
The old man strolled silent and confident on the sidewalk. Wearing his signature coat, the blue corduroy with brown button one, he walked the same mile everyday to his favorite coffee shop. The people he passed whispered or yelled out his name; familiarity gave Richard notoriety in the small town he returned to. Richard walked by each day, chipping away at the layer of rubber on his shoes. His stilted walk was slow and chunked with a limp that wore down his left shoe faster than his right. He leaned left after his fall. It was then his children pleaded with him to yield for a wheelchair. Walking is all I have to combat the shake he told them with his thin lipped mouth. His wife had passed ten years earlier and his children were encouraged to get on with their own lives. Richard carried in his right hand a black notebook filled with sketches of days past. His ancient knuckles warbled against a diary of drawings that marked the days as much as the lines on his skin did.
At the café Richard sat and drew everything his mind processed. If he tired of thinking, he drew the customers in line. Richard used to be paid for his drawings, before the galleries flipped with new owners and sought fresh talent. The old man packaged his framed pieces and put them in the same room in the back of his one story house his wife lived the last few months of her life in. He let his artistic aspirations die with her but Richard deepened his craft by staring down his own mind with the pen in hand, examining his own psyche. Because of this he knew himself and because of this he shook and in California it was not cold. To curb the shake he had an ounce or two or six of Jack Daniel’s Honey, a poor mans scotch. He used to drink the good stuff, the stuff everyone glinted their eyes at when he had company. His wife would shine and scoff her rose cheeks at his attempt to become more of a man by drinking courage. Richard did not drink too much, he drank just enough. He drank at night but in the morning he tried warming himself with the coffee the shop served him.
The baristas called him Captain, though no mention of his lack of military and boating experience ever shied them away from his nickname. To them, Captain was their grandparent and unlike their real grandparents, they came into harmless contact with him everyday. They loved his jacket that was worn smooth at the elbows and the buttons he buttoned to the top though they never noticed him rocking in small shaking rhythms. On hot days he wore the corduroy coat but Richard donned the faded blue shorts he bought from his trip to Argentina in the late 90’s, his wife’s last goodbye to her family. The true reason he loved to visit the coffee shop was to walk by the barbecue restaurant and smell the cooked meat. It brought him back to that final trip, the smell from the asados wafted into his nose and transformed into the physical warmth his wife had provided.
It had been this spot that he spotted his young wife back in his twenties. There he sat near the court with crystal fragile eyes that searched the crowd. When he saw a girl who looked like his wife, a younger stronger alive version of her, he smiled.
And then he didn’t shake, nor did he feel the chill.
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