“Has my package come yet, Ricky?”

“No, sir. Mr. Newton- who are you expecting this package from?”

“Not sure, really. I have a feeling the package will come before my big race.”

“Ah yes, your big race.”

The mat scuffed on Mr. Newton’s walker, folding above the left faded green tennis ball.

Ricky walked from behind the welcome counter. “Do you need help with that?”

“No, no. Watch this.” Mr. Newton leaned back on his ancient feet while his hands shook. They gripped the anchor that prevented his floating into the next life. The walker raised and Mr. Newton flicked his wrist to shed the entanglement. Mr. Newton was free to run.

“And I’m off!”

Ricky laughed and patted him on the back and began to walk with him.

“How was the weather on your Tuesday walk?”

“Perfect for racing. If I keep this up, I’ll be in good shape for the race next week.”

“Did you used to run?”

“Run? Hell- I flew. They called me Jacky-boy and I was the fastest with my lime green shoes. I still got it though and next week at this time, you’ll see me running that race. Racing is everything. When you race, you’re remembered. You’re celebrated after you’ve won. You’ll see what I’m talking about - I’ll round that corner with the dust behind me. Jacky-boy’s a comin’ home.”

Jacky-boy straightened up as Ms. Lunkin rolled by in her wheelchair. He turned his head as she wheeled by and made eye contact with her. Ricky patted him on the back again.

“You and Ms. Lunkin, huh?”

“Gracie? She’s been cheeky lately- eyein’ me for weeks she has. Likes these guns I guess.” He slid back onto his heels to shake the walker with bravado. His shoes smoothed at the sides by the tired maneuver. He winked at Ricky.

Jacky-boy wanted to make Ricky comfortable with a leisurely pace. He matched Ricky’s slow feet, dragging his against the walker. The walker was a guise for all the other people in the home. Jacky-boy smiled with it, content to keep up the charade as long as Ricky walked beside him.

While he waited for Ricky to catch up, Mr. Newton let his shoulders drop under the yellow painting of his old running grounds. It had the same valley and dusted brown trees that lined the banks. After he’d run he’d blow his nose to release the dust in him while his chest breathed fire. The painter must’ve run the grounds and then stolen inspiration from it, using intense oranges to burn like runner’s lungs.

“Mr. Newton? Are you alright?”

Jacky-boy turned his head as far as his left side would allow.

“Oh yes. You’ve caught up. Let’s get to it.”

A checkered flag welcome mat slept at the base of Room 223’s door. Jacky-boy jangled his keys between his giant tree knot knuckles. His lips mirrored the movements of the clanking metal. During intense moments of concentration his eyebrows threatened to close his eyes with their curtain drop, the long white hairs encroaching on his vision. The door popped open and his eyebrows ceased their meeting to plot blind sabotage. The walker turned left and Ricky held it towards the door.

“No, no Ricky- I’ve done this hundreds a times. It’s my backwards dismount. Just watch.”

The slow spin on the walker preceded the scooting backwards into the room, the door bouncing off his scrawny back and bony hip. When the walker cleared the checkered flag, Jacky-boy raised his right hand to wave off Ricky.

“Don’t hide my package from me. It should be here any moment. In fact, while you were walkin’ – slow I might add- you probably got it on the desk. I need it for my race.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Newton. I’ll check on that right away.”

The checkered flag faded as Ricky walked back down the hall, passed the poor impressionistic painting.

The yellows sagged into the browns and all the whites popped in unison with the mild peaks and shallow valleys. The sky held smoky grays above the red-orange treetops. As a boy, he had started a fire in that same field. His grandmother doused the fire and agreed not to tell his mother. Surely the painter lived not far from that episode – the crackle of brushfire dictating his frenzied brushstroke.

The hall narrowed and then expanded as he returned to his desk. A ring called out at regular intervals, increasing in volume with each step. His pace quickened. A light flickered on the telephone. Line one an urgent blinking yellow.

“Ricky? Can you come clean up the dining room? Ms. Lunkin had an accident.”

Ricky ventured back down the hall, away from the checkered flag room and towards the dining tables. Ms. Lunkin sat hunched over. Her eyes held a permanent glaze ahead as the nurses around her cleaned the food from her bib. She stared at Ricky as she breathed with deep pulls into her chest from her nostrils and expelled the air with twitching lips. Ricky mopped the floor and smiled at Ms. Lunkin. She stared through Ricky as he carried the trash out of the room.

The sun glinted off the trashcan when he lifted the lid to throw away the refuse. He turned to come back inside. A simple kraft-brown box sat quiet near the daisies in the planter outside the sliding glass door. The box had the numbers 223 written in black ink on the side with a weak scrawled hand. The same hand wrote Jacky-boy underneath it in equally shaky lettering. A white paper 0n top of the box graced with flowery cursive writing: Found this out front.

He walked with both hands under the box back past the impressionistic painting and over the idle checkered flag. His knock stood alone for several moments before a scuffle of tennis balled metallic legs rubbed the carpet on the other side of the door. The knob fiddled and Ricky held steady the package to keep it level. The door cracked open and Mr. Newton’s ancient faded blue eyes poked through the slit.

“I knew it was here. I’ll need these for my race.”

Jacky-boy leaned over his walker and teetered on fickle balance. His hands shook at the wrists but his eyes never left the package. Ricky counterbalanced the box back into Jacky-boy, sending him to safety in the correct stance behind the bars.

“Would you like help with that?”

“No, no that’s quite unnecessary. Watch this.” Jacky-boy twirled in his mind while his feet lost the communication somewhere around his hips. The delayed performance left Ricky standing with the regret of accepting refusal for help.

“Have a good evening, Mr. Newton.”

In the late afternoon light the shadows made the blues in the painting gray. Ricky could smell the smoldering dry grass. The yellow grass burned quickest and resisted the dust he had kicked at it. He checked the hall for signs of smoke, shaking his head as he found his place at his desk.

* *

One by one Ricky set the BINGO cards out on the tables in the dining room. The residents filed in, trickling towards their usual Wednesday perches. The four tables filled at nine and then the numbers began to call out. Ricky scanned the room but found Ms. Lunkin’s table one shy of their seven.

“Where’s Mr. Newton?” Ricky asked the table. The gentlemen smiled and shrugged while the ladies shook their head and wished to return to the game.

“Don’t you remember?”

Ricky spun towards Ms. Lunkin. Her eyes lost their silver glaze and shone with wet brilliance. In full possession of her life, Gracie smiled. “He’s racing.” Her eyes faded back into their muddied crystal color as she put down a BINGO chip. The landline rang in the distance.

The number one blinked as a ceaseless beacon. Ricky held the phone to his ear.

“Ricky, we have a code blue. I’ll need some help moving him.”

“Room number?”

“223.”

Ricky let the phone find its home in the receiver before he walked in a brisk pace down the hall, past the narrow opening and the yellow painting of his grandmother’s field and stepped over the checkered welcome mat into the faux tiled kitchenette through to the living room to find Mr. Newton hunched over with his chin tucking close to his knees, both hands dangled towards the floor. The nurse stood by him.

“We found him like this before morning medication.” On the table, the 223 weak scrawled box laid ripped open and empty. Tissue left a trail to the couch nearest Mr. Newton.

“It’s a code blue alright. I was just with him, though. What happened?”

“Not sure. I do believe it has something to do with this.” The nurse held up a lime green shoe with a single stripe on the side, the laces interlocked in her fingers. She pointed at Mr. Newton’s foot.

His hands dangled forward. The left hand held its palm towards the ankle sock that fed into the missing shoe.

“Putting on that must've caused his heart to race.”

Ricky left the room to retrieve the wheeled stretcher. A diagonal sunbeam crawled along the floor until it scampered up the wall onto the painting of the field. The morning light muted the yellows, milked the whites and softened the browns. The colors became an invitation out of his heated memory.

It looked like a place where one might take a run.

 

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