(S)wine — “Fiction…sometimes”

–My favourite fairy tale is the one in which the little girl strikes matches on the sides of houses in order to keep warm.
The old man sat on a bench in the sun by the side of the large grass field in front of the Atheneum. He watched two boys hold hands and play cowboys and Indians. They made guns out of their thumbs and forefingers.
–The sickness that bleeds inside of me is a terrible nuisance. It’s consumption. Everything drains out into the stomach and I can feel it mostly during the day.
One of the boys stopped his playing and walked up to the pensioner who had found a particle of food stuck in his false teeth and was chewing on it with his fake molars while rubbing his hands. The boy cocked his head and squinted from the glare of the sun coming off the freshly-painted white bench. The old man became melancholic.
–My father was a hard man. Just like yours, perhaps. He worked in salt mines in Parajd. He never liked my wife. I loved her. He didn’t. We got married for small change and after that my father said I will give you no money. When I was a boy like you I fell off the back of a horse drawn carriage upon seeing Satan whip the animal and shake the reins. He took off his teeth and I fell off into the mud. When I was a boy.
The old man removed his false teeth and laughed. The boy stood in front of him and squinted from the glare of the sun coming off the freshly-painted white bench.
–My first wife is now dead. My second wife is pretty. She has a twisted foot. I have bought her a white dress. She is thirty-two and I am seventy-eight. I have bought her many pairs of shoes. She has dozens of them. But she has a twisted foot. I buy straight shoes.
The boy said:
–Let me see your hands.
The old man flipped up his palms.
–You are a happy man?
The boy said and cocked his head and squinted from the glare of the sun coming off the freshly-painted white bench.
The old man said:
–And a good man too. Ask around town. I am a bricklayer and I am seventy-eight years of age. I hate old age. My name is Lynn.
The boy stood in the warm spring light in front of the bench in the sun by the side of the large grass field in front of the Atheneum. He watched the old man’s hands tremble under their own weight. He said:
–I can take your warts off the hands without blood coming out. You can write me letters after. I can take them off without pain. I won’t charge you. All is free.