The roses were in full bloom in the park, and were all really quite beautiful. But the day was overcast, and a sense of looming tension hung above the grass like a disease. No one was out today – if it wasn't the ominous looking clouds that kept them away, then it was the sharp bite in the air; if it wasn't the sharp bite in the air, then it was the sobering news from the military that though the war was over, not everyone would be coming back.
And under those gray, heavy clouds sat one dejected young man, sitting with his elbows on his knees and staring intensely into the grass. He had short dark brown hair, recently grown out from the harsh cut of the war, and a handsome, regal face. His eyes were a deep brown, and they stormed almost as much as the sky above him. They were tumultuous, searching for something they knew they would not get. There was a look of distance and sadness around him, which gave him a handsome sort of loneliness, just the right amount of unattainability, that may have intrigued women.
If someone knew him, they'd have known that he'd been sitting on this bench every day at six o'clock, after he got off work at the office. They'd know that day after day, rain, shine, sleet, hail, he would always, always be there. And he always sat alone.
Until today.
Today, another figure made her way up the hill to take a seat next to him on that bench. She looked about his same age, maybe a bit younger. Her hair was light blonde, curly, and bounced at her shoulders. Her eyes were bright brown and her lips brighter red. She lit a cigarette next to the man and crossed her long legs.
And they sat.
The woman wore a nurse's uniform, and her bag sat at her feet. As she puffed on her cigarette, one arm slung casually over the back of the bench, the man noticed her presence with a baffled sort of expression on his face.
"Couple of low-lifes, ain't we?" She asked, noticing his look, and the man had to answer.
"Couple of people sitting on a bench is what we are," he told her. His voice was deep and smooth.
The woman laughed heartily. "So, what's your deal? What deep, dark thing do you harbor in your heart and come here to brood over? What'd you do that was so bad you skulk here when it looks like the sky'll open up at any moment?"
The man stiffened. "That's awfully presumptuous. Can't a man enjoy a cool afternoon in the park without being pestered by overly intrusive strangers?"
The woman, unimpressed, raised her eyebrows at him and indicated to the park with her cigarette. "You see this place? This ain't no place people come to enjoy a cool afternoon. This place is straight dismal and reeks of loneliness," she squinted at him, "a little like you, I'd think. This is a place where people come to re-live their regrets, keep 'em alive, make sure they don't get too happy with their lives and forget all the wrong they done."
The man frowned at her. "Perhaps I just like to think."
"Trust me Honey, ain't no one like to think that much."
They were silent then, inches apart, yet feeling uniquely alone. The man listened to the slow chirp of crickets and the mechanic whir of the cars on the neighboring street. He heard the squeak of the swings as they caught the wind, heard the leaves as they rustled above. The woman watched him from time to time, watched the way he stared at the trees on either side of them, the way he marveled at their height, the way he seemed mesmerized by the slow up and down movement of their branches.
"I killed a man," she said suddenly. The man turned to look at her, raising his eyebrows in a bored sort of way that suggested he really wasn't surprised at all.
"What for?"
She tapped the ashes from her cigarette and paused to think before answering. "For killin' all my friends."
The man thought for a moment. "Well, then you'd think he deserved it."
She flicked ashes from her cigarette again casually. "I didn't know anything about him, Sonny. All I knew was the uniform he came in with and that frightened look in his eyes. He just wanted water, he told me. Water's all he wanted." She shrugged. "But all I could see was the blood on his hands. I couldn't see his hurt, his terror, the lives on his mind. All I could see was all that death, all those boys – my boy – wearing our uniforms and piling up by the minute. He was the culprit, you see. He alone harbored all my hate. He alone took my boy away from me, he alone was to blame. In him I rooted my loathing." She paused and looked at the stranger next to her with clear, blue eyes. "And I killed him."
The man was silent.
"I killed him," she continued, taking his silence as permission to go on. "It was so easy. I ignored him; I tended to the others and shoved him in a corner, and he was dead by morning. I watched him," she nodded, "I watched him go. I watched the light fade from his eyes." She shrugged. "I didn't feel any better then. It didn't help any. In fact, I cried like a baby over his dead body. I cried because I was human. I cried because I let my selfishness and ignorance rule my actions. I killed a man when he was in need because he was fighting against my country, was fighting for the force that killed my fiancé, was begging for my mercy."
She took a deep breath, and the man noticed a tear clinging to her eyelashes. "I ain't never told anybody that before."
They were silent again after that, and the man felt, for the first time in a long time, as if he had meaning. This woman had confided in him a secret she'd harbored in her soul, a secret much too close to him for him to treat it with indifference. He felt almost honored by her admission, and could not find the words to express the sudden gratitude he felt, until he did:
"I killed a man, too."
The woman looked at him, surprised.
He nodded, staring hard at the ground, his voice thick. "His name was Phineas, and I killed him. He was my best friend. He was one of those people that were just so good at everything; he was strong, funny, outgoing, and handsomer than the rest of us. And I killed him." His words were coming fast and joined together, but he was afraid that if he stopped, he would never start again. "I was jealous, I was . . . jealous of Finny. I never told him, of course, because I didn't realize it then. I was so desperate to escape it, the jealousy, that I fell prey to it. I kept my thoughts and my feelings to myself, locked away from the critical eye of an honest self-examination. I kept the truth of what I felt away from myself because I was afraid of what it might mean. So I made up excuses, reasons for his actions to prove to myself that he was in the wrong, that I was not jealous, that I was in the right. And I'm not sure if I hated him, honestly, or loved him. I believe I was somewhere in between, really, between admiration and dislike.
"And one day, I suppose it all came out. We were in a tree, rather like this one, and, in a moment that seems now to last forever in my mind, I jounced the limb and he fell. He broke his leg. His chances for enlisting and sports were over. And I knew. I knew it'd been me, I knew it hadn't been an accident and I . . . I told him. I told him I was sorry, because I'd taken his body from him, stripped him of his hope, of the part of himself he clung most dearly to. I ruined him to end the jealousy and discontentment with myself I hadn't even known I'd been a prisoner to. Of course, Finny was too kind, too naive, too afraid to believe it. He said he didn't believe me, didn't believe that I'd done it to him. And then one thing lead to another, and he'd fallen down some stairs, escaping the truth that he'd convinced himself was a lie. I went to see him in the medical room, and he yelled at me. He told me he could understand why I jounced the limb, he fit it into his mind. And then the surgery went wrong. And he died. And his blood is mine. And I am so sorry." He buried his face in his hands then. "I am so sorry."
They were silent for a long time, long enough for thunder to start to rumble in the distance, and a couple drops of rain to darken the pavement. The woman abandoned her cigarette and sighed. She looked straight ahead and ran a hand through her hair. "Couple of low-lifes, ain't we?"
And a smile touched the man's lips for the first time in a very long time. The air was thick with words he'd never brought forth before, and he was surprised to find that they tasted sweet on his tongue. Sitting there in his own confession, sitting there next to this woman who'd killed a man too, sitting there as his loneliness and isolation ebbed away, sitting there realizing that he was not the only one, he dared to bring his head out of his hands. And peering through the thin sheet of rain that had started to fall, he could just make out the figure of a boy, funny, outgoing, handsomer than the rest of us, walk slowly away from him and into the mist.