Chain Linked Fence

The door opened inward and for a moment it seemed to have acted on its own and then, slowly, with the careful steps of imperfect balance and a wariness and suspicion she closed it behind her. She stood on the concrete slab and looked at the yard until she had decided in which corner to start. The ground was still frozen and last years leaves, the ones she had missed during the fall raking, were sodden and piled against the chain linked fence that bordered the small yard. It was cold but she wore her overcoat open with a scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. She wore a simple housedress underneath and, below the hem, her knee high stockings were crowded around her ankles, resting on the withers of an old pair of black shoes laced with black laces.

In the days before the temperature began to rise above zero, at the last of winters worries, the snow had disappeared but that had not loosened it’s grip on the earth which seemed impervious to the weakened sun and held firm, solid with frost. The garden looked dead but she knew it only slept. Leaning on her cane, she bent as far as she could and any pieces of paper and any discarded cartons she could reach she piled near to the gate at the street. She moved deliberately and with a patience that came from the certainty that she could tame and reveal her well ordered beds where now only decayed straw stood. Like her, the bushes and shrubs lay exposed to the elements and owed their survival to nothing more than the belief that another season would come, nothing more.

She worked her way around the perimeter in a well worn pattern of contented duty and when she again reached the gate at the street she stood straight and peered up and down the sidewalk. Seeing no one she began to kick the refuse out of her garden and onto the sidewalk after which she closed the gate and, dusting off her hands, she turned and walked to the door. The garden was clean but the rest of the world was another’s responsibility.

The door swung silently closed and nothing moved until a truck came down the street and with it’s passing blew the pile of garbage across the sidewalk and up against the chain linked fence and it settled there.