Leaves of Fall

by John Fleckenstein


The old man’s eyes teared as he looked into the breeze. It was the kind of late autumn breeze that lifted his thin, white hair off his head and ripped even the most resilient leaves from the limbs of dying trees. The breeze carried with it a hint of the bitter winter that was soon to follow. He shuffled through the layer of brittle leaves that had already taken their annual descent to the sidewalk below. The old man sighed heavily, and in the chilly air he watched as his breath got swept away in the sharp wind, joining the remaining leaves that floated reluctantly to the waiting ground.

His house was only a few blocks away from the doctor’s office, but the old man decided to take a different route home. He turned left instead of right onto Kensington Lane and looked up from the dead leaves and the cracked gray sidewalk. Staring into the swirling leaves, he remembered the day he had finally saved up enough money from his paper route to buy a new bicycle. The day he bought it, each spoke reflected the sunlight into his eyes as he gazed at his reflection in every shiny piece of bright blue metal. He and the bicycle shared a feeling of freedom as he paid with every dime he owned. As a young boy, the old man remembered how fast he rode his new bicycle home. He pedaled as hard as he could until his legs burned. It was a cool, Saturday afternoon in early November. The wind stung his nose and his eyes, but he liked the taste of autumn in his lungs. Nothing at the time could have made him feel more alive.

The old man looked up as an old station wagon drove by. A trail of leaves lifted off the pavement and tried desperately to follow the car down the road, only to fall again, defeated.

Approaching him on the sidewalk was a golden retriever jogging with a woman wearing spandex and earmuffs. The dog trotted contentedly with its owner and let its tongue dangle out the side of its mouth. As the two drew nearer he could see white patches of fur spreading across the dog’s droopy face. The old man stared into the dog’s charcoal eyes as he nodded and smiled at the pair. It looked up and seemed to almost smile as they passed each other.

At the next corner the old man turned left and crossed the street. The neighborhood was quiet, except for the wind and an occasional car gliding by. He observed that most of the lawns had been raked. Except for a few refugees that had wandered hopelessly back into the grass, the leaves lay in dead heaps on the curb or in open black bags underneath the trees that yielded them. The entire street was a purgatory for the leaves as they waited to be disposed of. Up ahead, underneath a tree whose root had grown up from underneath the sidewalk, a man futilely raked leaves towards the curbside. He stopped and scoffed as he watched as a gust of wind deposited more dead brown leaves on the freshly raked plot of grass.

After passing the next block, the old man saw a park on a hill up ahead. In the distance he could see children scampering around in brightly colored coats. The biting wind at the his back muted the colorful children, creating a surreal scene of silent movement. Situated at a dead end, the park was among a cluster of pine trees. Unlike the jagged shadows of the exposed branches on the sidewalk underneath the old man’s feet, the pine trees provided the playground with undivided shield from the sun. As he went to sit down at a bench on the edge of the park, the wind finally brought to him the shouts of joy from the children playing in the park.

Mothers and fathers stood idly by and watched their sons and daughters swing and slide, run and twirl. They climbed and crawled and chased each other. A few mothers bobbed with their youngest on their hips, pink-nosed and bundled in pastel colored hats and rainbow scarves. Two men threw a football to each other until one of their sons tripped and sat in the grass and cried for help. The old man sat on the solitary bench in a gray jacket and smiled as he watched a boy help his younger sister reach to take a sip from a water fountain.

The old man’s wife, who had died from a stroke, used to knit. She had knit for their son and his two younger sisters matching blue hats with a bright yellow stripe. She would knit after supper while the old man put the children to bed, telling them stories of his childhood. He never felt old when he was telling stories about adventures with his bicycle or about fishing on the lake. He would tell story after story, even as the childrens' eyelids gave way to sleep, and his wife would sit in her rocking chair, knitting a new sweater or a pair of mittens for the upcoming winter.

Recently the old man found out that he had cancer. Given his age and the already extensive growth of the cancer, the only action the doctor decided to take was to keep the old man as pain free as possible. Weeks and months had passed by and the old man’s children visited often to keep his mind off of the cancer, which made him very weak at times. They brought their children and the old man took great pleasure in putting them to bed with stories of his own childhood. The old man’s children would listen in from another room to the same stories that put them to sleep many years before. After the grandchildren had fallen asleep, he and his children would talk about their mother. She had died before any of the grandchildren were born, but the old man gave his children the box of small mittens and scarves that his wife had been knitting when she died.

The old man had just come from the doctor. He had been told that the cancer was starting to spread faster now and his health would start to fail him very soon. When he arrived back at his house, the phone was ringing. He pulled the receiver off the wall and answered.

“Dad? Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for a half hour.” It was the old man’s son. He had promised he would call after his doctor’s appointment.

“Oh, I’m fine,” replied the old man. He thought his children were starting to worry too much about him. “I just needed some fresh air so I walked around the block. Anyway, how are you doing?”

“I’m fine, Dad. Listen, the kids want to come over tonight and see you. They keep going on about Grandpa’s stories. Is that okay?” The old man closed his eyes and smiled. “Dad? Are you still there?”

“I’m here. I’m still here.” The old man and his son listened to the crackling silence on the phone. “I’ll see you later, then.” He hung up the phone and walked to the living room. He sat down in his wife’s rocking chair and leaned back, massaging the old creaky arms of the oak chair. He smiled again as he traced the grain of the wood with his finger and thought of stories to tell his grandchildren.