Read Online Columbus by Derek Haas - Free Book Online

not sure how old I was when I read it. A lot of those years are blurry for me.”
    “It’s a famous story?”
    “I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I haven’t come across it in a long time. But some things in my life made me think of this story, and I thought maybe I’d tell it to you and see if you’d heard of it. I’m not even sure if it’s very good or particularly profound.”
    “Well, now I’m definitely intrigued. Let’s hear it.” I hear the sound of her leaning back in the desk chair, and I picture her with her knees pulled to her chest and one arm around them, holding them tight, those venerable leather-bound books surrounding her like a theater audience. “I haven’t unlocked the shop door yet and Alda is not coming in until after lunch. My ear is yours.”
    “Okay. Well, here goes. I don’t remember the name of the story. And the main character doesn’t have a name. In fact, that’s the point of the story . . . I think . . . anyway. . . . ”
    “I’m listening. . . . ”
    “Well, this guy, just a normal guy, he kisses his wife good-bye, leaves his house, dressed like he’s going out for a jog, but he’s not, he’s actually got his kid in his arms, a little boy, a two-and-a-half-year-old toddler who looks just like him.
    “And every day they do this . . . he and his kid take a walk together, all over the city. Or rather, he walks, pulling a silver wagon with his kid buckled safely inside. And they walk everywhere, I mean everywhere, looking at the fire trucks and the police cars and the ambulances and the construction trucks; and all the time, the dad’s pointing out this thing and that thing and the kid’s taking it all in like a sponge.
    “The dad’ll pull him for hours, for miles, end up in neighborhoods nowhere near his own, and everyone that passes them on the sidewalk or in the street looks at the two of them longingly and thinks that this father and this son who resemble each other are just a little part of the world that is right. That all the death and mayhem and war and assassinations and everything else wrong in this world is pulling them into the blackest of abysses, but this thing, these two walking by, father and son, these two are what’s honest and true and hopeful. And maybe they’re the only two, you know? Maybe everybody else has a little blackness in his life, but it all fades away to white, because when people spot this guy and his son walking down the street, they just can’t help but smile.”
    I can hear her breathing, but she doesn’t cough or sigh or interrupt. I can’t remember the last time I’ve talked this much, but the words continue to tumble out of my mouth like an avalanche.
    “And they’re on this block a good mile from their house and the dad is in the middle of telling his son about this big cedar tree on the end of the street he likes to visit, that the tree probably looks to the boy like it’s taller than a skyscraper, and right there, right in the middle of his sentence, the man’s left arm seizes up on him, his breath catches in his throat, and he falls down dead. Heart attack, no warning, right there on the sidewalk. He topples over like someone shot him and lies face down on the concrete.
    “The kid doesn’t know what’s going on, he’s only two and a half. Is the father playing some sort of game with him? That’s all this kid knows. So he calls out to his dad, ‘Da-ad. Da-ad.’ You know, like it’s a song, like it’s a game. But his father doesn’t, his father can’t get up.
    “‘Something is wrong’ registers in the kid’s brain . . . even caught in the middle between two and three, this message comes through loud and clear, but he can’t get out of the silver wagon, he’s stuck there, buckled in tight. He starts blinking tears, crying in that way toddlers cry, his lips curved in an ‘o,’ his wail silent then strong then silent again as he can’t catch his breath to pound it out.
    “And then a man comes up, this