Howard Bell walked down his deserted street, surrounded by winter. Cold clouds filled the sky, impaled on the dark spires of ancient structures. A cutting wind razored its way through him, blowing swiftly uptown, hell-bent on freezing everything in its path. A scent of salt and old earth filled Bell’s nostrils. He balanced on his aging feet and his long black cane, and peered into the rushing wind.

He was a veteran of many such winters, many more than he cared to remember. His face was craggy and scarred from their ravages, his skin was pale with their sunless dimness. His blue eyes were the color of ice, having faded from the summer-sky blue they had once been so long ago. His mind kept drifting back to those summers, days of wandering through yellow sun-glaring meadows and into black-shadowed oak groves, along winding trails leading through secret hollows, somewhere in countrysides long since forgotten.

As he walked, tipping his weight carefully from foot to cane to other foot, he slowly recognized an alien shape on the next street corner. It had been in his vision since he had left the entrance to the building where he lived, buttoning his long gray coat and adjusting his floppy-brimmed hat. Now he could see the stranger much more clearly. It was a dwarf, a dark little man half-hidden under a great enveloping jacket, a bright canvas cap perched on his nut-brown head. The dwarf stood in the midst of a fortification of cardboard cartons, on which were displayed dozens of identical, brightly-colored aerosol spray cans.

The dwarf called, in the voice of a creature that had been taken and pressed down and down in some great vise: “Summertime, summertime, summertime...”

Howard Bell gathered his bones tightly about himself and stood a moment, listening. The dwarf turned, sensing a presence, and looked at him with new-minted metallic eyes.

 

 

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