All Hot in the Snow

A Story by Ray

Thoughts of a mad man staring at a wall.

All Hot in the Snow

I have a pretty good view right now. Well, kind of. I think it’s good. I guess that depends on what you consider to be good. Directly in front of me, less than three feet away, is a white wall, last painted who-knows-how-many years ago. I like to make out faces and figures in the swipes, ridges, bubbles, and tiny plateaus caked in the wall plaster. I like to imagine the scenes witnessed day in and day out by the dusty white paint in this room playing out right there in the shapes on the wall. It’s like my own private movie of memories. Lucky those shapes were hidden under the paint from everything they could have experienced. Isn’t missing out on some laughs and some music better than having to suffer through the anger and the tears and the violence and the pain? I don’t know. Maybe not. Funny how what’s good is only good because you think it is.

The ceiling that meets the wall above me, I can’t tell if it’s off-color because it was a s****y paint job decades ago or if it’s stained from smoke. Some people used to live here for a while between now and the time I lived here before them and the time before that and then when I grew up here. I think they maybe smoked in here. And other people have. I swear, I’ve moved in and out of this house more times than a damn hermit crab and all his shells. They outgrow their shells, but I can’t seem to outgrow this house. You’d think that was kind of funny, too, if you knew that I’m basically a hermit crab myself. Maybe it’s more sad than funny, but isn’t that what sometimes makes something funny, funny?

Anyway, I used to live over by O Park. It’s not really called O Park, it’s really called the Colonel Some Guy Memorial Park or something, named after an old military guy like all the other parks, except for the ones named after other people who died. I guess that’s one thing everyone has in common, that dying business. No big city lawyer or Devil deal can outsmart ol Death when she comes floating all dark and smoke-like up out of the floor, like the old wood under the old carpet can’t take the heat of Death passing through it, even though it doesn’t even know what’s happening and it can’t find a flame to fight. Funny how things that can’t think still react to what happens to them. Makes you wonder if they can think in some way we don’t know how to.

Some people say Death is cold, but I know that’s not true. Death is hot. I saw a guy die one time, saw him lying there on the snowy sidewalk in O Park, turning the ground under the big Sycamore tree into the biggest cherry snow cone you’ve ever seen. It just got bigger and bigger, his blood running away from him like he was chasing it, or like it was excited to finally be able to escape the squeeze of all those tiny tubes. There was so much blood it looked like it was the tree that was bleeding out, not some guy. And why does a Sycamore have red blood, and blood at all? I guess it’s alive like you and me, and we all gotta bleed sometime.

Anyway, that’s why they called it O Park, and when that guy was trying to breathe with that big ol hole in him, he kept looking with the whole of both of his watery, red eyes at the Sycamore branches above him saying, “It’s hot!” and he would groan like he was plugged up on the pot, then, “It’s hot! Why?! It hurts! Hot!” like he was confused and scared and burning, and he yelled, and I was confused and alone with my hat and my gloves and my boots and my dog, Murph, looking down at some guy, wondering how he could think he was so hot when he was face-up in a couple inches of snow. But he was there, kind of on his side, kind of on his back, with one leg bent and resting across the other on the ground and his hands buried in the snow beside him trying to sink his fingers into the dirt underneath to hold on for dear life, not even looking at the hole in his stomach that probably punched through everything he had for lunch that day. He wasn’t trying to stop the bleeding to keep from dying and he wasn’t trying to call the police or ask me to get a message to his lady or his kids or his mom. If a man is dying, and he can still get a message to his mother that he loves her, he better damn-well do it, or he isn’t much of a man. That’s how I knew whatever he was seeing up in that Sycamore tree was as real as the gas station burrito staining red all over his white shirt. It wouldn’t have looked near as bad if he’d had on a dark colored shirt. I bet he wore it that day for dramatic effect. But when a man doesn’t even think to call his mother or his lady when he’s there, dying, right now, right in front of me, and fast, you know whatever he’s talking about must be more real than what you thought was real. I looked up at that Sycamore tree, and you wouldn’t believe it, but I swear I saw the tiniest flick of a tiny flame on the tip of one of the branches. And he just kept on going about how hot he was and how much it hurt, not asking about his family, and I swear I saw that flame, and the snow all around him did melt, and he was sweating, and his breath forcing its way through the cold night air looked like it was coming straight off some good kindling at the campsite. So it sure seemed like there was something to what he was saying. Even his eyes got redder, like his insides really were on fire, and his breath really was smoke. All I know is that’s the only time I ever saw someone die right there in front of me like it was the only thing he had to do that day, and he was hot as Hell when he should’ve been winter-cold, so that’s how I know Death is hot. Funny how what’s real just depends on what you think is real.

* * *

Anyway, I like my view. I like other views, too, but I’m not running away from this one. I come here a lot, in fact. Right next to the wall that’s directly in front of me, there’s an old window, older than me, that can’t help but let in a bit of the dirt and bugs and wind it fights so hard all the time to keep out. Can’t win ‘em all, I guess. I don’t see what difference it makes, really, whether the dust is inside or outside. Every once in a while I wipe some of it off, but it just comes right back like I’ve never so much as looked at my own stuff. It’s like in the horror movies when they throw the demented book in the river, but it’s on their desk, dry or wet, when they get back home. You can learn a lot about life by watching movies. All movies are based on real life, whether how it is, how it was, how it might be, or how we want it to be. Plus, all a movie is is a bunch of ideas some group of people had, right there in the lights with the guns and the girls and the guy with the hole in him, too, just like the guy at O Park that one time. Movies are real life, maybe just not for everyone who doesn’t think they’re real.

So, this old window just sits here, unaware of all the life happening on either side of it, filling the giant hole somebody put in the wall like they didn’t have enough wood and bricks to go around, so they just put in some glass instead. You can tell it’s old. And I’ve lived in this house off and on since I was too young to know how women really run the world, and I don’t remember anyone ever putting in a different window here or anywhere in this house. It’s the same glass after all that time, looking nothing but dirty and firm, but still fragile, with nothing to protect it on the outside the way the faces in the wall are covered by the paint. It’s actually a bit of an admirable feat, if you think about it. That window just watches the world and gets beaten by dirt and sticks and water in its different forms. And that damn sun. I get the sun is important, but you’d think it could take it easy sometimes. It’s almost enough to make a man give himself a slice just to feel a running tickle on his arm. I wouldn’t do that, though. It’s not that hot. But almost. But that window just takes it on its big, flat chin like any other way would be a fatal blow to its honor. Lord knows honor is the most important thing in life, and one must protect it by any means necessary, no matter the cost. Funny the bad things people do to save their honor. I’ve seen it over and over in movies, so I know it happens. They wouldn’t get the idea for it in the movie if it didn’t really happen. You have to protect your honor or you’ll lose everything, and that window still has it all. It’s got fake wooden blinds to guard it from the blows it takes from the inside, though. Funny how it needs more protection from people than from nature. You know how Mother Nature likes her windows. Sticks and stones may break the glass, but not as quick as a mad man. Woo-ee, a mad man sure can break a window. Not this window, though. Not so far.

I like windows. They’re safe. They let you see without having to be involved. Isn’t that the best? Just watching, and no one knows you’re watching and you don’t have to talk to them, and they can’t say things that make you want to curl your fingers all the way through the palms of your hands? That guy at O Park was mean, I’ll tell ya. He was a mad man. That’s why I didn’t feel too bad being the reason he was all hot in the snow. I guess maybe I’m a bit of a mad man myself.

I like my hermit crab house, even though I can’t outgrow it. I would be okay with more curtains, I guess, but I do have lots of blinds. That’s usually good enough these days. When I was young, I had foil and blankets hanging on the insides of all the windows in my bedroom. I wanted my room to be as dark as the deepest crack in the deepest cave. Now that I think about it, maybe I was just protecting them, ‘cause I know how mad men can get. Funny how memories can change like that. Sometimes, I wish I changed like that. But then who would talk to all the people in the wall?