On a narrow street not too far from the river, there stood a house that had been the most fashionable residence in lower Surrey. It's sturdy stone steps lead up to a grand oak door, framed on either side by a mosaic work of stain glass. The bright red tiles that covered the roof had shined in the late afternoon sun as it set over the bay, filling each window with a warm light that would not be stopped by something as flimsy as lace curtains.
It was said that the very wealthy owner of the hat factory that used to run on 34th street lived in this house, with his very elegant wife and their two very dignified six and ten year old sons. The hat factory, of course, closed like so many others during those terrible trying years. The neighborhood, that had once hosted the most cultivated of the cultured, quickly emptied, like the sad remains of a party when the food is all gone. The wealthy merchant lived there no more. He and his most elegant wife had had to learn how to cook and how to clean, how to hold a hammer and how to sew a seam, and had worked every day since to earn their butter and their cream. Their sons went on to become not lawyers and bankers but rail layers and bakers. One by the one the stylish homes of all of their neighbors disappeared as new factories were built, ones that made not hats but things like engine gears and mouse traps.
Many years passed.
The only witness to them now is one little old man. Sitting in the upmost top room of this once so elegant house, he long ago took shelter in the empty space left in the passing of time. This was now the only house on the narrow street not too far from the river. The stone steps were still there, as sturdy as ever, and even the solid oak door still stood, though it was no longer quite as grand, it surface covered in scratches and pockmarks and the remains of adolescent attempts at artistic expression. The patchwork of colored glass that had once been so carefully constructed on either side now gapped like broken grin of a seasoned boxer. The gleaming red roof had long ago blown away under the pounding force of year after year of hurricanes. The windows were still there, but there were no more lace curtains. Only one little old man, propped up against the wall, buried among his meager collection of thread bare blankets and lumpy pillows, a dingy white nightcap pulled down tight over his years. He had patches on the elbows of his faded lime green house coat, and holes in his soaks, but there was no one up there to care. After all, what was one more lonely old man hiding in the attic of a tired old house to this street? It had long ago forgotten everything else.
Even this quiet old man cared little for what had happened before. The ache in his left hip and the way the cold made his fingers stiff bothered him much more. It was only early spring. He had been taunted by whispers of warmer weather, only to be mocked by this current snap of cold wind.
It made writing darn right near impossible.
Scratching out yet again another smudged word, he struggled once more to patiently trace out the next word. Satisfied that the wet ink would not run this time, the old man leaned back and read out loud:
"And in the summer time the leaves will return, but the fruit upon the vine will have no fate but to burn."
"Yes, yes," he muttered. "Not bad. Not half bad at all. A fitting end perhaps. Though maybe it needs one stanza more," he muttered into the quiet, carefully laying the page with wet ink across his boney knees before fumbling to pull out half a dozen other ink smeared and bespeckled pages. He was up to ten pages now, a bit long for a piece of poetry, but he had spent hours and hours crafting out each line and he was as certain they were each and every one of them worth their weight in gold as he was certain that that blasted ache in his hip meant rain tonight. Which probably meant he ought to move downstairs. The roof up here had a slight tendency to leak, just a little. But there was nowhere else in the whole city that was a peaceful and quiet as that very top most room of that very antiqued house.
"GRANPA!"
Yes, so quiet and peaceful, right up until that little demon found him.
"GRANPA!" came the shout again from somewhere deep below. This time it was followed by the sound of stomping heavy feet as someone came thundering up the many twists and turns in the stairway that lead to the very top of the house.
Perhaps just one more stanza, just to round it out. Something about sparrows, perhaps. Or pigeons. He spent a lot of time watching the pigeons that came to rest on the window sill.
With a thunderous bang, the trap door in the floor went flying open and crashing back down onto the wood floor. A head of scraggly oily black hair popped out from its depths like a river rat surfacing from the murky depths below. A dirt smudge face followed it, graced by a most familiar scowl.
"Granpa," the boy stated sharply, as if talking to stubborn child or simply a buffoon. "You're up here. Again."
Granpa raise both of his shaggy eyebrows without glancing away from the page in front of him. He had been on the verge of something elegant and clever about pigeons and river rats. "Yes," he drawled. "I suppose I am."
The boy huffed. He shuffled from one foot to the other, still standing on the stairway below. "Dinner's ready," he announced hastily.
"That's nice."
There was another shuffling of feet. "Mom says to come down stairs."
"In a moment."
The boy scowled even more and folded his arms across his chest. "She says now."
"In a moment."
The boy sighed explosively, ruining the old man's best efforts to ignore the disruption. "Now!" the boy whined. "She says the rest of us can't eat 'til ya come down."
Giving up on river rats, Granpa turned to survey his great grandson most solemnly. As much as he might want to, he could not very well deny the boy food. A delayed dinner truly was far too cruel of a thing to do, even in the pursuit of art. That did not stop a sly smile from stretching across his face. 'Very well," he conceded, "but first! You will allow me to read to you my most latest work!"
The boy actually blanched, looking very much like a fabled ghost behind his black bangs. "No, Granpa, no! You've already read it to me. Like twice. Can we please, please just go down now?"
"Just my most latest stanza then," Granpa agreed, willingly forgoing the work in its entirety out of respect for dinner. He cleared his throat carefully, making sure there would not be any embarrassing bouts of phlegm in the middle of his oration. He read the lines once more, pausing carefully between each line to ensure they were absorbed to the greatest extend before finishing with a dramatic flourish that's inspiration nearly pulled him up off of the floor by its strength alone and thankfully just barely missed upturning his ink pot. Turning once more to his audience, Granpa smiled broadly. "Well, what do you think?"
It was a struggle for the boy, dear Granpa could see it. The child went near cross-eyed trying to hold it all in. "It's great, Granpa, really," the boy lied. "Now can we please, please, go eat?"
Granpa sighed forlornly and cooperatively shuffled forward. "It is at least better than the rest of today's work," he agreed.
His great grandson, bless his heart, simply was not able to pass up the temptation of curiosity. "How bad was the rest of it?"
Granpa cleared his throat once more and recited from memory. "Once upon a time, standing in a fine line, were nine mimes, all of a kind, who stood behind a sign, and whined."
There was a momentous pause. "What the hell?"
This time Granpa did flush, but only a little. "I said it was not as well crafted as my usual work."
"I don't get it."
"It is supposed to be ironic," Granpa informed him. "You know, frustrated mimes, standing by a sign? Oh, nevermind. I only wrote it because I was trying to think of something to rhyme with time."
"Huh?"
"I said nevermind!"
Granpa leaned on the boy's offered hand as he crawled his way out of the room only because there was not a railing this high up. It's lack had never bothered him when he had been a child living in this house, but he was beginning to understand why his father would never agree to join his sons in their secret hiding place. His father had had this house built big enough so that he would not have to crawl into such cramped quarters, but he had never been able to understand the allure of the unknown and the secretive. He had some hope for his great grandson to understand such things. The Lord knew the boy could not seem to help but stick his nose into everything and was more likely than not jump in after it head first. Unfortunately, Granpa had not had any luck instilling a complimentary deep love of poetry into the boy.
"You really gotta stop comin' up here, Granpa. It's not good for you."
"Hush, you child. And go wash your face, it is filthy."
"Is not!"
"Then what do you call that black stuff around your eyes?"
"Granpa! It's eyeliner. It's cool for guys now."
"Looks like dirt to me."
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