by Nels Griffin

Created on: July 26, 2009

No stops for the broken

Thick flakes pattered the windshield, muffling the mindless wipers. Inside the cab of the salt licked truck crisp air stirred only with his soft breath which was muted by the cold of the scant daylight. Lifeless eyes fought the beats and clatter of the pickup, piercing the white of the outside. A look of astonishment and abandonment scared his face, as the wisps of ghostly fields tacked and flickered in the windows like an old time cinema. The roll and dip of the meadows ventured a thousand times passed him unnoticed. Some dozen inches of snow that canvassed his driveway burped and gurgled under the tires as he slowed and came to a rest before a lonely house. A veil of winter buried the small home. What was once a chattering tree of the yard was silenced by the shortening days. The hum and stir of life, the pungent odors of spice and cinnamon yielded to the must of the rising frost. The colors of the fall had finally poured their last crimsons out as an offering to the ghostly long nights.

One salt charred door winced open. A thick boot dropped from the truck and sat still for just a moment. Mud mixed with ice crept up the laces of the sodden boots. He forced another leg from the truck, sitting cowardly as if grasping for a lost thought. One breathy sigh pushed through the high collard jacket tossing vapors through the cinched bulwark that shielded the frozen death. The clap of rusted metal startled the lone snow hare taping out its jagged trail in the distant fields. The pickup was behind him. Few wisps of hair tossed gently on his fleshy crown that poked through the collars and wraps. A man aged by life more then time fiddled with slurry of keys as he patiently made his way to a grey door of what was once a home. Despite the muted sensations of woolen hands he massaged the worn key that loosely fit the lock and tumbler to the house. For a moment the man swollen with the layers that preserved his life-giving warmth, stood before the door, before the home, before the emptiness that surrounded him. A pause, a low glance by his shoulder as if some silent specter caught his attention, a breath, and the crack of the opening door clapped in the silence only to be washed away by nature's cold breath.

As the man step in and barracked the pains of the outside behind him, the hollow raised floor announced his arrival to a breathless house. Two griping stomps roared out despite the thatched doormats vein battle for silence. Only his tired feet

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