Light . . . A fairytale by an old Hippy

Michael Gray Griffith . . . Sorry, in Hospital, Bored

It was the third house. Around, night ripped its winds about and found her hair and played. Each time she opened her clipboard, the papers blew. It was eight o'clock. Usually, she never stayed out this late, but she’d been at it since four and only made six dollars and thirty-five cents, and that was from one man—a smiling drunk man who’d spilled an empty coffee jar of silver coins into her hand. They had spilled, the majority bouncing and spinning across his veranda.

“Ya should have used two hands,” he laughed as she said, “Thank you” twice, and he shrugged, grinning, then closed the door.

Man gone, she withdrew the other hand from behind her back. People referred to it as deformed, but to her, it was unformed. Half the size of its mate, its fingers were pale and twisted. In the man’s outside light, with clipboard and tin beside her, she used the hand to herd the coins into a pile for her other to pick up. As the light went out, she crouched in the darkness, counting it carefully as she fed them into the can. Six dollars, thirty-five cents.

This street’s third house had a cement garden full of cars. She saw her shadow in the side of one as she passed. There was a cat on its roof. Hiding the hand, she reached up with her other to stroke it. Hissing, the cat reared, and she jumped too. Heart flustered, she approached it again, slowly, soft-spoken, hand outstretched. Still, it hissed.

Placing her tin and clipboard on the car’s bonnet, she began calling, “Puss, puss,” and reaching farther across the roof. The cat reared. Its hair bristled. “Puss, puss,” she said as she stretched full length. The cat hissed again, then spun and leapt off the other side of the car. Carefully, she walked around the vehicle, into the shadows, calling, “Puss, puss,” but it was gone.

Standing straight, the wind found her hair in a gust and enwrapped her face. Clearing it, she turned and looked at the house, before exhaling loudly. Collecting her board and tin, she approached the door.

A child answered her knock. “Hello, I’m collecting on behalf of . . .”

“Mum, there’s someone at the door!” It yelled and sulked back into the darkness of the hall.

“What?” The woman’s voice barked, as she stomped closer. “Someone at the door? Who is... Oh.”

“Hello, I’m collecting on behalf of the . . .”

“Do you know how late it is? You shouldn't be knocking on people’s doors at this time. It’s ridiculous.”

“Yes. Sorry, but I’m collecting . . .”

“And you.” The woman turned to the child. “I thought I told you to get in the shower.”

“...for the crippled . . .”

“Look, love, it’s eight o’clock. This is really ridiculous.” The door closed.

She received thirty percent of whatever she collected. Her life was a series of closed doors and aggressive advice. Sometimes on a good night, she could earn twenty-five dollars or more.

The wind was waiting for her as she moved back to the road, looking for the cat. She thought she saw it but it was nothing, and on turning back, she mistook a shrub for a man and hid the hand. The shrub swooned to the wind, and the wind lifted her hair and played.

She wondered about going home. Her feet were sore, and despite her jacket, it was cold. The street was long. Streetlights disappeared into the distance, but in the dark, she felt the meager weight of the can. “Just a few more houses,” she looked down the road, “just a few.”

From the driveway of the fourth house, she found something odd. There were no cars in the driveway for one, but that was nothing really. The garden was lush, overgrown, but that too wasn’t rare. It was the lights from the window. Both the front windows and one she could see on the side were glowing. No, more than glowing, they had a soft, almost warm light. As she edged cautiously down the drive, the cat hissed close from inside the dividing hedge. Startled, she jumped again and caught her breath.

“Bad puss.” She bent and scowled, struggling but unable to see it in the tangled mat of branches. Darkness offered no cat. Giving up, she turned back to the light and to the house.

She could hear no noises from inside, no music, or TV, and when she looked down at her skirt and cardigan, they were full of the light. Clutching her clipboard, hiding the hand, she went up to the door, and after a quick inner debate, knocked.

There was no answer. She waited, screwing up her face and looking at the wind as it bent the street trees. She knocked again. On the last of this knock, the door, with a click of the lock, opened, and she was washed in a flood of light, so bright she had to hold her hand up to it to shield the glare.

There was a figure in the light. A luminous silhouette.

“Hello, I’m collecting for the Crippled Children Association.” She said, then realized to her horror, it was the wrong hand that was shielding her face. Ripping it back behind her and blushing, she squinted into the light and continued, “All donations over two dollars are tax deductible. I can give you a receipt if you want.”

The figure was hard to make out. It didn’t seem to be moving.

“Did you hear what I said?” And it nodded, and she saw a hand slipping into a pocket or was it a robe, it was hard to see. How could they live in there? All that light? And then the hand came out, and its fingers were all light, and they pointed at the tin, which she struggled to bring round, then it found the coin slot and dropped something in.

“Oh um? How much was that?” She looked confused at the tin.

“Enough,” said the figure, sounding like both a woman and a man as quietly it closed the door.

“But, I’ve got to give you a receipt. Excuse me.” And she put the tin down and opened her folder, unclipped her pen, then paused. In the returned dark, something was glowing. Pulling aside the clipboard, she found the tin can was radiating light through its coin slot.

Placing the board in her bag, she picked up the can carefully and peered inside. The soft light lit her features. Her eyes, one after the other, peered inside, but all she could see was light.

She could get in trouble for this. She could. She’d needed to know what it was to write out the receipt properly.

She knocked again. No one answered. Defiant, she knocked twice, but still no reply. Can in hand, she backed out into the drive, ready to knock on a window, only to find all the windows dark.

They must have gone to bed, she thought as she stood in the dark driveway with her light-producing can.

Back on the street, she sat on the house’s short brick fence and peered in again. The light was bright but not blinding. Less than blinding, it was nourishing. The wind came round and enwrapped her. She looked even closer. Finally, her face was touching the can.

Looking up and around, she checked the street quickly, then upturned the can and tried to get the object to slide back out of the slot, but all that slipped free was a five-cent piece.

Always they were given a sealed can: A can that was opened by those who she worked for, the ones who tallied up the coins and notes to see if they equalled her receipts. Leaving the tin illuminating on the front garden’s wall, she searched through her bag, ripping things about with her good hand until she found it.

Wedging the tin in her lap, she tried to make the slot wider with her metal nail file. Inserting its blade into the slot and the light, she twisted and twisted, using all her good hand’s force until the blade snapped and fell into the tin. She peered in desperately, but there was only light. Beautiful light, like a dream in a tin. As she continued to look, she realized all her eyes’ tiredness was gone.

Rising, she slammed the top of the tin’s edge on the side of the brick wall. It made a dull thudding sound that she looked up to the house to see if someone would wake to check. No one did. The tin was dented but still whole. She belted it again.

Six times she whacked it, but the tin would only dent further. Perhaps she should take it home, get a can opener, and open it in her bedroom. But home was over an hour away. What if the light faded before then?

The cat came streaking out of the drive. Startled her as it shot across the road to disappear into the other side’s dark. Alone and wandering backward, she gazed in again, drank the light with her eyes, then squealed and scoured the verge for something sharp.

A car shot by

, lit her in its own lights, and was gone. She followed it with her vision as it growled up the street, then looked down at the tin.

The car had been a meter or so from the pavement. Walking out, she measured carefully, turned back, and measured again. But if they saw the can, they’d stop. They’d see the light for sure. But what if it was...

Finding a ‘finger-thick’ stick, she was back. Facing the bottom of the can towards the oncoming traffic, she placed the stick under the side so it wouldn’t roll free, then retreated behind a nature strip’s tree and waited. The light from the slot illuminated the road.

The first car swerved and missed it. The second car too. The third didn’t see it until the last moment, then swerved frantically, missing it still, but leaving the fourth that was close behind, no time to swerve. It smashed the tin, the money, and the light all over the road. There was a high-pitched screaming of sorts, a cry, and that was all. Neither car stopped.

Running out onto the road, she scoured the tar. There, next to the ripped-up can, between the scattered six dollars and thirty cents, the light lay, luminous.

Holding her breath, she bent down and picked it up, letting it rest in the palm of her good hand. Her palm tingled.

Looking first at the now dark house, then back, she stared in wonder. She would remember it as a star. The cry continued, awful, tortured.

Walking to the other side of the road, she felt her good hand; her tired, weary hand, becoming suppler. The light’s warmth was traveling up her arm. Lifting her arm’s hair as it did. Then the cry became small, sharper, reached inside this solidified dream and turned her eye. A little black thing was flailing under the streetlight. ‘Puss?’

The cat had been run over. The third car had hit it.

‘Puss?’ She repeated as she crossed to it, dollop of light in hand, to find its back legs crushed and its little face in agony and crying.

She frowned at it, then frowned at the house, then frowned too at the light, before bending to the struggling cat. It hissed at her as it had done before, but here its hiss broke into a cry.

She looked for a car. For someone to race it to a vet.

“Stupid cat.” She scowled as the light seeped like a new skin, up to her neck.

‘Look at you.’ She hissed and shook her head. And the cat cried, and scratched and bit at its legs, while the wind ripped up its cry and messed her hair and rolled the torn tin over the road.

“What do you think you’re doing running all over the road like this?... You naughty thing?”

She had never seen death before but she recognized it. As the cat began to quieten as the warmth spilt into her chest, she noticed the light’s radiance was less for her holding it.

She frowned. Looked back at the house long and all its dark windows, then frowning still, turned back to the failing cat and next to the cat held up and inspected the hand. In the streetlight’s glow, it looked twisted and pale. In her other hand, the light was continuing to dim. As she studied them all, again and again, the cat had ceased its crying.

“Stupid cat.” She hissed, “Look!... Look at this!” And she shook her bad hand in front of its failing self. “Look!” But the cat was no longer moving. Its head was on the ground, small ribs, barely breathing. Beneath the streetlight, glaring so fiercely at the unformed hand, her eyes burnt, she placed the hand that held the lessening light on its quiet side.

As though poured, the light drank into the feline’s frame and began to repair all the damage it found. As she had never seen death before, neither had she seen a miracle. She recognized it too.

As the light repaired, the light diminished. By the time the cat leapt up, hissed, and darted back across the road to its house in a crab walk, all she held was a handful of night.

A car passed and honked at her for being on the road, and the house of light was dark. Hiding her hand from the car that had already passed, she stood, then proceeded, while rubbing her eyes, to pick up all the coins she could find, using her cardigan pocket as a tin. Coins gathered, she grabbed the clipboard from her bag and went back up the driveway to the house’s door where she knocked twice, then knocked again till her fist hurt, but the only thing that answered was her knock’s echo.

Drying her eyes on her sleeve, she opened up her clipboard and using the balcony’s wall as a table, wrote the street number, then the street’s and the suburb’s name. Next to the word, ‘Amount,’ she printed carefully, ‘Enough.’ Finally, she signed it, ripped off the receipt’s top copy, folded it neatly, then bent and slid it under the door.

The wind was waiting for her back at the street. Lifted her hair into the air and played.

Picking up her ripped-up tin, she left it on the side of the road. Then wiping the cold tears off her face, she walked up the driveway of the next house. As the gravel cracked beneath her feet, she recovered her smile, rehearsed in her mind her speech, opened and displayed before the door her clipboard, stared for a while at a streetlight’s luminescence, before knocking with and then hiding her hand.

Michael