By Gary Bolick
It’s an old wall. Some claim it is as old, maybe older than the pyramids. Others swear that it was the first project finished by the WPA. Truncated, it now sits just off to the right of the reflecting pool, a hundred yards from the baseball field in Winlow Park.
A clear, worn footpath collars the wall’s foundation. Years of mall walkers looking for another laboratory-like setting, but in the open air, have made it impossible to keep grass growing around the wall. Even when maintenance workers would rope off and replant the footpath, invariably, with the first sign of new grass, the walkers, children, and the Clyde gawkers would return, killing the nascent green within a week’s time.
Clyde gawkers? Oh, yes, Clyde.
Clyde, well, anyone and everyone who visits Winlow Park—walks its confines, sits by the reflecting pool, attends a baseball game—has seen Clyde standing on the lone, grassy spot left along the foundation of the wall.
Yes, soft, green grass grows under the feet of Clyde as he looks up and directly into the wall. Even on the odd, unheard-of-day that Clyde is not standing and staring at the wall, no one will walk on his spot. Everyone: walkers, children and even the frustrated gawkers make sure to step around or not stand on Clyde’s spot.
On the odd day that Clyde is absent, observed from an aerial view, the wall appears to be wearing a necklace with a small pendant attached. On the days Clyde is there, which is pretty much every day, the pendant has a lone gray-headed, green-eyed jewel−Clyde.
People, for years, have walked up to stand by and stare at Clyde while he quietly and calmly looks straight into the wall. Yes, the people, the gawkers, make faces, fart, tell jokes, one woman even bared her breasts, all to goad Clyde into turning towards them or talk or move or laugh. All without success. Nothing. Clyde stares on. Now, for the most part, Clyde is left alone to stand and stare, and occasionally smile.
Yes, the smile, like Clyde−a landmark.
Clyde’s smile has, more often than not, confounded those who insist on stopping to look at Clyde staring. It is his expression that intrigues them. He appears, at times, to be just arriving from a long trip, and suddenly catching the eye of a loved one there . . .
“Yes, yes, right there!” . . . to meet him.
Other times he appears to be glowing as though rapt, filled with a post-coital release . . . “Billy, no, run on now, no, listen to your mother, go! Good, he’s gone. Harold? Did, do you see what I saw . . . there?”
Clyde’s smile.
To actually witness the moment in which Clyde’s smile appears has become the stuff of legend, a badge of honor worthy of television coverage. Yes, news of it even brings out Kelly Green, the perky news anchor and local celebrity.
“Our lead? A new Clyde smile, tonight!”
The screen, seemingly, glowing as Kelly interviews the vigilant gawker, asking any and all viewers to post their interpretation of Clyde’s smile on the network’s Facebook page and,
“Watch the follow-up, later at eleven!”
Unfortunately, watching Clyde, waiting for that elusive smile, became too onerous a task for everyone. Yes, Kelly and the gawkers moved on. Sisyphean Clyde and his wall, along with Chia pets and hula-hoops were no longer de rigueur.
One morning a maintenance worker, Tim, found Clyde’s body rigid and slumped over, head-first into the wall.
“Hard as a rock, straight as a stick of wood,” he excitedly explained to a largely disinterested Kelly Green.
Kelly, no longer perky, and a little morose, tried to smile on cue, but her face, now, seemed too small for her mouth.
“No babe, no, national networks are calling,” her agent said over the phone.
After the short interview, Tim the maintenance worker, escorted Kelly over to the grassy square, “Yes ma’am, right there. See that spot on the wall? That’s where Clyde’s head came to rest. The stone’s much smoother here, see? All the others are rough and untouched.”
Kelly thanked Tim and noted that there was even a small indention, and wait, more. Calling the cameraman, back over, Kelly instructed him to start filming,
“There, see? A small shoot of green, the first bud of a flower starting to appear. What a scoop! It’ll be the lead story at . . . no, not six or any other time! Cut it. Hell, erase it for all I care. And get that creepy maintenance worker out of here!”
Clyde’s two-by-two square dissolved quickly into the footpath. The regulars: the children, the mall walkers and, well, everyone, for that matter, now felt more at ease. The wall seemed to blend in, effortlessly, now.
“It just feels . . . warmer, more natural, now. It, I mean the wall and, well everything can be normal, take their rightful place in Winlow Park. That fella? Always struck me as well, a little . . . perverted!”
Clyde’s name was never mentioned again; nor were the stories of his miraculous stamina, his staring, his stoicism or his smiles. After Kelly’s last update, Clyde was used only as an occasional punch line or as an object lesson.
“Son-of-bitch was just some sort of twisted . . . individual! Yeah, went his own way. The nut!”
No longer a celebrity or a threat, Clyde simply reverted back to a place where no Clyde had ever existed in any real sense. Clyde stopped being Clyde to anyone not old enough to remember that there had ever been a man named Clyde. And to those old enough to still remember him?
“Yeah, I remember him. Knocked her up . . . that TV girl. Yeah, Kelly Green. Used to be a pretty young thing. What? No! Well, yeah, I guess that explains it . . . Elvis!”
Gary Bolick is a native of NC. He currently resides in Clemmons, NC with his wife Jill. Bolick lived and studied in Paris and Dijon, France prior to graduating from Wake Forest. He has published numerous short works of fiction, poetry and four novels. Go to The Kleksograph to read his latest short fiction: Train Tracks (a descent into seventeen syllables). Information on his latest novel: Store in a Cool, Dry Place can be found on his website.
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losing our grip on purpose 