How would God respond to making a mistake? Would planets collide or mountains slide into the sea? Or would the ledger of all life simply remain out kilter until a series of small events forced that ledger back into balance again? It's probably the l...
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On the sidewalk outside the garage, there was one of those standing type signboards – the ones that look like the letter A – and there were only a few cars on the street. As soon as I saw them passing in front of the sign, the calmness I felt just a few seconds before evaporated. For some reason, it looked like the traffic was taking too long to emerge from behind the frame. I'm sure I was just imagining that, but it frightened me. If I had only taken a moment to notice that there were no piles of dirty snow on the ground or that Baltimore was the same murky brown it had always been, I might have been okay. But each time a car passed behind the sign, everything felt strange and new and I was afraid that it wouldn't reappear on the other side.
We crept a few inches out onto the sidewalk and stopped. It was just enough to get past the sign and see the morning light on the roof of the brown brick building across the street. Since there was no shadow on the bricks, the building wasn't exactly sunlit, only brighter at the top than lower down.
It's funny, you know. I'd left that garage hundreds of times before and so I had to have seen the building across the street. But that was the first time I noticed the pale stone lips circling the brownness on every other floor. Scalloped stone like pie crust, pale and brown. To me, they looked like jumper's ledges. Six inches wide or a little more. Just enough to maneuver and find a comfortable spot. But not so wide that anyone would be tempted to take a smoke or relax out there.
In the morning dimness, without any lines or shadows to bother you, it seemed like you really could disappear into the brownness of Baltimore. Especially on that ledge. You could stand up there and think so fast that everything would come closer to you. And then even faster than that, because the faster you thought, the closer everything would come. And if you could think faster than the pictures hitting your eyes, faster than the speed of light, then the world might actually stop. The trees in the park down the street would freeze with the wind. The leaves and the limbs would stick in place. And then all the lines would finally be right. Frozen and stopped.
And once the motion was gone, there'd be no rhythm to anything and you could see all the hidden things in the world. The angles and shadows. Even the shapes of the air. You could reach out your hand and feel every invisible hook and arc like the air was thick, scratchy sand that would crack and fall between the tips of your fingers.
Then at that one moment, when everything was stopped and as close as it could possibly be, I'd pace along the ledge. Move alone, without anyone looking. My feet scudding along the stone.
Finally, one last time, I'd feel the roughness of the bricks and hear the sound of the grain under my shoes. I'd touch the roughness as softly as I could and listen for the quietest sound. Then I would leave. Jump or fall. One or the other. I'm not sure which it would be. But either way, it would be alright. Because once I was on the ground, the passers‑by would look at me or not look at me and it wouldn't matter. They'd probably think I was some drunk who didn't quite make it to the shelter. They'd think I was just sleeping on the sidewalk. A mound or a clump. Something collected by the wind and the angles of the walls. Then they'd step carefully around the clump like it wasn't there. Or shouldn't have been there. Unless there was blood. Red at first, but then aging and changing into Baltimore brown. So, I'd have to wear thick clothes. Absorbent clothes. Brown clothes.
