Maria’s finished her run and is in her car when he pulls into the lot. Public park, people always coming and going. He gets out of his car, looks around, antsy-like. Walks twenty yards to a garbage can and drops in a large paper grocery bag, crumpled. Wipes his hands on his shirt walking back to his car, then immediately drives away up the quarter-mile entrance road. It takes her a few moments for her to process this behavior. A special trip into the dark to discard…something. What had he been driving? No clue, and it was only two minutes ago. A two-door…something.
Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable.
A two-door something, dark in color. Accord-sized, bigger than a Civic. Except it didn’t look like a Honda, more like one of those boxy old Fords. Or maybe a Hyundai compact trying to look like a mid-sized sedan. And the bag. Brown, like the kind you get without asking at an eco-friendly supermarket. Unless it was a parcel, illicit drugs or an ugly sweater Grandma sent from Kansas, or some fish that has gone so bad the man doesn’t want it stinking up his garbage can, inviting cats and raccoons to strew bones and viscera around the yard.
It could be anything.
Maria waits until a family—man, woman, child, dog—disembarks from a Humvee-sized SUV and begins rollicking around the playground. Walking quickly, she reaches the can and peers into it. It’s half-full (half-empty?) and the sack sits atop, like the Ark on Ararat. She grabs a bottom corner and lifts, letting the contents fall out. Rags, clothing torn into pennants, stained dark. Four o’clock. Seneca Park. Beneath her feet, the world turns at 1,600 kilometers per hour, and she has a decision to make.
The poetry and prose of Robert L. Penick have appeared in over 200 different literary journals, including The Hudson Review, North American Review, Plainsongs, and Oxford Magazine. The Art of Mercy: New and Selected Poems is now available from Hohm Press, and more of his work can be found at theartofmercy.net