Lonesome Harold

Harold opened the long slim drawer on the front of his walnut paneled credenza in the foyer of his empty house. The opening echoed about and surely touched every soft seat and surface it could find or that could be found because there were no other ears but Harold's to apprehend it. Harold opened the drawer and closed it.

Before Harold closed the walnut paneled drawer of his credenza he saw and heard something rolling about in the drawer's dimmed recess. He recognized the sound amidst the echoes of the drawers opening. He knew the plastic click, and the smooth black of the cylinder. Within the confines of this black plastic canister Harold knew there was a roll of film. He knew that when and if he opened the black cylinder, he would smell the chemical tendrils which collected images. Before Harold closed the drawer he thought of place where he had once fished a roll of film out of a black canister and smelled the chemistry. In this remembered place he recalled placing it gingerly into the camera and hearing the metal backing snap shut around it, like a tin of hard candies. He remembered, before he closed the drawer, that the day on which he exposed the film smelling of chemistry with the candy-tin camera it wasn't the scenery or the inclement weather that had inspired him. He thought that in the echo of the drawer opening, he heard the rumbling of far-off thunder.

He remembered the steam of the rain on the distant asphalt gathering in low haze. And that over fragrant collaboration of dirt and water and heat that accompanied it. He remembered the smell of wet summer. Before he closed the drawer he remembered the gentle sagging support of the deck planks beneath his feet, the sandy scrape of his shoes on the decking, and the popping and smacking of drizzling gutters filling above him. On the day of the film and the candy-tin camera and the road of steamy-smelling wet summer and the dry deck sheltered from the popping, smacking rain he had recorded the image.

Before he closed the drawer, He heard amongst the echoing the plastic click, and the rolling sound combined. He heard the click and thought of the sound that lips make when they part for a smile, and of the shutter exposing the film, and of the tisk-tisk of jovial ribbing between friends on steaming road wet smelling summer days, he thought of the clicks of forks and knives that fall on food and plates in the silence that courts a well cooked meal, and hungry mouths. He heard the click of those plates clean and dried in the rack. He heard the click of his key in the door of the now empty house with the sandy rap-around porch on the rain drenched day of cameras and film, and the steaming road, and the last meal.

He heard the rolling sound and thought of the anticipation of a picture well exposed and naturalistic, the revealing of the well cooked dinner, the sound of approaching tires on a steaming asphalt road, the wheels of suitcases on a sand porch, the inviting empty sound of a door being opened on a timeshare. The rolling far off thunder. The sound of many chairs settling about a large table.

Before he closed the drawer he saw the day assembled in his mind. Exposed and burned in image by the force of a sound. The sound of a roll of film in the empty dimness of the long and slender front drawer of his walnut paneled credenza. In the span of half a second he had opened and closed it to find a slip of paper for this or that, but the echoing sound which raced about the interior spaces, the mournful elongation of the drawer's hollow wooden scraping betrayed the actual speed of process, the entanglements, missteps, and obstacles, the exponential result of recollection to which stimuli are the catalyst. The courtship of stored experiences and sensory intake.

Though he so briefly opened and shut the drawer, and as briefly forgot the action and reprecussive inner sequence of images and smells and sounds and feelings, Harold knew his senses to be the candy-tin camera, his recollection the roll of film. It was bane and boon to him as the echoes of his movements in the empty house, shadow sounds of the crowds once present.