Bad Things Happen

 Bad Things Happen

Noel Laflin

Fourth Thursday in June, 2014

Third Wednesday in September, 1963.

The youngster took the new shirt off the coat hanger and tried it on.  Yellow looked good on him, he decided, as he preened before the mirror hanging on the back of the closet door.  His mother had bought the shirt for him at the end of summer and today was the first time he’d actually worn it.  He had saved it for a special occasion.

“Maybe it will bring me luck,” he hoped.   Fifth grade at Lincoln Elementary was well under way and he was struggling with math – as usual.  Spelling was not his strong suit either lately.  There were tests in both subjects today.

“OK,” the boy whispered to the mirror.  “Bring me luck.”

  

With that, he found his mother in the kitchen placing an apple in his lunch sack.  As he pecked her on the cheek and said good bye, she noticed the new shirt and mentioned how nice it looked on him.

“Thanks,” he called out absently and bolted out the door.

Seconds later he ran back in again to retrieve his nearly-forgotten sack lunch.

“Bye again!” he shouted as he sped out the back door, hurriedly walking his bike out the gate and down the driveway.  He quickly mounted and sped off down the street.

He failed both tests that day.

“So much for luck,” the boy thought as he undressed later that night and tossed the shirt unceremoniously into the laundry basket. 

Second Monday in October, 1963.

His mother found him crying in his closet late that afternoon.  She had been preparing supper and had gone back to give her son the heads-up that she needed his assistance setting the table.  His father would be home soon.

The boy was sprawled upon the old wooden floor - lying atop a variety of shoes and miss-matched socks.  There was an upright cardboard box wedged in among the footwear.  The lid had been cast aside. The interior of the box was lined with an old soft towel and recently cut grass.  The scent of the grass helped mask the smell of old sneakers.  There was a small plastic water bowl in one corner of the box.  Another plastic bowl filled with dried grains, seeds and tiny bits of apple was seated beside it.

Upon seeing his mother, the boy slowly pulled himself upward and extended his cupped hands out to her – as in supplication.  He was cradling a small dead bird in his ten-year-old palms.  Tears streamed down his cheeks.

“She died, mom,” the boy whispered, between the gasping of a child’s sobs.

“Oh, honey,” his mother lamented, gently stroking the soft brown feathers of the gift being offered – like a precious diamond, she thought, through which light no longer shines.

“God knows every sparrow which falls,” she said more to herself than to her distraught child.

“You tried your best to keep this little one alive, son.  I don’t think anyone could have tried harder than you,” she said.  “She was hurt and you took her in and gave her substance and shelter.  But, it just wasn't in your power to heal that broken wing.  She is out of pain now.  I hope you understand that.”

“I know,” the boy began.  It was as much as he could say for the moment.

They heard a car pull into the driveway.

“That’ll be your dad.  Why don’t you place her back in the box and wash up a bit.  We’ll bury her in the garden after dinner.  Go ahead and say your goodbyes while I set the table.”

The boy watched her leave his room as she slowly walked down the hall and into the dining room.  He heard soft whispers from afar.  His parents were talking quietly.

There would be a subdued dinner – followed by an impromptu funeral in the far corner of the back yard. 

When the boy undressed for bed later that evening, he looked in the mirror hanging on the back of the closet door and recognized the yellow shirt that he had worn several weeks before - the shirt that he had hoped would bring him luck.  He’d shied away from wearing it after the defeat of two poor test scores.

He thought of the poor sparrow with the broken wing.  He had found the bird on Saturday and taken it into the house.  He wanted to save it.  His father spoke gently about the folly of trying to do so.  But, his mother understood the need in her boy’s plea.  She had provided the box, towel and plastic containers with food.  The boy kept watch over the injured creature all weekend.  He kept the box in his closet, away from the curious family dog.

The bird had still been alive this morning, he thought.

But I put on this shirt today and the bird then died, he reasoned, as only a ten-year-old could.

“I don’t think this is a lucky shirt after all,” he said to his reflection on the closet door. 

And with that, he grabbed the garment and threw it against the wall, far from the laundry basket.

Fourth Friday in November, 1963.

The boy in the pretty yellow shirt was daydreaming when the principal quietly stepped into their fifth grade class room and whispered in the ear of their teacher.  The man then departed and went into the class across the hall for another urgent whispering with another adult.  The clock on the wall read close to twelve noon.

The boy’s teacher removed a white handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his glasses absently.  He then wiped at the corners of both eyes and gently blew his nose.

“Boys and girls,” he began.  “President Kennedy has been shot.  In Dallas, I’m told. He is dead.  Class,” he stuttered, “class is dismissed.”

With that, the man turned and left the classroom, tears tumbling down his face.

The children sat in silence for a moment and then gathered up their things.  A bell sounded for lunch.

The boy who had been daydreaming was fully awake now.  He stared out the window as his classmates scattered.  A bird in an ancient pepper tree was chirping to an unseen mate.  The sound carried in through the open window.

The lone student lifted the lid of the old desk and put away his math test.  He had just scored an eighty on the pop quiz.  He thought it was going to be his lucky day.  Past resentment and superstition toward the shirt he was wearing had eroded over the past month.  He was too old, he reminded himself, to be thinking that kind of stuff.  But, all the same…

When he undressed for bed that night – reflecting on a day of stunning sadness – he stared at the boy in the mirror, the one in the pretty yellow shirt. 

“It can’t be,” he wondered in disbelief.

He removed the offensive clothing, wadded it tightly and hid it out of sight beneath the bed.

The last Monday in November, 1963.

The boy was amazed that the family’s old television set had not burned itself out over the past three days.  He was equally amazed how he and the rest of the world had also not burned themselves out during the same time frame while glued to their collective television sets and radios.

The images shifted from Dallas to Air Force One sitting on a warm Texas tarmac to Washington and back to Dallas again as a man stepped out of a crowd and fired point blank into the belly of another man in hand cuffs.

Familiar, father-like commentators wept openly on Friday and were wearing the same clothes come Saturday.  Crowds swelled in lines for forty blocks in order to pay their last respects to a young president lying in state.

And then there was the funeral on Monday. 

The black and white images pouring forth from the old family television were relentless.

And yet, life went on somehow.

Meals were prepared and consumed in silence or tears.

Chores around the house were attended to.

A mother cleaned her son’s bedroom and came across a discarded shirt on the floor of his room, beneath the bed.  Odd, she thought, for the boy to be so careless.  But, it was washed and ironed and hung once more in his closet by the close of Monday evening.

The boy spotted it while changing into his pajamas later that night.

He carried the shirt out to his mother.  She was sitting in front of the old television set, sewing.  It was turned off. 

“I can’t wear this anymore, mom,” the boy began.

“Bad things happen, when I do,” he concluded.

He tried his best to explain failed exams, a hurt sparrow and now the death of a president. 

His mother listened.

She then tried to reassure her son that he was not responsible for the death of anything or anybody.

The boy shook his head all the same.

“Please don’t be mad – but I just can’t take a chance on anything else happening, mom.”  He held the shirt with outstretched hands.  “Make it go away please,” he pleaded softly.

“All right,” she said.  “Leave it here now.  I will take care of it.  You have plenty of other shirts in the closet.  Now, go to bed.”

The boy set the shirt on the edge of her chair.  He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

“Night, mom – thanks.”  He shuffled off to bed.

“Good night,” she replied.  “Sweet dreams.”

The mother set down her sewing and picked up the pretty yellow shirt.

She went out the back door and into the garage, looking for the bag of used clothing intended for the Salvation Army.

She found the bag and carefully folded the shirt. She laid it atop items destined for others.

The boy’s mother closed the bag and headed for the house.

Halfway there she stopped – struck by a memory of a boy in a pretty yellow shirt crying in the closet.  She returned to the garage and the bag of clothing.

She removed the garment on top, held it aloft as it unfolded itself and then gave it a mighty tear right down the center.  Buttons fell to the floor.

She walked over to the trash can, lifted the old metal lid and tossed the once pretty shirt inside. 

It landed on a pile of newspapers with headlines proclaiming some very bad things.

The mother walked back into the house to check on her son.  She just wanted to tuck him in for the night and reassure him that everything would be all right.