The Short Story

Edward Teach, Neighbor
Note: Also the real name of the pirate, Blackbeard

I suspected he was a black-bearded ghost the way he was marooned in darkness pushing the sun ahead with his headlights as he sampled his companion, the stars, on his way to the milk company like a descendant of yesterday, to return with his white milk truck on a course he navigated by memory using a sexton of North Star memory, the same old routes over the hemisphere, to deliver milk into a milk chute, including ours, and when we open that tiny door, there it would be like a magic trick of re-appearing filled milk bottles with thick cream crusted on top. He would go, door to door, delivering irresistible promises, until the light climbed over the edge of the trees, and he would vanish like a movie vampire afraid of light.

One time I saw him at dawn wearing white pants and white shirt and white cap, lugging a wire basket with six milk bottles, knee-deep in fresh snow, puffs of cold and snowflakes, swirling like milk, displaced in the disappearing, nearby, cars were pumping gas fighting to start. He was already in the hours of sleeplessness. I asked him what he did for a living and he snickered like a horse, “I’m a reverse pirate.”

When he climbed the dark stairs of his death, he delivered the Milky Way wearing his white suit of heron feathers.

If I had to introduce what it was like then, memories are cream rising to the top: our cellar bin filling with coal; bananas float in soggy milk; impeccable bow ties; our father’s quest to take care of their family; the milkman’s headlights dimming on perilous roads driving to the familiar.

Sometimes our father’s hands held unemployment like an albatross of embarrassment. Sometimes our father’s made a good accounting. Some of them reminisced about the single life. Some like my neighbor rose with darkness driving the numbing route like practicing a song.

When we peeled away the thick cream of memory, thick as sliced bananas, there were these promises he delivered.