Why Kirk missed his own youth he wasn’t sure, because he felt nothing but sorrow for the youth of today.
Kirk Norwitz sat beside a kitchen full of empty cans. Beer cans take two days to begin to smell. Some had been there for over a month. Kirk is sixty-two. He always waited for someone to come and save him. A woman. A God. Maybe just someone who wanted to help, someone all his philosophies had led him too. Everyone that had came to help so far, whether sent from God or just coincidence, he had pushed away with his pride. He wanted to do it his way, no matter how bad the way was.
Sixty-two is plenty of years. Yet, he had spent the last 35 doing the same thing. Trying to work life out rather than live it. Sitting by the window watching the weather. Enthralled at how the wind picks up to help flowers pollenate at the beginning of spring, and how the wind stops at the end, as gentle youth learn to grow. Kirk was thinking of his youth. Since he was twenty-four he had been looking back. This had caused him to crash into what was in front of him. Suicide was too shameful, for better or worse. It was quitting. Saying to gravity that you have become too much. Saying to the sun, thank you but no thank you. So he killed himself more slowly, and although the drink and cigarettes brought a dull monotonic pain, it was his pain, it was his broken piano to play songs. Songs only he knew were special. Songs that are hindered, that showed the birds with broken wings that even if they can no longer fly, they can choose to sing.
It was a Wednesday morning and he had to go for a thirty minute drive to a medical centre to get the results of blood work. The medical centre was in a large shopping centre. Over 1000 parking spots. Over 500 shops. Over everything. As he walked through the empty cans they made a tune. He felt like a crooked Santa Clause. A broken down dream. He wondered how he ever had energy to do the things he used to do when he was younger. Then the kettle whistled loudly to remind him to stay present.
Kirk walked gingerly out of the house. His right knee was full of arthritis. His left ankle couldn’t handle his weight and with his walker he slowly went down the stairs, put his full mug on the roof and opened the drivers seat. He grabbed a cigarette from his top packet, lit it, and started the car. As he drove off he heard a bang on the roof, then hot coffee fell through his window on his arm. This caused him to swerve, narrowly missing the dam that is beside his caravan.
“Cunt of a thing!” he shouted at himself, dropping his cigarette, burning his old thigh. This caused him to swerve again, narrowly missing a tree. He put his brakes on. Sat with his burnt shoulder and thigh, white polo shirt covered in a brown stain, ash all over his leather interior. Took a deep breath and told himself to get it together.
“You right Baz?” asked the owner of the park.
Everyone called him Baz, no one knew why, someone just said it one day and I guess it sounded more fitting than Kirk. Kirk didn’t reply and drove off, turned right onto one road then another right on the highway. The speed limit was thirty kilometres too fast for his engine and brain. He sat on the inside lane, getting beeped and flashed by the crazy world full of confidence. He had four cigarettes on the drive and listened to music older than him.
At the shopping centre he parked in a disabled spot and walked in, still covered in a big brown stain. To kirk, walking into a shopping centre was what he imagined it would be like to walk into the brain of a rich mans wife, a wife with no identity or dreams, a wife with nothing but artificial currency. Colours of false temptation offering the answer to happiness. Why Kirk missed his own youth he wasn’t sure, because he felt nothing but sorrow for the youth of today. Those smiles, those fragile smiles, not knowing what is coming next. A world full of lies, so obvious, but what else?
Two hours in the waiting room before a Doctor poked his head out of many doors in a hallway and said, “Nor Witz?”
He put a gap in his name for some reason. Kirk got up as quick as he could which was extremely slow, made a few noises and walked into the intimate room with his Doctor.
“Kirk,” he said, without making eye-contact. Kirk didn’t know what he was meant to reply to that, or if he was, so he didn’t.
The doctor finally looked left from reading his computer.
“Kirk?”
“What?”
“How are you feeling?” asked the Doctor.
“How do you want me to answer that?” asked Kirk.
“However you want.”
“Good, I am feeling good.”
“We have a few concerning signs with the results from your blood work.”
Kirk was determined he was riddled with every disease known to man, and possibly animal, but he remained calm, like always. The truth known begins any process, any cycle, so he was happy to hear it straight from the doctor, whatever it was.
“You have high normal Htc, Hgb.”
Death, thought Kirk.
“Okay,” he said. “So?”
“This is a sign that you are heavily dehydrated. I am going to prescribe you with some medication and I want you looking into a morning routine of stretching and some electrolytes. Certain foods will help with this, fruit helps. And, how many drinks are you having?”
“Roughly thirty,” Kirk replied.
“Okay, so that averages out to about five drinks a day, can we get that down?”
Kirk was having thirty a day, the doctor had misunderstood, but he didn’t correct him, he just said, “Sure.”
He walked out of the Doctors office. He was in there for 7 minutes. Spoke with the receptionist who seems as if she had been there longer than the building. Back out into the bright lights of capitalism. The bright lights of false promises. He was not going to die, he was somehow only dehydrated.
“Better have a beer then,” he thought. He smiled to himself. Then felt a deep sadness. More time. More chances. More opportunities he knew he was not going to take. More waiting. More.
There was a bar by the food court and he ordered himself a beer to feel better, to feel more like himself, it had been a very big day so far. He sat and watched the world go by. All those long legs walking to meet another set. That is when it happened. A man holding a large black machine-gun walked over the white tiles. Right in front of Kirk the man aimed and shot, blowing the head off a lady who was changing the bins. Screams echoed through the guts of the centre. Kirk took his last sip, walked towards the man. All aches left him. He found some pace, quicker than he had moved in decades. Yet so slow and unexpected the gunman didn’t hear him coming. Kirk was waiting for the man to shoot him between the eyes before he got close, but now he was right there, new decisions had to be made.
He wrapped his arms around his neck. Three more shots went off, one killing a four year old girl. Kirk knew how to do a sleeper hold and got it locked in. As they both fell back Kirks old weathered head hit the tiles but he kept his grasp. He couldn’t feel anything but the grip he had around the gunman's neck. Pushing his head forward he knew he had him, he knew he would soon pass out. He didn’t feel the knife enter him eleven times. Slice his arm five times. All he felt was the man fall asleep.
Kirk Norwitz looked to the ceiling. There was a skylight and he could see a passing cloud. He smiled. He felt peace pour out of him. He understood why it was all so hard now, he understood why he suffered so much, because this moment was coming, and to sacrifice himself for others would be the easiest decision he had ever made, and in that museum of capitalism and lies soon to be realised, the old man took his last breath. After sixty two years of being a failure, the world blew out the heroes candle; The old man's fragile flame.
