Prompt: “Blue”

I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but there’s a man down the street, lives in a small white house, with an even smaller porch, and more chickens than cats, and a blue motorcycle sits in his yard with a broken front wheel and, now here’s the crazy part, he survived when Mt. Saint Helens blew her top off. Now, you can’t go see him. He won’t answer the door. He doesn’t want to answer your questions or tell you his stories. He’s a private fellow, you see? He knows he lived to see another day. Now he hides out his house. I see a rusty Dodge Neon drop food off on his porch and drive away. I’ve never seen him reach out for the food, but one day it’s there, and the next it’s not. I can’t tell who drives the Neon, ‘cause his family died in the eruption. But he’s still there, with his chickens and his cats. The cats just multiply around him, not one of them fixed, but they all get along with the chickens, alright. 

Couldn’t tell you the man’s name either. 

I know what you’re thinking. How do I even know there is a man in that house? Well, I’ll tell you. It was about 10 years ago when the library received a letter in the mail. It was a photograph of the big black cloud that filled the sky that day. Couldn’t have been more than a couple miles from whoever took the photograph, but the real kicker was that right in the road of that photograph was that damn blue motorcycle. Can you believe that? And then another photograph showed up in another letter. Same smoke wall, same motorcycle with a bent wheel being hauled by a Red Pinto. Now, I can’t tell you what happened to the Pinto. I’ve never seen it anywhere. Those things are rust buckets. But the library got letters for a couple years and then the letters and the photographs stopped. Now, I’ll admit, it sounds a bit like a rumor or a legend. Anybody could have found the photos taken by a man who didn’t survive and sent them in. And maybe the motorcycle was salvaged and sold long after the poor fellow who died on it parked it in that road for that picture. But if I was gonna make a bet, I’d bet the man who took that photograph, lives in that house and he’s just too scared to step outside the front steps. Imagine that? Surviving a volcano eruption, and then livin’ the rest of your life in that tiny white house with nothing but chickens and cats for friends. 

But I shouldn’t have told you any of that. Now, you’ll want to go pester the poor man, but do me a favor and let him be. Don’t go down there knockin’ on his door. Just let him be. You should at least drive by, though. Look at the motorcycle, and come back and tell me if you think all the black crud is Mt. Saint Helen’s ashy innards. Then, if you feel like it, go to the library and look at that photograph on the cork board to the right as soon as you walk in. They did a nice display of the photographs. It’s a big cork board. When you see that motorcycle, tell me it’s not the same one. But don’t bother the poor man. 

Whatever you do, just let him be.