Buddhaland Brooklyn by Richard C. Morais

Author:Richard C. Morais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

Chapter Nine

The sun chased the last sugar into the grapes that hung from trellises in the back of Brooklyn homes. The last fire hydrant of the season was opened for the children. It spewed water into Fourth Street and the children screamed with delight as they ran through its torrent. The fiery September sun and the fire hydrant spray met somewhere over the street and created a school of rainbow trout swimming across the Brooklyn sky, reminding me of the Devil’s Gate Gorge at that precious time of day.

But it was all coming to an end. The U.S. stock markets fell. The first leaves erupted in a fiery burst of russet and red before fluttering dead and exhausted to the pavement. I was told it was the Canadian maple, that gash of angry fire, that made a New York fall what it was. For me it was the testy wind, pensive one moment, then raging away irrationally until it forced tears to roll down my face. It was a bully, this wind, and it rattled garbage cans and whipped the torn, dried leaves into a trembling state of anxiety.

The end was near and everyone knew it. New Yorkers who argued violently on stoops and fire escapes just weeks before were now subdued, chastened, and seeking out the bosom of their families. The rough-looking father promenaded with his wife and children past the Longshoremen Union Center, enjoying the last nights of balmy weather, stopping on President Street to buy ices for the children. The mother in plastic flip-flops and a blue skirt, a cardigan across her shoulders, walked arm in arm with her man, soft at long last. Even the children were well behaved. No cuffs around the ears, for once.

I, too, could not resist this salute to the dying summer. One day, when the September sun was sinking in late afternoon, I emerged from 429 Cortina Street in a pullover and took a seat on a Sant’Andrea Park bench, a plastic cup of red wine at my fingertips. I read the Japanese papers, sitting next to the old men playing bocce, and when their roars were particularly loud, I glanced up from the papers to see what was happening. When I did, my eyes drifted over Brooklyn, over the rooftops, to where the black clouds were gathering, the threatening storms of winter preparing to run us down.

And was reminded of the Bashō poem:

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