I Couldn’t Park the Van Close to the Factory

I couldn’t park the van close to the factory

so I pulled up to the door, let all passengers

out and drove

 

three screened-in parking lots away

to a desolate place, parked the car in

between weeds that had grown up

 

along the cracks, and pushed the lock button

on the remote as I walked back to the factory

around chain-link fences, through

 

unlocked gates and on sidewalks between the

parking lots and the lower-middle class neighborhood

of small bungalows built on cement slabs.

 

Chain-link fences surrounded the backyards

silent of barking because there were no dogs there.

Nothing moved or made noise except me.

 

I wound my way through all the vehicles crowded together

as I neared the red bricked factory. If business failed,

it could be made into fashionable condos,

 

I thought, if it had been closer in to the city

center of whatever city the red bricked factory

was located near.  Before entering, I stood and

 

looked at the windows.  They would need

to have balconies attached, because I know my wife and

I would feel trapped inside with the

 

only escape to take the elevator to the first floor

and walk down the hall to the lobby and out the front door

to stand outside and breathe in the fresh air and

 

feel the summer, fall, winter, spring princess caress our faces

with a zephyr, tornado or hurricane. Walking inside, I was

greeted by my two grown kids, another person who apparently

 

I knew well and several others of the group that had

been staying at a less than posh accommodation not far

from the factory but closer in to city center, I think.

 

It must have been a retreat of some sort we

were on but we were here because we had business to do, too.

The factory floor was crowded. It was cold enough

 

outside to be Black Friday which would account

for my having to park so far away from the front door.

I didn’t see any police.  There were long lines of shoppers

 

waiting to talk to someone about the only thing available.

Apparently, it was a one item company – woodcuts.

Some of our group wandered the aisles moving from the

 

waiting lines to areas where the giant woodcuts would

be dipped in the voluminous ink vats and pressed against the

massive presses. None of the ink splattered into the aisles.

 

It was a clean operation. Finally, the person I knew well and I,

and I think maybe my kids, moved to the front.  The redheaded, female

clerk with a 50’s kind of permanent and a very ruddy round face

 

wasn’t helpful at all. She was impatient and bossy. We were all getting

frustrated. My children left to wander the aisles. The person I knew

well had with him a woodcut cut into the rounded

 

end of a broomstick handle and one other piece which

was nice, as I recall, except I can’t remember enough about it

to explain it in any detail. I didn’t have anything with me.  I saw

 

the short, bald-headed, kindly printmaker I knew from sometime before.

He was standing as if waiting to receive the next in line, but it seemed he was there

just for me and the person I knew well.

 

I told the red-head I wanted to see the bald-head, so the person

I knew well and I turned walked up to the printmaker who was waiting

for us with a kindly smile.  We greeted each other and I introduced

 

the person I knew well. The printmaker said things were going well and

presented a very large print.  He unfolded it on a nearby table, but

the table wasn’t big enough to hold it.

 

It was an abstract woodcut by my late wife, but instead of being ink on paper

It was a wood woodcut, hinged in places so it could be folded.  It looked

a bit like laminate instead of wood. I don’t ever remember having seen it.

 

The person I knew well presented his broom handle and the

piece I can’t describe to the kindly printmaker.  We went to

his station, he dipped the broom handle into the ink, pressed

 

the woodcut onto a sheet of paper.  The rounded head of the

broom handle made a circular indentation in the paper.

That looked nice. I could imagine it dried, numbered and framed.

 

Before he did the piece I can’t remember well enough

to describe, the kindly printmaker, who was standing on a

stool, turned like a pirouette toward us and told us that

 

the work would be very expensive.  How expensive we asked.

Very expensive, like thousands and thousands of dollars expensive.

The rest of our group was getting antsy and bored and wanted

 

to go back to the not very elaborate retreat center closer

to the city center to get their things together before going home.

I headed back to the van, passed all the cars still

 

jammed in the parking lot, through the gates, along the sidewalk

with the bungalows with the silent, vacant backyards.  I looked for absent dogs.

In the distance I could see the van in the otherwise abandoned lot.  When I squinted,

 

I could see the weeds surrounding the van. I was still separated from

the van by a chain-link fence and I had a hard

time seeing the unlocked gate. Was I supposed to have gone

 

around this fence?  I sat on a chair right there. My MacBook Pro

was in my lap, opened, on and connected to the internet. The remote

was too remote to work and I had to use openthedoor.com, but I

 

couldn’t find the site.  The person who I knew really well stood next to me.

He told me that a former parishioner of mine whom I didn’t even

know was on the retreat was angry about the whole thing and

 

decided that he was going to walk to the retreat center

by himself. I was worried because he had recently survived

a brain aneurism and was very fragile.

 

Anxious, I went back to the computer, but, accidentally,

I wound up scrolling down through movies to rent. I tried to get out

but each time I clicked an icon I rented another movie.

 

The last I remember, I owed $3,447.