Friday is writing creepy bummers.

You stick to the old town anymore, and that suits you fine. These clapboard sidewalks haven’t changed much, or at least not as much as everything else ‘round these parts. What few tourists wander through this district find it charming. A throwback. Mark Twain and Black Bart and panning for gold feel as close as breathing on this side of town. A body can just step around the road apples and find a stool at the one old-timey saloon still scraping up a living serving sarsaparilla to visitors and cheap whiskey to locals. It’s charming, sure, this little pocket of forgotten dust. A fine place to spend a few hours of an afternoon in wine country if one wants to tell one’s rich suburban friends one wandered off the beaten path. This is no postcard home for you though. Why did you never leave, old man? You had all the reason in the world to split and never look back.

When you were a child, there was an ancient oak tree just down yonder at the North cap of Main Street. That was ages back. Two or three ages, even. She was a beautiful lady, all titan height, sweeping boughs, and sharp-edged leaves underfoot in the dry fall. On young spring days like this one, a boy could filch an apple from the stable bin and spend the afternoon in her branches, watching the dust motes in the beams of light filtering through the green green green. You loved her dearly. Continued to, even after she broke your heart.

A piece of the sky snaked down and bit her during a dry thunderstorm one electric evening. Lightning from the vast open purple above. She split right in half with a crack like a hundred million roofs caving in and the whole county came a-runnin. Orange heat licked upward with sharp tongues that ran blue at their centers and if not for the brave souls quick on the draw with the fire buggy, the whole county may’ve been burnt right on up. Horses screamed, silhouettes against the inferno with noses flaring, manes curling at the tips as they stood harnessed to the fire wagon. Men with axes and sand and water threw themselves into action, and who should be leading the charge but your own big brother Bill?

At the strapping young age of twenty, Bill was the head of the volunteer firefighters. He was a hero in your shining twelve year old eyes as in the rest of the community’s, and never was one to shy away from a call to action. Bill was there the night your momma kissed your curly toddler head to sleeping and tucked her own head away into the stove. He was there to teach you everything a man should learn from their daddy. He was there for you and for every other one in need of a brotherly spirit, and he was there on the day of the Great Lady’s blaze. Into the fire went Bill. Into the snapping of flame and rattlesnake bite of ember. He did not re-emerge.

They buried him at the head of the main street. The great hero, a-sleeping forever right where the post office meets the edge of the fairground. The great hero, leaving the young lad who needed him most to spend days and nights and days alone and heavy with heartache in a drafty cottage. You never blamed him.

And the Great Lady? Her charred carcass was ground and compacted into statuettes for children and visitors. Molded into horsies and miniature trees and firefighters, dipped into lacquer so they wouldn’t smudge up a girl’s Sunday best. The salvageable wood was bought up by the Jubilee Committee, cut and set aside to age for a season. Next year, a great structure was built up on Bill’s grave. In his honor, they said. An improvement for the fair, they said. A draw to benefit the community. A real ferris wheel for the county’s kids to christen with sticky licorice whip fingers and throw-up. All you saw was the grave of the only family you ever knew, desecrated by the macabre restructured skeleton of your other great love. It made you sick. It hurt your heart. You signed on as caretaker immediately.

Such a life for a young man. The whole world of possibility, nothing holding you here. And you? You chose to spend these past seventy years greasing the gears of one corpse and keeping watch over another. Nary a day off, not a whit of vacation time claimed. You used to venture into the more modern side of town on your off-shift meanders, but being away from your post turns your stomach with anxiety. On the old Main Street, you can see the only sites that matter.

Walking northward, the weathered sidewalk creaks and groans, harmonizing with your crackling knees. You can see the great stump. She survived yet another fire last year and is now nursing a collection of dry rots, hopeful saplings, and wood-boring beetles. A crown of flaming orange poppy surrounds her like a fairy ring. Next spring there will be lupin as well. All is as it should be.

Walking southward now, you kick a clod of horse dung out of your path absentmindedly, measuring the curve and bend of the wheel’s wood from a distance with your reddened eyes. The old post office still sits at its feet, and Bill rests peacefully below. None have disturbed his rest these long years, thanks to your watchfulness. In your mind, his strong jaw and youthful cheeks are as plump and firm as ever they were. You cannot bear to remember the twisted, cracked, melting thing his body became. You know your truth, and he has never grown less beautiful in your heart. Here too, all is as it should be.

These are your days, old man. Seventy years is nigh twenty-six thousand days. How many of those minutes have you spent ministering to the earth and the wheel? Millions, without a doubt. How many grooves on the wooden walk are from your own shoes? Most, I’d wager. Shiny tracks of polished wood groove run north and south. A legacy few will ever notice or think to ask after. And when you’re gone? Half this town can’t imagine it, and the other half won’t notice. You try not to think on it, though you know that life will go on without you. Your days start early and end late, and in-between you’re just passing time at the fueling station of the mind. Your dreams are those of a man haunted by a single purpose. True, there will be eras beyond yours. Soon. But that’s none of your business.

Tonight you will dream about oak trees and ferris wheels. You will dream of a great cracking sound and electricity in the air. You will dream of the march of progress, of sweet Bill’s body in the ground and a beast of electric-powered wood planted atop like a headstone. You will dream the swinging of wooden baskets and the hum of a modern engine. You will dream the smell of lightning-charred trunk and the shocking green of a new oak tree sprouting.