Broken

A walk down the curved hill from door to road’s edge.  They are tiny people, and aged.  She leaning against her cane, he bow-legged walking with the deliberate care of sore joints.  They are slowly walking the downward slope, leading me to the road’s edge. 

She stops to punctuate a decision.  She will walk no further.  She speaks, her orders punctuated by jabs of the cane, her language not mine, snippets englais mixed in francais, her point understood.  He (two jabs directed to his chest) must go get the car (a swing jab over his head in the general direction of where they are parked) and he must bring the car here (a point of the cane from the road to the precise spot he is to stop) and he (more jabs to his chest) must be quick about it.  She leans upon her cane, tired and pained.  A look to her husband reveals her disdain.

He looks confused and frightened.  Momentary silence and then shy speech: where is the car parked?  Wife explodes in fury, a string of language I recall hearing on the schoolyards of my youth, her jabs to him pronounced and pointed: you stupid man, you forgetful uncaring man, you inconsiderate man, must I do and think of everything, man.  Her anger animated, her cane swinging about her, a menace of wood it lands across my shoulder.

Her profanities, no apologies, proffered upon myself for being so near.  Unapologetically she returns to her man to complete her eulogy in stupidity finally recalling to him the place where the car is parked. 

Wide berth I give her as I continue to the road.  He hobbles down, down to road’s edge.  At the light we look into each other’s eyes.  We share, he a broken man belittled impotent and useless, me a broken man bruised contained anger.  No words need pass we just know.  Light changes, permission made, we cross together, solace in companionship, strangers to pride.