The Man who Walked into the Sky

Note: This is a sad story for older readers

It must have been a man, because they were men’s shoes. He must have gone up into the sky, because why else would the shoes be left hanging from the power lines above the road? 

Mr. Koehler was walking home. In his hand was an attaché case full of fruit for his dinner. He was wearing his new tie, a blue one of glowing silk, a gift from his sister Annaliese.

As he walked, Mr. Koehler’s thoughts flitted like butterflies over many things. He thought of his dinner of apples, mandarins and tomatoes. He thought of his diet, and how he hoped to regain his former lithe figure. He thought of his friend Elsie and her garden of birds.  He thought of his home, a miniature house of two rooms, with a bathroom tacked onto one end of the verandah. He thought of his dreams.

The road along which Mr. Koehler walked was straight and led along the side of a hill toward the sunset. It was the end of a fine, cool day.

“The change will come tomorrow, for certain,” thought Mr. Koehler. He gazed at the clouds gathering on the ridge above the town. Weather had been shockingly dry lately. It made Mr. Koehler thirsty just to think about it. He’d have some of his bottled water. He stopped and put down his attaché case. He would get out his bottle of water. A feeling of luxury, and careless wastefulness and wild wanton devil-may-care, man-of-the-world modernity came over him. Breathing heavily as he bent over his round stomach toward the ground, Mr. Koehler opened the case and took out the bottle of bought water that had been his one extravagance today.

The bottle was an unusual one. As well as vegetables of the ordinary kind, the shop often acquired small dusty lots of strange items, unwanted by anyone else. Sweets reminisced over by grandparents, varieties of grapes only read of in the Bible, drinks that had been thought of as imaginary. This bottle, though plastic and of the usual size, was coloured and a graceful curving shape embossed with patterns. Mr. Koehler unscrewed the lid and drank.

That was better. The water was refreshing. It didn’t have the ferrous taste that his tank water had this year. Mr. Koehler bent over his case again to close the clasps. His breath came hard again, hurting his throat.

“It must be the cold evening air,” he thought. Straightening up, he felt a twisting pain under his ribs. “I’ll have another sip of water,” he said out loud. But his hands were full, the lid was screwed tightly onto the bottle, and he couldn’t be bothered to go through the whole rigamarole of putting things down again. So he walked on, breathing carefully and thinking of other things.

“I must get some new shoes,” he thought. Mr. Koehler, though portly, was proud of his delicately proportioned feet, and despite his small means, kept them clothed in the best shoes he could afford. His current shoes, though well polished and formal, were getting past the talents of the local shoe repair shop. But as he had spent the last of his week’s money on the fruit and water, this was an unproductive thought.

“Elsie,” Thought Mr. Koehler. Here was her house. Elsie; round, like himself, but tiny, her house across the road with its aviary where the doors were always open, but the perches were always full of small birds, chirping joyfully. He would call in and say hello.

“Elsie?” the back door was open as usual, but she was not sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, listening to the news on the radio. He called again. No answer.

“Elsie? Are you there?”  Mr. Koehler put his case down on the retaining wall next to the back door. He put his head round the screen door. The teapot stood on the bench in its pink crocheted cosy, a flowered teacup next to it. The radio chattered.

“She must be up with the birds,” thought Mr. Koehler. He puffed up the cement path that led past the washing line and the vegetable bed to the aviary. Herringbone ferns brushed his legs. He stopped to regain breath. Form here there was a fine view over the roof of Elsie’s house to the street, the roofs of the town and the ridge of wooded hills beyond. The light was changing from gold to pink. Clouds heralding the change in weather flocked in the sky, transformed by slanting rays that had travelled through many thousands of kilometres of atmosphere over land to the west. Mr. Koehler loosened his silk tie. The thought of talking to Elsie made him feel contented. She had a way of making everything seem as if moving toward a best possible end, an end that was not simply happy or nice, but deep beyond comfort. The teapot, the radio, the house furnished with familiar objects needed and loved, were mere frills to her.

Elsie’s birds sat fluffed into their feathers in line on the perches opposite the open aviary door. They were strangely silent. Mr. Koehler’s heart shrank inside his curving chest. Lying on the bench in front of the aviary, sheltered by overhanging jasmine already drooping for winter, Elsie was plainly dead. Mr. Koehler put his hand gently on her peaceful forehead. Her colourful home-knitted cardigan and flowered apron, her hair dyed orange, her bright bangles, all contradicted the melancholy of the scene. A tear ran down Mr. Koehler’s face. He had been happy, before. He wanted to share his mood with her, the friend who made all shared thoughts bigger and more real. He wanted to tell her about Annaliese and her family, and about the interesting bottle and show her the sunset. He wanted to hear about her day, what she thought of the news, which of her birds visited. Who else did he have to share these things with?  Mr. Koehler sat down on the bench next to Elsie. Tears blurred his sight. The light was changing from pink to purple, and he could see nothing but the colour of mourning. Soon it would be dark. He didn’t know what to do. “Goodbye, my friend.” 

A touch on his shoulder. Another. At first he didn’t know what it was. He closed his eyes, his hand on Elsie’s forehead. He gave her warmth; maybe she would come back. But no, he knew she would not. Something on his bald head, small, scratchy. Mr. Koehler opened his eyes. He was covered with birds. They pulled at his clothes, flapping their tiny wings, fanning him and touching his face with their feathers. There were so many of them. Mr. Koehler found himself pulled onto his feet, down the path and onto the footpath in front of Elsie’s house. The birds flapped their wings so fast that a small wind swirled around him. Their colours blurred with tears and the sunset. Mr. Koehler, the man who always looked as if he stood on tiptoe on tiny, delicate feet, began to rise from the ground. The birds carried him up a few metres, and then the south-west wind, coldly sweeping in from the clouds, picked him up by his suit jacket and flapping heavenly coloured tie and drew him into the sky, toes pointed. The birds separated from him as he rose, the wind strong enough to carry him, and were left holding only his worn-out shoes in their claws. So many tiny birds, so many feet and wings - but the shoes were too heavy for them to carry for long. The laces tangled in their grasp, and they dropped the shoes, which caught on the electricity wires that crossed the street.

It is strange that the only thing left of Mr. Koehler and Elsie was the joyful sunset, the empty houses and a pair of shoes hanging from electricity wires, and that of those things the shoes were the only thing that anyone ever noticed.