"The Walk Home" by M. L. Bell (Aroostook County)
The town was built off the Boardwalk, overlooking a sliver of the Pacific that always looked like a postcard. The wood slats were stained and laid carefully into a road, jutting from the pier and docks where the fishing boats slept. Shops quickly popped up, claiming the prime location and turning it into a tourist destination stamped with bright lights and frivolity. A Ferris wheel became the town’s staple. Popcorn stands arrived in droves.
Another road followed the backside of the shops. This road was paved in asphalt and had a view of dark, damp walls and fire escapes. It wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone but those who ran the shops and lived in the tiny apartments above them.
This was Willie’s road.
Willie first went down that road two nights after he was born, swaddled in a blanket and supported in the crook of his father’s good arm, his mother clutching on to watch his little face as he slept. Despite its dismal view, the road held friendly smiles and led straight to the upstairs apartment of the cigarette shop— home.
Willie learned to walk on that road, small and unsure steps toward his mother, who was leaning on a railing outside the back exit of the diner where she worked, a thin smile spread across her face to match the happy ribbon tied in her hair. Willie’s father would often bring him to visit in between her waitress shifts. The grease from her fingers would stain Willie’s little face until his father splashed him into the bubble-filled sink back in the apartment.
Willie walked home down that road starting on his first day of elementary school. His father would meet him halfway; sometimes, they’d walk on the opposite side of the shops, on the Boardwalk. They would buy popcorn and pretend to be tourists. His father would point out shops and describe what they used to be like when he was a kid, before old owners died and new management came and changed everything.
Why can’t people just settle for what they’ve got? Willie’s father would ask, not really looking for an answer. They always want the next best thing.
Willie didn’t mind the new shops— he liked the fresh start, the clean signs, the pleasure of something different— but he didn’t tell his father that. His father wanted things to always stay the same. With each passing year, he’d find something new to grumble about— the peeling paint, the holes in his socks, the marks measuring Willie’s height on the wall. Willie’s mother said that his father felt like he was missing out, on account of his weak arm from the war, keeping him from a job.
Before the end of his mother’s shift each night, Willie would walk from the cigarette shop to the diner, hoping for a sliver of apple pie that would go stale overnight if left uneaten. He was charming enough to get it, usually.
In Junior High, Willie spent hours walking up and down that road again and again, trying to process the words his mother had said— that an automobile accident meant his father wasn’t coming home. On his walks home from school after that, Willie would take the Boardwalk and point out the shops to himself, thinking of a comic book shop that used to be his favorite candy counter and— before that— a clock shop where Willie’s father’s father bought a grandfather clock that burnt up when Willie’s father’s father’s house caught fire.
Willie tried to keep things simple for his mother. He took a job at the cigarette shop to make up for the days when she couldn’t bear to go to work. More than once, he’d walk down that road real slow, staring down at the gaping hole in his brand-new, freshly ironed pants and the dirt on his dress shoes, trying to form an excuse other than being pushed to the ground during recess, accompanied by a chorus of taunting because he smelled like an ashtray. When he was in high school, Willie’s mother’s diner hired Jane as a waitress. It didn’t take long for Willie to fall in love, pacing back and forth on the road before getting up the courage to introduce himself to her and ask her if she’d like to take a ride on the Ferris wheel with him. She agreed and stared into his eyes as Willie swore that after one more year and a high school diploma, they would run away together and he’d start a business in New York City and they’d get married and everything would be perfect.
Willie talked about his plans again as he walked his mother home, seeing the light return to her eyes at his talk of love.
Six months later, the diner was bought out by a toy company and Willie’s mother took sick. He dropped out of school to work longer hours at the cigarette shop and take care of her. One year later, Jane was married, as promised, and Willie wore his mended pants and newly polished shoes to the ceremony. He sat alone in the back. Afterward, he went down that road, dazed and alone and feeling as if the walk home was longer than ever before.
*
Willie’s mother died on Willie’s twenty-fifth birthday, after a long winter of illness. Willie walked home from the funeral in his same pants and dress shoes, even though it was raining and several kind passersby offered to drive him.
The walk home— the road— was a different sort of friend.
Willie could’ve left right then, if he’d had any money or any idea of where he wanted to go. He could’ve left after ten years. Fifteen. But he didn’t. He stayed in the apartment above the cigarette shop. When the cigarette shop closed and was replaced by a café, Willie joined the sardine-packing plant two miles away, taking the long walk to and from work each day.
Willie walked by the post office on his daily commute; at Christmastime, he’d walk home with a stack of cards from old friends all over with pictures and well-wishes and askings of him to visit them, even though Willie couldn’t pronounce half of the return addresses and had never been outside of his town, much less in an airplane. He’d just stare at the pictures and wonder what it’d be like to have a family, kids, grandkids. As the years passed, fewer cards came in, and he still never left.
The new shop owners and kids running down the sidewalks would wave to Willie and say, “Hi, Mr. Willie!” and ask him how he was doing. He’d say “Good” even if he felt like one of the sardines he placed in cans all day— stuck between the Boardwalk and the storefronts, unable to squeeze his way out.
*
Now Willie is old. No one knows him well enough to say how old, but he’s been around longer than anyone else. He still works packing sardines at the plant two miles away. He doesn’t own a car, but he has a cane.
Willie walks home every day, cane in hand, wearing his worn-out pants and familiar dress shoes, the ones he’s worn to too many funerals and weddings and funerals and all of the happenings that feel the same to him.
As he walks home, Willie looks down at the warped boards speckled from the spray of the ocean, then up at the arcade that used to be the toy shop that used to be the diner where he fell in love and ate his favorite apple pie and learned how to walk.
He wishes his mind could be what it was years ago— willing to run away, to dream of something different, to adapt with the ever-changing town. But his mind is old now, too. So he moves through the town that used to be his but now feels like someone else’s, wondering if, when no one else misses him, maybe this road will, when he’s not there to take the long walk home.
Maggie Bell (M. L. Bell) lives in Caribou, Maine, and is a Junior in high school. She has three self-published books: Coffee Gets Cold Quick: A Novel (2022), We Are Human Still: A Novel (2023), and For People My Age: 99 Poems About Life (2024). Maggie’s short story, “The Walk Home,” pays homage to the power of storytelling she has witnessed in her life.