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The Little Green Pail

Bob Rashkow

    He entered the park at Greenview and Lill. It was a beautiful Indian Summer evening in Chicago, hardly a cloud visible, and he had time he needed to kill. As he walked around the sandbox, a vicious-looking dog yelped at him and he was momentarily distracted, but he continued to an empty bench, feeling already suspect. This bench was a good spot to sit and nurse his large Diet Coke from Mr. Sub. It faced part of the playground, and he could easily view the “action”—pretty much whatever came his way or presented itself. He sat down and gently placed the paper cup next to him. “Well, here it is: the Real America,” he thought, amused, to himself. “America in action. The true movers and shakers; the people you won’t see on Inside Edition or any of those shows......” It was a fairly upscale neighborhood, of this he was all too aware, and he was also quite aware of the potential danger his very existence caused: a 55-year-old man, bald, overweight, somewhat effeminate and cautious in his movements, all alone just sitting there. Just sitting there, observing the everyday antics of the stay-at-home dads and moms, their little charges skedaddling around the playground. There was even a Latino “nanny” squiring 2 white children around while she spoke, in Spanish, on a cell phone. It would have been difficult for him to believe that the silent, seemingly well-behaved little kids in the stroller were actually her own. Privilege has its privileges, he thought.
    But he had done enough walking for the day; he needed a rest, at least until he would get up again and walk two blocks over to the independent theatre he volunteered for. At 7 PM, they were screening “Five Easy Pieces,” an old but critically acclaimed thinking person’s film with Jack Nicholson as the freeloading, despairing protagonist. He’d seen it plenty of times before, but it was free for him as a volunteer and it was hard for him to resist Nicholson’s bravura performance, let alone the brilliant and intense workings of the script, the way it reflected so boldly the stark divisions in the country then, as opposed to the vague, blurry ones in the country now.
    In a way, he felt like Nicholson’s “Bobby Dupea” character. During the latter part of the film, Nicholson as Bobby travels to his boyhood home, his sister having informed him that their father is possibly dying. His reputation precedes him, though, and he is completely out of his element there, having long ago rejected the values and extremely high expectations of his upbringing. Now, here too, sitting alone in this quiet park with only the sounds of barking dogs or yelling children (or, every once in a while, a cell phone’s ringtone), he imagined that somehow he too was out of place—no dog, no kid or kids, just a huge cup of carbonated beverage for company. Totally suspicious, especially in the current atmosphere of fear and hostility.
    He didn’t care—not really; he was determined to stick it out. Time would cooperate, time would flow on; at 6, he could start making his way back. He had a movie he wanted to borrow, too.
    One after another, small children came and went. Usually, they were presently joined by an alert parent. A few of the men were wearing business outfits, but most just wore play clothes; the women wore basically designer slacks and blouses and kept their purses right where they could see them. Oh, this was a no-nonsense part of Chicago, all right: these people had been warned about the lower, dangerous elements; they’d been warned about the hungry, needful poor, about homosexual men lurking around looking for little boys whose lives they might ruin, about all kinds of terrorists, both international—and local.
    His imagination began to carry him away. Even on a few of the men’s and women’s faces, he could just begin to read a sort of pre-flight anxiety. Oh, yes, we’re going to go on the swings for awhile, we’re going to slide down the slide and climb up into the castle, but soon we’ll be going home. Home, safe, lock the door behind us where no one can come in and destroy our tranquil, upper-class, privileged life. It didn’t surprise him anymore, although it still startled him a little. He had witnessed this kind of thing going on throughout Chicago, throughout its vast array of suburbs, for some years now. It was the “kind of thing” most didn’t pay much attention to, because “most” were too busy living out their everyday lives and dealing with ordinary problems as they approached.
    He was approached by a little boy—at least he thought it was a boy—of about two or so, holding up a green sandbox pail with a little curlicue design around the rim. “Eee?” asked the tiny stranger. “Hi,” he replied to the child. The child came a couple of steps closer, clutching the green pail as if it were a trophy, and uttered another sound trying to communicate. He smiled at the boy, said, “Got your pail, huh?” The kid seemed completely enraptured and continued to look wonderingly at him. Then he randomly pointed—it was an honest guess—at a shapely woman of maybe 30 or so sitting on the bench closest to the sandbox. “Is that Mommy?”
    The child suddenly broke away and ran in the opposite direction, toward the north end of the park where there was more playground equipment, crying and yelling for his mother.
    Oh, good job, he told himself bitterly. You really scared that one off. He sighed, looked around; the whole little encounter had, indeed, gone completely unnoticed by any of the other kids. None of the parents, either, seemed to be aware of what had just transpired between the strange old bird and this poor, innocent, little guy of two or three. He noticed, though, that the child had dropped his little green pail in his haste to relocate his parent or parents, had left it lying upside down right in the middle of the little walkway. Wasn’t one of the parents going to notice this? He froze for a few seconds, anticipating an angry father or mother returning to confront him and direct him to leave the premises. This didn’t happen; the activity in the park continued, just as it was before.
    But what about the pail? Now an older boy, of about 5 or 6, grabbed it up from its place in the walkway and proceeded to carry it back to the sandbox, where for as long as his attention span would allow, he dug up treasures. It occurred to him that maybe it wasn’t that little boy’s pail to begin with. Maybe it was a pail that the Park District provides for the sandbox—there were, after all, several large and smaller containers inside the sandbox at any given time. So: maybe he shouldn’t be so concerned about the little boy losing the little green pail. Still, his concern continued. If the kid comes back looking for that pail—he decided he’d just have to monitor the pail’s progress, it was the least he could do to make up for scaring the poor little boy off like that. He watched as the older boy in the sandbox continued to use the pail a few minutes longer—he watched as a happy little girl wearing a party dress became the pail’s next “owner” and merrily brought it, skipping, over to the slide and monkey bars, where she promptly forgot it was there and left it sitting right side up, directly in front of his vision. Ahh! Now he could see it plainly and would be ready, willing, and able to report to that poor little guy, that his pail was not lost—that all was not yet lost.
    By now, though, he couldn’t help thinking that it probably didn’t belong to the child; and by now, he was reasonably certain that the child and his guardian had left the park.
    It didn’t matter; he continued to keep a close watch on the little pail.
    He was absolutely set on watching the pail until he got up from the bench at six, and in any case, it gave him something to focus his attention on, just as the impending film with Nicholson would give him something to escape into.
    A conversation taking place between two adult men—something vaguely political or vaguely business-related or vaguely media-related or vaguely relationship-related, or vaguely related to The Things Upper-Class Adult Men Tend To Prefer To Talk About, distracted him for a few seconds, and he turned around.
    When he turned back, the little green pail was gone.
    Holy smokes, he thought. Just like that! Another kid must have grabbed it while I wasn’t looking.
    For a moment, he felt like he was back in kindergarten, trying desperately to reclaim his little block of wood, when one of the other children had innocently yanked it away from him because he wouldn’t share it.
    Then, he was back to his version of reality; it was just about six and time to vacate the park. He walked out in the same direction he’d come in, glancing around as if to spot the little pail—as if to reclaim it for himself, if not for that precious little child. As he passed around the sandbox again, he was pretty sure he saw it—at least a replica of it; a green pail of more or less the same size and dimension lay on its side in the sand, a pail with curlicues along the rim. Yes—that must be the same one, he reassured himself. But there just wasn’t enough evidence to be absolutely, undoubtedly sure.

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