Dean Poling

Atop the slicky slide, the boy could see forever.

Not so much the height of the slide, or the view over and across the man-made lake filled with swimmers, rather the 5-year-old had an epiphany of forever – unceasing, round-and-round, constant day after day after eon stretch of the infinite.

Not so much like walking down a long hallway, but looking down a long hallway, thinking the end is in sight only to realize it continues on and on and on … He conceives infinity stretching not as a circle, nor the criss-cross loops of an eight, but a line where he has emerged then the line never finishing. He spins with the thought.

Ceaseless. Endless. Infinity.

Forever and ever and ever …

All unfolding on a sunny summer day, water splashing, kids screaming delight in the water – just as he had been doing, only a moment ago, just a minute before the second hand ticked to the endless. 

Smell of sun-tan lotion and hot plastic floats. Grit between toes and the waist band of swimming trunks from the sandy surface of the pool’s flooring. Fingers wrapped around the slippery metal of the slide’s arched handles.

Water beads on his shoulders, rolls from his wet hair down his neck. Despite the heat, a breeze, slight, but enough to chill the boy for a second, a shiver in the sun.

Then, forever. The boy sees forever past the swimmers, past the murky splash of water, past the picnics on the grass, the moms stretched out and sunning on the reclining lawn chairs, past the trees, the cars shining in the parking lot, past the hills, the sky, the blue, past himself and everything else.

A quick second, the cosmos as something unending, his mind like a vertigo turntable, round and round, an instant, a snap of the fingers. Forever and gone.

A shout. A nudge. A flash of anger. Kids behind him standing on the slide ladder, waiting their turns, only a delay of a couple of seconds, but even such a short pause is like forever to children impatiently waiting to move, to slide into gravity, to land in a splash, to rise and run, and do it all over again.

The boy snaps back to the slide. He drops and pushes himself forward, hands grasping the arched handles, arms slingshotting him down the slippery, wet slide into the crash of water. And like the other children, he’s up and moving again. Impatient to get back to moving, to living, even though he has all the time in the world.

Riding home, staring out the front seat passenger window. Damp swim trunks warming on the hot car seat. Window rolled down. Wind rushing across his face. Mom driving. Sister in the back seat. Hunger. Music playing on the radio. Curiosity, wondering what’s for supper. Maybe sneaking a few Oreos once home, before supper. 

He forgets forever.

Home. Change into dry clothes. Sneak one Oreo, two, three, four, caught by Mom at the fifth attempt. Dad comes home. Supper. TV. Pajamas. Bed. Sleep. Waking up, playing with the neighborhood kids. Summer days. School starts. More kids. New kids. Smell of sharpened pencils. Afternoon cartoons. Supper. 

A move. New house. New school. Ink on fingers. Afternoon ball practice. School. Summer. School. Summer. New people. Finishing one season, one year, starting another. Girls. The girl. Bliss. Heartbreak. New girl. Graduation. College. New girls. The Girl. Graduation.

Start a job. Not The Girl. Big move. A new job. Ah, The Girl. Marriage. Promotion. Move. One baby. Two, three. Promotion. House. Work. Family life – ball games, dance lessons, watching movies, dinners. Kids older, graduating, one, two, three. Parents pass. Promotion. Grandkids. Retirement. Travel. Puttering. Illness. Wife passes. More illness. 

Near the end, he lies in bed, memories mixing with the images on TV, the volume low but constant, the memories blurry but unceasing, until in a second, he flashes back to that afternoon, standing atop the slicky slide, the day he looked out into forever.

Clear, precise, the smell of suntan lotion, the water on his skin, his mother stretched on one of the reclining lawn chairs, his sister a few kids behind him in line, the sun, the slick of wet metal, sand in his waist band, forever, forever, forever, the infinite, the never-ending hall that is so far-reaching it is both linear and circular, spinning, falling, spinning, always, always, always, a shiver in the sun …

And he is gone.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.