Nick Ozment

         Jim Holmgren's lungs sounded like a bellows with a few holes in it as he circled the hospital parking lot looking for an open spot. Soon, he knew, he wouldn't be able to make this trip without a tube in his nose and an oxygen tank strapped to his side. Soon, much too soon, he wouldn't be able to make the trip at all.

         His luck was not holding out in the big picture or the small, immediate picture—all the spaces were full. He had not yet broken down and gotten a handicap permit. That would be admitting defeat, throwing in his cards to the Grim Reaper. If he couldn't bluff the Reaper, perhaps he could bluff himself just a little longer.

         In desperation he swung his Chevy Malibu out of the lot and onto the main street. He would circle the hospital, perhaps find some on-street parking.

         No such luck. He turned onto a small road just past the north end of the hospital, intending to cut back to the other side. A service road, almost a back alley really. And there, to his surprise, he saw a parking meter. Right next to a dumpster—it would be easy to overlook it and drive right by. Odd place for a meter.

         Wheezing, he pulled up beside it. Didn't leave much room for a truck to get by—but hey, it was legal. Three quarters plunked into the meter said so. Bought him one hour, the limit on the meter. The chemo-therapy session would most likely overshoot that, but what traffic cop was going to bust the balls of a guy coming out of chemo? Then again, how would the cop know this car belonged to a patient? No time to worry about it now.

         As soon as he dropped his quarters in, a funny thing happened. His wheezing diminished considerably, like an asthmatic who just took a good puff on an inhaler. The gnawing dead weight in his lungs seemed to lighten—he felt like he hadn't felt for a month, back when he'd first begun to suspect a visit to the doctor probably shouldn't  be put off too much longer. By then it had been too late. The cancer was well bunkered in. Doctor's diagnosis: inoperable. Chemo was an option, but without a miracle he was probably looking at about six months.

         Yes, it looked like the story of Jim Holmgren's 46-year life had suddenly jumped ahead without warning to the last couple pages. He'd been hoping for a longer one, a Dickens not a Hemingway, had always just assumed it really. But don't most people? Best not to think too much about where you are in your own personal story—the thought was apt to drive a guy mad.

         Yet as soon as he dropped that last quarter and the little flag in the meter clicked up to one hour, he felt again like there were maybe a few good chapters left in him. Even the doctor commented that day that he was looking much better.

         His next visit Jim remembered the tight little spot on the road behind the hospital. He didn't even bother with the parking lot, just turned down the by-road and hoped his secret spot was open. It was—who would look down here for parking? Again he dropped in his quarters, and he felt about ten years younger. Practically felt like jogging around the building to the front entrance.

         He began to think of that spot as his own—his own private parking. Within a month the doctor was talking about signs of remission, and then they took him off chemo.

         One day, about five months later, it hit him. The feeling—like someone had dumped out a fishbowl in his lungs—came back suddenly without warning. He glanced at the calendar on the wall—October—and remembered that back in April they'd told him six months: in other words, that the odds of his turning the calendar page to November, with its picture of a West Virginia mountain range in full fall splendor, had been roughly the same as the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes van pulling into his driveway.

         He was a typical, stubborn, Midwest-grown farmer's son when it came to the game of denial, but the sudden relapse of symptoms scared him enough to make a call to the hospital. Come in right away, they told him.

         Thirty minutes later, wheezing and coughing, he pulled into his special parking spot. A moment of panic when he fished into his pocket and came up empty, but he found two quarters in his car's ashtray. And this time, when he dropped the quarters into the meter and simultaneously the fishbowl-water seemed to drain out of his lungs, he made the connection. He'd known it subconsciously, but it wasn't something any rational person would consciously surmise. A terminal cancer patient dropping quarters into a parking meter to prolong his life? It sounded like an obsessive-compulsive act of desperation, not too far removed from those pitiable people who fly to Latin-American countries for exotic treatments that will never get FDA approval.

         Yet here it was. He felt fine. He went in for the visit anyway—he was here, he'd paid his fifty cents. False alarm, was the doctor's conclusion after reviewing the chest X-rays. Cancer's still in remission. Maybe just a bad case of heartburn?

         From then on, Jim Holmgren visited the hospital about once a week whether he had an appointment or not. Most times he wouldn't even go in, just park, pay his fee, then drive away. He had a new lease on life, as they say, spent time with friends and family. He didn't go out and ride a bull or jump out of an airplane or fulfill some childhood dream of visiting Italy. No, his life went on pretty much the same as before. But the moments that make up a life, the hours spent in the company of loved ones or just sitting in the pub enjoying a pint and watching a ballgame, these were more precious to him. He was more aware of the moment he was in than he had been maybe since the heady days of high school, when every new experience—the first date, the first drive, the first beer—carried great significance and weight. His wife again saw more clearly the man she'd fallen in love with: older, grayer, heavier in the belly, but still sweet, good-natured, kind ("At least"—she'd sometimes say in her friendly-sarcastic manner—"for a man"). Their son, when he came home from college for the Christmas holiday, found his father more attentive, genuinely interested in what was going on in his life—and not just with that parental "checking-up-on-you" attitude that had clammed him up on past visits. His son reciprocated by opening up and sharing man-to-man, and they talked more than they ever had before.

         That's how it was with Jim Holmgren until April the third of the following year. That was the day Jim drove through streets wet with snowmelt to the hospital and turned onto the little road to find it blocked off. His parking meter was on the other side of a Road Closed barricade. Next to that was a sign for Hanneford Brothers Construction.

         He left his car idling and jumped out and walked up to a man marking red lines on the asphalt.

         "What's going on here?" Jim demanded.

         "What does it look like?" the man snapped back, but then he softened a little when he saw the panic in the stranger's face. "They're gonna tear down that warehouse there and widen the road."

         "What'll happen to the parking spot? That parking meter?"

         "Meter's coming out. No sense in a parking space here anyway—nobody probably knows it's here."

         "What will they do with the meter?"

         The man paused in his rolling out red lines long enough to glance at the meter. "Likely scrap it. It's old style, the new ones are all digital. Why, you collect em?"

         "Uh, yes, yes I do. Who do I contact about that?"

         Amused, the man shook his head. "Folks'll collect anything. Well, I don't know, I guess the city owns it. Look..." He fished a card out of a pocket of his orange vest and handed it to Jim. "You can give the foreman a call. He's out today, but you can leave a message."

         The road crewman must've thought it peculiar when the middle-aged collector of parking meters walked around the barricade to drop three quarters in the meter before he left.

         Jim left several messages over the next week, but no one returned his calls. The messages grew more emphatic until he realized he was probably starting to sound a little deranged, likely assuring that the foreman would never call him back. So that Friday he drove to the construction site.

         He was horrified to see the asphalt all ripped up, and the parking meter gone.

         On the empty warehouse lot behind the hospital, all fenced off, sat a work-site trailer with the construction company's name on the side. He slipped through an unlocked gate in the chain-link fence, went to the trailer door and knocked three times before a burly man answered. The man peering down at him had a bushy moustache and goatee, his lower lip jutting out with a wad of chew.

         Jim introduced himself, trying to sound calm, keep the panic out of his voice. He imagined the fish-water welling up in his lungs, hoped it was just his overactive imagination playing tricks on him.

         "Sure, you're the guy's been callin about the parking meter." The foreman stepped down out of the trailer. "Come ‘round here," he said, leading Jim around to the back of the trailer where the parking meter leaned propped against it.

         "Collect em, huh?"

         "Yes. An odd hobby, I know."

         "Well, this here one we'd just send to the scrap yard, but I set it aside for you. Be honest with you, I was gonna do a Google search to find out what'd be worth to a collector, but didn't get around to it. What's it worth, anyway?"

         "Well, I don't think it's really caught on yet. I don't know any other collectors—just a whim of mine."

         The foreman's eyes twinkled and he grinned like he was sensing a put-on. He spit a brown splatter onto a patch of grimy snow, planted his hands in his vest pockets. "Well why don't you tell me what it's worth to you?"

         "I'll, uh, give you a hundred for it."

         The foreman raised an eyebrow, whether because he was expecting less or more he didn't say. But apparently he was prepared to negotiate. "Two hundred."

         "I'll have to go to the ATM machine, I only have a hundred and fifty on me."

         The foreman shrugged. "I guess that's enough."

         Jim pulled out his wallet.

         As he folded up Jim's money and stuck it away in a vest pocket the foreman said, "This is strictly under the table now, understand? I don't think anyone's gonna miss it, but it is a bit unorthodox."

         As he helped Jim lug it into the trunk of his car, the foreman muttered, "I heard people collecting old gas pumps, but not parking meters. That's a new one."

         After Jim closed the trunk he said "Thank you," with obvious sincerity and shook the foreman's hand. "You don't know how much this means to me."

         "Now I better not see that thing on eBay going for two grand," the foreman said.

         "No, no," Jim chuckled. "I plan on keeping this one for the rest of my life."

         "Ya, sure."

         "Thanks again."

         "You betcha. Thing don't work anyway. But I suppose that don't matter to a collector."

         "What do you mean it doesn't work?" Jim asked. "I used to park here."

         "I tried putting a quarter in it before we pulled it up. It's jammed."

         The first thing Jim did when he got home was look in the phone book for Small Appliance Repairmen. The first two he called said they "didn't know nothing" about parking meters, but the third boasted he could fix anything.

         His shop was full of lawn mowers, TVs, a washer and dryer combo, and even an old popcorn popper all in various states of disassembly. He helped Jim carry the meter in and lay it out like a sick patient on the counter. The repairman was a tall, wiry old man with a handle-bar moustache and slicked-back hair, fingers blackened from years in grease.

         Jim waited, outwardly patient, as the repairman—Rick—took it apart. Rick examined its inward workings with an occasional click of his tongue. Finally he looked up at Jim and delivered the prognosis. Jim felt his chest tighten and his breath catch in his throat, reminding him of that day a year before when he stood in the doctor's office awaiting the news.

         "This thing ain't worked in years, be my guess," Rick announced. "Look here, the gears are all rusted together."

         "That's not possible. I used it only a couple weeks ago."

         Rick eyed him dubiously. "I can't see how. Lookee here, there's a gear that's completely worn down—it won't turn at all."

         "Can you fix it?"

         "Oh ya, I can fix it, or I'll take my sign down n close up shop. May have to order in some parts."

         "How long do you think that'll take? Time is of the essence."

         Rick gave him a funny look. "All right, I'll move it up on my schedule, but that'll cost you a little extra. I'll shoot for the middle of next week."

         A week later the parking meter had a new home, in the grass next to Jim's driveway. Every time he came home from work he dropped a quarter in it. His wife protested loudly and regularly at first about the eyesore on the front lawn, but when it became apparent Jim wasn't going to budge she resigned herself to it. He made up for it in other ways—flowers and love notes and such little endearments that men tend to let lapse after twenty-six years of marriage.

         Despite the daily investment of pocket change, Jim no longer felt the strange rush that the meter once bestowed. Perhaps the repairs had robbed it of whatever magic it had possessed. Perhaps it hadn't been in the meter at all, but in the spot where it had been staked. Jim had three more years before the cancer came back. Roughly four years from the date the doctors predicted, Jim Holmgren was laid to rest. Fifty years is short by some standards—his loved ones would say so—but for Jim those last four years were a gift, a bonus, like time left on the meter by the person who just vacated your parking spot.

         Jim Holmgren had one last request, a rather eccentric one that two cemetery boards refused. The third, represented by a Vicar Whitfield, consented—for a healthy additional fee.

         On Jim Holmgren's headstone, beneath his name and "b. June 14 1955 – d. Oct. 30 2005," is inscribed "Time is short / Spend every minute wisely". Next to the headstone stands a parking meter, the little red flag in its window eternally pronouncing "Expired."

 

 

Copyright 2007, Nick Ozment

Nick Ozment is an adjunct professor of English at Winona State University, where, in addition to the normal composition classes, he has also taught a Topics in Literature class on J.R.R. Tolkien. His Master's Thesis explored the mythopoeic vision of the Inklings. His essay "Gandalf's Staff, Prospero's Books: Magic in Tolkien and Shakespeare" is forthcoming in Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language from McFarland & Co. (Spring 2007). Nick resides in Minnesota with his wife, the painter and poet Melissa Ozment.

 

    

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For more information visit www.dkamagazine.com. This work appears as part of Issue 41, February 2007.

                                                     

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