Ron & the Writer

A Memory of the Past

After getting refreshed within a few minutes, I checked the time in my wrist watch.

It was 4.30 p.m. already.

The weather outside was pleasant indeed and a cool gentle wind blew periodically. Putting on my father’s old brown coat, I started strolling down the Green lane, looking around keenly and trying to observe every minute things of the unfamiliar surroundings.

Suddenly, from somewhere I heard loud joyful shrieks— most probably, of a large group of little children. On turning my head to the right, I noticed a shabby hoarding on the wall, hanging from only one of its corners. The letters on it were not too clear to read, still it declared its popular name, “The Bluestone Park”.

Soon I remembered that this was the park that Mr. Andrew had talked about, while giving the precise location of his residence. So, with keen interest, I walked forward to gather a bunch of new ideas for my next write-up. As soon as I stepped inside, a little kid dashed against me and hugged my knees to save himself from falling down. “Sorry Sir!”, he apologized immediately, followed by a sweet grin, then ran away with his large group of friends who were screaming with boundless joy. On the other side, some old men were chatting among themselves while walking briskly, and the youngsters were jogging and working out.

Suddenly, my eyes caught something. On my left, a little boy was seated on a bench holding up a book, which covered his face completely. I was not initially concerned about either of them, until the reddish-orange coloured book cover felt familiar.

Wait, isn’t it my book?!

The big title, “The First Fall” and my name below it proved my intuition to be absolutely correct. I smiled as I felt a bit proud, but decided not to disclose it in front of him.

“Hey, little man!”, I tried to grab attention of the young reader.

He popped up his head and revealed his chubby little round face, and looked at me with his small brown eyes.

“Sorry to disturb you amidst reading. Can I sit here?”, I apologised before asking permission to sit beside him on the same bench.

But he didn’t reply. Neither did he smile at me in return. Instead, he just shifted to the other end of the bench. I sat down and asked him, “What’s your name?”.

There was a minute silence.

Then, with his eyes fixed on the book, he replied in a serious tone, “Ronald Browne. Or Ron”. I peeped into the book and saw that he was reading a story which was based on a true incident that I wrote after I had an account with Michael, my roommate in Texas. Unfortunately, he had committed suicide due to an unknown depression he was going through. He claimed that he could feel someone's presence in the same house where we stayed and I often found him crying like a kid, without any proper reason.

Initially, he was a very jolly, talkative, fun-loving Floridian boy. For the first few weeks, we used to stay together in the same room and mostly talked about the whole day till late night. I introduced my friends to him and he called his friends to our place and we had a good time altogether.

But things changed as time passed.

He shifted to the other room and lived a lonely life, locking himself in the darkness. He started being irregular to his office, couldn’t complete his works before deadlines and was insulted by his boss for being too disobedient. I tried to understand what he was going through, but he never opened up clearly. What he murmured was “I didn’t kill her, it was a suicide”. When I asked him what he meant by those words, he wiped his tears and turned away from me saying, “Leave me alone for a while”.