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Harvest is Coming (re-edited a bit)
People were looking at Roland Hawkins as he wove his way through the collection of apartments and laundry mats called University Village. He wouldn't call it staring, because that word just seemed too…mean…to attribute to something so benign and harmless. After all, this had to be his tenth time through the place and how were they to know that it was the place where he'd made his fondest memories back in that beautiful, fleeting world of childhood. Besides, he was the only black person in an area that was now dominated by East Asians and he thought that a good enough reason to look if you wanted to. In the case of one of the girl's he'd passed by--a Korean with jet black hair that faltered down to the middle of her subtle back muscles rocking on a children's swing set--he hoped she was looking for other reasons. There was a certain sleekness in her features that made it hard for him not to look back.
Generally, it was hard to care too much though. About people looking at you, thinking of you, desiring you and even retreating from you like you were something other than one of them (like the two East Indian children that had abandoned their tricycles for the cover of their family's apartment when his quiet steps had found them practically towering above their tiny bodies). They reminded him of Khan, who had his own children now and was lurking around somewhere but hadn't shown his face just yet. When it came down to it, they loved him so much more than they probably even realized. The thought of seeing him hunted down and torn apart would bring tears to their precious eyes; maybe even sickness to their stomach.
He thought of something suddenly and chuckled. He and his brothers often liked to think that it was their muscular builds, their gracefulness or maybe even, in flights of fancy, palpable nobility that drew people's eyes to them. But what about the fact that Roland and so many of the rest wore their sunglasses at all hours of the day? But it was force of habit and they were far too useful in the dark--the real dark--to allow them to be anything less than a part of your face.
The smell of curry danced under his nose from an open village door. Up ahead, he saw the girl cross through the parking lot, her eyes averted from him, her slender arms gently folded as she walked. He wondered if he should approach her...say something, plant a seed that might even blossom into the kind of life that Khan, Bear and so many of the others enjoy in their time away. Soon, he'd stink of wolf’s bane and garlic and his leather jacket would conceal a chain-mail shirt and a veritable armory's worth of silver weaponry. Then he'd have no time for anything but his brothers, the dark and God.
Something crunched beneath his feet. He paused and looked down to see the remains of a leaf.
Harvest was coming.
It'd overpowered summer like a squealing little brother that was afraid to hit back and now fall was merely stepping aside for it like a partner in crime. The trees were getting increasingly barren with each passing day and the winds were starting to whisper again.
Harvest was coming but it wasn't here quite yet. All the old faces were back in town--he'd glimpsed them out of the corner of his eye turning a corner or fleetingly as they pulled out of the parking lot after Sunday service--but they were laying low. They were coveting the time with family, lovers and old friends they'd missed. Before they rode out into the night again they'd want to come together under some dimly lit tavern’s roof to drink, shout, swear and reaffirm to each other that the bond that united them was still strong enough to stake their lives on.
Eventually.
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