Book excerpt from: DEATH AND THE DREAM by J.J. Brown (Short Stories)  Amazon   /   Audible   /   AppleBooks  /  Bookshop.org

Spring Awakenings

by J.J. Brown

Pages of a discarded newspaper ruffle in the oxygen-rich spring breeze on a Tompkins Square Park bench, beneath a scraggly fruit tree that’s waking up for spring. The plants are remembering. The East Village neighborhood of Manhattan is full of small, little-known parks like this one. Damp spring air, old trees and quiet, shaded paths.

No children play in this section of the park; no police officers patrol its walks.

An elderly man in a gray hat and loose black coat sits on the bench, the newspaper beside him. Like most of the men who haunt the parks in the early morning hours, he’s silent. He works a short pencil carefully with his thick, bent fingers. Buds emerge on the page before him, recreating images of crooked tree branches opposite him.

He stops drawing to run his pencil sideways back and forth on the newspaper, marking over the headline that reads, “30 Years Later, Killer Anthony Morales Released to a Changed World.” Wiping it out. Below the headline is a photo of an older man. His photo. Beside it is a second contrasting photo. There, he’s much younger, a burly man with a tight, angry face being escorted from criminal court by a police officer. That was after his murder conviction, three decades ago.

Anthony spits on the pencil, then coughs thickly, short of breath from chronic asthma. He pulls a folded scrap of sandpaper from his pocket, and sands the pencil wood to expose more of the graphite tip. He sharpens it the way you do when you don’t have a blade sharp enough to cut wood. Now, among the many items he does not have, is a blade. His hands work slowly, plagued by rheumatoid arthritis.

He pushes the newspaper away to the other end of the bench. That’s history. He’s here now. Here as a free man the same as any other man sitting in the park. Here trying to learn to live again, like the flowering trees rousing from winter slumber.

He’ll start with sketching.

Today, Saturday, a bustling farmers market is underway on Avenue A at the west side of the park. Normally, sellers come to this part of the City on Sunday, but on Easter weekend they come on Saturday. The schedule changes for religious holidays so people can go to church with their families on a Sunday.

Celebrate the resurrection of Christ and promise of eternal life tomorrow, if they want to.

Peddlers and farmers position their tables along the sidewalk; they unload rented trucks. Stack up locally produced golden honeys, jewel-colored fruit jams and amber maple syrups in jars that glimmer in the sunlight. One of the tables is full of shining apples – even though April is a time when apples couldn’t possibly have come from a farm anywhere in New York State. Aromas of cheeses, herbs and flowers mask the usual stench of urine around the park. The walkways host a symphony of spring scents.

Two blocks away in a third-floor apartment, a young woman rushes to get dressed. She’s in a six-story, brick building which was once a tenement. Now it costs a small fortune for a six-month lease on a two-room unit.

 She paints on brown eyeliner. Flips her hair. Sprays perfume under her blouse.

“What’s the plan today, Peter?” she calls.

In the next room, Peter fits a handgun neatly into a holster underneath his freshly-cleaned jacket. He regards his reflection critically in a wall mirror. In his 40’s, Peter is careful about his appearance. Even if what he does every day is ugly, he doesn’t have to be. And he doesn’t want to be, either. He’s not proud, but he is vain.

“Breakfast, Lina. I’m taking you out for breakfast,” he answers.

“To that Polish place?”

“Ukrainian. It’s Ukrainian,” he replies, certain she isn’t listening.

“Working on Saturday?” She appears in front of him, all dressed and ready to go.

He thinks she looks pretty. And happy. She’s round in all the right ways for her age, mid 20’s. She smells of freesia floral perfume. Something that doesn’t grow anywhere around here, but still says “spring” to him.

“Got a job to take care of, that’s how it is,” Peter says.

“I don’t even want to know.”

“Was I planning on telling you?”

“I hope you aren’t working tomorrow – you know, it’s Easter.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Are you?” She draws her eyebrows together.

“Not if I take care of it today, I’m not. But if I don’t, then I am.”

“That’s you, all logical, all predictable. You look nice,” she adds cheerfully.

Peter looks her over. “Don’t have a dress?”

“Not here, not with me, I don’t. You told me to bring one?”

She slips on brown-heeled sandals and walks ahead of him down gray slate steps of the building’s white marble-walled stairway.

Lina always goes first, so she won’t rush him. Even if she says whatever comes to her mind freely, most of the time anyway, she’s learned to always be extra cautious with Peter, physically. She protects his need for space.

He stops by a hall window to look at pigeons roosting outside. They’re nestled between the window and the building next door. It’s a dark alley space about six feet wide and six stories tall. The birds seem to think it’s a rock canyon; Peter thinks it looks like a crypt.

Rhythmic cooing echoes along the marble walls and up the stairwell in an undulating pearl-gray chorus. Beneath one of the windows, a nearly full-grown fledgling sits alone on a narrow, red brick ledge. Silent. The bird seems to be looking right at Peter. It blinks at him.

With a whistling, frantic blur of wings, the flock of pigeons fly up past the fledgling toward the light above the alley’s walls. After they pass, the fledgling remains. Motionless.

“The other one’s gone,” Peter says as he follows Lina down the stairs and out the front door.

“Other one what?”

“Baby pigeon. There were two yesterday.”

Lina stops in the face of the sun, glaring painfully off the windows of parked cars. “So bright,” she says squinting.

“Probably died, no one to look after it,” Peter says, following her. He slips on reflective sunglasses.

“Or flew off. They were getting big. It probably flew, don’t you think?” She takes his arm gently.

“Or fell,” he says.

“Don’t they fly when they start falling?”

“Or die, something like that. Like people. They grow up, comes time to go, and some fly, some fall. Some die.”

Lina gives him a disapproving grimace.

In a parking lot next to the building, the glossy green tips of spring plants push up through dead leaves. It’s a patch where the pavement ends, close to a 10-foot-high wire mesh fence along the parking lot, now crowded with police cars. Evenly pointed spears emerge in clusters, every two feet or so. The place is also dotted with recent litter.

“Must have been a garden before the police station got it,” Peter says.

“Where?”

“It wasn’t always for parking. There…” he says and points out the sleek green shoots to her.

Lina looks carefully. “They’re weeds.”

“Narcissus or daffodils,” he corrects her. “Not fat enough for tulips.”

They walk along First Avenue and Peter scours the dirt beside the sidewalk looking for more signs of life. He stops and kicks at the ground at the sidewalk edge in front of a deli.

A young man hosing down the deli sidewalk with bleach pauses to watch him.

Lina steps into the store and picks up the Saturday paper. She glances at the headline as she pays and sees, “30 Years Later, Killer Anthony Morales Released to a Changed World.” She folds the paper under her arm before Peter looks her way.

They walk slowly together down the block in the bright sunshine. Lina’s heels click lightly on the sidewalk. The air carries the rich aroma of shops brewing coffee and baking pastries; delicious hints of burning sugar, yeast, nuts. The scents mix with the usual pungent layer of smells from various bodily fluids that cover The East Village sidewalks on any Saturday morning.

Today everyone with a shop has put out buckets of new cut flowers for sale. Brilliant yellow, white and pink blooms line their path.

“God, it’s so bright. Beautiful! Look at those yellow ones,” Lina says, “What are they called?”

“Daffodils.”

“Daff-a-down dilly,” she says and hums the nursery tune softly.

“They’re not from around here. It’ll be a week or so before they bloom here, from the old gardens,” Peter predicts.

“What’s with you today, you and the old gardens? No one has gardens here, anymore. Is something going on?” She laughs. And teases, “Are you trying to be poetic?”

Peter notices how the sun behind random trees filters through and where tips of twigs are starting to bud. He looks over at Lina smiling at him. The light dapples her soft hair. Not because of that, but just because he can’t help himself, he forgives her. She’s young.

She probably does have an Easter dress back at her own apartment, or at her mother’s house. Or something that would pass for an Easter dress. She probably would care about plants if they’d been together longer, and she began to understand him. Then he would show her the hidden East Village and Lower East Side gardens. Maybe the one at La Plaza Cultural down the street. Tomorrow, even, if he didn’t have to work. Easter, after all, and a good time for a walk in a garden – not necessarily alone.

The air is crisp in the shade, and warming where it’s sunny. As they walk together, the sunlight does something to Peter. Or maybe it’s the fragments of old gardens emerging from beneath the pavement in the odd corners he and Lina pass. The sun, the flowers, a memory from somewhere else, something he can’t help remembering from a different time in his life pushes through. Like nature moves the sleeping winter bulbs to emerge fresh in spring, something subconscious pushes up into his thoughts and right through to the present moment.

“I used to be poetic,” he says reluctantly.

Lina snorts, “You?”

“A long time ago. Used to take care of a garden out back for my mother – perennials, herbs. Used to draw. We probably never talked about it. The world changed. My world changed. Back then, the family lived in the Lower East Side.”

“I wondered why you’d want to stay down here. When was that, anyway?”

“It’s history.  30 years ago. Like I said, a long time ago.”

“Well, I guess it was,” Lina replies. “How old are you, 50? And all you ever talk about is work, taking care of business. I never ask you about it. Honestly, I don’t care.”

“Not 50. I’m 47.

“You’re old, Peter, and you know what? You’re the least poetic man I’ve ever known.” She laughs.

He pulls her to the side of the street where new shoots push up through the ground along a long, low fence. It surrounds a group of recently-constructed condos.

“Hey! You alright?” she asks him.

“See those, the red ones? Uncurling like a tiny baby’s fist?”

She looks closely.

“Those are peonies,” he says.

She shrugs, unimpressed. “What do they look like later? The flowers, I mean.”

“Big and fluffy like a fat, beautiful woman’s dress.”

“You think I’m fat? Is that what you’re saying?” She asks, hurt.

“No. But a dress is nice sometimes. And that…” he nods toward a crooked, trailing brown twig with green buds dotting it like minute jade pyramids. “Roses. You’ll see if you come by here again in June.”

“Looks like old sticks,” she says. “But I’ll come. You invite me? And I’ll come.”

They turn onto Avenue A by Tompkins Square Park. Peter can see behind the busy farmers’ market all the way across the sleepy park, because the trees are mostly bare. A pink and white mist of the earliest flowers dot the tree branches like white lace covering old women’s hair at mass.

He notices a few men sit on benches quietly; others lean motionless on tree trunks. These men never seem to leave the park; men like shadows of the trees in their loose, black coats and gray hats. He doesn’t know who they are. No one does, he expects, and no one asks.

Peter and Lina take a booth near the front full-length windows in a diner overlooking the park. It’s Peter’s favorite, Odessa. The best for hashbrowns and pancakes, it also serves passable coffee.

Lina reads the paper with her back to the windows during breakfast. She looks for something to interest him. 

He finishes his coffee and stares at the park.

“What does that mean, anyway, ‘Odessa’?” Lina asks absently.

“It’s a city,” he says. “Pushkin lived there.”

“Who?”

“Pushkin,” he says. “The poet.”

“Never heard of him. First it’s gardens and now poets. What’s next? Hey, this is something. Right up your alley. Listen,” Lina reads.

“This guy was in prison for years, 30 years. Locked up for 30 years – can you imagine? He got caught for murder. They arrested him for… oh, no! This is terrible. Listen to this, Peter. He murdered a man right inside his home, here on the Lower East Side. Was about to kill the wife when the police came in and the son, the son…”

Peter tears the paper away from her.

He smoothes it out on the table and shoves the dishes back, out of his way. He trembles as he reads.

“Hey! Rude,” Lina blurts out.

Peter remembers… I walk home alone, it’s late. Flashing red and blue lights reflect along our block. I see the police car. I hear the wailing ambulance sirens. I walk up the stairs, our stairs, past yellow caution tape. I touch fresh blood on the doorway. I’m terrified. I walk into the kitchen.

Mom is down on the floor. She’s bleeding. She’s crying. I can’t speak. She sees me and starts screaming at the police in Ukrainian. She tells them to take me away from there – but they don’t understand her. A man from the ambulance bends over her asking her questions in English. 

Men move a stretcher behind her. I go to it. The person who lies there is someone I know. My father. He’s covered on the stretcher, completely covered, but I know it’s him. A police officer pushes me back and leads a big, handcuffed man past me. The man is hard, fierce – he stares at me as he passes. He has blood on his shirt. 

I remember him. His face, his hard, thick hands. I remember him precisely. That’s when it all started. Thirty years ago my family life, my beautiful family life ended and something different began then. My work began. My ugly work. It’s him, that tight, angry face. Tried, imprisoned, released. Anthony Morales.

He’s out.

“Check!” Peter calls urgently across the room. He hands a 20 dollar bill to Lina. “Take care of this,” he says.

As he looks at her, Peter is startled. He realizes, for the first time, that she looks like his mother did when she was young. That face.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lina whispers.

“Have to go.” Peter rushes out of the diner.

“No you don’t, not this time. This is for Easter!” Lina steadily raises her voice. “Goddamn it, Peter, come back here! Will I see you tomorrow?” She calls, but he’s gone.

Peter reflexively checks his belt for the gun, and he rushes along Avenue A. It’s lined with rented trucks, carts and boxes. Blindingly white tents cover produce-laden tables, all reflecting the bright sunlight. Glare. Peter is hit violently with an unbearable headache. Now, the complex smells nauseate him.

He crosses over to the sidewalk. It’s crowded with chatty young couples and sleepy students, all new to the neighborhood. They look at the produce. They leisurely pick up pots of flowers. Vendors keep the tables full, as shoppers take away their bags of local treasures.

A drunken man, probably still up from the night before, leans on a tree. He seems to watch busy peddlers rearrange their goods. A young homeless man pisses on the tree behind him.

Everything seems disconnected.

“Want a taste of honey?” A boy calls out, smiles and reaches toward Peter. The boy leans over a table piled high with honey jars and boxes of honeycomb, trying to offer his sample.

“It’s from New York,” the boy says. “Local wildflower honey.” He leans forward, closer to Peter and says under his breath, “Don’t tell anyone, though. Can’t have a bee farm in New York. Some law on the books from way back. History, you know,” and laughs.

“How old are you?” Peter asks, and his voice breaks with emotion.

“Just 17, man,” the boy answers. “Why?”

 Peter’s heart pounds. The pain in his head hammers him. He was 17 when it happened, when everything changed.

He pushes past the boy, jostling the flimsy table. People cry out, as it tilts toward the sidewalk. Honey jars slide off and crash on the pavement, splitting open. The boy rushes forward to rescue what he can of his precious things. Boxes of honeycomb tumble into the spilled honey around him.

Peter breaks into a run through the crowded market. No one tries to stop him. He heads blindly into the quiet park, and races along the sleepy paths, pursued by the drumming of his pounding feet until he’s out of breath. He’s drenched with sweat.

None of the local men standing around like shadows on the trees seem to notice him. No one follows him.

He feels like a ghost, flying unseen through his past – the missing fledgling pigeon, the emerging flower tips, the news about Anthony Morales, Lina’s face and his mom’s face, the boy in the market, his own youth. All of it gone, missing, but somehow reemerging. Coming back to him at once. And it’s too much.

The pain in his head becomes so intense he sees flashing lights.

He stops behind a bench and leans on a tree, wheezing painfully. He struggles to calm his thoughts. Pulls out a white handkerchief, wipes his sweaty face, and tries to formulate a plan… Into the garden, into the garden and no one is following. For her, for them. Crucifixion, rebirth. Into the park, into the park and no one is watching. Alone with the old men. Find him. Find Anthony Morales in a remote area. Finish it off. For Mom, for Lina. Get my life back. Kill, die, be reborn and live again.

The tree Peter leans against is budding, like the others. The first pink-white flowers push through the branches’ tough red bark tips. Beneath the tree, a ragged man and his large dog sleep on the ground, curled up around one another.

Peter watches them sleeping. He hears gentle flutters around within the silence of the park. Sparrows, must be. And there, a squirrel. He begins to cry. He hasn’t cried in years, and his chest is on fire. He holds the handkerchief to his eyes and breathes deeply into it.

He notices a man in a gray hat and black coat sitting there on the bench, right beside the tree. His back is to Peter.

The man works on a pencil drawing in his notebook with arthritic hands, fully concentrating. He shades buds on crooked fruit tree branches. The penciled tree branch unfolds in the notebook delicately, pushing through the paper. Coming to life.

Peter listens to the rhythmic scratching of the pencil and it draws him back, grounds him in the present. He stops crying. He watches. Stares at the intricate details of the flowers emerging on the page. He looks up at the flowering tree above them, down at the sketch which is taking on its own existence. He’s fascinated by the drawing. The park and the art merge into one idea of rebirth.

“Beautiful.” The word escapes him in a whisper as his handkerchief falls to the ground.

Anthony Morales drops the pencil from his arthritic fingers, unaware. He clutches his hat, awkwardly pressing it to his chest. His face contorts, wrinkling in on itself like the bark of an old tree. He slumps forward slowly, and then he’s perfectly still.

The dog curled up under the tree awakens suddenly. It barks in a frenzy, circling the tree madly. Possessed.

Peter jumps away, startled.

The dog keeps barking in hysteria. The ragged, sleeping man hears the ruckus, stirs and reaches out to catch hold of his dog. He gets his hand around the dog’s collar. The dog stops barking and begins whining pitifully, pressing up against his owner. Both stare at the man’s figure slumped forward on the bench. They simultaneously look over at Peter. Expectant.

“Do somethin’! Can’t you do somethin’?” The man finally pleads. Whimpering, the big dog lies down and waits.

Peter inches around the park bench.

He kneels and picks up the fallen pencil. He looks up – recognizes the old man. It’s him.

Anthony Morales is peacefully folded over a notebook open in his lap. Dead, already. Pencil-scratched newspaper pages with the story of his release ruffle in the oxygen-rich breeze.

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Excerpt from DEATH & THE DREAM short stories, 2nd edition, by J.J. Brown (c) 2025.