Diapers
In rural northern Illinois northwest of Chicago, a raised, pressed, gray gravel path, long ago a railroad track, runs straight for miles, bordered by trees. On one side, farmers harvest their cornfields, green John Deere combines and tractors stirring up more dust than smoke from a forest fire. On the other side, houses on two-acre lots show off manicured, landscaped backyards with two and three-story mansions with castle-like turrets and floor-to-ceiling windows.
Walking through this shadowy tunnel one day, I meet Blackjack, a 14-year-old deaf, half-blind black lab. The man walking him, Mike, looks like Hemingway in his later, Ketchum years. He tells me he is a retired contractor.
I am strolling our family’s miniature poodle, a dog rescued when ten-years-old, now lying wrapped in blankets in a baby carriage because, at 18, partially deaf and mostly blind, she no longer walks.
Like aging men do, we start talking general aches—physical and familial—and how we handle them, then graduate to specific body parts. I brag two replaced hips, he a prostate.
“The friends of mine who had them taken out all wear diapers today,” Mike says, his voice low, gravelly. “Me, I got nuclear implants. They put in radioactive seeds that kill the cancer. They said I had eight years. That was back in 1998, more’n twenty years ago.”
Before surgery, Mike asked his doctor, “Will I still be able to get it up?”
“I’m not a miracle-worker,” his oncologist answered. “Can you get it up now?”
I tell him when eight or nine-years-old, I had to tap twice with the first two fingers of my left hand each light pole passed when walking to my elementary school on Dearborn Place or else something horrific beyond imagining would befall me.
I never missed touching one. Maybe I was afraid each would collapse if not tapped.
After one or two more serendipitous meetings, I no longer met Mike and Blackjack. Then Summer died. Occasionally I walked the Great Western Trail thinking I’d run into Mike, most likely alone. I looked forward to seeing him. After many strolls, no sign of him or his dog, I pretty much stopped walking there. Maybe he, like Blackjack, was no longer able to make it out, his prostate issues finally catching up to him.
The town we lived in bought a farm with a prairie growing an infinite number of wildflowers, a marsh where egrets and herons gathered, and multiple pairs of bluebird houses. I would have loved to walk it with Mike. Why hadn’t I asked for his contact information? Every time we met I left after saying goodbye thinking I’d see him next time when we would exchange phone numbers or emails, when more convenient, when we had more time.
Now I step onto the gravel trail, look up and down the shady path, see one bike rider in the distance, know it’s not Mike, know I won’t see him today, and know I won’t see him again, ever.
Richard Holinger
Richard Holinger’s work has recently appeared in Chautauqua, SIR, Cleaver, Whitefish Review, Cutleaf, and elsewhere. Nominations include the Pushcart Prize (5), Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction 2025, including the latter. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry) and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays). His 2025 poetry chapbook, Down from the Sycamores, is available from www.finishinglinepress.com, and a short fiction collection, Unimaginable Things, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Publications. He holds a doctorate in creative writing from UIC, taught high school and community college English for decades, and lives in rural northern Illinois.
