Walter’s Apprentice
Walter Messer was the great-grandson of the German designer responsible for one of the most feared fighter planes in propeller-driven military aviation, the Messerschmitt fighter planes of Luftwaffe infamy. Great-Grandpa Willy Messerschmitt fled to Argentina following the war, bringing nothing but a small handful of books in a leather satchel. That satchel made it’s way eventually to Walter, and lived quietly under a stool in the corner of the messy garage behind Walter’s pale green house on the quiet street in an old south-Denver neighborhood.
The house itself was specifically bland on the exterior. It was on a post-WWII street with a lot of nearly identical and equally dull Sears mail-order houses and a few brand new mansions. Walter enjoyed the anonymity as he had spent his entire life trying to avoid fame or notoriety of any kind. He had never married because he couldn’t really understand why people wanted to spend that much time with each other.
The night before where he endured an episode with irregular heart rhythms and a sudden blood pressure spike. He made the decision to make a friend before the saline bag was connected to his arm. He needed a particular friend. He needed a special friend that would understand him, the way he thought, and his methods. He needed a friend that wouldn’t laugh when he told them about his super-power, if there was such a thing. He needed someone to teach his skills to.
He considered it at length sitting behind the curtain at the emergency room. That’s the proper process. That’s proper. I must now teach the next generation. He began to look for an apprentice while he waited for the bag of lactated ringers to drain into his arm.
Walter sat in his garage the next morning, a particularly beautiful Saturday morning, drinking his tea and staring intently at the empty space between himself and the door when he made the decision. The tea was Earl Gray because it was morning. The cup he drank from was stained dark brown inside, and had a bank logo on the front. He didn’t do business with that specific bank, but liked the shape of the handle the way it made a upper-case P shape just right for his index finger. There was enough ceramic running down the side to prevent his middle finger from burning. He also liked the way the lip of the cup felt on his lower lip. It allowed him to sip it at a particular pace and still not burn his mouth at about 95-degrees celcius, the boiling point of water at one mile in elevation.
Walter had never even considered looking for a friend, especially one so specific, so he sat thinking about how to approach the problem. As he sat in his fading brown leather recliner sipping his second cup of tea, with exactly one level teaspoon of raw sugar and one ounce of half and half, he stood suddenly, walked to the open door that faced the alley and waited exactly seven seconds. At exactly the correct moment, he stepped out of the garage into the alley, and faced south. At that moment a young girl turned into the alley on her bicycle. It was a certain shade of bluish-purple that most people would call it periwinkle if they had heard of such a color. As he expected, she was wearing a red shirt.
As she approached him, Walter raised his left hand in a gesture almost like a wave, but also like a don’t walk hand at a traffic signal. She slowed down enough to hear him speak.
“Excuse me, young lady. I believe you are looking for something interesting to learn.” She ignored him, looked forward and rode past. Walter walked back slowly to his chair and sat down to finish the last sips of tea as it was already almost too cool to be considered hot, and far to warm to earn an ‘iced’ label.
He counted to seventeen seconds, an auspicious number, he believed since it was prime, and also because one plus seven equals eight. Eight, Walter thought as he counted, is another auspicious number as a cube of two and the exact number of ounces of water to make a perfect cup of Earl Grey with exactly one level teaspoon of sugar and one ounce of half and half. As he set the cup down on the small table to the right of the recliner, he had two thoughts. First, that nine ounces of tea and cream barely fit in his favorite ten-ounce cup, and second that the girl rolling up on the periwinkle bicycle would indeed be a perfect apprentice.
This is what I imagine to be the opening chapter of a novel. There is a lot about Walter that interests me, and I think there are some really fun places to take this. Let me know what YOU think! #AtoZChallenge
