The Panacea

There is a cure for everything...even death.

The children gathered round the slouched man, their eyes bold and filled with the light of spring morn. The man's hunched expression was solemn, his body turgid and immobile. The dullness of winter had not spared the body. His beard, wet with the melting snow, sopped up sunlight and shined bright green from moss and dew. Gnarled hands clasped into fists to keep warm, eyes snapped shut. The man had put up a fight. But it was over now. He once was a living creature, but now he was simply a plaything for the neighborhood children. A life-sized doll, a hobo marionette.

The children took turns posing with the man. One little girl had a small camera, and took pictures of those who stood besides his old body. They forced open rigor-mortified hands and coerced cold fingers into shapes and signs. One boy made a Peace Sign and took a picture with the cadaver's arms around his shoulder in a playful manner. Another sat in the hobo's bony lap and hugged the man gingerly. Such a squalid display of disrespect for the dead, the children were happy in their ignorance, gleeful in their morbidity.

The children gave the man a name; Jack, the hero of the playground. The savior of girlhood, defender against cooties, the bringer of light. Every day, his body remained in its normal place; slouched over behind the Jungle Jim, slightly concealed by a faux rock wall. His smelly clothes were replaced with the clothes of businessmen and office workers, their clothes stolen by the playful children in order to make Jack appear more humanistic. Girls would purloin their mother's make-up to make Jack appear more...lively. A ruby blush was smeared across his wrinkled face, his scars and scratches disguised by layers of cheap foundation. One girl decided to put lipstick on him, but the council of children disagreed and the mistake was fastidiously fixed.

Jack, to the children, evolved from a doll to a human being. Ironically, the once alive man had become alive again, through the imagination of the playground and through the ambition of the children. Jack was given a story, a reality, a family. He was the Headmaster of the Happy Saints Orphanage, according to a creative chap in Mrs. Burns' class, and all the children in the playground were his orphans. Jack the Headmaster loved all of his children, and played with them and fed them. He was their role model. They looked up to him, his mossy beard the color of natural splendor, and hugged his cold body and slowly turned it warm. Even as Jack began to decay, the skin upon his leathery face cracking and the aroma of death filling the playground with foulness, the children did not leave Jack's side. They would cry every time recess ended, and scream in glee when it began. They raced to his side, snuggled under his arms and held tight to his body until they were whisked back into class.

And then, one a summer morn, the day before school ended, the entire grade huddled around Jack's decaying body. His ribs protruded from his leathery body, his eyes had melted away. His hair was a grey tangled mess of knots and bows that the girls had placed there. His fingers were placed gingerly on his knit pants. His shoes shined by the neighborhood boys. They hugged Jack in a giant line, one after another. They left gifts in his pockets and inside his filched jacket and slowly walked away sobbing, towards the school. Jack's body was quiet, his giant torso filled with countless tokens and encomiums. He was truly loved, and truly revered. In life, the man was not nearly as accepted. The hobo suffered from chronic depression and asthma, which was exacerbated by a fixation with alcohol. One night, he collapsed outside the playground where he bought dope from local dealers and died after a snowstorm. When the children returned from winter break, his body was discovered.

But the alcoholic hobo, who history never seemed to remember, became the neighborhood hero. From his decrepit body, Jack the Headmaster, savior of girlhood, defender against cooties, bringer of light was born. And on that warm late spring day, the light of the radiant sun shining upon his porcelain body, the last child hugged Jack's warmed body. And at that very moment, as if by some divine gift, the stiff arms rose and embraced the child in return.