The soft rain had waned not long after midnight leaving only a sporadic errant drip from the swaying leaves overhead, the shifting patterns of their shadows chasing each other through the shallow puddles gently illuminated by the hiss of magnesium street lights parading down 5th avenue – giant sentinels blind to the cloaked figure silently passing beneath them. Jed came this way often passing by the brick alleys of the older apartment buildings fortunate enough to have survived the onslaught of the glass and steel of the high-rise condos surrounding them on all sides, his purposeful stride belied by the vacuum of silence emanating from within the folds of his cloak. Three blocks down the gentle flicker and then darkness as the street light gives out altogether bringing him back to the moment he whispers, “I’m here Jason.”

The bottle had slipped from the arthritic clasp of Jason Whitlock’s bony hands its poison syrup mixing with the lingering residue of the earlier shower winds its way down the sidewalk to the anxiously waiting gutter. A gentle breeze picks up the brown paper bag releasing it from its most recent vocation; cast to the sky it twirls and dips like some macabre kite before settling behind the stairs to watch the next scene in this tragic play.

The darkness deepens and as he gathers the living spark recently inhabiting the rapidly cooling husk that had been Whitlock, he murmurs to himself, “long is the day, hard is the struggle…”  He had no recollection of where he had picked up the phrase, but it seemed to fit his purposes he muses already moving past the corner and crossing the avenue – in his wake the street light sputters and hisses back to life. How many more to gather on tonight’s journey he wonders pointlessly for he already knows the tally had been calculated long ago and wasn’t he just the courier after all?

Picking up his pace he whistles some Duke, briefly amusing himself with an interlude between “Sentimental Mood” and his personal favorite “Jeep’s Blues,” as the street lights perched upon their steel spires sputter out and hiss back to life the only mark of his passage.

The siren’s wail fades into the night muted by the fog rolling off the sound, the red light’s prismatic flashing in the watery air bounces off the dark brick creating a kaleidoscope of shadows heightening his invisibility. For a moment he wonders why it had to be one so young and seemingly full of life – the thought passes quickly there has never been an answer for this particular question.

“Be not afraid Marcus I am here for long is the day and hard is the struggle…” that refrain again why couldn’t he remember where he had picked it up? In the ambulance Jack Roberts continues compressions knowing he has lost the young man but unwilling to concede the moment. Marcus Jefferson’s fate had been sealed the moment the knife had passed between his ribs creating a three-centimeter tear in the lining of his heart. It had rapidly grown to a point beyond repair and doomed him long before he had heard the approaching sirens lying there on damp grass smelling the loamy dirt below him and the sweet fragrant firs mixing with the night jasmine; a small smile playing across his lips, Marcus can feel himself falling away.

Picking his satchel up the collector whistles, the soft refrain intermingling with the wails of young Marcus’ grandmother and the receding siren, he heads further up the hill two more stops tonight as a slight line of turquoise forecasts the coming dawn beyond the Eastern hills.

He stands silently in the shadows of the parked cars the street lights having sputtered out as he had approached from further down the sharply inclined street never quite regaining their intensity as he maintains his vigil. He had found himself here every night over the past three weeks he could still sense the residual echoes of Marcus’ soul where the young man’s life force had bled into the spongy earth of the old row house’s front lawn. More curious than concerned he had been pondering why now, why this soul, why, why, why…

As usual there were no answers, it wasn’t his purview to understand or even question, but he couldn’t seem to let this one go. He had traveled these avenues and back streets for years without count, collecting the young, old, healthy, diseased, happy and despairing it had made no difference when the time came he was there to usher them through. He had heard their prayers, lamentations, curses, and pleadings all to no avail the inevitability of death’s transition spared none.

Slowly he walks down the hill toward the center of the city, a few more to collect this evening, he whistles softly in the falling rain. Passing within a few feet of Terry’s listless body he slows, the young heroin addict was in his usual spot tucked under the 3rd Street overpass, tonight the Collector hesitates; how is it this soul abuses itself every day yet lives on while young Marcus has already become a fading memory?

These are dangerous thoughts, questions from the unquestioning, judgments from one who isn’t here to judge. A full stop now and unbidden comes his mantra “long is the day, hard is the struggle…” and with those simple words he collects the soul of Terry Parsons once of Davidson Oklahoma a small town on the banks of the Red River.

Startled, Terry feels his last breath escape him as he watches his crumpled body lying in the soft rain to be discovered by he knows not who, but realizing in quiet desperation that most unexpectedly his time has come. The Collector turns picking up his pace he has a schedule to keep and he has not absorbed the full impact of what has just occurred.

The night hurries before the breaking dawn as he makes his way uphill finding his path leading once again to the site of young Marcus’ early demise. Looking up he is surprised to find a collection of individuals arrayed across his path. Not concerned he continues on knowing that the mortals of this earth may sense him, but he exists in a different plane then their awareness can penetrate. Slowing he turns to gaze upon that verdant grass listening carefully for a whisper of the young man’s final vestiges of life. 

The hand on his shoulder is firm but somehow he is not concerned; it is almost comforting and with a long breath of relief he hears the words, “long is the day, hard is the struggle… welcome to the Company, we wondered when you would cross over….”  Jed shivers, not thinking that was possible, and nods unsure of what he had crossed over to.