~6.1~

The sun sets on Jericho.

The ground slopes from west to east. The buildings, too. The buildings on the west side are not just built on a higher plane. The tall buildings are taller. The small buildings are less small. From a rooftop vantage point down in the east side looking up and around the city to the west, it rises up like the rows of seats in a great amphitheater.

The city rises. The sun sets. Long shadows slant downwards, running through canyons of concrete and brick and glass and steel. The sunlight touches the high points: a bronze eagle grasping the ball of a flagpole in its talons, a gilt statue of blinded justice on top of a granite courthouse, the steepled bell tower of an east end church, its rooftop bristling with gargoyles.

These statues cast long shadows in the evening, longer than most people knew.

Tucked away in an artificial valley is an old public library, one of the oldest buildings standing in the city. Flanking its broad steps are a pair of pedestals. One of them is empty, its inhabitant having been lost to the effects of ice and cracks decades before. On the other one is the figure of a stone lion with the face and breasts of a woman… a sphinx. For a few weeks every year near the beginning of winter, the sun’s fading light falls on the statue each evening.

Daylight slips away. The shadow of an eagle perched on top of a flagpole is swallowed by larger shadows of the city. There’s a faint sound of fluttering wings and a shrill cry.

The sun slips off of the golden statue of justice. Its shadow disappears. A tapping sound echoes down the darkening streets as a woman in a hooded sweatshirt sweeps the sidewalk in front of her with a cane.

The sun sets on the just and the unjust alike, on Jericho’s citizens of flesh and blood and those of shadow and stone.