by Fannie Flagg
“I guess it’s just one of those mysteries of life, isn’t it?”
Dena had hung up and gone back to bed.
Now, remembering their last conversation, it suddenly hit her just how much she would miss talking to Elner. They had talked at least once a week for the past fifteen years. As Dena sat there and thought more about it, she also realized just how much of her present life and happiness she owed to having known Elner. Dena and her mother had left Elmwood Springs when she was still a baby, and she hadn’t gone back until she was a grown woman, and even then she had not intended to ever go back there. At the time she had been one of the new up-and-coming female network television news reporters. She had only gone back because she had been sick, and needed a place to recuperate. To her, Elner was just a country woman, certainly not very smart, not in the ways that Dena judged people as being smart.
Before Dena had become ill, her first priority had always been her career, getting ahead, chasing after success and money. It had never even occurred to her that anything else was important, and so a woman who lived in the most humble of circumstances and seemed content to do so was an enigma to her. Having lived ten years in New York City, Dena couldn’t believe the woman never locked her doors, didn’t even own a key to her own house, and Elner was the first person she had ever met who actually seemed content, and she didn’t understand it. Dena thought that she must be a little simpleminded and her almost childlike fascination with nature was just a lack of sophistication. “God, who could get so excited at finding a four-leaf clover?”
Before she had left New York, Dena had certainly never paid the slightest attention to nature, had never seen a sunset or sunrise unless it had been an accident. She had rarely even noticed the moon or the stars or even the seasons changing, other than switching to heavier clothes. And most of all she was at a loss to understand why anybody would go out of their way to see the same sunrise every morning, and the same old sunset every night. As far as she was concerned, if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. But Aunt Elner had explained, “Oh, honey, it’s never the same, every morning it’s an entirely different sunrise, and every night an entirely different sunset, and it will never ever happen in quite the same way again.” And Elner had turned to her and said, “My question to you is, how in the world could you stand to miss even one? It’s better than any picture show and it’s free too.”
It had taken Dena a while, but after joining Elner every evening, sitting with her and watching the sun go down over the fields in the back of her house, she had come to see what Elner had been talking about. Aunt Elner had taught her to look for the tiny green flash that happened just as the sun dipped down into the horizon. The first night she came over and sat out back with her, Aunt Elner had said, “You know, Dena, there’s a secret to watching a sunset, most people think that once the sun goes down, that’s the end of it. They stop watching too soon, because the really pretty part is just beginning.” Aunt Elner had been right, of course, and every night after that they sat in the yard and watched until the last rays faded and until after the sky had turned dark blue and the first star had appeared.
Aunt Elner said, “I just couldn’t go to bed if I hadn’t made a wish on the first star, could you?” Dena had always wondered what Aunt Elner wished for, but when she asked, Aunt Elner had just smiled. “If I tell, it won’t come true, but it’s a good one, I can tell you that much.” Since those days, Dena had come a long way. Aunt Elner had been the one who had first opened her eyes, made her see the things that had always been right in front of her, all the things she had never stopped long enough to look at. Later, she came to realize just how smart Aunt Elner really was, and now she hardly ever missed a sunset. All of a sudden another wave of sadness hit her as she realized what a lonely old world this was going to be without Aunt Elner.
Meeting the Husband
Dorothy and Elner walked down the hall, past the old cedar chest, and when they reached the last door on the right Dorothy knocked lightly. “Raymond? May we come in?”
A man’s voice answered, “Sure, come on.”
Elner rearranged her robe. “Dorothy, do I look all right to be meeting somebody? I wish I didn’t have on this old thing.”
“You look just fine,” Dorothy said, and opened the door. Inside the room, Elner could see a nice-looking older man with shiny silver hair sitting at a large desk. He looked exactly like Dorothy’s husband, Doc Smith, who had been the pharmacist at the old Rexall drugstore in Elmwood Springs! As Dorothy escorted her into the room, she said, “Raymond, look who’s here,” and he immediately stood up and came around the desk, with a big friendly smile on his face, and he shook Elner’s hand with great enthusiasm.
“Well, hello there, Mrs. Shimfissle, so glad to see you! Dorothy told me you were coming up today. Please, have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and forgive the mess.” He indicated the room, packed with maps, papers, and files scattered everywhere. “I try to keep the place neat, but as you can see I’m not doing a very good job.” As he was busy removing several books and papers from a chair so she could sit down, Dorothy commented to Elner, “How he manages to find anything in here is a mystery to me, but he does.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Elner, “you should see my house.” As she walked over to the chair, Elner was secretly pleased when she noticed several dirty coffee cups on the floor, and dust on the bookcases; just as she had always suspected, cleanliness, or neatness, for that matter, was not necessarily next to godliness. She thought, “Norma is going to be in for a big surprise when she sees this.” She looked around the room and saw a wall full of pictures of thousands of little babies, and she was also happy to see that over in a corner, a big fat black and white cat was sleeping on the window seat, and he was the spitting image of Bottle Top, the cat that used to sleep in the window of the Cat’s Paw shoe repair shop in downtown Elmwood Springs.
Dorothy sat down in the other chair across from the desk, and said to Raymond, “Honey, Elner has a few questions she wants to ask, so I thought it would be best if she talked to both of us.”
Raymond sat back in his chair and removed his glasses. “Of course, happy to answer any questions you have, Mrs. Shimfissle.”
It was at that moment when Elner noticed the small gold plaque on the edge of his desk that read SUPREME BEING, and she was unsure how she should address him. She sure didn’t want to make any mistakes at this late date, and asked, “Should I refer to you as Supreme Being?”
Raymond looked at her, somewhat puzzled. “Pardon me, dear?”
She pointed to the sign. “Your plaque?”
Raymond reached over, picked it up, turned it around, and read it and then laughed. “Oh that, no, that’s just a little something some people like to see, makes them feel better.” He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a handful of plaques and showed them to her “Look…see…I have a GOD THE FATHER…BUDDHA. Here’s a MUHAMMAD. I even have an ELVIS PRESLEY in here somewhere, but you just call me Raymond.” He put the plaques in the drawer and smiled at her. “All right now, Mrs. Shimfissle, what’s your question? And by the way, I like your robe.”
“You do?” she said, looking down at it. “I’ve had this old thing for years, it’s about to fall apart on me.”
“Yes, but I’ll bet it’s comfortable.”
“It is,” she said. Elner was relieved and amazed at how relaxed she was. Who would have thought meeting your Maker would be this pleasant?
She sat back, happy that they were starting off with the “mysteries of life” part first, and said, “Well, Raymond, I know you probably get asked this all the time, but like everybody that comes up here, I guess, I’ve just been itching to know the answer to this one for years.”
“Yes?” said Raymond.
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
Raymond looked surprised at first, then he laughed. “I’m sorry to laugh, Mrs. Shimfissle, but that’s usually not the first question most people ask, but th
e correct answer is the egg.”
Now Elner was surprised. “The egg? Are you sure?”
“Oh sure.” He nodded. “You can’t put the cart before the horse, so it stands to reason, you have to have an egg for the chicken to come out of.”
Elner was clearly disappointed, and said, “Well, darn it all. I sure figured wrong on that one, now I’m glad I didn’t call Bud and Jay. Live and learn, I guess.” She looked over at Dorothy. “Do I get to ask another one, or was that it?”
“You get to ask as many questions as you want, doesn’t she, Raymond?”
“You bet. That’s what we’re here for…fire away.”
“Oh, good,” she said. “I guess my second question would be, what is life all about?”
Raymond nodded thoughtfully and repeated, “What is life all about…hmmm, let’s see.” Then he leaned over the desk, clasped his hands together, looked her straight in the eye, and said, “Darned if I know, Mrs. Shimfissle.”
“Oh, Raymond!” Dorothy said. “Be serious.” She turned to Elner. “He loves to do that.”
Raymond laughed. “All right, I was just kidding. Seriously though, to put it as frankly and simply as I can…life is a gift.”
Dorothy smiled at Elner. “That’s right, a gift from us to you, with love.”
“A gift?” said Elner, thinking it over for a moment. “Well, that was awfully nice of you, and I thank you for it. Of course, I can’t speak for anybody else, but I just loved being a human being, enjoyed almost every minute of it, really, from beginning to end.”
Raymond said, “We know you did, Mrs. Shimfissle, more than most people, I might add, and we’re so glad, that’s all we ever wanted, for you to enjoy it, isn’t that right, Dorothy?”
“Absolutely.” She smiled.
Elner shook her head in amazement at what she had just been told, and she said, “It’s kind of funny, really, all these years, everybody has been so busy trying to figure what life was all about, and all the while, it was just something for us to enjoy.”
“That’s right,” said Raymond. “You see, Mrs. Shimfissle—”
“Oh, please call me Elner.”
“Thank you. You see, Elner, life is not nearly as complicated as people think.”
“No,” said Dorothy cheerfully. “It’s kind of simple, really.”
Raymond turned around to the wall behind him and pulled down a large picture of a carnival scene that lit up with hundreds of colored lights going around in circles, and played carnival music, then said, “You see, Elner, life is like one big roller-coaster ride, with all kinds of bumps and twists and turns, and ups and downs along the way.”
“Ahh,” said Elner, “so all we have to do is just sit back and enjoy it.”
Raymond said, “Exactly. But the problem is…most people think they are steering, and get so busy trying to control it that they miss all the fun parts.”
Elner turned to Dorothy. “I wish Norma could hear this, she’s holding on to that roller coaster for dear life. She’d be better off just relaxing a little.”
“That’s exactly right,” said Raymond, rolling his carnival picture up. “So…Elner,” he asked, “is that answer too far off from what you thought?”
“No, not really…. I always had a feeling it was something like that, but of course you can never be sure, I was dead wrong about the chicken and the egg, so it’s good to know that I was at least on the right track. You want us to be happy.”
“You bet,” he said. “We sure wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble just so people could be miserable all the time, would we, Dorothy?”
“No,” Dorothy said. “Coming up with everything was a lot of hard work. Of course, Raymond did most of the big heavy things, planets, mountains, oceans, elephants. I did ponds, freshwater lakes, and smaller animals. I did dogs and cats…aren’t they fun?”
“Oh, yes,” said Elner. “Old Sonny keeps me entertained night and day, and I always said if anybody is depressed all they need to do is get a kitten. When Tot Whooten had her breakdown, I got her a kitten, and within a week she snapped out of it.”
Dorothy agreed, “Yes, I was very pleased with how kittens turned out, if I do say so myself, and Raymond did oxygen, water, all the major minerals: iron, steel, copper, what else, hon?”
“Silver, gold.” Then Raymond looked at Dorothy and said proudly, “But she came up with flowers, music, art…. I would never have thought of it.”
“Listen,” said Dorothy, waving it off, “I’m still amazed at all you came up with. The sun and the moon, I think he’s a genius, myself.”
Raymond seemed embarrassed. “Now, Dorothy…”
“Well, you are. Isn’t he, Elner?”
“I agree with her, Raymond. The sun and the moon? Just those two alone would make you a genius in my book. Which one of you came up with the idea for people?”
“We both did!” they said in unison, then looked at each other and laughed.
Then Dorothy repeated, “We both did. He did the chemical makeup, cells, DNA, and all that, but it was pretty much a joint effort and it was not easy.”
Raymond agreed, “No, getting every little thing to turn out right, the knees, elbows, not to mention the eyes, the fingers, the opposable thumb.”
At the mention of the word thumb Elner said, “Oh, here’s another question I have…how did you ever come up with so many different fingerprints?”
Raymond said, “Excellent question! Here, let me show you.” He took out a piece of paper and quickly drew a perfect picture of a thumb and held it up. “You see, Elner, by superimposing upon certain recurring patterns variations derived from…”
Dorothy stopped him. “Honey, she’s not going to understand all that biochemistry stuff.”
Elner laughed. “She’s right, it’s too deep for me, but it’s sure something to be proud of yourself for.”
“Oh, all right,” he said, putting his pencil down. “So,” said Raymond, smiling. “Tell me, Elner, what did you enjoy the most about being a human being?”
“Well, let me see, I enjoyed nature, birds, fowl of any kind, really, and I loved insects.”
Raymond’s eyes lit up. “Me too! What was your favorite?”
“Oh, let’s see…potato bugs, grasshoppers, moths, june bugs, ants, snails…Wait a minute, is a snail an insect?”
“No, it’s a mollusk,” said Raymond.
“Well, whatever they are, I always liked them, and dragonflies, lightning bugs, caterpillars, bees.” She looked at Raymond. “No offense, but I’m afraid I don’t care too much for wasps anymore.”
“No,” said Dorothy. “And who can blame you?”
Elner continued, “And I loved a good gospel song, and all the holidays, Christmas, Thanksgiving…Easter especially, I enjoyed being a little girl, being a grown woman with my own home, loved being married, and coffee, bacon, I particularly loved bacon, me and my neighbor Merle even joined the Bacon of the Month Club, of course I didn’t tell Norma.” When she realized what she had said, Elner winced. “Uh-oh, is that considered a lie…me not telling her?”
He thought about it, then said, “I would say it falls into the ‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her’ category, wouldn’t you, Dorothy?”
“I agree.”
“Whew! I’m glad about that,” said a relieved Elner. “I have a lot of those where Norma is concerned.” And then she continued. “I loved homemade peach ice cream…black walnut was my second favorite, but you don’t see that so much anymore, and turnip greens, mashed potatoes, black-eyed peas, fried okra, cornbread, and biscuits.” Elner looked over at Dorothy. “And pie and cake of course!”
“That’s a lot of things,” said Raymond appreciatively.
“And liver and onions…most people don’t like liver and onions, but I did. And rice puddings…Oh, I could just go on and on, if you want me to,” she said.
“No, that’s all right, Elner, like we said, this is your time for asking questions.”
“Oh, OK
then, here’s something else I always wanted to know: What good is a flea?”
Dorothy put her hand over her mouth and tried not to laugh.
Raymond leaned back in his chair, put his thumbs in his vest, and cleared his throat. “Well, you see, Elner, monkeys—all primates in general—have a rather complicated set of social rituals and grooming behaviors, and the picking of fleas is an important element for bonding.”
Dorothy looked askance at her husband. “Raymond?”
He sighed. “Oh, all right, I don’t know what they’re good for. I’m sure I had something in mind but I just forgot.”
“I told you she was smart, Raymond,” said Dorothy.
“Well, don’t feel bad about those old fleas for one minute,” Elner said to Raymond. “Like I said, I thoroughly enjoyed your sunsets, sunrises, the stars and the moon, and the rain, I loved a good summer rainstorm, and the fall…all the seasons, really, they were all just wonderful.”
“Thank you, Elner, I’m glad you enjoyed them. We tried to come up with a lot of nice things to balance it out, because regretfully, in life bad things do happen.”
“And we just hate it when they do,” said Dorothy sadly.
Elner said, “Well, now that you mentioned it, people do wonder about why they happen.”
Raymond looked very sympathetic and said, “I know they do, and I don’t blame them, but in order for them to have free will, I had to set up concrete laws of cause and effect, or else it wouldn’t have worked.” He shrugged. “I had no choice, what else could I do?”
“Well, Raymond,” Elner said thoughtfully, “I know it’s always easy to second-guess anything, but you might want to rethink the free will thing. I know that was Luther Griggs’s problem, if he could do anything he wanted, he usually got himself in a lot of trouble.”
Raymond nodded. “I understand, and believe me, Elner, we thought long and hard about free will, but we didn’t want to force people to do things.”
Dorothy added, “You can’t force people to love you, or each other, for that matter.”
