As I Walked Out One Evening

by Donald Wetzel

  It was something to think about—the simple wonder of it—even at the time.

  Chapter 3

  In front of the post office here in Old Bisbee off to one side along the sidewalk leading to it from the parking lot are a couple of uncomfortable old iron benches of striated or slated construction where the old people like to sit and which has become a place referred to reasonably enough by our local wags as dead-pecker row, and where almost any time during a weekday weather permitting you can see a number of old galumphers or farts or senior citizens take your pick old men anyhow sitting there alone with their private thoughts their seasoned survey of the passing scene and so forth or more likely just sitting there looking at their feet and thinking nothing much at all, except maybe noting vaguely as appropriate to their age and circumstance that their asses once again have begun to feel the iron.

  At seventy-four I have sat there I have been among that number I have felt the iron.

  And I am not sure why I am writing about this now, but it seems somehow relevant because that is one of the differences seven years can make because at sixty-seven, back that day in Baldwin County Alabama on my way home from Mattie’s I was not particularly surprised at the awakening the movement the tingling in my nether region—okay in and above and around my balls—(why am I trying so hard not to write penis?—actually I know why because in my opinion it is a particularly lousy sounding word just the sound of it which is true as well of the word masturbation an ugly sounding word for sure I mean the word not the act; just compare the sound of penis or masturbation with the sound of a word like vagina or breasts for instance or even the word fucking when not used in casual deprecation or in anger, and which of the words have the nicer sounds should be immediately apparent)—okay the tingling then as mentioned above as I took leave of Mattie and drove over the cattle guard and felt the tingling for real, as though all it took after that last friendly bit with Mattie was the gentle bouncing of the van going over the cattle guard to set things thinking so to speak in my nether region as mentioned earlier, the way it used to be with me riding on a train just hearing the clack clack clack back when I was young and just the damn motion of the train and the clack clack would make me finally come up no pun intended with my own private imitation of some telephone pole or signal tower seen along the way, and then feeling I had to do something about it anything and the damn awkwardness of getting up and walking to the cooler and getting one of those silly paper cups of water as though that might help somehow (they were those little pointy paper cups and naturally reminded me of tits; but the water probably helped some even so.) Or on a bus, even, just a whiff of perfume or nothing at all but the motion of the bus. Anyhow, I was no sooner over the cattle guard leaving Mattie’s when there was that old familiar tingling all right in the nether region; and a far cry indeed it was—although naturally I didn’t know that at the time—from the feel of the iron on my ass on dead-pecker row that was yet to come, come seven years more on down the road.

  So I guess that is why I write of it now.

  And the tingle didn’t stop either I would say it intensified as I drove, and I drove on through Larson and Karlsville past my turn and took the next macadam west and got half way lost but I had to laugh at the way the tingle kept tingling and getting more pronounced thinking how it would please Mattie no end to know how she still could do a thing like that to me without half trying.

  Being lost somewhat—I knew I was still in Baldwin County anyhow and heading west—had the advantage however of being more a scenic route at least going through and around and about some branch and bottom land and so forth with a number of unexpected sexy dips and curves, the element of the unknown being present of discovery and surprise, around the curve and the sudden smooth drop and a curve the other way and down again where the road dipped down; and the tingling in my nether region was actually spreading up my thighs and into my arms to where I have to say it was getting to the point that it could not be ignored and I thought wait until Mattie hears about this; like Mattie, I would say, the van was humming with it like a hive of bees if you can imagine, and go on in a similar vein, knowing full well there was no way she could consider this as other than reflecting most favorably upon herself; and then it was pretty obvious that as a matter of fact the van actually was humming like a hive of bees and more in fact it was vibrating, and my first thought sensibly enough finally was oh shit I wish I was not lost because I have a universal going out for sure.

  There was no question of it.

  The only question was would I make it home first or drop a drive shaft?

  And so much I guess for an old man’s lust.

  But the rest of the way back home—I made it all right but by the time I got to the environs of Fairfield the van was shaking hard enough to keep me sucking on my upper plate—but even so—and this I think speaks reasonably well of me—what I thought about most during that time, what I felt most unhappy about, even with the van about to shake itself to pieces and knowing what a bundle it would no doubt cost me to get it fixed, what worried me most was what a sad thing this would be for Mattie, this denoument to my little story in which she had been so much a star, at least to start with, the wonderful story the way I had seen it in my mind, how I would go to Mattie with it wrapped in bright ribbons as one bearing gifts; some gift all right being nothing more at the end but the stupid even let it be said pointless story of a worn out universal joint going the way of all wore-out universal joints.

  I hate the lousy way so many things come to an end.

  But the fun is in the doing, even so, and should not be forgot, I suppose.

  Chapter 4

  So I left the van at the Chevron station and started walking home thinking how strange it is the way a man grows old without hardly noticing it—the way it is with me anyhow—but the way how even so more and more it seems that all sorts of little things no matter how oblique or tangential to the man’s vision or concern or even such quick little things as are barely caught from the corner of his eye, are somehow more and more being brought to his attention and are things of a nature which—for a second or two at least—tend to remind him strangely enough—like a casual or possibly accidental shot to the ribs—of his mortality; and which can come to him—again strangely enough I would say—as something of a novelty, a surprise, (that sudden moment of pure true wonder as Auden wrote of it so wonderfully—I have looked it up—“And the crack in the teacup opens/ A lane to the land of the dead”) the fact that he is mortal, this old man I am talking about which is me of course but could be any old person I believe man or woman at this same particular point in life, on the cusp, as it were, and by all and any evidence of his mortality still young enough and dumb enough or maybe wise enough to be surprised by it; and which I suppose is the strangest part of it at all, that he is surprised.

  I mean a little thing like the universal joint giving out.

  Anyhow I was walking along with the subject of Mattie and so forth pretty much already out of mind and thinking about the business of growing old and remembering again an incident back in Bisbee one that more and more these days keeps coming to mind until finally in this instance walking along I hear myself saying to myself—sotto voice, naturally—the word, the one word that really did it for me, saying there goes that spry old man, meaning me (spry is the significant word of course, just in case that is not automatically obvious to anyone I mean a spry kid would have to have some other seriously wrong things about him before friends and family would be apt to refer to him as being like “he’s a pretty spry kid, all things considered.”) spry anyhow was the word used that certain day not too long ago by a lovely young lady of some forty summers back in Bisbee and in reference to me and which at that time as you can imagine gave me as they say furiously to pause; spry, a word which was meant to make some things clear to me and which it did and which sort of dramatically got me to start looking at myself as I supposed most other people not only young ladies must be looking at me now
or I wouldn’t have been here in Fairfield on a nice autumn evening walking along narcissistically talking to myself saying there goes that spry old man meaning me.

  But the truth of it is that not until that lovely and otherwise most gracious young lady back in Bisbee Arizona said what she did to me about my being spry it had never really occurred to me—although surely it should have as I am not a simple or unthinking person—that I actually have become that which I had somehow assumed I was even now only someday yet to become some distant someday at that which is to say old; or at least spry anyhow a word which springs unbidden to my mind these days as though I have not got it all figured out yet have not grasped the full significance of it that I am spry, old.

  Which is not something a person thinks about generally or for long hunks of time and so it was that I was walking along walking spryly I suppose but even so thinking mostly by this time about what a nice day it was and about the van and hoping it was only a universal joint giving up the ghost, and not the whole rear end, and wondering why it is that just about the time you get something paid for it busts, almost like a rule of nature, things flower and fade things as well that never knew seed or root even as the new stuff comes rolling down out of Detroit or rolling in from Japan and comes floating up the ships’ channel or is floated down the Tombigbee (I am not sure about this last about how much big ticket commerce is carried on the Tombigbee but what a wonderful name for a river) on down to Mobile where the good citizens of Fairfield buy the stuff foreign and domestic all bright and new right off the docks; although little Fairfield is starting to flower now too billboards and neon on the fine new four lane leading into town enough to make you wish you were back on I-10. And stereos don’t last forever either; if you want to keep the music you had better be ready to get a new one by-and-by if my experience is any indication what happens is you grow a little deaf which you do not believe so you turn up the volume to compensate for the way the thing is wearing out and then you wonder finally if that new buzzing sound is in your head or have you blown the speakers or the whole damn set, and naturally it turns out to be the whole damn set; a flick of the switch and a sound like the snap of a mouse trap and you are standing there looking down at something dead.

  Which sounds worse than I meant it to sound somehow but music is one thing while a mouse is only a mouse.

  I have got from the action.

  The way it goes: I am walking along by this time thinking more or less cheerful trivia such as this, how things mold or rust or finally bust and it is all the same the ravages of time the same to steel or bone, but better to have lived than to have been say a universal joint, and how the leaves come down some of them pretty the real ones but for the rest a junk heap is just a junk heap and kids will play there at their peril.

  It would be nice if things just got spry I guess but they don’t.

  Chapter 5

  It is to be remembered that back at the point where the old man is afoot on the streets of Fairfield walking along scuffing his way through the autumn leaves and kicking around a number of more or less half-assed thoughts about growing old or being old etc he is at that time not yet a septuagenarian even but only a slightly wore-out sixty-seven, while at this writing—which is being writ here in Bisbee Arizona on a fine spring morning with the buzzards riding the thermals light as thistle-down lifting up on their great black sails into an endlessness of white-blue sky (and enough of that, but damn they soar so beautifully)—he is in fact seventy-four years old and better qualified at least if not better able to show and tell of what it is he speaks.

  And so if it seems I sometimes get confused about when or even who I am talking about as I get on into this account I hope it may serve to cover my ass somewhat in regard to such various inconsistencies and confusions as may be noted that I am in fact always and only seventy-four years old as this is being written, and along with this for covering my butt is the fact that senile dementia, of a heavy sort, runs in the family.

  On my father’s side.

  Smart as he was he ended up papering the walls of his cottage with pictures of Abraham Lincoln the Great Emancipator which told me a great deal at the time about which way the wind was starting to blow in my old man’s head as he was not the kind of person nor ever had been to give a shit about emancipating anyone.

  And one of his sisters who was also a lousy person to start with—but nowhere near I have to say as well educated as my father—a rural snob and vicious gossip and no one liked her including me—one day put on several dresses and a crazy hat and ran off hollering into the woods, and the country neighbors—this was back in Alabama—all said that her chickens had come home to roost and which gave a lot of people who knew her a great deal of satisfaction, but the doctors back then called it senile dementia, as was also what they called it with my father—I myself had never heard of Alzheimer’s at the time and it is possible that the doctors hadn’t either if that is what it was—and still another of my father’s sisters who was actually the first one of the three of them to lose it which she did so I am told by having less and less to say until one summer day she turned off the fan and sat down in front of the fireplace and refused to move just sat there looking at the ashes.

  Said she was cold.

  I understand that she went with them quietly.

  I never knew her personally but I was told that she had always been the quiet one.

  At the end I would go to see my father at the nursing home and he would be tied to his chair.

  Hi Dad I would say.

  He didn’t know me from Abraham Lincoln.

  He didn’t seem to know he was tied to his chair.

  Just knew that he couldn’t wander off.

  I couldn’t tell if that bothered him or not.

  Maybe he didn’t even know that he couldn’t wander off.

  So it is with ample reason I believe that I now and then catch myself worrying will it be with me as it was with my father and his sisters? with a little mouse name of Alzheimer nibbling at my brain? In fact one morning here in Bisbee not too long ago I pretty well emptied out the Renaissance Cafe with my comments in regard to this very matter.

  People just don’t want to hear about it, least of all early in the morning over coffee and who can blame them?

  But what if the little mouse is already up there skittering around inside my skull, already nibbling away? what if this is so? Would I have the good sense then not to talk about it?

  Think about that for a minute or two.

  So I worry about it occasionally now and did so even when I was a spry sixty-seven watching for the subtle—and not so subtle now—signs of short-term long-term memory loss and various evidences of cognitive impairment and such as that; signs of either Alzheimer’s or of simple senile dementia which ever it should turn out to be—there are certain proteins recently discovered in the blood they say that serve as evidence, a warning: don’t look back, something may be gaining on you (my idea of an Alzheimer’s joke) or then if the doctors suspect that something is really starting to give way they may ask you to count backward by sevens from one hundred down to one (just try it sometime) or if it is already pretty obvious they will see if you can make it even counting backward any way you can just down from ten—so I worry some on occasion about this sort of thing because it sounds like something having to do with a genetically placed and highly signficant little blue or red dot in my DNA or in other words something that very well could be hereditary—in fact they have proved that it damn well can be, at least some of the time—and which is funny in a way because when I was nineteen my father made a big thing of altogether disowning me, mostly because there was a war going on and I was a pacifist, a conscientious objector, and he couldn’t stand the shame of it, which—being disowned—was okay with me as I told him at the time because I had disowned him and for far better reason I believe when I was twelve; and what is funny is that under these circumstances the only thing I have got from my father here at the end is a genetic s
usceptibility to senile dementia or Alzheimer’s or anyhow a tendency to lose my mind.

  No way he could disown me that.

  As only a short while ago I was writing in these same pages several pages back how it was better to have been me than to have been a universal joint for instance.

  That could be a sign.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  The truth is I have always had a thing about machines the way they are moving in on us taking our place—I mean call any eight hundred government agency number and try to talk to a human being; you will first receive instruction from a robot as to what numbers to push next if you wish to speak about one thing push number 1 if would wish to discuss something else push number 2 and so on up through the single digits until maybe at the end you will get a real living person or maybe the robot will have the final word at that—or take the computer for instance and here you are out there on the information highway speeding along on the Internet for instance and you have been cutoff by some fellow traveler who may not even exist except in some jerk’s imagination but naturally you are pissed and very much wish to tell the jerk what a bunch of shit he is and that his mother sleeps in pay toilets and so forth, the only way you can do this is to FLAME the guy and the way you do this while hunched snarling over your computer keyboard is—I mean how pitiful can you get?—to type it all in CAPS. (Try it, for instance: JUST STEP OUTSIDE YOU ASSHOLE AND I’LL FIX YOUR CLOCK!!! Looks pretty silly doesn’t it?)

  And then there are kids like my grand daughter Lisa who fear the thing the way kids used to fear God it is a presence a being a thing of mystery and power it cannot be fooled it can even tell when they are bad; and most of all it is smarter than they are.

  They think it is a brain. It is a machine.

  Or consider for a moment if you think about it it would not be so strange to wonder what kind of animal you would like to be if you could be some kind of an animal but who would ever think about entering the world as a computer say or a universal joint?