As I Walked Out One Evening

by Donald Wetzel

  Chapter 9

  So once I had got over my somewhat spooky reaction to the out of nowhere sudden appearance of this strange old man this animated ancient this unlikely parody of a piping Pan—okay this lively (and as it turned out) drunk old goat—slow-dancing out in front of my van totally oblivious to me I sat there in my lofty plush customized captain’s chair and looked down on the old man with as I recall it a certain condescension—naturally having no idea at the time of what was in store for me—a condescension neither more nor less I suppose than the way you will often see people in vans looking down at you at stop lights with a kindly sort of supercilious shit-eating grin just for you the lowly pedestrian making your way across the street below—I mean it is just a natural feeling that goes with the elevation attendant on the ownership of a van (and just think how truck drivers must feel way up there so high some of them they can’t even see you down there right in front of the truck I suppose they just watch the light and hope for the best) (and then sometimes off by itself on a post there may be as an aid for the lowly pedestrian a dummy-light usually orange that comes on to indicate that it really and truly is okay now for you to walk being the silhouette cut-out or stick-figure image of a person walking a likeness which in some high class neighborhoods actually moves its feet to be sure you get it which I suppose is some help some kind of reassurance for the timid some encouragement for the faint of heart)…

  … and I have to wonder at this point sitting here in Bisbee Arizona at my writing machine looking out now at the mountains across the way saluting this morning’s flight of buzzards already risen circling high and wide and the ease with which they do their thing the grace with which it is achieved while I on the other hand cannot seem to get a drunk old man in Baldwin County Alabama from one side of the street to the other.

  No matter also that the old man—and how he would hate it if the dead could hate—to be realistic about it is most likely altogether and a long time dead by now.

  Altogether dead?

  Degrees of deadness?

  Some mornings it is like that with me.

  On the other hand how many people know where buzzards mate and how they do it?

  Buzzards mate on the ground.

  I have seen them do it and what they do is they hop up sideways to each other and then face off and back and fill for a bit and then there is a great confusion of wings and that’s it.

  They seem shy about it which I have to admit somehow moves me.

  The female lays her egg or eggs on high often rocky ground usually under a bush.

  Not all that much is known about buzzards at least not in my circles in fact it is possible I know as much about buzzards as anyone or as does anyone who is not really heavy into buzzards.

  But such gifts notwithstanding I seem unable this morning to move Lucian on across the street.

  Would that I could soar like a buzzard.

  Not that that would help but just imagine what it would be like!

  I should have been a buzzard.

  Maybe next time.

  (Okay okay I didn’t really mean it I know better it is just a thing people say.)

  (A friend of mine once told me she had tried her hand at channeling and was put on hold. All the spooks were busy.)

  (And back to buzzards if you ever see a sick buzzard you can bet it was not something it ate they can eat anything even old tires if they are ripe enough I believe.)

  And so enough with the non sequiturs; back to a nameless intersection—something and Garden Street—in Fairfield Alabama and the progress across or into this intersection by an eighty-three year old man—a very dirty old man I can see by this time as he is directly not ten feet away in front of my van and he still doesn’t see it which is something that could only be accomplished I suppose by a person being eighty-three years old and more or less blind drunk—a man name of Lucian which name I learned only later and not from him and who is not as a matter of fact going to make it on across the street; no indeed instead he is going to end up happily and with obvious approval—but in no apparent surprise—he had expected no less it seems—seated in the plush customized captain’s chair next to mine.

  The way these things can just sort of happen.

  For Lucian especially it would seem.

  More specifically what happened was I sat there taking note of the old man’s attire which told a story of sorts being most notable to start with by way of a suit coat hanging rakishly off one shoulder rakishly I say although the coat itself being of a sedate not to say funeral black in color and cut and with the look about it of having recently been slept in, and a formerly one guesses white dress shirt open at the throat and nondescript other than to say absolutely filthy work pants of some sort and in sharp even dramatic contrast with of course the bright new bedroom slippers mentioned earlier—and these the bedroom slippers bright new and all told a good bit of the old man’s story right there I believe made it clear that filthy as the old man was there were those who cared or who would not let him go around barefoot anyhow, some nurturing kin female no doubt to whom he was for a certainty a general pain in the ass, and who would let him get filthy if that was his wish but not to wander too far from home to take off in such a condition for parts unknown—and thus the hobbling slippers or such was the intent no doubt of it in my mind—and further it was these very bedroom slippers, the low heels or the absence of any heel at all that now as I had noticed earlier imparted a kind of celebratory freedom to his walk, a softness an ease of movement a suggestion of the dance—of ballet perhaps if you will—uniquely characteristic of the old man’s manner of locomotion and which locomotion for all its seeming liveliness (and in this regard it is my guess also that the messages being sent from brain to leg were somehow—a matter of peripheral nervous system pathology perhaps—delayed in transit and arrived later than expected but with each time a rush, a burst of communication of instruction at the end resulting in that lively cute little kick with which the old man commenced each step) being a form of locomotion however and unfortunately which for all its surprisingly various activity was moving the old man forward hardly at all.

  It may be wondered at this point why I did not just blow the horn finally and move the old boy on out of there which in my opinion was something only a first class schmuck would have done but I thought about it and right about then the old man looked up at last and saw me saw the van at least and in genuine surprise and horror flung up both his arms and staggered backwards half way across Garden Street.

  Where as luck would have it the customary flow of traffic was nowhere present not a car in sight.

  And so it was that fate which so often takes the worthy and spares the worthless had done its thing here again.

  I shook my head; I remember that, how I sat there like a fool and shook my head as though at some great cleverness of the Gods: an old man twice in one day spared.

  And then he saw me.

  Pulled himself erect and peered at me.

  Cocked his head to one side to see the better.

  Nodded.

  Smiled.

  Lifted both arms in a gesture of purest wonder.

  Of amazed and heartfelt welcome.

  Not death after all but a friend!!!!

  Me.

  Oh shit I thought.

  Chapter 10

  And even as I thought oh shit he came running toward me or I should say hasting as best as he could hasten which was pretty good all things considered a kind of running surprisingly quick in fact with a turtle-like leg-kicking arm-waving turtle-version of hurry up and get some place, and at the same time pitifully waving his hands in the air or I should say his hands piteously fluttering in the air—as that is how I saw it anyhow fluttering like wounded birds or baby birds perhaps just learning to fly—something unexpectedly brave if I can say that and tender and I was touched by it quite foolishly perhaps but nonetheless it was so—and I understood immediately that the feebly wildly gesturing hands were meant to be seen
by me as commanding imploring beseeching me that I stop that I stay where I was that I wait that we had business together; and of course I had no alternative either stay there or run him down like a dog in the street (and I have already run that one by sufficiently I believe) so I sat there stupidly watching him coming at me until it looked like he might actually manage to run himself head-on into the van even with the van just sitting there but at the last instant he ducked around to the passenger’s side and disappeared.

  Probably went into a ditch I figured.

  A lot of Fairfield streets have ditches to either side; Baldwin County gets a lot of rain.

  So I sat there waiting and wondering should I go look and see or instead why not just drive away as if nothing at all had happened? who would know? and then there was this gently thump thump on the passenger door window and I looked and saw a hand the white dirty palm of a hand softly beating on the window like a large moth and I thought oh to hell with it and cut the motor and got out and went around and the old man was half in the ditch and half out of it and I got him the rest of the way out and then up into the van a maneuver which was not as easy as it may sound and mostly involved my shoving and pushing up gently but firmly on his bony ass—my van happens to be one of those cool no-frill models that they didn’t bother with a step or running boards; getting in it it was more like getting on a horse something well beyond the old man I believe even if he had been sober but which between us we managed to get done and which for some reason was done largely in silence—as though by prior arrangement it seemed or as if it was something we did every day—as I eased him up going slow and careful not to scare him or hurt him I could imagine easy enough how fragile the rest of his bones had to be just from the feel of the bones in his ass thinking to myself as well why am I doing this? and even more thinking God forbid that he should be incontinent.

  A man knows when he is being foolish even when doing the right thing and I knew it all right and in such cases I am not above invoking the memory of my sainted mother as the Irish say and while I am not Catholic or even religious walking back around in front of the van to the driver’s side I quite distinctly nodded in a general upward direction and thought “see?” as though my mother bless her heart was not only a witness to this present foolishness of her favorite child but that it was her fault.

  She would have approved is what I mean. No doubt of it.

  Furthermore I see nothing wrong in invoking the memory or spirit of my mother any time it pleases me; what has old age got to do with it? old people still had mothers for Christ sake.

  Other people have religions saints idols graven images crystals you name it.

  To each his own.

  I however will dance with the one who brung me.

  And so much for that.

  At the time of course I was not arguing this out at length or anything like that; I simply remember glancing up and giving a nod to the sky if you wish and acknowledging that this was a strange development for sure and I was probably doing a very dumb thing but there it was and I had it to do, and it was no less strange let me add to get back in my captain’s chair finally and see the old man sitting next to me patiently waiting—for me, I guess—nodding to himself and patting the fancy customized softly padded arms of his chair as though as it was just a little habit of his in that particular chair as though it—as though the van itself—was as familiar to him as an old hat.

  He might as well have told me to come right in and make myself to home.

  In my own damn van.

  You would have had to have been there to understand but take my word for it.

  (I should explain that my van is a customized job not a factory job but the work of some independent artist prior to my coming into possession of the thing but customized to the hilt all the same—no matter the bank turned up its nose at it invoking their fucking little blue book bible when hell it had carpeting even on the ceiling—said it was just a van to them—with a fold-down seat in back that makes into a bed and a small table with its own captain’s chair and two high-back captain’s chairs in front chairs capable of being turned all the way from front to back including the driver’s should this seem desirable. I mean not truly a customized van indeed the bastards; at the bank I mean)

  Just so the picture is clear.

  And so I sat there with the old man sitting next to me filling the van with his stink of sweat and booze and god knows what else—urine probably—feeling as if I had possibly taken a little too long a lead off first or been a tad more than usually stupid wondering what have I got here? and then the old man turned and flashed a smile of such innocence and sweetness at me as I would have believed impossible for any male at all let alone a man that drunk and that old.

  Even if he turned out to be totally insane.

  Nice truck you got he said.

  Well okay then I thought.

  And for a time we just sat there.

  Like old friends.

  As though it all made perfect sense.

  As though it was only natural.

  The two of us like two birds side by side on a wire two gulls side by side on a wave.

  And no big deal.

  I don’t know.

  It is almost frightening sometimes how quickly we can adjust to the bizarre.

  (My thought for the day and you may quote me.)

  Well there was the hiatus as mentioned above such as will happen now and then in even the busiest of enterprises in the heat of the hottest of arguments—who has not known of this phenomenon?—and then time and the action picks up again as though without pause as though the gap the hiatus seems not to have happened—when you get older however too great a frequency of such gaps or hiatuses can be clinically significant I suspect although on the other hand there is probably nothing much you can do about it if it happens it happens—maybe this is the way Alzheimer’s starts and maybe it isn’t—but anyhow as though without pause I started the van and looked in the rear view mirror—nothing behind us waiting even yet and ahead of us Garden Street was clear again; time to move it out. I glanced over at the old man Jesus he was dirty his neck especially like a chicken in molt by which I mean you could see the skin showing through here and there but you would just as soon not his head swaying as though hollow as though to gusts of capricious winds the head of an idiot bowing to all the compass points, and the stink of the man …

  … it has been my experience with drunks that a drunk on a roll can be sometimes hard to get rid of they will love you like a brother to leave from you is as the pulling of the flesh from their bones in your presence alone do their stupid lives have purpose and meaning; tie in with a dedicated drunk like that and it can be a little similar to an ancient Chinese custom no longer observed I believe which made it incumbent upon any Chinaman foolish enough to save the life of another Chinaman say from drowning for instance to accept full responsibility for ever after of the Chinaman saved which must have caused some powerful hesitations back on the banks of the Yangtze now and then but maybe not maybe they jumped right in regardless; but God forbid I thought at the time that the old man should be in touch in some drunken mystical way with the rules of the game in ancient China that having plucked him helpless from the street … too bad for me!

  Well as it turned out and as was only to be expected God forbade it not.

  (Parenthetically I am aware that I frequently make references to—and even invoke the intervention of—a God in whom I profess not to believe as was true of a scholarly friend of mine of similar persuasion—dead now rest his soul—and who when I asked how come this inconsistency would he care to comment on it? he simply shrugged which was his right of course but for myself I will say in this regard: okay to be honest about it somewhere in some small corner of my heart I still believe what my earliest senses told me; that the earth is flat and that there is a God.

  I know better now of course.

  And that should take care of that.

  Anyhow what I finally said t
o the old man was well I guess it’s time we took you home.

  I have no idea why I used the editorial we but I did.

  To put some distance between us maybe.

  Anyhow he squirreled around in his chair with considerable difficulty and looked around in the back of the van; I thought we was alone he said.

  So, I thought.

  Very well then I thought.

  Time to get real.

  Just tell me where you live and I’ll take you there I have not got all day I said.

  The old man leaned toward me peered at me you going to put me off your truck he said?

  I am going to take you home I said.

  If I had of wanted to be home I would have stayed at home he said; you mean to put me off your truck?

  No I said I am taking you the hell home or at least I hope I am.

  I revved up the motor; which way? I said.

  He wasn’t saying instead he smiled and shook his head and took hold of the the arm rests with both hands and pulled himself up and looked over at me and told me how it was.

  I believe I caught it pretty much as I have set it down; as follows:

  There was some people put me off their truck—can you imagine such a thing? money is everything—can you imagine—I am eighty-three years old imagine that—the Lord frowns on drinking so they say but money is everything—that’s all they care about—yes sir—I would get some money but this is Saturday ain’t it and the banks is closed but that’s where they keep the money all right keep it in a room all by itself private no visitors the doctors come and put in more money you understand?—not everybody understands—you’re a good fellow—but it’s all money money that’s all it is there’s people never learn—hard to believe ain’t it?—clear as it is—hey I could get some money from the bank and we could get a drink?—beer tears up your bowels—yes sir—you drink whiskey?—course if I had money in the bank what good is that if the bank is closed? ain’t I right? ain’t it always that way though if you got money the bank is closed and if you ain’t got money it don’t make no difference they wouldn’t let you in anyhow—they just put me off by the side of the road like a dog they was set to get rid of—go they said go on go—like I was suppose to go off in the woods and hunt game or die—not even knowing me—not kin—strangers—can you imagine that?