As I Walked Out One Evening

by Donald Wetzel

  I cannot believe he went out and bought it on his own.

  Of course if back then Bush had read the thing—the bit about the President’s Fart—he may not have thought it was funny in the least far from it it may have roundly pissed him off; oval orifice oval farts indeed he may have thought I’ll show them …

  … I mean (this is admittedly far fetched, wildly speculative) but it could have been just one more little demeaning pejorative particular as relating to his manhood—like being called a wimp—which contributed to the president’s increasingly war-like frame of mind at the time the last straw so to speak that pushed him right to the edge and over …

  The way such things can happen …

  Which is not I hasten to add a possibility a likelihood that rests all that heavily on my conscience …

  Chapter 13

  Chronology—the linear one after another proper positioning of events in their true actual-time and uninterrupted sequence—has never come easy to me in speech or in writing—a social and professional negative perhaps but that is neither here nor there—all I wish to say here is that I am indeed well aware that more and more I would seem to get these two old men of whom I write—one (myself) the protagonist being only on the cusp of being old when the scene is Alabama (sixty-seven in case you have forgot) but old enough (seventy-four) to speak with some authority to that condition when the scene is Bisbee and the time the present—and of course Lucian—supposedly pivotal to the piece—who is really old—in fact ridiculously old to be pivotal to anything it seems to me—he is eighty-three or he says he is—but there you have it—and what bothers me in this particular instance is the random and arbitrary but most of all rude—this is how I have come to think of it anyhow—the generally rude and abrupt manner in which I seem repeatedly to leave these two old men here and there throughout the script just standing where I happen last to have left them, cut off in mid-stride, with one foot lifted, so to speak.

  Why do I do this?

  I don’t know.

  As we grow older—appreciably so that is—one of the first signs of significant short term memory loss is an increasing propensity to forget people’s names which is something we did as well when we were younger but not as much; and so similarly perhaps in one’s old age the careless abrupt and even rude violations of chronology attending our recital of familiar anecdote etc may increase accordingly no matter that when younger such was also pretty much the case only not so much the case.

  In other words maybe—to cop a plea—it is perhaps simply because I am now myself become old that I treat of my old men (and my readers bless their hearts) so rudely.

  One other possibility is as follows: when one is young and on coming suddenly upon a very old person—say an old woman rising from a chair or an old man standing one foot at the curb the other in the street—one as I say when young can get the feeling can somehow find it only reasonable to assume—that they—the various old people so encountered—have been precisely positioned so forever or if not forever then for an exceedingly good long time; which is to say we think of old people and their way with time much differently than we do the young; as though they—the elderly the halt the lame the infirm the decrepit—or just simply the very old—inhabit a wholly different world than do the rest of us a world in which both they and time have more or less slowed to a crawl.

  They are the almost dead.

  Why hurry them along?

  And how is that for copping a plea?

  (And then this morning—a Sunday morning here in Bisbee the fourth of June to be precise (and four days short of the start of my seventy-fifth year) I go forth as is my wont for the morning paper—go easy down the mountain path to the canyon down the canyon under the cottonwoods where the buzzards roost on down to the store—with the buzzards already risen—having caught—I see—this early summer morning’s early thermals—which—the early thermals—tells me the day will be a hot one by and by—with the buzzards—I have had to search for them—already circling high but high above in a sky-blue-sky not yet washed white—being little more than drifting bird/dots drifting slow as stars—and I marvel yet again at how from their seemingly celestial heights they spot the dead cat dead mouse dead bird in the roadside debris and come spiralling down to gather—a whole damn flock of them—for the tidbit repast …

  … for the funeral meats to quote the bard that do indeed and for a fact furnish forth their wedding feast …

  … and so with such progress marked with such poetry if you will allow me or with such pleasure at least in the beginning day I reach the store and pick up my buck-and-a-half’s worth of what’s new and what’s for sale in the world; and what hits me? front fucking page no less—below the fold but front page all the same—and a three column spread to boot: ALZHEIMER’S The Early Signs.

  I read the front page portion of the piece standing in the store in people’s way.

  The article I read is continued on page twelve.

  I walk back up the canyon up under the cottonwoods up the path to the house knock the cat off the breakfast table and read page twelve to the end.

  I take such comfort as may be had from the signs not yet mine.)

  The above parenthesis as regards my going forth for the Sunday paper and returning with Alzheimer’s was not at all what I had in mind to write this morning if I had in mind to write anything at all; rather upon awakening and over coffee it had been my thought and most idly that most likely when again at work I might well return to cousin Mattie (the crow of the rooster, the child on the swing) or to old Lucian left waiting in the “truck”; and it is with apologies I guess—although the bit above referred to is hardly—in the larger context of the work—an irrelevance I think—I herewith and immediately return again to old Lucian or to little Mattie or anyhow to things remembered well—and moving on—God willing.

  Chapter 14

  Lucian the young lady said oh my and backed away from the window put some distance between even the sight of the old man and herself no matter there was a thickness of plate glass and a considerable distance of macadam/turf already between the two of them moving back in among the shiny new or rebuilt auto parts clearly intent at this point on putting herself at some distance from me as well—drunk and dirty by association I guess—Lucian and me old woreout parts—although back then I did not yet generally think of myself as being numbered among the aged although I did in this instance all right and immediately as it were—indeed without further thought I considered myself not only old but good and old precisely as I stood there and—more or less quite properly and as I would rather have preferred it had the choice been mine—true kin to the old man name of Lucian—or if not his kin at least more for sure his kind than her’s—Lucian she said and her lips got thin and she eased back in among the merchandise away from the both of us from Lucian outside in the van and from me just standing there.

  Lucian.

  A good old country name.

  The lady’s name was probably Iris or Maribell.

  Something sweet the name of some kind of flower.

  I am just guessing of course.

  I remember however that when she drew her lips into that quick straight line it was like a lizard snapping up a fly.

  That sudden.

  Hardly anything else about her moved.

  I can still see it.

  (It is surprising how a picture like that can remain so sharp and clear for so long a time—some seven years in this case—but then who really understands the tricks of memory when it comes to the literal picture of a thing? the way it swings in out of nowhere like a fragment of song a phrase from the past except that it is instead a picture sharp and clear and with edges so to speak as though framed? and are the pictures the last to go then, are they nibbled away at the edges by the mouse in the mind? left shredded in the end like photographs found in the rat’s nest in the attic? and how and why in God’s name were they selected to be saved in the first place …?

  Why m
ust I see her even now as I write? see her so clear? there among the new and used auto parts? this briefly thin-lipped bored and altogether quite unlovely Iris person?

  Seems such a waste of film and file space.)

  I remember too that Iris or whatever her name was wore a scent that could have fogged up the window.

  I was half choking on it.

  But I am being unfair.

  For all I know the woman had a heart of gold.

  But not for old Lucian.

  So I said ah yes, Lucian—as though the name meant something to me—Lucian—nodding my head and taking my time which is the proper way a stranger does things in the South when soliciting information of a native—Lucian I said I would take him home if I knew where he lived but he won’t say.

  He is nothing but trouble the lady said.

  He is old I said.

  He is nothing but a drunkard and always has been the lady said he lives way out near the river way out of town out along county road thirty-eight somewhere; you know where county road thirty-eight is?

  I told her I didn’t think so in fact I gave her quite a long and detailed explanation about why I didn’t think so having to do with the fact that while I had indeed lived in the area while young both in Larson and in Fairfield—at different times of course—and was familiar in a general way with the South Baldwin County area the rivers and creeks particularly most of which or at least many of which I could still name and some of which indeed had figured significantly in my early years by way it might be said of certain youthful adventures and might I say misadventures as well and educational experiences of one sort and another the discovery of one’s self in nature and so forth and while I was therefore more or less familiar with many of the rural roads—many of them of course being dirt back then—the truth was that I was not much of a one to take note of county road numbers then or now.

  She kept smiling at some merchandise on the opposite wall.

  Never moved a muscle

  It was like I was talking to a manikin.

  I could not shut up.

  No doubt I seemed strange to her.

  Finally I stopped.

  Well you go straight back out Garden Street she said the way you came and keep going about nine mile or so—nine mile or so she said again a kind of question in her voice as if maybe I didn’t quite get the math of it or something—(nine mile in the Baldwin county boonies equals I believe nine miles in Birmingham I could have told her but I didn’t) nine mile or so she said and you’ll come to county road thirty-eight going south just watch for it; and then she clicked off the smile and waited for me to leave.

  So I stood there looking at all the virgin automotive paraphernalia and wondering why everything seemed so damn irrelevant to me right then why I couldn’t connect with it not the store or anything in it least of all the people as though I had stepped into the store and both time and a normal human sense of things had stopped and wouldn’t start again until I got out of there which is a way I have felt about going in and out of stores before but never quite like that so I tipped my cap and said thank you for your trouble Ma’am as we say in the South and left and got out of there and back to the van.

  Sorry no cookies I said.

  The old man smiled at me forgave me hadn’t hardly expected cookies anyhow I guess smiled a plaintive damn smile that somehow pissed me the familiarity of it like we were old time friends old good ole boys or something in on this together.

  What ever it was we were in on.

  His drunk I guess.

  They knowed me? he said.

  Yes Lucian I said they knowed you.

  Used to be the five and dime he said.

  I just sat there for a bit getting used to the old man again.

  An old man name of Lucian.

  Well I thought at least now I knew his name.

  And finally I made up my mind and said Lucian—I put a hand on his shoulder to get his attention and I could feel the bone—as in the song them bones them bones them dry bones—this is crazy I thought I am talking to a goddamn skeleton—okay I said I am going to drive us back out Garden Street and on back out to county road number thirty-eight if I can find it and when we get there you are going to tell me how to get you the rest of the way on home; Lucian you hear me?

  He kept looking out the window and nodding as though at people I couldn’t see and which as a matter of fact weren’t there and fiddling with the window crank and I said Lucian listen at me I am talking to you; you are going to tell me the hell how to take you on home when we get to county road thirty-eight or you and me will go find us the sheriff right now and maybe the sheriff will know where you live; you hear?

  Southern talk.

  And so the old man sighed and turned from the window; it would be right nice of you he said if you was to take me home.

  I had killed a butterfly with an axe.

  I looked over at him.

  He grinned.

  Nodded.

  Like we were really getting to know each other.

  Before I had time to think about it I had smiled and nodded it was so.

  Then I thought about it.

  This will never do I thought.

  Well then I thought …

  Well then I said I guess it is settled and we both of us nodded at one another polite and friendly as could be and I started up the van and headed back out Garden Street.

  But even at the time I knew better.

  Not just in retrospect but right then.

  I swear it.

  Chapter 15

  And so parenthetically let it be noted here that on my most recent birthday—an imminence foreshadowed earlier in the more recent portions of the text—a birthday my seventy-fifth which has since come and gone but even so not all that long ago this being still the month of June (and our first real hot spell of the season here in Bisbee; the rains the cooling storms will come we like to say in the first week of July but they don’t always)—but a birthday anyhow which I celebrated—and from which I am still recovering—in a manner more or less appropriate to my years as they say or by falling down; but let it also be noted that this hurrah for me was not accomplished by some pitiful pedestrian or domestic misadventure such as missing the last step or a hold on the hand rail but by falling down a mountain.

  Not the whole damn mountain just a portion of it.

  And not airborne other than for the briefest of intervals.

  It was oops and over backwards and then bam dash bam as I remember it an interval in which I was twice and only twice I believe briefly airborne my being airborne being due not to any great athleticism on my part but—one—to the steepness and—two—to the undulant surface of the slope on which I fell a matter of hitting the high spots so to speak.

  Two of them.

  And then I slid.

  On talus.

  Sharp broken shale.

  With at the end a cholla cactus to break my fall as the expression goes.

  Or my slide to be more precise.

  And if not for the cactus in truth I could well have slid a good deal further.

  I would just as well perhaps have done so—cholla cactus being cholla cactus—even though it was indeed an even steeper rocky slope stretched out below, glimpsed—I remember—while airborne—the earth aslant like a cathedral roof top endlessly falling away beneath me, lacking only the drop the abyss at the end.

  Lacking as I say the abyss; there being limits … by which I mean I am not that foolish yet—foolish as I must at times appear to others as well as to myself—not yet so foolish anyhow as to play at being javelina right to the edge of the cliff the drop off the abyss to follow the javelina paths no matter where although that is what I was doing up there on that mountain side that day a thing I do frequently or used to do frequently which is to find an area somewhere up in the Mules—the Mule Mountain range—up in the Juniper Flats region usually—here or there some new to me area some place where the only path the only track and sign is that
of the javelina the wild pig as they are sometimes called and to follow the path to go where the javelina have gone to see what they have seen to crawl on all fours or on my belly if that is what it takes and my wind is up to go where they have gone even through the manzanita thicket where their hide-hair here and there on the twigs and thorn-ends marks the difficulty of their passage even for hides as thick as theirs—half blind they go by scent more than sight and will brute their way through almost anything that yields—and I of course will follow after hold to the trail they have left and leave proof as well of my own passage there my signature my bits of hide—in my case skin—as they have left theirs, most small and negligible bits of hide for me of course but all the same I come up bloody of leg and arm when the clearing is reached and I rise again to my feet to stand most likely—or at least for sure quite precisely on a spot—where no man no human animal no one of us has ever stood before …

  … and to no end other than this do I do this, do I find it a fine if rare and lonely pleasure—a kind of continuing instruction—in who knows what?—in being animal perhaps as in part remembered still from childhood or from the cave (if the blood remembers?)

  Anyhow to have gone once more where the javelina go has often in recent years been my pleasure—and was meant to be such again on the occasion of my birthday—a weird pleasure if one prefers to see it so—and hard to deny that it well might seem so—but so what if generally I bleed a little at the end it is not in great gouts and gushes …