As I Walked Out One Evening

by Donald Wetzel

  … as the mind it seemed indeed grew fanciful as I waited there in that stupid barren lonely little room for the arrival of one who might know, who might reasonably be expected to have some answers good old Dr. Diddly …

  … who having finally arrived settled his ass on his little stool and patiently heard me out as I recounted—pretty much as recorded earlier in these pages—the details of the highly unusual and disturbing incident that brought me there.

  He listened; nodded; smiled.

  The equanimity with which he managed my distress is to be seen as laudable I suppose although the distress of another is generally easily born by most of us I believe …

  A brief interruption of the blood to the brain most likely he said and of no real significance—a very small stroke at most perhaps—nothing to be alarmed about—small strokes happen to the elderly more frequently than people realize—he mumbled some initials and then some further name of the particular medical phenomenon which sounded like the same model number of my Japanese mini-sterio set but which of course it wasn’t—said it was common with the elderly to have these occasional brief interruptions of the flow of blood to the brain—T.I.A.’s I believe he called them—as little as this may generally be understood he said—yes—minor blips of sorts—nothing more …

  … Alzheimer’s Dr. Diddly said and he shook his head that I could be so ignorant oh come on now he said you don’t have to worry about Alzheimer’s—and he shook his head again—you have already outlived your chance of being hit with it—how old are you now? seventy-four?—well then if you were going to get Alzheimer’s you’d have gotten it by now …

  I hear the man speak but I cannot believe it.

  I cannot.

  This was my doctor who was talking good old Dr. Diddly who was blowing blue smoke sitting there on his little stool and blowing great clouds of it straight from his bunghole it had to be—an incredible performance to say the least—as surely he or any other fool should know who so much as reads the papers or watches the dummy tube the chance the likelihood of getting Alzheimer’s increases exponentially with longevity …

  … I mean I had come to this man this licensed medical practitioner in hope of some reasonably knowledgeable answers to my questions answers such as bear upon this new and vital mystery in my life and he knows—God help me but he knows does Dr. Diddly—not even what the wild goose knows …

  My doctor …

  I could not believe it.

  And yet for all of that I still sat there—myself as big a fool as he although perhaps with better reason—and asked: what might the first signs then of Alzheimer’s be?

  And he shrugged. An eloquent shrug that dismissed me for the ignorant rogue and peasant slave I had shown myself to be and he rose to his feet in all the true majesty and might of his calling and our interview was at an end …

  Meekly I made for the exit.

  Outside I looked around and said—to no one in particular—no shit.

  Anybody hearing me might have wondered.

  But really: Who knows how Alzheimer’s starts?

  Really.

  Chapter 24

  The rains had not yet arrived.

  Not to speak of anyhow.

  Not so this old man could honestly “clap hands and sing” at last at last and stand at the window and wait for the next bright jagged bolt and the sight again through the riven rain of the mountain still intact across the way and the canyon road become a river down below and all identities—my own not least of all—held poised as though on the cusp of time itself …

  … before the darkness closes in again and the thunder rolls …

  Not like that had the rains arrived no indeed not yet not even a hint of the full crashing fury of our usual summer monsoons …

  … but okay yesterday actually it rained a bit—a lot in fact—starting at dusk and raining on into the night a good slow steady heavy rain and most welcome at the time by all of us of course …

  … and if not the storm to have altogether cleared away my own persistent inner untoward weather—of which ample evidence exists, I’m afraid, in the most recent several pages furnished here—an edginess an irritability, a morbid tendency to wild surmise and obscene metaphor …

  … and sorry about that …

  … but rains enough at least to have moderated to have gentled things down a bit with me or so I hope although even yet there is something still that gnaws away at the edges of my peace as it were not unlike the work of that rodent in the brain—should there be such a one of course and should the he/she little mouse actually in fact be at this very writing so employed—at gnawing I mean—for all of Dr. Diddly’s assurances to the contrary …

  But whatever at least it had rained and the morning earth gave off the fresh new wet-dirt odor dear to all desert dwellers—(a scent I find particularly pleasing here in our mountains after rain is the sweet/acrid rush of fragrance released by the creosote bush)—and anyhow by and large it seems only right that at this point in the narrative I lighten up a bit.

  After all it was quite some few pages back that I left Lucian and the other old man (meaning me) driving along back there on a two lane country road in rural Alabama with myself the driver having slowed the van almost to a stop on receipt of the intelligence provided me by Lucian—most incidentally if not to say with a seeming vast indifference—that we had indeed driven well beyond the appointed place—at the south only intersection of county road number thirty-eight—at which I was to turn and from thence to take the old man home and shortly thus be rid of him—which is to say I had more or less come to a stop in the middle of the road at the realization that I had been hoaxed …

  And there I left the two of us.

  Just left us there.

  A hell of a way write a book.

  But then I hadn’t figured on this little no-account stroke or whatever it was …

  So very well then; just one more personal contemporary Bisbee item and it’s back seven years ago to the two old men in the the middle of the road in the middle of nowhere gone eyeball to eyeball.

  The item: the wisdom of Feral Dog.

  As follows:

  But first by way of prologue:

  It was on the occasion of my seventieth birthday in recognition of which a small group of purported well wishers had gathered on the patio of the Copper Queen Hotel—I believe it was my seventieth birthday but it could have been my seventy-first or seventy-second—anyhow it was back when I still had it all pretty much together or thought I did—so there was a bunch of us sitting around in a celebratory way variously into the sauce—except for F. D. who some time ago had given the stuff up—had abruptly retired so to speak after years of having been our heavyweight wino number one—retired undefeated he likes to say—in any event whichever birthday of mine it was F. D. was there and by and large with little to say for the better part of the evening due mostly to his growing deafness I believe and the subsequent fact that he wasn’t always certain what was going on—(a condition which unfortunately continues only to worsen)—so it was however that at one point in the festivities he lifted his head and looked about and finally broke his silence, referring to me—nodding in my direction as though in fact he had just that moment become aware of my presence—grinning broadly and mumbling as was his usual manner when verbally going for a person’s jugular—he thoughtfully observed—voiced the opinion that is—that I was now an obvious natural to serve as the Alzheimer’s Poster Boy.

  Much laughter and other evidences of approval followed.

  In Bisbee this sort of thing passes for wit of a high order.

  And it was clever I suppose.

  The humor of it at least seemed to escape no one not even me.

  Not at the time nor has it since throughout the village.

  No matter that I must live with it still, have it told to me now years later yet once again even by those who didn’t seem to get the joke the first time and who still don’t.

  (We are f
rugal in Bisbee; we pass a thing on as the saying goes until even the cat won’t have it.)

  And so it is that now—these last few days particularly—F. D.’s observation those several years ago as regards my fitness to serve as the Alzheimer’s Poster Boy seems only reasonable to me.

  Only maybe not so funny.

  Well then naturally—following my one-time one-way journey down between the canyon walls from Adams street to nowhere and my consequent consultation with the good Dr. Diddly—it was to the Feral Dog himself that I went for enlightenment and comfort.

  I went to see the wise man in his cave.

  That’s what I did.

  Yes.

  (Well, it’s a kind of cave at that up high on the side of a hill reached by way of a series of concrete steps in various degrees of disrepair and of varying vertical increments such as might seem natural to the progress of a drunk I suppose and typical of that part of town but which I always found troublesome and the house not actually a cave of course although as dark as one despite a few random windows and doors here and there and with to be sure the other amenities of any well appointed cave; no in fairness were it not for the many scorpions for which it also served as shelter from the world of light it wasn’t a bad sort of little adobe house at all being cool in the summer and warm in the winter and most of the time reasonably dry.)

  I stepped heavily up onto the porch (so that F. D. could feel the vibrations should he not have heard me stumbling about on the steps); put away your fucking gun I said it’s me.

  Who else he said come in and I did.

  He was stretched out on the couch looking at a dark television screen.

  What’s new? he said.

  He always says that.

  Apparently it is the only way he knows to start a conversation with anyone other than a moron. Or maybe he even asks morons what’s new. Sometimes it pisses me as though he thinks he is some kind of a fucking Socrates or something.

  Nothing the fuck is new I said I have come to say goodbye while I still know who you are.

  You don’t usually use language like that F. D. said how’s the writing going?

  That is another thing he will usually say.

  It is more than a courtesy however.

  His father was a writer.

  F. D. knows that things don’t always go so well with writers.

  You are looking at an apparition I said I have died and returned I am not the man you once knew I am my own lousy ghost think about that you dumb prick Alzheimer’s Poster Boy my ass I am become the real thing.

  You’re pitiful he said.

  All old people are pitiful I said.

  Bullshit he said my father died in his nineties and his mind was clear as a bell.

  Fuck your father I said.

  That is not something a sane person would normally say to F. D.

  He swung his feet around and sat up on the couch.

  You must be halfway serious he said.

  So I told him the whole bit.

  He heard me out.

  Dr. Diddly was right he said you had a small inconsequential stroke; right after I quit drinking I used to have them all the time.

  No I said I had a sign is what I had I had a sign that some member of that same particular mouse family known to my father and his sisters is now in the area as they say—they say that of the plane you know when you are waiting there at the airport for it to arrive and it’s late and you ask the uniformed attendants where is it; in the area they say and sure enough pretty soon it lands—these mice run in families you understand the same way Alzheimer’s does—and on the other hand I have outlived Sugar Ray Robinson which doesn’t seem right somehow but there it is and no doubt you know that Sugar Ray died with Alzheimer’s in nineteen eighty-nine it was having been born in nineteen hundred and twenty-one the same year I was born but of course Sugar Ray took a lot more blows to the head than I ever did which probably didn’t help much but at the end it was Alzheimer’s.

  His real name was Walker Smith F. D. said.

  Naturally you would know an arcane detail such as that I said someday I will tell you something I know that you don’t it is bound to happen sooner or later although it better be sooner.

  I know that you haven’t got Alzheimer’s F. D. said.

  Sure I said.

  People with Alzheimer’s are at a loss for words he said.

  I bet you don’t know where Lord Nelson is buried I said.

  In St. Pauls church in London he said his first name was Horatio.

  Miserable comforters are ye all I said.

  Job he said.

  You don’t understand I said I came to be comforted.

  That was only stupid he said you can be stupid without having Alzheimer’s.

  That’s comforting I suppose I said did you know that Spanish moss produces a blossom? Not many people even southerner’s know that but it’s true.

  Also little known F. D. said is the fact that Spanish moss is a member of the pineapple family.

  It was time to go.

  I got up to leave.

  Did you know he said that the elephant is the only animal that has four knees? watch an elephant run some time.

  Thank you for everything I said.

  He grunted.

  You are a real friend I said not like some.

  Which line is a quotation from a long time favorite book of mine—I mean the line: you are a real friend not like some—and I waited for F. D. to identify the thing the usual know-it-all attribution author book chapter and verse etc.

  I bet you don’t know who said that I said.

  Said what? he said.

  You are a real friend not like some I said; that line.

  He sat up so he could think about it.

  I waited.

  He shook his head.

  He didn’t know.

  For once.

  Ha ha I said you don’t even want to guess?

  I never guess he said

  Eeyore said it I said and he said it to Winnie the Pooh.

  I put a hand on his shoulder.

  Think about that for awhile I said.

  And with that and saying no more I left.

  As Mark Twain said: you do not pursue a man once you have got him down.

  Addendum

  And so it is—and certainly not by prearrangement as will be made clear—that I bring Book One to a close—on a small note of triumph—with a learned reference to the works of A. A. Milne which is to say with a line—quoted quite from memory alone I am happy to say—taken from either The House At Pooh Corner or Winnie-the-Pooh I forget which.

  Probably Winnie-the-Pooh.

  Book Two

  What shall I do with absurdity …

  Decrepit age has been tied to me

  As to a dog’s tail?

  W.B. Yeats

  Chapter 25

  In the absence of wit there is I suppose something to be said for honesty.

  Or I hope there is.

  Anyhow the truth is that it has been roughly two months now—and summer long departed—since I last sat here processing words on this remarkable machine and I confess I feel somewhat awkward at it now—writing is not like riding a bicycle—not ever—(I am talking about the writing of fiction about what is in some quarters called creative writing and which boldly as such is taught in certain universities now—which is pretty imaginative it seems to me or pushing the envelope as they say—you can even take a degree in Creative Writing a Master’s no less; imagine that) but in my opinion you do not come back to the novel or whatever you have been writing after sixty or seventy days away without experiencing a certain profound uncertainty about the whole business; and then to add to it in my case the presumption the arrogance implicit I guess in my calling this new beginning as it were Book Two … as though all along it had been my intent to divide the thing into two books something in fact which had never entered my mind until more or less this moment if you want the truth—when obviously of course
it is simply more of the same—of which there is not all that much to begin with—but to which I return now in all humility believe me I mean it BOOK TWO the title writ out big notwithstanding; I mean how pretentious can I get you might well ask? two books yet in one even greater book like the bible or something?—ridiculous on the face of it …

  … but what happened was there was an hiatus—I was gone from here for awhile—not adrift down drool alley as they say—and what a cruel thing to say but there it is—I say gone from here in a loose sense only not literally not as though for that period of time I was out of the country so to speak by which I mean certifiably bonkers or clearly gaga or such as that but only that one morning this past summer I woke up not at all myself not with it at all and not with it writing-wise for sure not a bit not in the least—and not with it much of any otherwise either to be honest about it …

  … and so for the last few months or so I have been a walker not a writer …

  … a climber of lesser mountains a high desert wanderer a watcher of cloud shadows and buzzards and yucca blooms and lizards and now and then a hawk …

  … and not to complain; it was adequate to the place I was at …

  … and so it is anyhow that right now as far as being again a writer as far as actually writing anything at all I feel very much all thumbs at this point even something of an imposter.