Halfwit and All Man

by Peter Rodman

  In the third grade my class went on about one field trip a month; Miss Fox saw we had every advantage.

  One day for some reason we visited a monastery. It was big, and old, and boring. Parts were over 600 years old. I assumed the old parts were the places that smelled bad-- musty and a little rotten.

  There was some armor, which was neat, especially the long swords, axes, and a few cruel-looking things that we couldn't figure out and the guide wouldn't talk about. There was a secret passage, but it just went through a wall; no big deal.

  Mainly there were paintings, lots of dark, dark, paintings of dead people, and stairs, lots of stairs going up, down, down, down, up--way up.

  I was tired. We'd been walking for hours--at least 45 minutes--and I wanted to sit down, but we never passed any chairs. Miss Fox had been bringing up the rear to watch for stragglers, but she got involved talking to the guide up front as we walked along, so when we passed the upstairs side hallway, she didn't see me.

  I figured if there weren't any chairs along the main hall, there might be some in the side hall rooms. I wasn't going far, and besides the carpet we were walking on was red and so was the side-hall carpet, which meant it was probably okay, and I even got under the red velvet rope blocking the hallway without touching it, which was always a good sign.

  I didn't want to open any doors, because they were big doors--skinny, but they went all the way to the ceiling--and I knew that opening a closed door was trespassing, just like touching a fence or velvet rope when you went through it or over it or under it. There were a couple of open doors down the hallway.

  The first open room was empty, with a big desk and three chairs in front of it. At least I thought it was empty. I saw the old man just as he looked up and noticed me.

  "Hola!" he said softly.

  "Uh, hola," I said. Then he started talking to me. A lot, and in Spanish. Asking me questions. Finally he stopped talking.

  "Yo no . . . how do you say 'speak' in Spanish--?"

  "Hablar." said the old man.

  "Yo no hablar español muy bueno."

  "And my English is not very good."

  "I understand you."

  "Good. You are lost?"

  "No. We're up the hall. I'm just tired."

  "Seat yourself and rest." It turned out that the three chairs I saw from the door were the only chairs in the room, so I had to walk up to his desk and take one of them. He lowered his attention to his papers on the desk.

  The chair was awful. Dark wood with worn green velvet on the seat and no padding, armrests that I could just barely raise my elbows to (but they made me look like I was making chickenwings,) too tall for me to touch the floor with my feet, and too deep for me to reach the backrest with my back. I watched him write for a while, then looked at his desk.

  He had four wire baskets across the front of his desk. Two empty ones, one stacked high, and one with a few sheets in it. He finished writing and dropped the paper in the basket with a few sheets in it, then took a bundle of papers off the tall stack.

  "You have a lot of work," I said.

  He smiled without looking up. "Si, a lot of work."

  "I have a lot of homework.”

  "Good. You help your mama and papa at home."

  He thought I meant chores. "No." I said. "I mean, yes, I help at home, but I meant homework--work from school I have to do at home."

  He looked up, a little confused. "Ah, school work to do at home."

  Just then a side door I thought was a closet opened and a priest came in. The priest saw me, and started bawling me out in Spanish. The old man said, "Pablo--(something)" and the priest shut up, picked up some papers, and left through the closet door. I didn't know you could do that to a priest. The old man smiled at me.

  "Well, at least you emptied these two baskets," I said.

  "Yes," he smiled. "No work for these two baskets today, gracias a Dios!" He put another paper in the low basket, threw away some others, and took another bundle from the tall basket. The pile wobbled when he took it.

  "You could put some of the big pile in the two empty baskets so it won't fall over," I said.

  "No," he said. "These are special baskets. See the signs?" He turned one of the baskets around so I could read the handwritten sign on it. It was in Spanish.

  "What does it say?" I asked.

  "Hoy morir," the old man said, "It means, 'to die today,'" and this one--" he replaced the first basket and turned around the second basket for me to read, "says, 'mañana morir,' which means, 'to die tomorrow.'" He put the basket back and put his hand on the pile in the full basket. "and this one says, 'otro,' which means, 'everything else.'"

  "What dies today?" I said.

  "People. Only when people are in danger are there papers here. Most days, sometimes years, they are empty."

  "Why do you have them if you don't use them much? Wouldn't you remember if people were going to die?"

  "I would remember that day, but I would forget on days when the basket was empty."

  "Huh?" I said.

  "I am prideful. I think that because I have so much to do, that I am important. I keep the baskets on my desk to remind me that most days I have nothing very important to do, gracias a Dios!"

  "Oh."

  "It is not necessary for you to understand. I am pleased you do not."

  "Okay."

  "Are you rested? They will worry for you."

  "Oh, yeah, I forgot." I slid off the chair and turned to go.

  "Momento," he said, and stood up from his desk, and I saw that what I thought was a white shirt was a white cassock, like the black one the priest wore, and that the chain around his neck had a cross at the bottom. He put one hand on either side of my head and spoke in Spanish, then made the sign of the cross over me. "Go now, before you get us both in trouble," he said.

  Not Fish--Fishing!

  Don't misunderstand--I like fishing. Though there certainly are ways of making fishing a chore.

  Boats are one way. I've never found a way to enjoy fishing from a boat. First I'm cold from sitting in a little boat on top of a cold lake before the sun has had her coffee, then I'm sitting in a little boat that seems to be the hottest, stuffiest place in the world--open to the air, but suffocating--while tiny knives of sunlight glint off the water wherever I look.

  How does a person go to the bathroom on a dinghy in the middle of a lake? A person doesn't.

  I sit on a silly little bench for hours afraid to move for fear of upsetting the boat or triggering a bladder explosion. My back starts to ache, then twitch from the sitting, but there's no place to walk and stretch out the kinks.

  And the absolutely worst thing that can happen on a boat is for someone to catch a fish: "Where's the net?" "Play him over here!" "Can we go home now?" "Use the gaff!" "No, get the gun!" "I need to be on the other side of you." "The beer fell overboard." "You're going to lose him!" "He's gone." "Wonder how big he was."

  I gave up fishing on boats before I ever fished on the ocean, but I understand ocean fishing is almost the same as lake fishing, except you also get to turn green and throw up. This is known as "chumming" the water.

  But I do like fishing. I do, as long as I'm not on a boat. I'm a bank fisherman. To be more specific, I'm a sloping-bank-under-a-good-shade-tree-without-too-many-pebbles-at-a-reasonable-time-of-day-and-not-at-all-in-the-rain-fisherman. This leads some people to criticize me as being less serious about fishing than they are. I've been told that if I was a serious fisherman I'd go out in the middle of winter, chop a hole in the ice, and fish. I'd go after the fish.

  But I don't like fish, I like fishing; why should I make myself miserable doing something I like (fishing) to catch something I don't like (fish)?

  Even people who like and want fish will admit that there are parts of a fish that they don't much care for. The fins for example. Some folks like the heads, lips, and eyes, but most people will pass on them. The zillions of tiny b
ones (if that's what they really are) are also a problem, along with the scales.

  Then of course, there's the insides. They call it "cleaning" a fish, but most fish are pretty well rinsed-off by the time you catch them. You're not cleaning a fish so much a hollowing it out. So most people who like fish, really only like a little bit of a fish, the rest they throw away.

  But I like to fish. I can do it all day if I'm not disturbed. And that's the real problem, the interruptions.

  In past times, I used a Super-Duper, which is a casting lure (a bent piece of chrome metal with some red on it and a hook), but throwing the lure out and reeling it in, throwing it out and reeling it in, just took too much effort. Another problem with the lure was that there are some very stupid fish out there. Once in a while, one of these aquatic Einsteins would actually bite the lure. Which meant I had to reel in the fish, take it off the hook, try to explain the difference between a piece of metal and food, and send it off with a severe reprimand while hoping it did better in the future.

  So now I use a bobber. The bobber takes less effort on my part. I only have to toss out the bobber and sinker once every half hour or so, and reel it in when it's floating off in some bushes or hung up next to a log. The rest of the time I'm free to sit back and enjoy the fishing.

  You'll notice I said "bobber and sinker," and not "bobber and sinker and bait." At one time I did use bait-- salmon eggs, some cheese, a little salami (a kind of riparian club sandwich)--after all there's nothing wrong with feeding the fish. But as I found with the Super-Duper, there are some pretty stupid fish out there, and rather than nibble away at the goodies, they grab the bait and catch themselves, which means reeling them in, unhooking them, pointing out their errors in judgment, and sending them on their way with a reprimand.

  So I don't use bait anymore. The fish have to get their meals elsewhere.

  I did keep using hooks for a while: bobber, sinker, and hook, just to keep up the illusion, but I'd find that no sooner would I get all the pebbles swept away from under me and lie back to enjoy the breeze off the river with the sunlight flickering through the leaves above me--all drowsy and comfortable--when a fish would bite.

  I didn't understand it. Either these were the stupidest fish in the state, or there was some sort of fish ego involved that compelled these fish to do something to get noticed.

  Next I filed the barbs off the hooks, figuring that if this was some sort of fish-ego thing, the fish would hook itself, have its life-and-death struggle with the mammal on the other end of the line (since I put a big rock on my rod when I went to lie down, the fish was actually fighting a rock, not a mammal), then slip the hook and swim off to get a tattoo, read Hemingway, or something else macho.

  But I think it was more stupidity than ego, because the fish kept getting hooked and couldn't get free; one hooked itself through the tailfin. So I quit using hooks.

  The fish pretty much leave the sinker alone, or spit it out soon after biting it. They don't trouble me much anymore, so I can get some serious fishing done.

  Festivals of the Ancient Mercans

  Modern archaeologists know far too much about the ancient Mercans. When the epidemic of brain cancer caused by cellular phone radiation wiped out the civilization, they left behind a mountain of paper: canceled checks, Publisher's Clearing House lucky numbers, purchase orders, chemical toilet invoices, Shell credit card receipts, savings and loan financial statements, dinner tabs, computer printouts, past-due SMUD bills and on and on.

  The sheer mass of relics serves only to confuse archaeologists, but from the amount and type of paperwork left behind, one thing is clear: the civilization was based on the accumulation of goods and money.

  This point can hardly be over-stressed. The greed was religious in nature. In fact, the only consistent public use of the word "God" in the Mercan culture was on their money, where it always appeared.

  As a result of the deep religious feelings towards money by this culture, its annual festivals were all financial in nature. These are the important ones.

  TAXUS or TAXES, APRIL 15th. As with the Christians and the Muslims, the spring was a time of penance and abasement for the Mercans. They would examine the previous year, and make careful calculations of their worth. While all the rest of the year the Mercans bragged about their wealth and paraded their possessions, during Taxus they proclaimed their unworthiness and made every effort to appear poor and humble.

  Given the obvious love of money by this people, the depth of their religious commitment was amazing. Other religions required "tithing," that is, the donation of a tenth of the income to the church. The Mercans gave from fifteen to thirty percent of their income to their religion during Taxus, with the bulk of the giving coming from the poorest people.

  This giving away money was not really a contradiction. Mercans were penalized for not being rich enough and so had to contribute most, but the richest Mercans always tried to appear poor at Taxus, because by showing a net loss of income, they escaped paying Taxus, and retained more money.

  FISCAL YEAR, JUNE 30. This was the end of the old business year and the beginning of the new year (July 1st).

  Fiscal Year roughly corresponded with the agricultural summer solstice celebrations, and as with all Mercan festivals it missed the astronomical event by a good period of time. The Mercans were better accountants than astronomers, and modern scientists theorize that the widespread use of fluorescent lights confused the Mercan sense of seasons.

  It was celebrated by ritually "closing the books" and getting drunk. It was primarily a business holiday, and not observed privately. Like agricultural solstice celebrations it came during the busiest time of the year, and so was intensely celebrated for a brief period of time, then everyone went back to work.

  HOLIDAY RUSH, OCTOBER 31st. The Mercan buying and eating binge lasted about two months and paralleled the natural cycle of animals gathering goods for the hard times of winter (though it was completely detached from nature and took place in malls.)

  The festival began slowly on October 31st with children going from door to door in disguise demanding candy, accelerated after the eating holiday at the end of November, and peaked with--

  SANTA CLAUS DAY, DECEMBER 25th. A day of demonstrating conspicuous wealth and gluttony. Roughly parallel to the pagan winter solstice celebrations and the old Christian Christmas Day, Santa Claus Day was a bright, wasteful bonfire at the darkest time of the year, an attempt to demonstrate ones value to the world at the time the world was bleakest. Santa Claus appears to have been an advertising character used to detach the celebration from the less lucrative Christian holiday.

  NEW YEAR'S DAY, JANUARY 1st. The personal fiscal year ended December 31st, so many Mercans tried to accumulate "deductions" (meaning "proper spending") before the year closed which would enable them to make smaller penance payments on the year's income at the next feast of Taxus. These deductions could include new family members, attic insulation, a diesel vehicle, or a solar retrofit.

  New Year's Eve was celebrated with parties. New Year's Day was celebrated by posting bail.

  Kill the Death Penalty

  "He deserves to die for what he did!"

  Deserves? I suppose so. If anyone can make that judgment, then a multiple-murderer with "special circumstances" deserves to die.

  The problem is with the word deserves. People deserve all sorts of things they don't get. Plenty of people deserve to live, but die (including the murderer's victims). The difficulty with deserves is that we think because we can do something--kill someone who deserves to die--that we ought to do it.

  But be careful about doing something you can't undo, about taking away something that's impossible to give back. Lock someone up, and you can free him. Fine someone, and you can repay his money. But someone who is dead can't be made alive again.

  "But he's guilty!"

  I'll make it easier. Suppose the guy is guilty, convicted, not crazy, and wants to be put to
death--is asking for it. It's still wrong. It's wrong because we can't give it back once we take it.

  So it isn't ours to take.

  This isn't about justice, or even mercy, it's about humility. Because we can't undo it once we've done it, killing people is out of our reach, it doesn't belong to us. It's not our job or responsibility to kill, even if he deserves it, even if he wants it, even if we can do it.

  "But what he did!"

  What he did was kill people. What you want to do is kill someone, him. The rest is frosting on the killing.

  How he killed his victims, however poisonous and soaked in malice, is only frosting on his killing that he had no right to do. And how we kill him, however detached, painless and wrapped in the law, is only frosting on our killing that we have no right to do.

  "We have to protect ourselves from people like him."

  Are we Crips? They killed one of us so we kill one of them? We can do better than revenge, and protect ourselves from him without killing him.

  It's not even good math; nothing is evened up by subtracting more.

  "But if we kill him, at least he won't be around to kill again. We'll be rid of him."

  Wrong. We won't be rid of him, we'll be him. Killing infects the society that kills and he'll live on in us--we will kill again. There's no end to it.

  We can't become a moral society by killing people we consider to be immoral. We become a moral society by doing what is right and refusing what is wrong.

  We have to be better than the people who do us harm. Otherwise, what's the difference between us and them?

  If the difference is that there's more of us than there are of him, and that we passed laws making his killing wrong and our killing right, then any majority rule decision is moral. Does that mean purifying the race by killing Jews, gypsies, and the insane is moral if the majority doesn't oppose it? How small of a community does it take for a majority decision to be moral? Is a lynch mob big enough to be moral?

  If we do it because we've always done it and been able to get away with it, there's no morality in that. We "always did" slavery for thousands of years, but we're a better society without it. Since when is a hoary and cherished mistake beyond correction?