by R.P. Burnham
One time when Harold was walking to his car in the city Elroy accosted him. "Hey man. Got any spare change?" As he spoke these ancient words he glanced mournfully at his rusty wheelchair and assumed a woebegone expression guaranteed to melt a miser's heart. Harold, lost in a haze of golden light, looked up startled and embarrassed. "No," he shook his head, and he walked on.
He hardly noticed the woebegone expression, the skin stretched thin over the bone, the tremor of Elroy's hand which he had affectingly extended in supplication, or the rusty chariot from which Elroy led the army of Burt and Bart. How could he when he was lost in the warm glow of God's love? How could he when love is blind?
So he walked on to his car and drove home. Elroy, meanwhile, accosted the next man and the next. About one in ten gave, so he didn't think twice about Harold. Why should he when all he was intent on doing was getting loaded?
But since Harold's place of business was close to the area where Elroy was gainfully employed, as the months went by they met one another frequently. Sometimes Harold absentmindedly threw Elroy a quarter, sometimes he didn't. Once when Elroy fell out of his wheelchair dead drunk, Harold and another man helped him back into it, an heroic mercy indeed, considering that Elroy hadn't bathed for several months and was riper than a dead pumpkin. When Harold asked if they should see that he got home, the other man shook his head. "The poor bastard is home," he said. "He lives in that alley."
"But what about when it gets cold?" Harold asked in a shocked voice.
The man shrugged. "The man's an alcoholic. Maybe he doesn't feel."
That didn't seem to Harold to be a satisfactory answer. But what was the answer? He looked down at the man slumped in the wheelchair with his tongue hanging out of his mouth and with his chin covered with slobber. For the first time it occurred to him that Elroy was one slice short of a loaf in addition to being a drunk. He'd already noticed the limpness of the left arm when he'd picked him up and concluded that paralysis was the reason for the wheelchair. What kind of a life was this? The question opened up such a dark chamber that Harold dared not look within.
And so he waited for the cops to arrive; then he walked on and tried to forget because he did not know what else to do. But he could not forget. It had been a year since he'd died and returned, and for the first time in that year his obsessive thoughts of the bright light were shadowed by the haunting face of Elroy. Each day he looked for Elroy in his accustomed place in front of the alley, simultaneously hoping and dreading to see him. A week later he was there, still in the wheelchair, still begging, but having had a session up in the file cabinet where things had gotten very much misfiled indeed, he had developed a new Tom-O-Bedlam technique. "Poor Elroy's a-cold," Elroy said. "Poor Elroy's a-hungry. Elroy could use a quarter." (You'll note nirvana was that much closer for our Buddhist mystic -- now even his name was an estranged objective thing external to himself.)
It was in this way that Harold learned Elroy's name. Now the amazing thing about a name, particularly when you can hang a face and a few experiences on it, is that it individualizes and personalizes. Harold had been in the habit of thinking of Elroy as the beggar. Sometimes he was the beggar in the wheelchair, other times the poor bastard, the mad bugger, the empty bagger, but always a nice vague phrase that helped Elroy stay in nirvana as far as Harold was concerned. Now here he was saying poor Elroy this and poor Elroy that -- making it awfully hard to keep a fellow tucked away in nirvana under such circumstances. "What is it you want me to do for you?" Harold asked.
"Do?" Elroy repeated sarcastically. "Elroy wants a quarter. Poor Elroy's a-cold and a-hungry."
"Is there someplace you want to go?" Harold asked in his kindest voice.
"To each according to his need, from each according to his ability," answered the wise Elroy. "Elroy wants you to ante up. Poor Elroy wants you to listen to his song. Poor Elroy wants you to be a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal while he sings. Elroy wants you to stay on key. Elroy wants you to remember charity suffereth long and is kind. Poor Elroy wants more than a quarter. Elroy wants to sing."
And there on the street, in front of the alley, in his untutored Heldentenor, Elroy sang this song:
Sky blue, true blue, eye blue, you blue,
What in the world am I supposed to do?
Sky blue, true blue, eye blue, you blue,
To live like this with life to rue.
Sky blue, true blue, eye blue, you blue,
There's nothing, nothing I can do.
Harold was about to compliment Elroy when he was stopped by a wave of the hand that indicated an encore was forthcoming. And sure enough, Elroy rose from the wheelchair and on trembling legs sang,
Sky blue, true blue, eye blue, you blue,
There's something, something I can do.
Then his face turned purple and, seized with convulsions, he collapsed onto the gross uncleanliness of the sidewalk.
Now here finally, you think, here is Harold's chance. Elroy's booked for a flight to the other world and Harold having been there can offer him tips for tourists and so comfort him. Be of good cheer, brother, you're going to a far far better place, etc. etc. -- that sort of thing. Wrong. Elroy was beyond the comfort of speech. His emaciated, alcohol-ravaged face, unnaturally florid because he had been gagging blood, was already assuming the dignified and unreachable expression of death, so there was nothing for Harold to do. Even though he did do things -- like tell a passerby to call an ambulance -- Harold's main job right now was to think. And what was he thinking? He was thinking of life and he was thinking of death. He was thinking of the Light of Love and the darkness of hate, of transcendence and immanence, of promise and failure, of dream and reality. He saw that neither he nor the world lived up to its promise and he was ashamed. He saw that he had to love Elroy, freely and as a gift. He saw that nothing was easy, least of all being human and escaping from the terrible prison of the self. He saw that there was only work to do, work that would take him all the rest of his days and even then, when he followed Elroy permanently to the light, would still be undone. He saw that the world was a strange, strange place and would never easily yield up its contradictions.
And two more things:
He saw that Elroy had died.
He saw that the sidewalk was real.
ONE DAY GRISWOLD
