IBID: A Life

by Mark Dunn

  35. And then, suddenly the clouds lifted. The complete diary entry follows. This is the last time Jonathan would put down his thoughts here. Though he lived for another three months, he was never to pick up the book again.

  May 2, 1962

  Today I met a little boy named Robbie. He knocked on my door. Uriah was going to send him away, but I heard his wee voice and thought he was a little Brownie selling Girl Scout Thin Mints. Oh how I love Thin Mints. “It isn’t a Brownie with Thin Mints, Mr. Blashette,” said Uriah. ”It’s a boy. He says his name is Robbie. He would like to speak with you.”

  I asked Uriah to bring the boy into the living room. My legs were covered with a lap blanket. I was still fighting the cold that had arrived on Monday and I was, at the moment, slightly chilled. “Have a seat, young man. What can I do for you?”

  Robbie sat down and immediately began to squirm as boys his age will do, especially when they set their eyes on bowls full of M & M’s. I nodded for little Robbie to take a handful and he dug in. “I used to have a little boy like you,” I said.

  “What happened to him?” Robbie asked.

  “He grew up to be a man. He now runs a very big company. Now, how can I be of service?”

  “My teacher sent me here,” Robbie answered, his mouth oozing the chocolate brown of the half-masticated candies. “She said you could help me with my composition. I have to have it finished by Friday.”

  “She thought I could help you? What is your theme about?”

  “I had a funny idea. Are you a funny man? Maybe she thought you were funny and you could give me funny ideas I can put in it.”

  “I haven’t been feeling all that funny lately, son. Uriah, do you think I’ve been very funny lately?”

  “No, sir. Not for some time.”

  Robbie was eyeing those M&M’s again. I picked up the bowl and set it in his lap. “So what is the idea?”

  “I wanted to write a story about a boy who joins the circus. There is a very special thing about him. He has three legs.”

  I shooed Uriah away, afraid that he might divulge an important fact that I had no desire at that moment to convey to the boy. Then I leaned forward, feigning intense interest in this most amazing anatomical phenomenon. “Three legs! My, oh my. Now, young Robbie, why did you decide to give this boy three legs?”

  Robbie shoveled another handful of M&M’s into his chocolate-daubed mouth and replied, “My grandfather told me about a boy he knew who had three legs and he went to the circus and later he became a great man.”

  “A great man? Hmm. What did he do that made him so great?”

  “He helped Granddaddy not be so afraid of squirrels. I think that my grandfather now knows more about squirrels that any man alive.”

  “And that makes this three-legged man a great man?”

  “Granddaddy says he helped other people, too, this man. He spent his whole life helping people. My grandfather says that third leg—that’s where his heart is.”

  Uriah dropped something in the dining room that made a loud crashing sound—a sound very near the door to living room. Uriah had apparently been eavesdropping. He’d rib me about this statement for the next month, I was sure of it.

  I looked the boy squarely in the eye and said, “And that’s why you want to write about this man?”

  Robbie nodded. “Do you think you can help me?”

  “I just might be able to.”

  “Why do you think my teacher Miss Lyttle sent me here to see you?”

  “Probably because I used to know that man, too. Used to know him very well, in fact.”

  Robbie set the M&M’s aside. The thing about their not melting in the hands isn’t entirely accurate. I called for Uriah to bring the boy a napkin.

  “Did you know my grandfather, too?”

  I nodded.

  “What was he like—when he was young?”

  “I’ll make a deal with you, Robbie. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about your grandfather as a young man. But do this for me: don’t write a story about a three-legged man. Write one about your grandfather. He was a fascinating man. He was a good man. I’ve known a lot of wonderful people in my life—people whose stories hardly ever get told. His is the story you ought to tell.”

  I convinced Robbie. I also convinced myself of something: that there is no one great man. Only millions of men and women in possession of tiny pieces of greatness, which when put together, when assembled in the aggregate make the whole. I am a piece of a very large jigsaw puzzle. One of the corner pieces. The one you go for first—important for a time, different from most of the others. But then, in the end, in the big picture, just one of many. Maybe this is what had been percolating in the back of Bloor’s mind all those years. All that wondering over how I was to fit in. How I was to contribute in a big way to that something bigger than myself. I wished that I could write to him and tell him what I now knew:

  “Dear Professor Bloor,

  It should interest you to know:

  I am a corner piece.”

  I regret that I didn’t have the chance to make things right with him before he died. He would have been proud that I’d finally figured it out.

  36. “Jonathan died as he lived—warm, funny, and generous.” New York Clarion, 3 August 1962. It seems only fair that, as the last person to see Jonathan Blashette alive, manservant Uriah should be entitled to such a poetic, tidy assessment of his employer’s final minutes on earth, (which, of course, made good copy for the morning dailies). When one reads Uriah’s account of the conversation that comprised Jonathan’s last words, one is struck by the fact that these words, while somewhat banal, were spoken by a man who had finally taken stock of his life, found it not so wanting after all, and could now relax and enjoy the remainder of his days in a way in which he’d never been able before. According to Uriah, Jonathan’s spirits had greatly improved after the visit from Jiminy Crutch’s young grandson. The cloud had lifted, and this fact offered Jonathan the chance to spend many happy moments in that final summer working jigsaw puzzles, watching old movies, and continuing to give money to an odd assortment of petitioners, including a man who wanted to manufacture “word” soup:

  “You see, Mr. Blashette, it would be like alphabet soup except the letters would actually be fixed together in words and by moving them about in the bowl, one could easily construct purposeful sentences, such as ‘Will you marry me?’ and ‘There is a fly in here.’ I would not require much money. I will take preexisting alphabet noodles and link them together using some form of edible adhesive.”

  The final exchange between Jonathan and manservant Uriah Hensley follows.

  JONATHAN (watching television): Uriah! Uriah, where are you?

  URIAH: I’m coming, Mr. B.

  JONATHAN: I want you to see this. That man is wearing a diaper.

  URIAH: Will you look at that!

  JONATHAN: Full-grown man wearing a big baby diaper. Say, do we have any more of that pea spread? I’d like to have some on a saltine or two. And make some for yourself.

  URIAH: Would you like some Hi-C with that?

  JONATHAN: Not tonight, Uriah. I’m in a Hawaiian Punch mood. Oh look at that! The man in the diaper is chasing a creature of some sort.

  URIAH: It’s a wild pig, Mr. B. See the tusks?

  JONATHAN: That’s a sight, isn’t it Uriah? A diapered man in a baby bonnet chasing a wild boar. And in a glass shop, no less! Homph, homph, heh, hickle, heh, homph!

  URIAH: It’s something else, all right, heh, heh.

  JONATHAN: My chest hurts.

  URIAH: You’re laughing too hard! Mr. B? Mr. B?

  37. Davison and Caldwell were both hit hard by Jonathan’s death. Both men lapsed into deep depressions. Although I do not discount the enormous loss that each must have been feeling from Jonathan’s sudden absence from their lives, correspondence between the two men at the time also sheds light on other potential reasons for the depression: the possibility of global annihilation by a hydrog
en bomb holocaust, thalidomide babies, a $300 billion dollar national debt, and the inscrutable popularity of The Beverly Hillbillies. Reinhold, The Story of Dandy-de-odor-o., 299-309.

  38. He was buried in Pettiville. A third memorial was held in Ottawaugus, New York where Jonathan had served for two years as dog catcher (and related dog-adoption agent). The doors of the Ottawaugus United Methodist Church were opened to both friends of Jonathan and their pets. After a moving eulogy delivered by Jonathan’s most treasured friend and supporter Harlan Davison, Venetia House read from her organization’s “Beatitudes for Bowsers.” It was well received by most even given its potential for sacrilege.

  Blessed are the sad and lonely pound pups for they shall find happy homes in the kingdom of heaven.

  Blessed are they that moan at the door and whimper for need of an outdoor visit for they shall be released. Blessed are the meek and small for they shall inherit serious lap-petting.

  Blessed are they which hunger for dog chow and thirst for water on a hot summer’s day for they shall be fed and watered, lapping the liquid with happy slaps of their slurpy tongues.

  Blessed are those named Mercy, for it is a pretty name for a dog.

  Blessed are all you precious pooches, for love and happy petting are sure to come your way.

  After passing out glasses of grape juice to all in attendance, Venetia concluded with this observation:

  “If my friend Jonathan Blashette were a dog, I think he would have been a big, friendly Saint Bernard. He had a keen sense of smell, as all of his employees at Dandy D will attest—a gift for sniff that ended up making the world just a little more fragrant through his efforts in the marketplace. Like the Saint Bernard, Jonathan served as able guide over often treacherous trails—those daunting pathways of life, helping so many he knew gain a better foothold here and there. And in the snowstorms of travail that buried us, he was always there, Jonny-on-the-spot, to dig us out and offer something cockle-warming to drink. He drank with us all—famous and ordinary and everyone in between. So let us now raise our glasses to Jonathan Blashette. Cheers to the greatest three-legged man we ever met.

  Please join the family in fellowship and remembrance as they gather in the undercroft.lounge. Beer nuts and figs will be provided for refreshment.”

  39. Afterword. This brief, seemingly irrelevant essay on the beauty, rich history and delicious municipal enchantment that is the city of Boston, while appearing to be the work of the Boston Tourist and Visitor’s Bureau (I have, in fact, quoted heavily, and with permission from that bureau’s boosterish brochures) constitutes my humblest apology to a city which I have mischaracterized throughout this book. I hope that readers from that fair metropolis, the Cradle of Liberty, Hub of the Universe, and Athens of America will find it in their hearts to forgive me…and to buy my book.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, David Poindexter and Pat Walsh at MacAdam/ Cage for allowing this most recent, brazen attempt at redefining the American novel. I’ve always contended that there are a lot of ways to tell a story, and some that are rarely or never even tried. I appreciate this new opportunity to step wide of the narrative box.

  Thank you to all my history teachers. You kept it fun and kept me reading and delving…and laughing.

  Thank you Woody Allen, who doesn’t know me from Adam (Adam’s slightly taller), but who is the master at mining history for all its comic worth. You have inspired me through the spirit of your New Yorker pieces and your films Zelig and Radio Days among others. And if you think this represents a bald attempt to suck up to you so that we might one day hang out at a Rangers game together,…you are right.

  Thanks, Wayne Furman for giving me access to the Allen Room for scholars at the New York Public Library where much of this book was researched. I also enjoyed our afternoon tea and M & M breaks.

  And thank you, good readers, for giving me the chance to convince you that history can be more than dry facts and dates. And that naughty can be mighty fun. Wasn’t it Mary Todd Lincoln who privately remarked, “I wonder how the play turned out.”