Good for Nothing

           Good For Nothing

“Come down from there you fool.”

“I’m not a fool. I’m prognostic.”

“Do you even know what prognostic means?”

“Listen, I’ve been around a while and It doesn’t matter if I know what something means or not. Sometimes, most times, better if I don’t know. Making things up, has more upsides than down. Ever tell you about Harry Holden. He was quite the character. He believed the truth was the absence of a lie. I tried to talk him out of that confounded notion, but he wouldn’t believe me. Now he’s dead, can’t change a man’s mind after they are dead. One of the perks I suppose of being dead.”

“Why you always talking about being dead.”

He never answered. As I reached up to grab him, he jumped. I guess I knew him about as well as a person can know anyone not themselves. You know, we have a tendency to lie to ourselves to keep from knowing the truth. Hurts too much in most cases, and it really doesn’t solve anything. The real issue is what constitutes truth.  It seems to have become more elusive with time.

His name, just in case anyone should ask, is, was, Jimmy Butcher; but I get ahead of myself. I don’t know if that was his real name, or the one he made up to keep me from asking repeatedly, which I suppose, is an inherent anomaly of mine.   He was like that. He preferred to be mysterious, as though the secrets he’d uncovered over the years were something special, and there were people out there who wanted them. It’s hard to argue with that kind of backwards socialism. I believe that is why we tolerated each other as well as we did. 

He told me once that he’d had enough, seen enough, and knew more than was really good for a person. He said once you begin to feel there is nothing worth leaning, or teaching, you should just pack it in, cause all you were doing if you were being honest, is taking up resources that might just help the next guy do something worthwhile. He was always thinking he had nothing to offer, he’d bet all his chips, and hadn’t won the big jackpot. Happiness, I supposed.

We talked about disappointment. He agreed it was a waste of time being disappointed, cause you wouldn’t know you were disappointed until you were, so it didn’t solve a thing. I know what he was saying, even though, he didn’t seem to. I feel like that myself sometimes. But then how do you know that the next meteor to fall from the sky won’t be the one that kills you, and you’ll end up in the Sunday paper under the headline, “What Are the Odds.”

He often talked about ending it, but I never took him seriously. People like to talk about leaving, but then when it comes time, they make excuses. I know I do, would. I find the chance of there being nothing but more nothing, worse than the nothing I’ve got here. And if there is something more than nothing, what would we do with it?

No, I think what we have is here, and if we don’t do, the best we can with it, well then, we will end up with nothing. JB and I spent many a long night talking about nothing. Not the nothing you don’t have, but the nothing that you could have had, if only you hadn’t been so afraid of making a mistake or failing. Failure seems to the part of the protestant ethic that took the most hold of us. It was kind of like being wrestled to extinction by a boa constrictor. Protestantism squeezes the creativity and hope right out of you. 

JB believed that you only got so much creativity and when it was gone, you might as well be. He didn’t believe in treading water, he made that especially clear. I think that is why he was always lookin for something to pull him from the bottom of well he found himself in. I should say, placed himself in. His optimism was as cloudy as the bottom of gin bottle. 

I told him I thought he was one of those people who weren’t happy unless they were unhappy. He laughed at the possibility of being made happy by unhappiness, but I know it to be true.

Take a plumb or apple, pear even, that hangs on for all its worth. Fighting the storms, then the cold and snow, and finally rather than be something that could have, would have, nourished a purpose, it just hangs there getting all wrinkly looking, and then turns to much; no value to anyone unless you are making wine. It did no one any good and it spent all its time attempting to petrify perfection. If you can’t see the future for the tea bags on your eyes, possibly, it is time to switch to coffee.

He looked into my eyes, just as he jumped. He had the softest brown eyes, like those of a mother deer, or those of particular lovely woman I knew in my youth. The remainder of him was ugly as sin, but then age will do that to you. It tends to rob not only your physical attributes, but allows your eyes who work overtime to distort reality and remain unforgiving. I tried to tell him just because his body was falling apart, there was no need it had to take his mind with it. He just laughed and asked me what I planned to do on New Years Eve. 

I could see in his eyes that what he believed about New Year’s resolutions, was just talk to keep me from asking what he had planned. Something about not planning that makes leaving, all the more obvious. Kind of like going on a trip without a suitcase. It kind of sends the message, you aren’t coming back.

But then, he was always talking about things most people didn’t think about, let alone say. One day when we were sitting, watching the pigeons decide which building to desecrate, he says to me, in his perfectly sober way, “Don’t ever die at the breakfast table. It puts a somber mood on the entire day.”

I could only think, yes, that was right, but it was such an obvious description of something we take for granted, that it wasn’t worth mentioning. He was like that. He dwelled in the obvious, the way others immerse themselves in day dreams of a future filled with difference. “Difference after all is no more or less than the perception of something you have little understanding of,” that was his as well.

We spent a lot of time together in the park. We didn’t go there together, plan on meeting there, but it seemed we always found ourselves there, together. We would often sit and watch people walk about in their hobbled way or sit at the most uncomfortable concrete tables and play checkers, sometimes chess, but chess times were rare. We decided chess was too much of a distraction from the reason for coming to the park. You couldn’t watch the trees dance, the clouds skip, or even the squirrels pretend they would remember where they’d hidden their winters food supply. We decided if you were going someplace for a reason, it was best to leave that reason at home, as it could do little but program an afternoon you purposely set aside for the indifference.

When he jumped, something in me died. It wasn’t my heart, or soul, but the idea of possibility, having been taken with him. Why he asked me to go to the roof top, why never occurred to me. He suggested we go up to watch the sun set, which was unusual for him. He complained often of the feral imagery attributed to something as simple and predictable as the sun setting. But I went just to see what he was up to. He had a motive for everything. He believed planning was essential if disappointment was to be avoided, which was the dichotomy of his bringing no preconception on any outing, as it had a tendency to hurry the ripening, the smell driving one from its purpose.

I could go on, but I won’t bore you. His fall was the epitome of luck, if you looked at it from one perspective, and disastrous, if your perception was unmoved by intent. It all happened so fast I did not have time to say goodbye. I barely found the time to look over the edge and see him smile as he pulled Mrs. Olynyk’s air conditioner from its windowed nesting place. He then I believe, waved to Mrs. Hanson, a nice young woman, fond of African Violets, before hitting the awning of Bosco’s Bakery. The awning was no match for his 144 pounds and ripped dutifully, he finding himself sprawled awkwardly on the push cart of Denise McDermott, the flower woman who believed in, and never tired of regurgitating prophetic renderings; paper was to be the future of the internment business.

I did not hurry to the street, as I believed he had succeeded in his attempt to make the splash he’d regretted never having made in life. I was mistaken. As I reached the walk, he was pulling himself apologetically from the flower cart; offering to pay for the destruction of flowers meant for posterity. He saw me standing, staring at him, hat over my heart, my Einstein hair no doubt remembering its ancestry. He had the gall to wave. He then limped towards me and suggested we go for coffee, no doubt forgetting I had given up everything but tea at my doctors suggestion.

We never talked about his attempt to become who he was, and no doubt had been disappointed that he succeeded in becoming who he wasn’t. I did not care. When estimating the number of acorns a squirrel can bury in the time before the first frost, and snow, it is reassuring to have a friend who understands, the need to do so.