(no subject)
“Go to hell.” I once told an old man who came up to me, because I knew him. Undaunted, he matched my sluggish pace and walked with me down the autumn sidewalk.
I feigned interest in the damp leaves and spidery cracks in the concrete while he politely smiled (I think he did, but I didn’t look at his face. All I felt was that the air in between us had been altered in a polite way and I didn’t like it.) and replied, “Exactly as I should want you to address me. Life is far too short, and you’ll likely find this to be more true the older you become, to not say what you mean and mean what you say.”
Humph, I thought, Old man, you are wrong. I can’t, and won’t, get into why you are wrong right now by saying what on the surface seems true. I admire your subtleties, but you are old and wrong. And wrong because you are old.
“Ah, you’re quite the stoic,” the wrinkled old man said, peering up at me, “But not quite a Stoic, eh?”
“Closer to the former than the latter,” I mumbled and shrugged.
“How eclectic!” he chirped, tucking a loose tuft of hair into the ordered ruin with its mates, “As though life were a buffet from which you can pick and choose whatever you want.”
We reached the corner of the block and stopped to let the traffic go past. Underneath the bright red hand and with a benevolent air I permitted cars to slink across my path. Middle-aged women and ugly men hardly acknowledged the honor I’d granted them, many going so far as to avoid making eye contact. All this I noted with humor.
“But maybe it is,” the old man frowned, “Maybe I was too foolish or dumb or timid to step out of the buffet line and now I’ve been left with, and must eat, an unappetizing meal on my plate.”
“Don’t learn from my mistakes!” he shouted, gesticulating angrily.
Or, rather, learn from them,” he chuckled, digging an elbow into my ribs, “This morning is quite cold, do you need my jacket?”
Now it became my turn to frown, because he’d ruined the princely, charming wave of my hand and the perfectly careless smile that I was tendering to a pretty girl being driven by. Our eyes had locked, but now I looked angrily away. My heart is always on my sleeve, yet this old man had me vulnerable. How could I look into her merry eyes now that I knew she was laughing at me?
“I don’t want them,” I tell the stupid old man, “I’m not cold and there’s no reason why I should want to inherit your failure.”
At that point I was done there: with the scene, the man, the conversation. So I nodded to the traffic light which obligingly changed, and then strode across the road. But the old man followed.
“I saw the way you made eyes at that young philly,” he winked, pulling at the sleeve of my shirt to catch up, “Too bad she isn’t standing here because I could tell that, for you, she was the one. Perfect body, so-so mind, as sweet as a kitten: probably better than the best you could ever hope for.”
“I don’t know you, sir,” I said as the sidewalk ended and we continued along a dirt path, “No one has ever introduced us, I haven’t read your manuscript, and I have not seen your accreditations on the wall of an office. Is there not a home I could take you to, does no one miss you?”
He grinned slowly, yellow and crooked.
“And yet you choose to bother me,” I said, shoving him back with one arm.
He gasped and clutched his dented old chest at the spot where I had pushed him. I hurried on and then stopped to see if he wasn’t hurt, fearing the consequences if I’d hurt him. He held up a finger and I waited while he went through a coughing fit.
“You’re stronger than you know,” he wheezed, following me again.
“Just sinew and bone,” I argued half-heartedly, ducking beneath a low-hanging tree branch.
“You were wondering why me and why you?” he asked while following me forward.
I did not bat a lid or move a muscle in response, whatever his game was I wanted victory to be dear.
He leaned forward and intoned dramatically, “Luke, I am your father.”
“Had you there for a minute,” he snorted, “Stupid question, anyways. You should’ve asked me about how to win that girl, or how to find pi, or maybe how to cheat at poker. Try again.”
“Tell me about the galaxy, starting with our sun,” I sneered.
The old man ignored me and continued, “Women love all sorts of things in a man, they love men who listen and they love men they think they can change. They love men fat, strong, blonde, brown-eyed, loud, sad, right or wrong. And that’s the trick. Once you find out a woman’ll love you for your flaws, all you have to do is keep dancing with new partners until you get one who tangos like you like.
“The sun,” I responded, “often referred to as Helios or Sol, is a class G2 star with a surface temperature of over five thousand degrees Kelvin and is expected to last for at least four billion more years.”
“Or you can find a girl who’s close enough and learn to compromise,” he grumbled.
“It is comprised mainly of hydrogen and helium.” I rejoined, climbing a short fence and continuing through a field.
“You think because you know one or two science facts that you know the rest of the world,” he spat bitterly, “When was the last time that the rings of Saturn ever did anything for you or me?”
“The sun gives the earth life, it powers life,” I responded in surprise and stepped onto a new sidewalk.
“So worship your glorious sky-battery, you damned automaton,” the old man snipes.
I said nothing, quite maturely.
It was at this point that the old man chose, spitefully in my opinion, to die. First, a question formed on one side of his mouth, “You know that it’s the Langoliers who will get you, who will eat away your youth and leave you old like me?”
“Bullshit,” I laughed.
The old man sagged and began to fall when I caught him in my arms.
“You could,” he croaked, with one arm feebly encircling my neck, “probably prove a million ways to Sunday that Langoliers don’t or can’t exist.”
“But,” he whispered as I gently lowered him onto the sidewalk, “you’ll be all the more desperate when you realize that means only that you’ll have no way of stopping them.”
As a crowd formed around us, helpful men and women stepped forward to offer what life-saving techniques they could, but soon, and despite their best and most earnest efforts, it soon became quite clear that the old man was dead.
I stood up and joined the crowd until an ambulance arrived to take the body away.
“My eyes look quite like his," I said to no one in particular. Then I made my way through the crowd and continued my walk.