Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....
Old Friends; a short story
Though they'd both originally come from County Armagh in Ireland, it was on this side of the Atlantic that they had met. Gary was a cheerful rhomboid, his hair a grey wisp, complexion map-like with veined convolutions, and despite that he never took anything stronger than 'a cop'a tae', his nose, a bulbous affair, glowed like a red beacon. Ghey made an eccentric looking pair; Tom a veritable beanpole who leaned into the landscape as though by virtue of thrusting his torso forward he might arrive before his feet.
"I don't know what he'd do without me", Gary told a neighbour once. "He's no friends, nane atall! I feel responsible fer 'im in a way. He can't settle down nowhere fer any length of time, no not he."
"You care so much for one another", the neighbour ventured. "How is it you've never thought to live together?"
"Ah, he's my friend, all right, but we could no more stand each ither's company fer longer thin a day thin you would want a goose livin' with ye. An' even if we did git on well, all the movin' hither an' thither would drive me mad, yes it would."
Tom was fond of renting a flat or apartment that appeared to suit his needs, then he poured all his energies into fitting out his new apartment; paint and paper, hang just the right pictures on the wall; completely transform the place to reflect his latest fancy. He would live content with the results for a short while, then give notice.
"An' it's not jist little things like the pictures he gits tired of", Gary went on, "he buys new furniture, he does, then gits rid of it too when he moves. Nathin' will do fer 'im but a complete change."
But the fact was, neither had Gary anyone who he could really call a friend. He was a friendly sort though, and would eagerly stop to chat with anyone who was willing. Unlike Tom, who was unutterably shy, and would never permit his eyes to meet another's. It was true, Gary knew, Tom needed him. For Gary kept Tom in touch with reality, gave him a base, as it were. Gary lent stability to Tom's existence, offered him someone he could depend on to be there.
Gary would talk fondly of The Old Hame, the farm, how they fed bahttermilk and botatoes to the pigs, how no one there would eat anything like pumpkin; it was for the cattle. Tom, unsentimental, would listen disinterestedly, nod, but offer no reminiscences of his own.
During his working life Gary had returned occasionally to Ireland. Each return demonstrated a changing scene, a shifting lifestyle so that the Ireland he had left as a young man receded a little further from fact with each visit. Still he had harboured a desire to return once and forever. The time for decision had long passed by now. He was afraid of all the violence there; and he would miss Tom.
During the week while Tom was gainfully employed, enjoying a sense of purpose denied the elderly retired like Gary who lived by means of government pension, they seldom saw one another. Gary kept busy with daily walks, going out on long rambling excursions twice a day, every day. He was determined to keep in shape, to remain healthy, to be a burden to no one.
As though to remind him of the eventual decay of all flesh, he had the recent memory of a neighbourhood mongrel which had been accustomed to dogging his footsteps. Only a month ago Gary noticed the dog avoiding him. It took to slinking warily away. As though it owed him its companionship and was deserting him, when it heard Gary's whistle. Soon after, the dog went blind and the neighbourhood talk was that it had been 'put away'.
They put people away too, Gary knew. Oh, not the same way as the dog, but the end result was the same. And the end was a finality he was not yet prepared to contemplate.
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Both men were great advocates of locomotion by shank's mare; would follow a regular circuit of walking places from one city park to another, ambling the interlinking pathways. Once they had even enjoyed going to movies together, but lately had stopped going, what with all the sex being flaunted on the screen. They were fastidious bachelors; the gratuitous flesh disgusted them.
On Tom's days off neighbours would see them set out together, Tom's long legs outdistancing Gary's busily-pumping ones. For a short while they might manage to match strides until Tom became absorbed in the passing scene and he would outdistance his friend, legs scissoring the air. They were something to see. Starting out abreast, Tom's monologue was directed sideways to Gary whose staccato, breathless 'huh's' punctuated Tom's running commentary; Tom talking to make up for all those silent hours of uncommunicativeness when he spoke to no one, shrinking from all social contact. Many a passerby could be forgiven if he thought the tall man mad who conducted that animated discourse, engrossed in the passing landscape, his words floating off to the left ... and empty air. It took an acute observer to link the red-faced, puffing little man with the crane-like person striding energetically ahead, spouting observations.
They argued amiably and sometimes even heatedly, about everything that mattered to them. Gary was scrupulously neat about his person, his shoe-leather brushed to an enviable lustre. Tom was partial to scruffy shoes and always seemed to be wearing the same old plaid sport jacket and open-necked shirt. His trousers were inches short and Gary threatened to ignore him in public. Give it a lick an' a spit, man", he'd plead with Tom who happily ignored him.
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For the past ten years they had rented a little cottage on Lake Ontario each summer, for a two-week period. Neither drove, so they took the Greyhound bus up to Grimsby, then clutched their baggage along the dusty country road to the cottages. Where they set up temporary housekeeping together, bickering incessantly.
When they had first gone there, years before, the grounds had been well looked after, but the proprietor, himself growing old, had let the grass get rough and the bushes grow wild. Still, they had the relative privacy there that they preferred; only ten cottages and half were usually empty; the place banked on either side by fruit orchards. The sand leading down to the little spit where the beach was had become rank with weeds and littered with refuse. The litter offended Gary who each year sniffed at the mess and said that year's visit would be the last.
But the view was fine. In front of the cottage lay Lake Ontario in its vast impersonal blue, only a nuance of colour differentiating it from the limitless horizon. And on stormy days when clouds lowered the sky bringing it closer to them, the lake reflected the anger of the lightning, the clear air resounded with the harsh cries of the seagulls who carelessly rode the wind's updrafts, who sailed on the crests of storm-flung waves. This exposure to, and closeness of nature appealed to them both.
A long pier reached into the lake and on it a lighthouse needled the sky. They enjoyed sitting out in the evening on wooden summer chairs to watch the stars fleck the sky, to listen to the water lapping the pier. And the lighthouse turned and blinked like some nocturnal beast.
Tom did the cooking and Gary the cleaning up. They argued about the day's menu until Tom told his friend to shut up. Gary was so meticulous about cleaning up that he infuriated Tom: "WHAT in God's name do you want to be doing that again for? You just swept the ruddy porch yesterday!"
They would walk down the lane leading from the cottage to a nearby town road. Beside the road grew rows of cherry trees, their fruit ripening in the summer heat. Tom easily reached into low-growing clusters to come away with a handful of cherries, popping the unripe fruit into his mouth.
"That's thievery, that is! Fer shame on ye Tom Sanson, I'll not be walking with ye."
Unperturbed, Tom continued picking and popping, telling his friend, "Stow it, you silly old arse! What's a handful of cherries? No one'll be missing them or be any the poorer for the lack of them."
At the grocery they argued cantaloupe versus peaches. Then Tom wanted fish and Gary preferred ham. "Well, look here you silly old gnome", Tom finally said in exasperation. "Who's cooking the dinner anyway?"
"Niver you mind, ye mindless giraffe - who cleans up after ye make that blinkin' mess?"
Exploring under the pier one morning, Gary called Tom's attention to a cache of duck eggs. Delighted, Tom commenced to collect the large, still warm eggs, tucking the mottled-surfaced ovoids carefully into the cap he'd taken to wearing.
"And WHAT in th' name 'o heaven d'ye think ye're doin' now?" Gary asked, an outraged, disbelieving look on his face.
"Well now, you don't think I'm going to LEAVE the blessed things, do you?"
"An' why not? The duck'll come lookin' fer thim - what fer d'ye want with'tm?"
"We'll be having them for breakfast tomorrow."
"Not likely, not atall likely! Put thim back, I say!"
"Listen old fool", Tom said evenly. "If you don't want them for breakfast that's well and fine. I'LL have them all, and be glad."
The next morning while Tom ate the four eggs, making a great show of relishing the wild-tasting mess, Gary muttered 'murtherer!' at him while he spooned bran into his own pious mouth.
By the time their two weeks were up they were eager to return to the city, glad to get away from the constant companionship their holiday forced on them. Once a week had passed though, they looked forward again to Tom's days off and the resumption of their walks together.
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From Gary's place, at the end of the street, they would cut across two large open fields, walk under a huge water tower painted white and resembling a rigid octopus; across a set of railroad tracks, then over to the main street. Sometimes they might stop at the Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and carry a box-lunch over to the nearby Mill Pond. There they would sit on park benches and watch the domestic swans, the geese and the Pekin ducks. The birds' wings were clipped to keep them from flying off, and in the winter they were moved into a protected enclosure where the ice was kept chopped and food was thrown to them.
Spotting a likely touch the waterfowl would invariably swim over to the bank to waddle confidently out of the water and approach the two men. The fowl were bold, they scrambled for scraps, the geese sounding their clacking warning to the others, insisting on their sole right to the handouts. Emulating, as Tom was wont to observe, humanity. Whenever Gary remembered, they'd bring along a bag of stale bread crusts and sit for hours feeding the greedy horde.
But of course during the week Tom's days were full, he was busy and Gary was left at loose ends again. On one of Gary's lonely walks near an industrial area of town he thought to take a short-cut home. Wouldn't do to get a chill now the days were getting colder, he reasoned, noting the dark menace of an approaching storm overhead. It took him a long time now to shake off a cold and he sweated in cold fear of any degree of debilitation.
He darted across the train tracks even though the wig-wags were going, certain from past experience they were probably just shunting cars around the bend. From the tracks, he walked briskly onto the paved back-end of a trucking yard. The area was full of parked tractor-trailers. He knew he shouldn't be there, but he was, that was that. Passing the back of a warehouse, he made certain there was no traffic, then continued, intending to climb a grassy knoll just ahead which would lead him to the fields and then out to the street.
Careful, he was always careful. But this time he walked right into a transport which was backing up. He felt a tremendous shove and a sickening crunch; his ears filling with the sound that terrified him.
At first there was no pain. Then an overwhelming ache crushed his body and he lost consciousness.
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The ambulance took him to the new township hospital. X-rays revealed a few cracked ribs. Some surface lacerations, his body much bruised. He hadn't, however, been too badly hurt, given the circumstances, the examining doctor told him. Speaking to him as though he were some not-very-bright child who had wilfully courted danger.
They insisted on keeping him in hospital for longer than he would have liked. "For observation purposes", he was told, "to make certain the patient did not sustain internal injuries". The response to his question mechanical, removed, and he not 'you', but 'the patient'. He felt abused, institutionalized, alienated.
Tom sat by his bed on his days off, but it just wasn't the same. The hospital environment with its odours of illness and medication, its sterility, the manner in which there, all flesh became a thing ephemeral, made Tom nervous too and he seemed not himself, detached, unhappy to be there.
When Gary was finally released from hospital the doctor told him to eat well, get fresh air and exercise. "But take it easy, eh, old fella?" the doctor, a healthy young man advised, patting Gary in an avuncular manner on his hospital-gowned shoulder.
Somehow the aches and pains were with him constantly now. His walks, although he tried to work himself up to them again gradually, became a trial and he had eventually to force himself to go out. He lost faith in his body's ability to serve him and began to think of himself as an old man, much older than the ten years he had on Tom.
"You'll move in with me, Gary. I'll look after you, old boy", Tom offered, genuinely concerned about his friend's obvious deterioration. He'd thought long about it, before making his tentative offer; articulated it with a choked voice and not a little misgiving - but knew it was expected of him.
"No, I couldna do that to ye", Gary said. "I've been thinkin' maybe one a' thim places where they puts old codgers like me ..."
"You'd hate it!" Tom recoiled. "It's no kind of life for you!"
"It'd do me, the time what's left", Gary said calmly, though he felt queasy, wondered why he was saying what he did, knew he'd rather die than be put like a vegetable into one of those places; his physical needs seen to but his spirit ignored.
"I'll look after you", Tom offered again, knowing he couldn't be seen to give up so easily. And noting how aged Gary looked, how grey, how tired. And wondered when his mind would start to go.
"No", Gary said, positively. "If it was you like me, I'd not want to be burdened with ye, so I'll not do it to ye."
It was a lie, he knew; he would look after Tom. Gary watched Tom's face carefully and the relief he saw there was so hurtful it made him catch his breath with the stabbing pain of it. But no, he was doing his friend a disservice, he suddenly thought. That was not relief, but a pain reflecting his own. He wants me, he's going to insist. He wants to look after me, he won't let me die in one of those places.
They sat silently, Gary watching Tom's mouth with a fierce concentration, almost willing him to make his offer again.
"If you think it's all for the best, Gary, you go on ahead", Tom sighed. "I'll come and visit with you, there."
c. 1980 Rita Rosenfeld
published in ThisMagazine, March-April 1980
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