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The Gathering
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The Gathering |
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broker6 Member
since 1999-11-07
Posts 132Bellevue, NE, Sarpy |
1,712 words THE GATHERING by Richard J. Budig He stood, clinging with one hand to my counter, wavering perilously back and forth like a tiny ship on an angry sea, his free arm slicing the air like a ship’s mast in a strong wind, seeking balance and ballast. He looked like a tightrope walker without his pole, one foot floating in space, seeking the rope, and the other none too squarely on the rope. His faded, rheumy blue eyes cast about the room, searching for me. They seemed always about to weep, and they seemed always to stay open, even when he blinked. "'m Bob Harding, 'n' 'm shemty shix y'rs old," he croaked as he wavered back and forth, his eyes finally settling on me. Bob was a spindly little old guy, not much more than five feet high, with brittle bones and weepy blue eyes that didn't change expression even when he bunched up his forehead the way people do when making a pronouncement. Being 76 years old seemed to be his main accomplishment in life', and he remembered it most clearly when completely inebriated, as he was now. Slowly, and not without one or two moments of drama, Bob managed to turn himself to face the counter. He gathered in his flailing arm and tucked it tentatively at his side like a bird that couldn't decide whether to stay or fly. He placed both elbows on the counter to steady himself, and began the daunting task of undoing his watch band. An eternal tear clung to a droopy lower lid as he struggled to focus on his work. It was getting on toward the end of the month, and Bob was beginning his monthly ritual of borrowing money against his personal possessions to keep himself in liquor. With great effort, he wrestled the ancient Timex from a wrist that hadn't seen a bathtub in recent memory. A circle of dirty flesh ringed his tan bony wrist. It looked like the marks on galley slaves in the movies when their wrist irons are removed. "G'mme three d'llrs, Dick," he said, tossing the Timex onto the counter. It was crusted with stuff best described as stuff . . . ancient spaghetti sauce, body oil, dirt, sweat . . . the soiled remnants of hope. Three dollars for a Timex in reasonable condition was about right in those days. Bob's Timex, on the other hand, belonged in Ripley's Believe It Or Not. The crystal was so scarred it was almost impossible to see the numbers, which appeared as indefinite spots beneath the frosted plastic crystal. Its hands loomed like ghostly captives marching endlessly round and round, marking both their own, and Bob's waning days. But, Bob and his watch had at least one thing in common. Both were durable. So, now, some years after he had started pawning his watch, Bob still expected to borrow three dollars on a watch that should have been discarded. This is one of the problems pawnbrokers face. We start doing business with someone who doesn't drift away in a few month’s time. They hang on, and pretty soon it's years later, and your still loaning the same amount of money on something that may not work anymore. My good friend and mentor, Dick Gammel, is philosophical on this point. "Hell," he says, after doing business with them all that time, what's the difference? By now, you're loaning them their own money." He's right, in a way. In those days, I had a minimum charge of $2 on loans up to $10. It wasn't long, at that rate, before the return on my $3 investment was substantial. Well, not that substantial, but figuring I made 66% per month on this watch means I was making about 800% per year. Bankers-- and even fund managers -- the world over gulp hard and blink rapidly when they hear numbers like that. Bob often pawned his watch, and several other equally defunct and crusty items, several times a month. So, over the years, it was, indeed, like I was loaning him his own money. As I think about it now, I'm not sure how old Bob really was. He was living in the rooming house upstairs, above the piano store -- we called it Wino Heights -- when I bought the pawnshop. I owned my shop almost 15 years, and did business with Bob for at least 10 of those years. He disappeared toward the end of that time. But, for all those years, he was "shemty shix y'rs old." How he got to be his age -- whatever it was -- is beyond me. For one thing, he was a hard drinker all his life, a pastime with usually serious consequences. Ghandi dancing isn't much better. It has killed or maimed big, burly men. In his prime, Bob couldn't have weighed more than 130 pounds, and the top of his head never saw five feet five. How he spent a lifetime wrestling rails, rousting ties, and sweeping snow out of switches hour after hour and managed to live past 75 puzzles me. Not only did he do it, but he did it long enough to retire, which is about the time I met him. After a lifetime of grueling labor, Bob retired to an unpainted room on the second floor at the back of Wino Heights where he spent most of his time in a haze, defecating and throwing up on himself. Bob spent most of the month up there, alone and in a fog, rousing like a bear in winter, only long enough to go out for more liquor when his supply ran low. Bob never seemed able to figure out exactly how much liquor to lay in on the first of the month when his railroad retirement and social security checks arrived. No matter how hard he figured, or how much booze he bought, he ran short at the end of the month, making it necessary for him to start borrowing money. But It wasn't his borrowing money for an activity that was slowly killing him that irked me so much as it was what I called the gathering. As the end of the month loomed, a small group began forming around Bob. "M' frenz," Bob called them with a gregarious wave of his tiny arm, and then, beaming, he'd point in the general direction of a small, vacant-eyed, slack-jawed man of around 40, also with weak blue eyes, and say through a toothless smile, "'n this 's m' son." Bob seemed to stand a little taller as his arm fluttered in the general direction of his boy, who stood there, smiling the uncertain smile of the betrayed. But these people, the ones who gathered around Bob, weren't friends at all. They were guys who knew that Bob's room rent was two bucks a night, that his food and other necessities ran around $100 for the month, leaving Bob with well over $1,000 each month for liquor. They were there to cash in. For days after the first of the month, long after Bob had laid in his supply, I'd see those guys climbing into the gloom at the top of the stairs at Wino Heights and come down minutes later with a bottle they had taken from Bob as he wheezed into the gray aura that surrounded and insulated him. This ritual went on month after month. Nothing astounding about it, I guess. Bob never had one of those end-of-the-movie awakenings where he sat straight up in bed, bleary- and teary-eyed as though witnessing an apparition of the Marley-ghost class, and saying aloud and with non-sotted breath, "I've seen the light!!!" I once offered to act as his banker, to hold his "cash money" for him. I explained that I'd dole it out as he wished, and that I wouldn't let any of those won't-work, lay-about, thievin' sons-a-bitches have it. He allowed as how that was an idea, alright, but he got a really worried look on his face and wobbled out of their as fast as he could. I think this was when I realized that all of this, all of Bob's monthly gyrations, all his bitching and moaning and lying on sidewalks and in alleys trying to find up from down, hanging out with "frenz" who stole from him, wearing clothes that smelled of solidified, putrefied and petrified defecation -- all this meant something to him. Or, maybe it was all an elaborate plot designed to teach me something about life. After all, it bothered me more than Bob. I had to watch it, to live with it and to let it go. As I think about it, it seems that it was the gathering, more than anything else, that bothered me. In most families, a gathering signifies something good, even when something bad is happening. A funeral, for example, may be a bad thing, but the gathering of friends and relatives is positive. It is a show of solidarity, of oneness, of like purposes, of acceptance and of going on. It speaks of tomorrow rather than yesterday. However, to the best of my limited vision, the only thing that came out of Bob's gathering was the end of his retirement check. And, in a way, it was the end of Bob, too. He never was a big man, but here he was, withering before my eyes and I was powerless to do anything about it. Maybe that's it. It's frustrating when that little, nagging voice inside of us says to do something for someone, and those for whom we should be doing it, cut us off. So, I watched Bob shrink away. One day, he just wasn't there any more. Like so many before him, he left his watch behind. I kept it around for awhile, as I often do, on the possibility that he'd stop in one day and ask if I still had it. I was going to give it to him. Not so much as a gift, but as a way to say that I had resolved whatever it was that used to bother me. But he never came back, and I still wonder what happened to him. 30-30 |
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Marilyn Member Elite
since 1999-09-26
Posts 2621Ontario, Canada |
Great story broker. Great story with a great lesson about helplessness and caring. We have to care even when there is nothing we can do to help someone. Very well done.  |
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Dusk Treader
Moderator
Senior Member
since 1999-06-18
Posts 1187St. Paul, MN |
Excellent story Broker, you are an exquisite writer who always manages to get a moral into an already great story. I love your work, most impressive. In flames I shall not be consumed, but reborn. |
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Christopher
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-08-02
Posts 8296Purgatorial Incarceration |
Hey DT! I was going to say that about the morals! Great broker! |
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