Nathaniel's Got the Blues

by David L Heaney

  “I’m not going to apologize for being happy and content, Nathaniel,” Birgit said defiantly. Yet Nathaniel believed that it was not anger but bewilderment that was driving her frustration. “Well, what can I do?” she continued. “What do you think you need?”

  But Nathaniel was ambivalent, feeling annoyed by his wife’s questions on the one hand and sympathetic to what he assumed was her confusion on the other.

  So, unintentionally spitting out the words he thought might sound vaguely rational, but really placed a higher premium on his own frustrations, he sneered, “Maybe I just need to take a walk.” Even as the words tumbled off his tongue, he thought to himself what a terrible idea a walk seemed. He didn’t wish to take a walk at all. He didn’t want to do anything, he thought, except vent his anger and frustration at whoever had the misfortune to be near him.

  “Well, yes. A walk is a good idea,” she agreed. “Go take a walk.”

  He took note of the incongruity of their respective responses: she smiling while he glared and frowned at her. Birgit continued to smile, manifesting the stable temperament that Nathaniel coveted. The lilting tone of her reassuring declaration that a walk would be good for him only served to further annoy the grouchy old rat.

  “I don’t want to take a damned walk! It’s not a walk I need. I know what I need. I need to take a journey! I need to explore the world … see what I’ve missed,” he said, the volume of his voice increasing to match the heights of his mania.

  “Just take a walk, Nathaniel.”

  “I don’t really want to take a walk,” he whined, like a small child.

  “I know you don’t.” She continued smiling agreeably at Nathaniel, then added, “But I’d really like you to go, because I know if you don’t, you will stay here and complain about things I can do nothing about. Go walk, Nathaniel. It’ll be good for you … clear your thoughts, eh? Go take care of your blues. Banish your blues!” She laughed, which Nathaniel thought was insensitive to his fragile emotional state. “Go on. Walk! The exercise will be good for you!”

  He looked at Birgit, surprised, because her voice rose by several octaves and she began to tremble, which, to Nathaniel, meant she was perched on the verge of losing her patience, a real rarity.

  “Well, then, I guess there is no point in pursuing this,” he huffed. Then, without another word, he left their nest, pouting as he climbed down the overgrown shrubs that brushed against the house.

  While he climbed down the shrubs, the word blue somehow stuck in his mind, and no matter how hard he tried to pry it loose, it refused to be dislodged, demanding his attention. So, yes, maybe he should walk and work on, as Birgit put it, “banishing his blues.” But how?

  He sat for a few minutes beside the shrub, considering his plan, but there it was again. He was feeling blue all right. He had told Birgit it best described the condition of his soul—his soul, he complained, was “bruised blue.” He had nailed it, he thought. Blue was a condition of the soul, while melancholy was a condition of the mind. Nathaniel decided his was a matter of the soul. Indeed, he thought. I have the blues.

  He hummed a tune that he often found soothing when upset by one thing or another. But the manner of his humming wasn’t at all the way he usually hummed. The quality of his tone was raspy and edgy and sorrowful, and tasted of bitter tears. He sang quietly to himself words that welled up from somewhere deep inside.

  I’m all used up.

  Every day a brand-new pain.

  My wife just threw me out,

  ’cause I was driving her insane.

  I got that old-rat blues.

  Yes, that old-rat blues.

  But old is what I am, so being younger’s

  what I lose.

  I have no more to offer,

  and I’m feeling all alone.

  The only thing that others want

  is to pick at these old bones.

  I got to banish these blues.

  These do-nothin’ blues.

  Growing old and being grumpy is the lifestyle

  that I choose.

  2

  Nathaniel laughed at his little ditty and its silly words but was aware that he felt a little better. Still, it wasn’t long before he rediscovered his anger about being “tricked” into taking a walk, his frustration over how little things seemed to mean to him, and the feeling he was missing the really important things that life wanted to share with him. It was as if these thoughts were old friends and had agreed to reconvene again to stir up trouble.

  Shaking his head and shrugging off his annoying perseverating, he reconciled himself to the inevitable walk. A walk of only a few minutes and an early return simply wouldn’t cut it, and he’d lose face, so he resolved to burn some time before going back. He wanted Birgit to understand that this long walk of his was not only a matter of sorting out his thoughts but also expressing his annoyance with her for suggesting he take a walk in the first place. The part about the walk being his idea, he remembered but edited out of his final recollection. Still, he was annoyed with her.

  Now, he wondered, how best to waste some time? Most of the rats he knew were quite social, but he had no interest in visiting any of the nearby colonies to listen to other old rats drone on about the past or brag about how smart their offspring were.

  Instead, Nathaniel made his way up to the telephone wires, as he had as a younger rat, and headed toward familiar places that might trigger some soothing nostalgic moments to lift his spirits. He would head over to the home of his deceased friend Niles, with whom he’d shared a great adventure when much younger. Now that was an epic journey, he thought. We discovered what life was all about. That was the real thing, a hero’s journey. Shuffling aside his recent dismissal of the lessons he’d learned as no longer relevant, he reveled in the memories of the extraordinary creatures they had met and how they had triumphed over terrible adversity. It was epic all right. The memories caused him to laugh hard enough to momentarily lose his balance and wonder whether he was pressing his luck up here on the wires. The hero he referred to, of course, was him.

  Nathaniel had walked the wires since he was a mere pup. Now he found himself behind his old friend’s home with a growing uneasiness and fear that he might fall. He moved cautiously, much more slowly and deliberately than he had as a young rat. Still, he felt a visit to his old friend’s home might help restore some of the optimism he’d felt back then.

  Behind the house, Nathaniel peered down from the wires that spanned the width of the yard, and saw two small children in a sandbox. “Hmm. New owners. Niles’s family had no children,” he mumbled. Over there, in the corner of the yard, stood the avocado tree under which he would have late-night talks with his old friend. It was mostly just as he remembered it.

  One of the children interrupted his pleasant recollections when he spotted him on the wire. Pointing at Nathaniel, the boy called, “Look! Mommy, a big mouse!”

  Nathaniel knew how humans felt about rats, so he quickly moved along, passing behind the neighboring homes until he was well out of sight.

  As the day dragged on, prospects for some sort of breakthrough moment dimmed, so he climbed down from the wires, which was probably wise, given his vertigo. Returning to his old friend’s house, he scaled the fence, then started off toward home and began to hum, and again the words found their own way into his song.

  Went down to see my old friend’s house,

  best friend I ever had.

  Now he’s gone away and left this world,

  and oh, I feel so sad.

  I’ve got my-friends-are-dyin’ blues.

  That’s right, my-friends-are-dyin’ blues.

  In time you’ll learn the truth, that everything you love,

  you will lose.

  Was that really true? he wondered. Everything you love, you ultimately lose? It was true he had lost his best frie
nd, Niles. But there was still more in life that he loved. However, there was something inescapably true, that as he grew older, it seemed loss was becoming the norm. Oh, he thought. I would not know what to do if I lost Birgit. Then he said aloud again the line from his song that came from who knows where. “Everything you love, you will lose.” It was frankly a terrible and unbearable thought.

  Even as he contemplated these dreadful thoughts, the sight of a wizened old possum mumbling to himself dramatically snapped him out of his gloomy state, flooding him with unfamiliar delight. That raggedy old possum was his dear old friend Mr. Leach. His sagging skin, a dull silver-gray coat, and bony ridged back betrayed his old age but couldn’t disguise the eccentric old creature’s peculiar attraction and the history the two shared.

  “Mr. Leach?” he called. “Is that you? Is that really you, Mr. Leach?” Nathaniel called, half laughing, half crying.

  Old Mr. Leach looked up, shaken, as if he had been wakened from his daydreaming or the obscure thoughts he was known to contemplate.

  “Mr. Leach?” Nathaniel called again.

  That was when Mr. Leach turned his head in the direction of the sound and spotted Nathaniel. The old possum hesitated momentarily, squinted, and leaned forward, straining to see whose familiar voice had called his name. Nathaniel was thrilled to see the delight in Mr. Leach’s face as a grin spread from one side to the next. “Why, Nathaniel! Brother! It is you? Oh my! It has been such a long time. Come closer. Let me get a better look at you. Come, come, come on now. Let me have a look.”

  Nathaniel moved up close, and they greeted and studied one another, Nathaniel taking special note of how old Mr. Leach appeared since he had last seen him.

  “Trouble with my eyes just like old Niles had … all part of growing … uh, maturing. That’s all there is to it. Just maturing, heh heh.” Then he muttered, “Maturing! Bah! We’re just getting old, heh heh … to be honest about it all, eh, old chum?”

  “Indeed, Mr. Leach. My eyes are just not at all what they used to be, but I can tell you this: you look great, and it is wonderful to see you.”

  Mr. Leach stepped back and looked Nathaniel up and down. He then mumbled indiscernibly, commenting, “Yes, it’s good to be seen.” As he spoke, Nathaniel watched his grin fade, and a deep furrow emerged between his brows.

  “What is it, Mr. Leach?” Nathaniel asked, alarmed by his expression.

  “And how have you been, Nathaniel?” He hesitated momentarily but not long enough to allow Nathaniel to answer. “I do sense some, hmm … some internal agitation. Is something bothering you, brother?”

  Nathaniel never ceased to wonder at Mr. Leach’s capacity to sense what others could not. He smiled and signaled there was nothing at all bothering him. Besides, he didn’t want to burden Mr. Leach with his troubles. Nevertheless, the old possum persisted with benign questions about what Nathaniel had been doing with his time, until Nathaniel held up his paw, signaling Mr. Leach to wait.

  “Well, OK, Mr. Leach,” Nathaniel relented. “It’s just that I have been feeling so old and useless. I feel … what’s the word? … adrift … yes, adrift, that’s it. I am discontent and all used up. That’s what I told Birgit … Birgit’s my wife.”

  Mr. Leach smiled and nodded.

  “Discontent and all used up.”

  Mr. Leach kept nodding as he studied Nathaniel with a solemn expression.

  “Yeah, that’s right. I was trying to think of the word to describe my state, and I couldn’t remember it. But I believe a good word to describe it is melancholy. But then an even better word came to mind, because it speaks to not only my emotional state but the condition of my soul as well: blue. And some feelings just can’t be described except in, say, a color, like blue. That’s it. I’m feeling blue, Mr. Leach. I’ve got the blues.”

  “Uh-huh. Ennui.” Mr. Leach pronounced his diagnosis.

  “OK. Maybe that’s it,” Nathaniel responded, deciding he had simply used a fancy translation for the word blue. “I feel like I’ve lost something … that I’m losing … um, losing things. Like the excitement I used to feel about so many things. Gone! And all the lessons I learned on my journey with Niles seem to have vaporized. POOF!” Nathaniel threw his tiny paws up, illustrating their disappearance and mimicking astonishment at the empty space between his paws. “I told Birgit I need to go on a journey again, like the one we had way back when. I need to learn, or maybe relearn, the lessons life wants to teach me. Back then … you know, I learned what life wanted me to learn. I mean, all that was so important to me, and now … well …” He shrugged.

  “But, Nathaniel.” Mr. Leach held up a paw to silence him. “Those lessons belonged to Niles, not to you. You understand that, of course.”

  Puzzled, Nathaniel simply waited for Mr. Leach to continue. Just as Mr. Leach opened his mouth to try to shed some light on this matter, Nathaniel complained, “But we went on this journey, this, um … this quest … It was a shared quest to discover answers to life’s big questions. And we did this together,” he added, almost pleading for Mr. Leach to affirm his right to the journey’s lessons.

  “I’m afraid, my friend, you suffer from a malady common to us all: euphoric recall. You remember events through your own special pair of proverbial rose-colored glasses, heh heh. You remember what you want to remember, which may be not exactly what happened. Heh heh. You can’t just hijack the lessons another learns because you happened to be near them. But, but, but, let me be clear. He was most fortunate to have been accompanied by you as a good and trusted friend, of course. What I’m telling you, Nathaniel, are truths that perhaps could have been learned sooner but likely would not have been understood. We must learn our lessons at the right time, don’t you think? That is, for them to have their proper and intended impact.”

  “I guess so.” Nathaniel shrugged.

  “And your current, rather wretched state creates a nearly perfect condition for you to learn something profound, old boy!”

  “My wretched state?” he asked meekly.

  “Wretched indeed, Nathaniel!” Mr. Leach continued. “My dear brother … I am going to teach you several very important things, and I want you to listen carefully. Do you understand?”

  Nathaniel nodded awkwardly, his head cocked further to the right because of the pain in his ear.

  “First, there is no particular journey that one goes on to learn the lessons that life has to teach you. Heh heh. Your life is the journey, and your job is simply this: go live your life. As you live your life, the lessons that you alone must learn will begin to emerge as you are ready to receive them. The lessons that life has to teach you are not found outside your life, not found in some adventure you create to learn lessons … They are always there in the ho-hum and presumably boring day-to-day life that most of us have. Rather than simply enduring that boring life, dig around a little bit, old boy. You are likely to discover those lessons right there, tucked between the dull and the boring parts of life as you live it. The lessons … the truth, perhaps, lies dormant in the boredom until you extract it.”

  Mr. Leach’s tone startled Nathaniel, who was struggling to follow another one of the old possum’s soliloquies. He knew to expect Mr. Leach to build drama that finally crescendoed as … uh, how did Mr. Leach explain it? … as he “te-e-e-eased out the truth.”

  Mr. Leach paused to rub his muzzle pensively and slowly walked around Nathaniel, looking him up and down as if he were sizing up his fitness to receive these pearls of wisdom.

  “Nathaniel, your proximity to those who are learning the lessons of life does not entitle you to claim their lessons as your own. One creature’s epiphanies are another creature’s follies! Heh heh. Oh, I must remember that.” Mr. Leach paused. Then, beaming a smile at Nathaniel, he quipped, “That was not only clever but insightful, don’t you think? Heh heh.”

  Mr. Leach paused again, studying Nathaniel, who was feeling as
if he had been caught not paying attention. Nathaniel nodded thoughtfully, adding an admiring “Hmm,” which Mr. Leach seemed to take note of.

  “Second …” Mr. Leach dropped his head and slowly lifted his gaze to meet Nathaniel’s to underscore the demand for his undivided attention. “Second, your life is the sum of your experiences, each one of which has some truth to offer you. But these truths are not served up to you as breakfast in bed. No. No, no, no! These lessons, these very important lessons that life has to teach you, must be extracted.” Mr. Leach stabbed the air with a finger as he said this. “EXTRACTED, MINED, EXTRICATED, YANKED, TORN, even RIPPED from your experience! It’s all about this business of extraction, Nathaniel,” he boomed, wagging his finger and punctuating his points with toothy smiles, facial contortions, and wild eyes that projected the dramatic flair Nathaniel remembered so well. “You must extract these lessons from the mundane and worthless cocoons in which they have hidden themselves, in order to claim them as your own. You will need to learn to pry open the metaphorical oyster that protects the precious pearl that dwells therein. This is work … real work, old boy!”

  Mr. Leach paused, scanning the area as if to ensure they were alone before he shared a great secret, dropping his voice to a whisper as if to convey the solemnity of the moment. “It is in the tussle between you, what you experience in the world, and how well you hone your skill to ex-tri-cate its meaning that you will learn the lessons that are uniquely and properly yours and yours alone.” Mr. Leach leaned in toward Nathaniel to gently pat him on the back. “Remember, my brother,” he continued, now unceremoniously. “We are all different. How could a lesson you extract from your experience be right for me?”

  “Hmm,” Nathaniel grunted, hoping Mr. Leach was nearly done with his speech, and praying the old possum would not ask him to explain what he had just said. But he felt he had to say something and quickly cleared his throat to say “Mr. Leach” with a commanding voice.