As I Walked Out One Evening

by Donald Wetzel

The old man looked over at me. Yes sir he said Burkhards the woods is full of them—not a one of them that’s worth a damn no sir not a one—some’s crazy some’s mean but most is just stupid—powerful stupid some of them—ain’t it so?—you been away from here long?

  Forty-eight years more or less I said I’ve come and gone—called it home for the most part—but mostly I’ve been gone.

  We were back into the piney woods finally which helped against the old man’s stink which had got strong again in the heat the clean smell of the pines blowing in with the hot heavy wind and for a moment I could almost feel the motion of those forty-eight years all the twists and turns the old trails and new—halfway around the world on foot so to speak—and then back here again the way a game trail in the woods can lead back on into itself in the end; as one might have guessed it would I suppose.

  And nothing wrong with that.

  (It is only humankind that sees some great wisdom in going straight I mean literally straight; but I have worked that subject over pretty well already I believe.)

  Forty-eight years the old man said a right long time—don’t seem like you could be that old—I’m eighty-three can you imagine?—eighty-three years old yes sir—old Lucian Burkhard what they call me round in town—could have been my boy you knew—he’s dead now—sure is—how come you to come back?

  It’s a long story I said.

  I imagine it is Lucian said—yes sir a right long story—I bet it is all right. He sat bolt upright and leaned over into me pushed up against me put his face right into mine; you want to die? he said you come back home to die?

  I have not come home to die I said.

  He seemed unduly relieved at that to say the least.

  There are people wants to die Lucian said—ain’t I right?—Christians—can’t wait to be up there singing with the angels—preacher tells them how it’s going to be—talks about money and how nice things going to be in heaven—got to pay the preacher just to hurry up and die—can you imagine such a thing?

  Sell the farm to buy the farm I said.

  Yes sir Lucian said you said it right. He shook his head. Don’t never stop drinking he said you understand?

  I’ll keep that in mind I said.

  You’re a good fellow Lucian said you understand—who wants to die?—I don’t want to die no sir I don’t—no thank you sweet Jesus I never don’t—people don’t drink that’s a bad mistake—you understand?—way it is is Jesus don’t want no part of drunks—whores are okay—now ain’t that strange?—well drunks don’t give much pleasure I guess—but you drink and the lord ain’t going to call you until the last—maybe if you was a drunk whore he might—but he generally won’t call a drunk—don’t want him—you understand?—yes sir and the devil he don’t want the competition.

  So I’ve heard I said.

  Well then Lucian said ain’t it so?

  Could be I said.

  Could be Lucian said you said it right—could be—you understand—be a writer you got to be a clever fellow—you understand—yes sir you’re a good fellow—bringing me home like this—you have gone by the turn how ever—yes sir I believe it was a good ways back.

  I slowed the van and turned and looked at him.

  He smiled.

  Yes sir he said.

  Chapter 22

  Okay this is Bisbee and it is early August and the promised cooling rains the great thundering gully-busting soul satisfying annual monsoons that are supposed to get here the first week in July have not yet arrived but the heat has arrived and right on schedule and in greater—far greater—quantity than scheduled more indeed I believe than ever heretofore recorded one hundred and five degrees fahrenheit of it no less has come down on our little mountain village like the wolf on the fold as they say (which in case you have forgotten it, is what the Assyrian did according to Byron, and I quote:

  The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold

  And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold …

  Which I quote from memory no less and which I have remembered from childhood because of the color and vigor and scope of the image it so wonderfully thrust onto or into my impressionable young head and also I suppose because it rhymed; but nothing like that here in Bisbee as I write certainly nothing in any manner or degree so much as touched with poetry here this August day and the rains still waiting just pure blue-white sky and brain-numbing heat) along with a kind of humidity for which I might as well have stayed in Alabama where to walk forth on an August morning any August morning is as though to be hit in the face with a warm wet wash cloth; and here the same damn thing is happening in Bisbee of all unlikely places and naturally I like the rest of my fellow villagers am really getting pointlessly pissed about it …

  …(I suppose I should find a better word than pissed I seem enamored of it the way I keep using it especially when I am not really all that pissed but a better synonym does not seem to offer itself right now nor does it appear likely that one will, particularly the way I see things shaping up right now in regard to the possibility of some great new overall liveliness in my mental processes occurring at this point in time such as might become manifest in the exercise of a more imaginative vocabulary in regard to my being pissed)…

  … and what a stupid phrase that is—this point in time I mean—but that is neither here nor there I suppose—the here and there having mostly to do with the heat etc or so I assumed at the time—

  —so anyhow by the weather pissed—to start with—is the best I can do right now by way of prologue to the incident I am finally about to recount …

  … in which the sequence of events is probably important at least it is to me so I will start with it the way it started—three mornings ago now it was—and what happened was as follows:

  I awoke with Sadie the cat in my face in the predawn dark telling me it was time to rise.

  Perhaps to play. Etc.

  (Much must of necessity be inferred as to the meaning of a cat’s meow.)

  Anyhow there was nothing for it but for me to rise and deceive the stupid beast into following me to her feeding dish by the door at which point I picked her up and threw her out and went back to bed.

  Sadie and I go through this little exercise in mutual stupidity pretty much on a regular basis.

  Like every day.

  Neither of us has so far figured out a better way to handle it.

  Although I always feel a little bad about it.

  And irked.

  I mean when old people rise before dawn it is generally because they hurt; otherwise they prefer to waken as the spirit moves them or as when they damn well please, this being one of the few perks that go with being old, a perk shared otherwise only I would guess by idle bums and the filthy rich or is it the other way around?

  No matter certainly it is not the wish of the elderly to be awakened before dawn at the whim of a stupid goddamned cat.

  Not the wish of this old man anyhow and not particularly when already out of sorts to start with—due to the weather perhaps—even in his sleep as it were.

  So anyhow I went back to bed and lay there for awhile thinking about birds.

  About blue jays to be precise.

  Or scrub jays and Mexican jays to be even more precise the blue jay proper not being native to the region.

  It was a kind of troubled thinking that I did then for awhile, thinking about the jays.

  The pursuit of a moot yet recent and recurring question that I asked of no one in particular but asked for all of that:

  Why did I see the scrub jay and Mexican jay so infrequently anymore?

  Here where heretofore they had been so numerous?

  A small matter …

  But a troubling one.

  I worried it as futilely—and knowingly—as a dog might worry a dry dead bone.

  The truth was—ridiculously perhaps—that I felt betrayed by the absence of the jays, by this negative alteration of the natural world around me, myself diminished by it, this unac
countably decimated presence of a once abundant and familiar bird.

  By what authority or prompting—now and forever unknown to me—were they gone?

  It simply hurt, the small sad lonely wonder of it.

  But such is my nature and always has been to feel all diminutions in the natural world around me as somehow personally diminishing me—the loss of some birds no less than the leveling of a mountain—a diminution not just of the elemental world in which I live but of myself as well, a subtle wounding—however unreasoning perhaps—to that core abiding residue of elemental animal innocence and trust that sustained me at the start and which sustains me still.

  I speak only for myself of course.

  As to the significance of the thing.

  The absent birds.

  My oddity.

  Some missing blue jays.

  Yes.

  Well anyhow so to hell with it I thought and kicked off the sheet and got up and scratched my butt and shook my brains around a bit; so we don’t got some scrub jays anymore I thought big fucking deal.

  For some reason I was angry at myself for having thought about the jays at all.

  Which makes no great sense to me as I write of it now but such was my thinking at the time and as such do I record it.

  Three days ago it was.

  To start the day.

  And nothing else much out of the ordinary.

  Except maybe the weather.

  The heat.

  The waiting for rain.

  Very well then; and so it was that day—three days ago—that my day began—as next—as was my usual sequential practice upon arising—I drew open first the curtains of the bedroom window facing east—in truth an awkward operation involving—how to describe this?—the necessity of kneeling on the bed and walking thus on my knees across it’s width to reach the the central area where the curtains met and there—and with deliberate vigor then—to part them left and right; and still kneeling—as close to prayer or the attitude of prayer as I am ever apt to come—to survey once again the soft new glow of sunlight on the distant slopes …

  … and then—and still in familiar sequence—next to note in the cottonwoods below and close at hand the familiar hunched black shapes of the buzzards still at roost there …

  … only this time the sight of the still sleeping birds somehow truly pissed me off …

  … quite irrationally—I see it now—but profoundly all the same.

  And not at all in the normal morning sequence of things for me no not at all.

  It should have been a sign perhaps …

  But it wasn’t.

  (But even had it been? had I taken note of it? what then?)

  No matter; I cursed the birds.

  Lazy fucking birds I said.

  I actually said it.

  Softly, but I said it.

  I remember thinking on it later as I went about showering and breakfasting and so forth even now and then going to the window to note that the lazy damn birds were still hunched there waiting I supposed for the earth—which hadn’t cooled all that much the night before—to create the customary thermals the updrafts formed by the cooler night air being warmed by the sun and so rising upward—as heated air is wont to do—and thus forming those handy thermals on which the buzzards—hardly troubling their wings other than to spread them wide—might be lifted endlessly skyward to circle there as effortlessly as had the height achieved been gained …

  … this is just my notion of the way it all works of course my theory about possibly why the birds had been slow of late in getting off the mark what with the humidity and heat and all nothing scientific about it or even that thoughtful; but I had observed what I had observed and naturally I had given it some thought to the extent of at one point thinking—as though addressing the birds although naturally not doing anything of the kind just thinking it—thinking okay how about you try maybe flapping your wings? you know like flying like a duck or something?—sort of joking with the buzzards about it …

  … not actually of course …

  … so yes, I had given it some thought earlier—casually or by the by—but certainly not in anger …

  … not waxing wroth as it were …

  … as seemed it so that morning—three mornings now ago—as the rains held off and the heat held on—and I said it fucking lazy birds I said and meant it.

  And what has any of this to do with what is next to follow?

  Hard to say.

  I write after the fact, but soon after it, and well before memory has had the wit to select or manipulate or least of all to understand what it remembers …

  … as in the way for instance following the crash we look for clues in the broken glass in the uprooted grass at the side of the road …

  … not knowing at all what it is we are looking for …

  … I mean, in a matter such as this who am I to sort out meanings?…

  … there was this and there was that and the heat of course and then it happened, thus:

  It was down the hill for the paper and back on foot as per my usual morning routine and by way of the longer hard way home as well—so as not to be made humble by the heat—a vanity perhaps—but anyhow circling around and up the crooked long back stairs—one hundred and seventy-six steps not counting the landings—to Laundry Hill and up the short last gut-tugging grade to Adams Street and then high above town and free of the strain, and so undulating on home as it were—it being Adams Street that did the undulating of course not me—Adams Street at this point being a stretch of street that curves along above the village in a series of easy sweeps like the undulating flight of the red shafted flicker—(talk about a lazy bird; it flies as much as it possibly can with its wings neatly folded at its sides and while falling like a rock)—but a walk on Adams Street that I had always enjoyed what with the easy traverse here of the earth’s underneath me gentle lift and fall and a bird’s eye view of the town below—and yes, to the best of my recollection heat or no heat it was pretty much with me then as it had always been, a modest pleasure at the end, coming home on Adams Street.

  Okay, some irritation at the heat, a touch of pique at the unfair largeness of the sun …

  … but nothing more than that …

  … no troubling uneasiness …

  … no stirring in or of the bowels to be read by me for sign …

  … nothing …

  … and then next I remember the car as usual spinning gravel back toward the house as I gunned it up out of the short steep drive onto Adams Street and headed down into town for the mail at the usual morning time—somewhere between ten and ten-thirty usually—in the usual manner and still in second gear as I approached the sharp elbow curve dropping down from Adams Street to Moon Canyon—a passage in which I have always taken a certain childlike pleasure in the quick little roller coaster tug at the gut each time as the car dipped and dropped sharply curving down between the high retaining walls …

  … but this time though …

  … there was a brief clear humming sound, like the sound of a tuning fork …

  … a sound felt …

  … a vibration deep within the skull …

  … and with it a total and absolute disorientation …

  … the street ahead curving and falling away in a manner altogether new and foreign to me between walls that I had never seen before in a place unknown …

  … as was I for that brief and awful moment to myself unknown …

  And that was it.

  And then ahead of me was the remaining straight short stretch of Moon Canyon with the Tombstone Canyon stop sign at the end the same as I had always known it …

  … as was I myself the same …

  … except that I was also now my own most real and awesome ghost.

  That was the feel of it.

  At the post office no one seemed to notice.

  I am starting to get used to it, I think.

  Chapter 23

  Who knows how Alzhei
mer’s starts?

  I mean really.

  Which is in effect—almost literally in fact—the last question I asked the man.

  And it’s for sure that good old Dr. Diddly didn’t know didn’t know with such authority that it wasn’t worth his time saying so instead he simply shrugged and shifted his butt around on his silly little stool—the little stool on wheels in doctor’s examination rooms on which for some reason they like to sit—maybe it is supposed to make it look as though they expect to spend some time with you—or maybe they are old like Dr. Diddly who is my doctor and just needs to sit down a lot—I don’t know but anyhow finally Dr. Diddly came in and rolled out his little stool and sat on it which pissed me somehow—although I know better he does it every time—so I smiled back at him—he always smiles when he sits down—no doubt from the relief—anyhow I figured if he wanted to practice medicine while sitting down on his little stool with his butt hanging out to either side that was up to him it was his examination room and all and there was no point in being pissed about it—even though prior to that time I had sat there alone for fifteen or twenty minutes with my legs dangling from the examinging table or gurney or whatever it is—the sort of slab like couch affair with the clean white paper on it—I always think of butcher’s paper (come to think of it there are probably people in their thirties or forties who have no idea what butcher’s paper is who have never seen the stuff; it was used by the butcher to wrap up your meat or cheese and to write the price of it on; I mean there was a butcher right there and everything)—I have digressed—to get back to what I was saying I always think of butcher’s paper the way the nurse rolls out a clean new sheet of it and says sit here as though I am a piece of meat which as a matter of fact is pretty much what I usually feel like at that time and as it would appear to be as well the way I am seen by my HMO if I understand their literature—but again as I was saying; prior to the arrival of Dr. Diddly I had sat there alone for some fifteen or twenty minutes looking at a large colorful rendering done mostly in yellows and reds of selected aspects of the human anatomy and circulatory system including the guts asking myself various questions having to do rather with the more esoteric or less easily pictured mysteries of the brain, of the interruptions to which it is liable from out of the blue so to speak, the removal—however briefly—of the elemental identities—of one’s old familiar certainties as it were—in regard to place and time and self all gone bye bye all at once and then boom returned thank goodness; but so then might it well be asked: of what diagnostic significance might this be or more pointedly by what phenomena are the first beginnings of senile dementia or Alzheimer’s marked? sitting there as I say looking at mere bone and blood and guts looming large and static on the wall while these real and probing questions moved around uneasily in my mind as though within the confines of the room—if not within my skull itself—like great caged birds, like captive raptors—hawks or owls if you will—come to inquire of that mouse in the brain …