CONTINUED: Partners

I’ll spare you the painful details … the new room grew larger even as we were drawing the plans, the idiots who worked on the structure (including yours truly)  often had less enthusiasm than Egyptian slaves arriving at the pyramid each morning.  The astounding costs continued to escalate before our eyes.  But today we have a wonderful space that also doubles as an office for my wife’s work.

The two of us have accomplished many things in life that we’re proud of, both together and individually.  Lately I’ve realized much of it wouldn’t have happened without each other.  I can feel sorry for those who never had a confederate with whom to wade into the deeper waters, or someone to prod them when sitting down appeared to be the safer option.  It turns out life isn’t about security.  Smarter folks than I have said it’s about challenge. And it’s best done with a partner.

Looking back, I realize I knew nothing  about how to find a partner,.  But when the first likely candidate  came over the horizon, I didn’t hesitate, I married her.  Something told me there wouldn’t be another.  And I was right.  Of the women I’ve known over the past half century, none would have been a better  partner for me.  Nor would any have put up with my quirks or temperament, a mild way of describing my personality.

It took a special woman to pack up the house and to move everything we owned from city to city while I carved out a career in different locations.  It required an attitude of fairness to balance our tasks when later she pursued her own professional goals. 

And after buying what the ad described as a “lovely old farmhouse,” it took a mutual sense of humor to lighten the nights and weekends of sawing, nailing, and painting, often cursing our way to the finish line.  More than mutual goals, of course, our journey took courage and a devotion to one another. It enabled us to deal with the losses and heartaches of a normal life, and to the lives of our children as well.  An ideal partner is a loving anchor to the other, and an occasional inspiration too. 

I can’t think of a better synonym for spouse than partner.  We scream and yell and curse and blame and stamp our feet … me … and cry and change our minds and change them again … her … and sometimes stagger on our way under the weight of misgivings and doubts.  But without each other’s encouragement, we’d never start the journey.  Without each other’s solace, we’d often be tempted to turn around and go home.  But when a home is what you are building, there’s no where to go except to each other.

Stumbling around in the occasional darkness of life is best not done alone.  My partner and I have weathered many stormy nights on the trail, but we arrived at places neither of us would have reached on our own.  

Copyright 2009,  David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Sturm und Drang

“It seems to me more like a sitting service, a kennel.”

“Wait till you try the food,” he said.

I puffed out my chest. “I won’t be here very long.”

Rusty cleared his throat.  “Most of us are essentially permanent residents.”

“Not me,” I said.  “I’m going to graduate and go home.”

Rusty smiled and looked away.

When we bedded down at the end of the evening, my mind could not lay down the thought I’d been left here for good.  I kept rubbing it like a sore, hoping it would feel better, wishing I could rub it away. I lay all night trying to figure out a riddle.  Over and over in my mind I pushed and pulled at the most confusing puzzle I’d seen so far in my puppy life.  How could the two old farts not understand how much I loved them?  And what did my behavior have to do with my loyalty to them, my need to be with them, to spark their attention, to get them to play with me, even if it meant pissing them off once in  a while?   And how could two people who had been so clueless in their early experience as human babies not understand that life was a process that didn’t start with good sense.  But eventually it was learned.

Morning dawned bright and early in the prison-kennel.  The Guards woke us by pounding on the roofs of our little houses.  Soon they were ladling out the tasteless gruel they called breakfast.  I felt a little sorry for sticking up my nose at the crunchy food I was served at home.  I didn’t care anymore if it was on sale.

After chow, I told the nearest Guard I was ready for my obedience lessons.  Bring ‘em on.  I would Ace the tests and get out of here and go home.  But by mid morning I confirmed with Rusty there was no training.  We were to do nothing but sit in our tiny house all week, getting a little time to run and jump and … well, not play … only in the evenings for ten minutes.

Just before noon, when Rusty said lunch would be what wasn’t eaten for breakfast, the door at the end of the parade ground opened.  Himself entered, followed by the warden who appeared upset.

She called after him, “Murphy hasn’t had time to learn anything.”

“I’m taking her home, in any case,” said Himself.

When the little door to our house refused to open easily, Himself gave a great pull.  The door came off in his hand.  He passed it back to Miss Ritalin, saying, “Sorry.”

We were soon in the car on our way home and Himself launched into a monologue.

He said he missed telling me to stop chewing his shoelaces and he noticed there was no warm ball of fur draped across his cold feet.  He said he woke up on his own that morning, because I wasn’t there to escape my cage and come bounding across the bed to land on his face, kicking and licking and trying to get my paws around his neck.  He said he didn’t miss my staring out the sliding door and barking at absolutely nothing for ten minutes, but he had a plan to help me shorten it to two minutes.  And he said Herself told him to not come home without me.

So, I’ve been to Obedience school and I would say I’m now a model of deportment.  (I’ll bet you haven’t heard that word since the third grade when Sister Mary Contrary said your deportment was showing and you looked down to see if your fly was open.)  I don’t have all of my behaviors quite in check, but when I act up and start chewing on the end of the old guy's belt as he lies  napping on the couch, one mention of the Canine Correctional Institute causes me to stop  and find some other rule to break.  It’s good to be home.  I plan on staying here.

copyright 2015, David Griffin

CONTINUED: Anger Problem

"Dave?  I really hate to bother you, but there's a fire."  She said this with the same amount of excitement in her voice as if she'd discovered weeds in the lawn. In dreamland, I had no idea who I was talking to when I woke up and found my self on the phone.

"Huh?" I said. "A large, with pepperoni and onions."

"No, you have to go to the fire.”  Now her voice was raised, as though what she had thought to be weeds were instead poisonous vines snaking her way.

“FIre, Dave.  F-I-R-E.”

“Call the fire department,” I said.  I was logical, if not yet fully in gear.

“There’s a FIRE, DAVE!"  she shouted.

I came fully awake and croaked, "Where's the fire?"

"Well, do you know where Bonnie Jones ran over the chicken last year on the Kings Highway?" she said.

"No, Mary, I don't know where =="

"Oh, sure you do!  Wait.  Put your wife on the phone. She'll remember."

I passed the phone to my wife, now awake, and jumped out of bed.

"Hi Mary," said my wife.  "Is little Beth still sick with the flu?"

"Where the hell is the f#%$-ing fire!" I hollered as I repeatedly tried to jam my feet into my fire boots, unaware that a moment before I'd automatically put my shoes on.

"Mary," said my wife, "David was wondering if you could tell him where the fire is."

"Of course I'm wondering where the f#%$-ing fire is!” I shouted.  "I'm a f#%$-ing fireman!"

Trying to pull up all my zippers, I ran to the closet and rummaged around for my fire helmet.  “Who’s been using my f%#$-ing fire helmet?" I cursed. 

I envisioned one of the kids making  Kool Aid in it.

"Where did Bonnie Jones run over the chicken last year?” I screamed.

"Oh," said my wife, "I don't know, dear.  Wait, I'll ask Mary.  Mary, David’s in an awful rush,  but he wants to know where Bonnie Jones ran over a ....   You know, I think it was turkey.  Mary, wasn't it a turkey?"

"How can I go to my first fire without my helmet?" I cried.

I stumbled out of the bedroom,  headed for the driveway. My wife ran down the hall after me, shouting,  “Mary agrees it was a turkey, dear.” 

I hoped that once on the road I’d come across another fireman and follow his pulsing blue light to the fire in the dead of night

I arrived at the fire wearing a Boston Red Sox cap.  The chief is a Yankees fan.  Declaring me dressed in an unsafe manner, he sent me out to buy coffee for everyone. 

Mary told her husband later she really didn't like calling me in the middle of the night, and she suspected I had an anger problem.  Only when I can't find my helmet.

copyright 2012, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

dave@windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 35 & 36

 “Miss?  This is Detective Fiore of the Utica Police.  Please step away.  I’m coming in.”

I finally brought my head all the way up, but my tears blurred my vision of the boy I had loved my whole life.  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands, but still couldn’t bring him into focus.  Jimmy moved toward me and I realized the detective was opening the door.  I stepped back and in a moment let the man lead me out of the room.  How I wished I had one last look at Jimmy Bean.  His parents would choose a closed casket.

 

I saw Jimmy Bean one more time.  Last night, after lights out, he was at the foot of my bed.  Just standing there, looking at me.  I was embarrassed to be so old in front of him.  But as soon as I thought it, a glorious smile crossed his face.  It seemed to light up the room and I felt the warmth from it.  He began to fade away and I shouted, “No, let me come with you this time.”

“Soon,” was all he said, and then he was gone.

I lay there until dawn waiting for the daylight to creep through my window.  This is the first day I haven’t felt the old fear of knowing that death waited for me.  My fear got up and left.  Now I’m wishing for death to save me.  I read somewhere the end often comes at dawn.  I waited for Jimmy to come back and get me before the sun was fully up.

I sat in that god damned nursing home all morning waiting for Jimmy Bean on this first day of No Smoking.  I can’t believe the people who run this place have ever had a thought beyond their books and their rules.  “It's for your health,” the social worker told me.   Health?  We’re dying, for chrissakes! 

When they were all busy wheeling the cattle down to the cafeteria for lunch, I found  my boots.  They’re a little tight, but they fit pretty well.  I put on my heavy coat and just walked out the front door. No one saw me or stopped me. 

I’ve come down the driveway to the highway.  It’s snowing really hard and I can’t even see the Home behind me now, but across the road I can make out the neon beer sign in the window of the American Legion building.  I’m gonna put Jimmy Bean’s  twenty dollar bill on the bar and order a Calverts and ginger ale and get change for the cigarette machine.  Then I don’t know what I’m gonna do.  Order another Calverts, probably.  And wait.

 

The End

 

 

“Jimmy Bean” is mostly a true story, and for all I know could be completely true.  Mary was my mother.  To read more about Jimmy and Mary and how I came to write the story, click on the following link.  http://www.windsweptpress.com/jimmybeanpscript.htm

 

 

 

 

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean Posts 33 & 34

 

 I was getting worried.  I stopped at my house on the way to Jimmy’s.  Blanche sat in the kitchen, cutting up potatoes for tomorrow’s dinner.  She often spent all of Saturday afternoon cooking and baking for Sunday dinner.  She always loved being in the kitchen and said she thanked her lucky stars for having a house, food, a good cook stove and a family to serve a meal to.  She said those words to Father Flaherty on one of the few occasions she spoke to him.  He told Blanche, a Presbyterian,  she should thank the Blessed Mother, the Mother of God, who he believed to be the ultimate housewife to Joseph and Jesus.  Blanche told him her God didn’t need a mother.

“Mary,” Blanche said when I came in the side door,  “Jimmy called.  He didn’t sound good.”

”What do you mean?  Where is he?”  I said.

Just then she was putting the filled bread tins in the oven.  I unbuttoned my coat.  I could hear the coal crackle on the grate inside the stove.  Blanches’ cooking had made the kitchen quite warm.

 “He was home, if he knew what he was saying,” Blanche said.  “He sounded drunk, slurring his words. He said they were surrounding his house.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, he didn’t say.  You know how he imagines things,” she said, but this time Blanche seemed afraid.

“What time did he call?” I said.

“More than an hour ago,” she said.

I  stood and buttoned my coat.  “I’m going up to his house.”

“Mary, wait for your Pa to come back.  He’s just gone down the block for his tobacco from the drug store.”

“Don’t worry, Blanche.   Jimmy needs help.”

 I left and headed for Jimmy’s flat, about six blocks away. I didn’t want Pa to see Jimmy if he was drunk or acting like it.   I ran, then slowed down to a walk when I was out of breath.  No one was with him.  He thought “they” were outside and trying to get in to harm him.  Oh, Jimmy, I thought.  Wait for me, Jimmy.   I was so worried the police would be called again and then he would wind up in jail.  Don’t do anything, Jimmy, I thought.  Please don’t.  Oh, please wait for me.

 

I’ve sat here in this nursing home thinking of that day for the first time in many years.  I’ve always tried to put it out of my mind.  But today for some reason the memory has come back and my heart wrenches almost as badly as the day it happened over sixty years ago.

I ran up the back stairway to the Bean’s second floor flat on Square Street and pounded on the door.  I twisted the knob but the door was locked from the inside.

”Jimmy?  Jimmy?  Oh, Jimmy, let me in.  It’ll be OK.  Jimmy, let me in!’

For the first time I felt a deep fear inside me for his life.  The doctor had said he might hurt himself.  I began to shake.  I couldn’t stop myself, I was so afraid.  If I had a key I would not have been able to use it, my hands were shaking so.

 

 

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean Post 31 &32 of 36

 

 

Saturday was a major shopping day and as I walked along people crowded on to Genesee Street, the main downtown shopping area.  Most either worked during the week and couldn’t shop or didn’t have their  paychecks until Friday night.  When I got to the City’s retail center,  the Busy Corner as it was called,  I found the going slow as I moved around people and often had to step off the curb to move ahead of the crowds.

When I passed Woolworth’s, the floorwalker was standing outside smoking.  I ignored him but I felt his eyes on me and that made me even more scared.

I passed the Kresge’s store and remembered how Blanche often took me in to the lunch counter and bought me a soda when I was a little girl.  She brought me downtown on the trolley and we jumped off in front of Grace Church and then crossed Elizabeth Street and walked through the wood and brass doors of the store.  Even if I didn’t need anything, Blanche always made sure I came home with some little trinket so when we finally arrived back in our kitchen, she could say, “Oh, let’s open our bags and look at our treasures.”  There were the times Blanche punished me for things like not coming in the house when she called or sassing back my English teacher in school.  How unfair I thought she was, probably because she wasn’t my real mother.  But at nineteen years of age I knew how much she loved me.  Bringing up a another woman’s daughter must have been a chore.

I was always worried about Jimmy, but this morning I became more afraid.  Why did he have me wait around the factory for him?  Maybe he wanted me in a place where I couldn’t get to him quickly.  If I had been home, I would have run the few blocks to his house when I began to worry about him causing trouble or doing something crazy.  But he never planned to do those things.  They seemed to come upon him, to ambush him.  Only if he planned something would he have called me the night before.  What could it be?  No, I pushed that thought from my mind.  Jimmy would never do that.  He knew he would go straight to Hell if he ... hurt himself. 

I convinced myself Jimmy was safe, but I could not for the life of me figure out what he was thinking.  Maybe it was nothing and I was just worrying too much.

 

I passed Grace Church as I continued up the hill.   I would never be married there.  Being Catholic I would settle for St. Francis de Sales if it didn’t crumble and fall down before Jimmy Bean and I finally got through all of this and he asked me to marry him.  But the doctor had said the man I loved wouldn’t get better, only worse.  There had to be some way to change that.  There just had to be a miracle waiting for us.

At the top of the hill I passed Mr. Proctor's Library, turned on to Eagle Street and soon was about to pass St. Francis de Sales Church.  A car drove up and pulled to the curb and Father Flaherty got out, thanking the driver for the ride.  When he saw me approaching, he forced a smile and said hello to me.

“Can I talk with you, Father?” I asked.

“Of course, Mary,” he responded, “how about Monday night after the Altar Rosary Society meeting.  Now there’s a group you may want to join!  Since you’re all grown up and working now.”

“I really need to talk now,” I said.

“Well, then come in, come in,” he said, but he didn’t sound enthusiastic.

We walked to the Rectory next door.  He inquired what might be the matter as we climbed the stairs to the porch, but I just sniffled.  I heard him sigh.  I knew he was an old Irish bachelor who probably didn’t look forward to hearing a young woman’s sob story, but he was also a priest and that was his job.

Inside the hallway, Mrs. Cartwright, the housekeeper, came up to us and Father told her we’d be in the study. 

”We won’t be long,” he said.  “There’s another meeting, I think, pretty soon.”

Father Flaherty’s office was spacious with two round-top stained glass windows.  Without electric lights, the place would have been as dark as a tomb.  He sat down behind a large brown desk that was piled with magazines and books.  When he leaned back in his swivel chair, it seemed like it would go all the way and topple over.  His face was back there in the gloom, peering out just over his knees and between the stacks of books.

“What is it you want to tell me, Mary?” he said.  He didn’t ask me to be seated.  I felt like a servant standing there, waiting for him to dismiss me.  I started to talk, but stopped.  There was a chair behind me covered in cracked leather, but when I sat in it Father disappeared behind the right hand pile of books and papers.  I stood and dragged the chair to my left and sat down again.

Father pulled his tobacco pouch from one side pocket, his pipe from the handkerchief pocket, a wooden match from his pants pocket and looked at me.  I sat mesmerized by this display of  a man preparing his drug.  He rolled far forward in the tilted chair and scraped the match on the sole of his shoe.  As soon as it exploded into a small fire, he rolled backward as his hand came up to light the pipe.  I thought he’d go over backward and I’d spend the week explaining how I was with Father Flaherty when he fell out of his chair, hit his head on the radiator and died before my very eyes. No, I couldn’t catch him.  The thought of death brought Jimmy to mind.  He’d never do that to himself.  I brushed it from my mind.

 

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 28 and 29 of 36

“We don’t usually share knowledge of a person’s illness with another employee,” the Doctor said, “but I know you’re close to the young man.”

He got up from behind the desk and came around on my side, “I have another reason.”

Dr. Penslowe deposited his great bulk in the chair next to mine, about two feet away.

“Of course, I’ve shared this with his parents,” he said.  “His father works here, as you know.  I warned them to make sure someone is with him at all times.”

“Why?” I asked.

”Mary,” he said, “this is a terrible disease and it is not unknown for the person to become so depressed with their symptoms that they … do harm to themselves.”

I let that sink in, then said, “Do you mean he might want to kill himself?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean,”  he said.

“Oh, no, Doctor.  He wouldn’t.  Jimmy wouldn’t do that.”

“We hope not Mary, but I can tell you it’s been known to happen.”

“Oh, no. No ....”

Dr. Penslowe stared at me and I felt stupid.  How could I have kept from admitting to myself that Jimmy really could take his own life.  Especially after the time Jimmy tried to jump off the North Genesee Street Bridge and the night he tried to steer us off the Verona bridge  On those occasions he had said he was joking, but he had not been convincing, not even to me, and I believed everything he said. But somehow an hour later I was willing to believe ... to hope ... that everything would be just swell.  Jimmy would be better and we’d be married, have a family ...

“Mr. and Mrs. Bean are not with him, of course, when he is out with you,” said Dr. Penslowe.  “You need to help convince him there’s hope, that someone might invent a medicine tomorrow to alleviate his suffering.  I doubt if we’ll see any successful medication soon, but one never knows.  Please hold out hope to him.

“I’ll try … “ I said, the tears coming.

“But you must also guard yourself,” he said.  “Don’t drive out with him any more, I beg of you.  Don’t accompany him to any great heights.  It would be terrible if he killed himself, so much worse if he took you with him..”

My face burned.  I felt more embarrassed than in danger.  Oh, I knew Jimmy had tried to drive off the bridge, but he didn’t.  He would have thought of my safety and steered back on t the road if I hadn’t grabbed the wheel first.  He would never hurt me.

It was so difficult to see the truth, because the truth was so unacceptable, so horrible.

 

That evening was a Friday night and the phone rang while I was waiting for Jimmy to come to our house.  The ringing sound was still strange to my ear.  It was only during the past few years that Blanche had convinced Pa to replace the gas lighting with electricity.  Neither she nor I cared about the light electricity would bring, we just wanted to have a radio like the rest of the world.  We  finally got a telephone last year.  It was 1931 for crying out loud and Pa wanted to live like the Civil War was just beginning.

“Mary, I can’t make it tonight,” Jimmy said over the phone.  I was so disappointed.

“But we …” I started, then teared up and couldn’t speak.

“These people are dangerous,” he said.  “I can’t be seen outside tonight.”

“Jimmy, there’s no one –“.

“Mary, please,” he said.  “You don’t realize … you don’t know all of it.”

I sniffed and said, “OK, Jimmy.  I love you.  I’m just so disappointed.”

I felt up my sleeve for my handkerchief, but I’d lost it again.

“Jimmy, I’ll come up and we—“

“No,” he said. “my parents would not appreciate company tonight.”

“You mean they wouldn’t appreciate me,” I said.

“Come down to the factory tomorrow morning,” he said.

“The factory ... why?”

I’m clearing out some stuff.  Nine  o’clock.  I’ll meet you there.  Gotta go!”    He hung up.

I placed the receiver up on the telephone box on the kitchen wall and returned to the kitchen table, sitting across from Blanche.

”Why does he have to go to the factory?” asked Blanche when I told her. “They would have sent everything home to him.”

“I don’t know ….” I said

“Mary,” she said.  “Go ahead and meet him at the factory, but do not go anywhere with him.”

“Oh, Blanche ….”

“I mean it.  You don’t seem to realize that Jimmy Bean is getting crazier by the day.”

“He is not, Blanche.  He’s just sick.”

CONTINUED: Bacon

Flying down an unimpeded straight line beneath the cupboards,  I skid into a turn and  hurtle through the doorway into the far end of the living room.  With a head of steam now building, I fly into the air, land on the couch and do a triple summersault down the length of the seat cushions.  Landing in the pillows, I topple onto the floor with a flourish.  Now is a good time to play “catch me if you can.”  I feint and dodge and almost always out-maneuver the two old folks who insist they own me.  Maybe they do, but not during Faster Than A Speeding Bullet.

Last night the guest named Mrs. Irish swooped down out of nowhere and scooped me up in her arms.  I didn’t fight very hard to free myself.  She cooed and smiled and said what a nice dog I was.

“But,” she said,  “you’re not very disciplined.”

“Well, no,” I yipped.  “So what?”

“Do you mind if I teach Murphy a few things?”  she asked of the old codgers.

“Be my guest,” the old man said, as a hopeful look dawned across his face.

With that, Mrs. Irish sat down on the couch, firmly placed me on the floor, flipped me on my side  and pressed me into the carpet.  I lay there  flattened like a slice of bacon..  I tried to mouth her, which is not quite a bite.  But she only smiled in surprise, again called me a nice dog and clamped her  iron hand around my muzzle. 

“Relax, Murphy,” she said.

How could I relax when every muscle of my body was clamped to the carpet and I couldn’t even open my mouth?

But she kept talking softly to me and eventually I did let my sails luff.

Suddenly, she let me go, I jumped up on her, but  she caught me and clamped me to the floor again.  This went on three or four more times until  I finally surrendered.  In fact, I’m thinking about maybe giving up jumping on people.

“Where did you learn to control dogs so well?” the old timer asked Mrs. Irish.

“At home,” she said, “practicing on our German Shepherd.”

“That’s a big, dog,” he said.

Mrs. Irish nodded in agreement.  “Baron is almost a hundred pounds and he’s pure jet black.”

“Holy crap,” I barked.  “Don’t bring him over here.”

“You should bring Baron over to play with Murphy,” the old man said.

“Are you crazy?” I barked.  “He’d have me for lunch.”

“Good idea,” said the Irishwoman.

“Hey!  Just a minute here,” I muttered.  “This is not a good idea.”

She was nodding her head again.  “Murphy would fall in line with a bigger dog around.”

“Fall in line?” I whimpered. “I’d fall over dead.”

And so Baron is due here this morning, in just a few minutes.  I’m sure he won’t want to play  Run Around In A Circle Untill We Drop or Pull The Pillows Off The Couch And Into The Bathroom.  And I’m sure he long ago gave up Bark Your Lungs Out For Fifteen Minutes At Absolutely Nothing.

The old codger looks happy to have made a deal with the devil as he opens the door.  I swear the smell of fire and brimstone drifts in.  I hear the devil woman’s high pitched womanly laugh.  And then comes a low rumbling growl.  I feel like a strip of bacon.

copyright 2015, David Griffin

The Windswept Press

Murrells Inlet, South Carolina

www.windsweptpress.com

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 26

Jimmy would have eventually been fired in any case because he missed work all the time.  Now he had no place to go on in the morning, so he stayed home and got more and more depressed.  Pa said people who knew the Beans mentioned that on weekends instead of staying home with Jimmy, his parents would find reasons to leave the flat on Square Street.  A girl I knew at work said the Mr. and Mrs. Bean just couldn’t take the insanity.  I don’t know why I could, but I don’t know for sure what he was like while he was at home with his parents.  On a weekend when I was off from work I’d sometimes go up to his house to see him, but I always called first to see if he was OK to be with.

More often Jimmy stopped at my house to get me and I seldom saw his parents.  He didn’t go to church at all any more.  I would see his mother and father at St. Francis when I attended Mass, but they avoided me.  At first I was hurt, to be honest, but since I’d didn’t really know them, I figured they might just be people who kept to themselves.  Someday their son would announce we were to be married and the dam would break and we’d all be good friends.  Blanche didn’t think so.

“How are Mr. and Mrs. Bean,” she asked, when I came home from church on a Sunday morning.

“Oh, fine,” I said.

“Does Jimmy go to church with them?” she asked.

“No, Blanche, he‘s not interested,” I said, hoping to sound disinterested myself.  At age eighteen I deserved a little privacy and I didn’t need to discuss everything with my step mother. 

”Are they busy getting ready for Thanksgiving?” she asked.  “Have they invited you?”

“What is this, Blanche, the third degree?” I asked, losing my composure.

“Mary,” she said, “I’m just asking.  I wondered how you were getting along with the parents of the boy you evidently are … the boy you think so highly of,” she finished.

We sat cutting out little strips of dough Blanche would bake into cinnamon swirls for dinner later this afternoon, neither of us speaking for a few moments.

“I thought,” I said, “if it was all right with you and Pa, I might invite Jimmy Bean to Thanksgiving here.”

Blanche kept cutting the strips, carefully letting her eyes follow the knife through the dough.  She said nothing.

“Of course, if you don’t want him to come here …”  I said.

“It isn’t that, Mary,” she replied.  “Look, can we talk about this without you flying off the handle?”

“I’m sorry,” I said.  “It’s just that …”  I didn’t know how to finish the sentence.

“I’m worried,” she said. “And he would never tell you, but your Pa is worried, too. He thinks Jimmy won’t be good for you, won’t be able to support a family.  You know he lost his job, don’t you?”

I did, of course, but I didn’t think Blanche and Pa knew.

“I was hoping Pa could give him some work in the metal business,” I said, using the term Pa always called the tinsmith work and furnace building he did in the little shop behind our house.

“We did discuss that,” said Blanche. “I told him frankly I thought it not a good idea.”

“Whatever for?”  I cried.  “He needs work, Blanche,”

“He needs to be independent,” she said, “so he can support you if he wants to marry you. And besides, your Pa’s work has dropped off now that mostly everyone has switched to a furnace.”

“Blanche, you have some nerve!” I said, raising my voice. “If Pa wants to help him--”

“I don’t, Mary,” came my father’s voice from behind me.  He had stepped up from the shop into the kitchen.  “That boy is not for you.  He’s got something screwed up in his head.”

I ran out of the kitchen into the parlor and plopped down on the dust cover on the couch and cried for twenty minutes.  Oh Ma, I prayed, get somebody up there to help me and Jimmy Bean.  I can’t live without him. 

But Jimmy was beyond help.

CONTINUED: Jimmy Bean 24

One evening Jimmy and I  walked over to the swamp on the north side of the tracks near Union Station, down by the Mohawk River.  The sky was a deep pink in the west and a gorgeous bank of clouds rolled up over us and then east down the valley.  We were excited to be out and walking with each other, laughing and holding hands.  But later on our way back, Jimmy was so depressed he was hardly able talk.  I didn’t know what had happened.  It was like he'd heard his death sentence since we started out that evening. “You don’t want to marry me, Mary,” he said. “There are too many people following me.”

I’d heard this before but I never said anything.  I thought if I ignored it maybe he would stop saying such things.  But it was really beginning to bother me, to scare me.

“Jimmy Bean,”  I said, “you tell me that all the time.  Why don’t I ever see these people?”

“I don’t know, Mary.  Didn’t you see that group at the swamp?  Didn’t you hear them?”

“No, Jimmy,” I said,  “I heard no people.  I heard no such thing.”

Jimmy shook his head.  We were crossing the bridge over the railroad tracks and he climbed up on the sooty girder and said, “Mary, if I jump down on the tracks, I want to you go home and not tell anyone.”

 “Please, Jimmy!’  I pleaded with him.

“Just go on with your life,” he said.  “You’re better off without me.”

“Don’t be crazy!  Come down here, Jimmy.”

But he wouldn’t come down and I talked and talked to him for an hour before he climbed off the girder.

Jimmy worked in the building next to mine and I began to hear stories about him going crazy at work and running across the factory floor as if someone was chasing him.  One afternoon he suddenly jumped up from his bench and took off down the aisle.  Jumping to the side to miss a man pushing a table full of spools, Jimmy caught his shirt on a mandrel sticking out from a finishing machine.  He was moving so fast it tore his shirt half off him, but he didn't stop until he was down the stairway and out in the yard, where they found him hiding behind a metal bin.  Some men from the front office put him in a taxi and sent him home.

He borrowed my cousin’s Chevrolet and drove us to Sylvan Beach in late August and on the way home I snuggled up to him.  Just as we were going over the bridge at Verona, I don’t know what came over me, but I knew he was going to pull the wheel and send us off the side of the bridge.  I don’t know how I knew,  I just did.  When he pulled the steering wheel down to the right, I immediately pulled it up from the bottom with both hands.   He said there had been a dog on the bridge, but I didn’t believe him and for the first time I was really afraid to be with him.