You
could feel sorry for my dopey friend Wendell, but if you had spent any time watching him
cross the road without looking, or riding his lawn tractor to the store when no
one could run fast enough to stop him, you’d realize he must have the hardest working
Guardian Angel this side of the Pearly Gates.
They say God protects drunks and fools. Ordinarily Wendell was neither, until the night
thirty years ago when he went out drinking after his freshman biology exam. He lost control of the Chevy convertible as
it spun wildly off the road and crashed into
a sleepy fleabag hotel in the Catskills.
Without a seatbelt, it’s a wonder Wendell stayed in the saddle, so to
speak. The Chevy bashed and bounced off 6
parked cars and a US Mail truck before plowing into Units Number 3 and 4. The latter was occupied by a young lady and
an older man who would have a lot of explaining to do when he got out of the
hospital.
Wendell’s
head must have hit every two-by-four as he went flying through the walls of the
High Peak Motel. He hasn’t been the same
since. He lives up the road with a
sister, and each day walks down to my place, oblivious to the cars that zoom by
him on the busy road. When he gets to my
house, after wandering on and off the
pavement inspecting anything along the side of the road that catches his
interest, Wendell stops and waits for me to come out and invite him up on the
porch. He loves to sit for a while in
the wooden rocking chairs and explain everything in the universe to me. Some days I stay inside and feel like I’m
hiding. This goes on all summer and
fall, until Wendell flies off to spend the winter with his younger brother in Florida.
“So,
“ I asked Wendell, “Saint
Joseph traveled
all over 48 states looking for work?”
“Don’t
be silly,” he said, “ there’s 50 states now.”
“Oh,
I forgot,” I said, “we bought Mexico.”
“No-o-o!
Alabama and Puerto Rica.
You don’t know your geology.
Hahahaha!”
Wendell
loves it when I play the fool, though I’m pretty sure he suspects the ruse. His sister and her family have grown tired of
his banter and his needs … unfortunate,
but understandable … and he seldom has the opportunity to feel important, or even superior. So, I often ask his advice on little things.
“It’s
clouding up, Wendell. Do you think rain is
coming?” I said that afternoon.
“Rain?
Coming? Only one way to tell,” he said.
And with that, he got up from the rocker, stepped off the porch and walked
toward the road. Proudly making a
production of the joke he’d just thought up, he shuffled up to the macadam, puts
his toes on the edge of the grass as if it was the end of a diving board, and then bowed way out over the road’s
surface. I cringed, thinking he might
lose his balance and fall into the path of an oncoming car. Leaning even further out, Wendell put his
hand to his forehead, shading his eyes like some long ago Hiawatha. He looked north, then swooped the upper half
of his body around and stared off to the south.
Then he turned and ambled back to the porch.
“Any
rain coming?” I asked as Wendell plopped himself back down in the rocker. I’m a good straight man.
“Huh?” He looked truly confused.
He’d
forgotten what he had been about. His
eyes screwed up in thought. In a moment
he would realize he’d lost a conversational thread again and begin to feel bad.
“Did
you see any rain coming up the road?” I reminded him. “Or anyone on a donkey?”
“No,” he said, now deflated.
“This isn’t the road to Jerusalem.” He was silent for a few moments, while for the first
time I wondered if this might be my Road to Emmaus. If you weren’t listening in Sunday School,
that’s where Christ was disguised as a mere mortal after his resurrection to
show people that truth is often hidden.
“You
want some coffee, Wendell?”
“I’ve
had my two cups today,” he said, "but .... "
I knew
he wanted a cup. He always wants a
cup. He was afraid to break one of the many
rules his sister had decreed, this one to
keep him from getting too jittery.
“You
won’t tell anyone I had coffee, will you?” he asked.
“Your
caffeine secrets are safe with me,” I said with a chuckle. I stood up to go in and get two mugs.
He
looked up suddenly and said, “Who is your patron saint?”
“Saint
George,” I said, without a thought.
“You
mean the guy with the dragons and the round table and all?” he asked.
“No,
the guy with the piano, George Gershwin.”
“But
he’s Jewish,” said Wendell.
“So
is God,” I replied.
Well, you’d think I’d just made the funniest joke
this side of Paradise. Wendell
laughed and laughed, and was still
giggling when I brought the mugs of coffee out from the kitchen. I always wrap his in a wash cloth and rubber
band, because his hands shake a bit.
Quiet
for a moment, we sipped our coffee.
While Wendell was thinking about God-knows-what, I sat and thought of
all the things inside the house I needed to do … a package to wrap, the refrigerator
ice maker to fix, the ….
“I
have a patron saint,” said Wendell.
“Who’s
that,” I asked.
“You,”
he replied, without looking at me.
Ah,
me. What could I say to that? It’s a heavy responsibility to be someone’s
patron saint, I was thinking. Still, I’ve never received a nicer compliment.
“You
could find a better one, Wendell,” I said.
He
looked off the porch to the road.
“Probably,”
he said. “But this one comes with a free
cup of coffee.”
copyright 2009, David Griffin
The Windswept Press
Murrells Inlet, South Carolina
dave@windsweptpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment