The Long Home

I wrote about Catherine and Buddy here several years ago. We were neighbors then, but the Redhead and I moved back to town shortly after I told you that little rose-colored glasses tale.

Over the last four years I have passed back and forth by their house many times. Last time I stopped was at the beginning of the pandemic. I dropped off a couple of N95 masks and told them to be careful if they went to town. Looked like there was going to be a bad virus going round, and they were saying it was going to be hard on old folks.

Since, one or both usually on the porch whenever I pass. They wave. I wave. Me always thinking I should stop and talk a minute, just check on them, but I never did. In a hurry. Felt too bad. Needed to get on home. Next time. Whatever excuse worked that day.

Shame passes quickly when you develop the knack. Still, I asked myself “What kind of person behaves this way?”

I never liked the answer. Still don’t.

Today Catherine is out by the mailbox. She flags me down, arms waving, as in ‘you need to stop, and you better stop now.’

“Buddy wants to see you. He’s got some questions he wants to ask you. Go on up. I’ll be up directly.”

He sits on the glider, as always. I shake his hand and move to the guest chair, diagonal from him about four feet away.

“Good to see you,” he says. “How you been lately?” He always says that.

“Not so good. I’ve been sick since I got bit by a tick a while back and –”

“Huh?” he says.

I try again, but it is obvious that he can’t hear me. I look to the yard for help, but Catherine is still dawdling by the Knockout Rose, which is gorgeous this year. I cross the porch and reposition myself in her chair to be at his ear.

He continues. “You heard any turkeys gobbling this year?”

“No, I haven’t been down here at sunrise in a while. You know I can’t get around in the woods like I used to since I’ve been sick, so I didn’t go at all this year.”

“Huh?” he says. Didn’t hear a word of it.

“Used to be a lot of turkeys around here, but not no more. Last time I saw a turkey gobbler was four, maybe five years ago. I come to the door one morning and there was one standing at the far end of the yard. He was tall as my waist. Beard hanging down nearly ‘bout to the ground. He took off running right down the road towards your place. I heard a shot a little while later down in the bottom. I figure it was that Lewis fellow that lives down at the crossroads. You know he hunts all the time – don’t pay no attention whatsoever to whether the season’s in or not. I’ll bet that was the turkey I saw, ‘cause I ain’t seen him again since.”

“Probably,” I say. Add a nod for good measure.

“You ever seen things in as big a mess as we’re in? I tell you that Joe Biden is running this country in the ground.”

The next several minutes are a non-stop soliloquy about the mess we’re in. The war in Ukraine. The open borders. High prices for everything. The disappearing work ethic. It is animated and punctuated by profanity, the kind once reserved only for sailors like him.

I do a lot of nodding. The name “Trump” never comes up just in case you are wondering. It is not a rant about what could have been, or should be, or might still could be. It is about what is.

After a while he seems satisfied that he has said what he needed to say, and we both sit quietly. Catherine has finally come up and sits down in the guest seat. She looks back and forth, at him, at me, as if she is following a conversation between us, even though none is occurring.

We all just sit. Silence is acceptable porch etiquette in the South. Even expected. As much a part of the conversation as the words.

Buddy looks at neither of us. His gaze is straight ahead as if he might be watching that gobbler walk over the hill.

“You know, I worked down at the car dealership in town for 38 years. I was a good mechanic, could take any Chevrolet apart, car or truck, from bumper-to-bumper. Put it all in a pile then turn right around and put it all back together again. All them years I fixed the town people’s cars. When I left there they was paying me four dollars an hour. I woke up one day and said, ‘to hell with it.’ They don’t appreciate me no more than that they can get somebody else.

I heard the town was building a water treatment plant. I put in an application, and they offered me the job because they knew I could mechanic. I had to drive down to Montgomery for a while to go to a school to learn how to run it. Got a class three degree in wastewater treatment so I’d know how the thing was supposed to work.

I ran that plant for ten years. Just me. Whole time I was on call 24/7. If anything went sideways, I’d drive in and fix it, day or night. I didn’t make a bunch of money there either, but they bought me a pickup truck so I didn’t have to wear out mine driving back and forth.

Them State boys would come up and inspect everything regular, but they never did find nothing wrong. I got to be fairly good friends with one of them. He’d say “Buddy, how come you don’t keep several of everything you might need in the shop so you don’t have to go get a part when something breaks down?” I told him I didn’t see any point in that. If I needed a part or a tool I’d just get in the truck and go get it.  Why spend money on keeping inventory in a room just sitting around? That’s foolish. Then he said, “why don’t you keep any tools in your truck?” I said why would I, everything thing I need to work with is right here. No point in carrying around a bunch of extra weight in a truck, burning gas and wearing it out. I got tools at home if I need them around my place.

I told them going in that I would work until 63, then I was going to retire. That’s what I did.

Thirty-eight years at the car place and ten at the treatment plant. I never made no real money, but we had enough to get by. We got our place here and everything’s paid for, don’t owe nobody any money. We get social security from the government and that covers what we need, as long as Joe Biden don’t take that away and give it to them people he’s letting into this county.

I worked all of them years. Never complained about low wages or getting up in the middle of the night cause some alarm went off at the plant. Never stole nothing, not so much as a wrench or even a bolt to use on something here at the house.”

A pause. He looked at me and then looked down. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“What was it all for?”

He began to cry. Cry like when somebody tells you your momma’s dead. Great shuddering sobs. His voice became high-pitched and childlike. His words Faulkneresque, one long stream-of-consciousness sentence punctuated by little gasps between sobs. His hand at his lips, the way old folks subconsciously do when they’re afraid their false teeth might slip out.

Catherine gets up and stands by him, hand on his shoulder. She looks at me, expressionless.

“I’m 96 years old. I hurt all over all the time. My knees and elbows and back – every part of me. I can’t hardly walk so I don’t go nowhere anymore unless she takes me to the doctor, and that’s a wasted trip ‘cause they don’t do a damn thing except give me some other kind of pill to take. I can’t hear nothing. I can’t see nothing. I can’t eat nothing that tastes good cause they won’t let me have any salt. I can’t sleep no more, day or night, cause I’m always hurting so bad. All I do is sit here on this porch or inside the house, day after day, night after night. Why don’t I just die? I ought to just kill myself and be done with it.”

Ah, I think. The ghost of Christmas future.

“No,” I say. “Ain’t no good going to come from that.”

It’s all I can think of to say that I will say. I know I bit of Hebrew poetry written by The Preacher in Ecclesiastes 12 that describes this journey to the long home. But I won’t read it to him. Not today. Vanity of vanities.

He is done talking. His gaze is at the floor. The tears still roll, but he is regaining his composure.

Catherine begins to explain. I don’t know if he can hear her. Maybe, maybe not.

“He ain’t in too good a shape. He can’t hear it thunder, and the hearing aids I got him don’t work. He’s got a cataract on one eye, so he don’t see too well neither. He’s got arthritis and he has two cysts, one on each kidney. They doctor says they are both benign, but they make him hurt. That mesh they put in him when he had his hernias fixed has broke loose, so it moves around sometimes and that hurts him too. That’s why he has trouble sleeping. He can’t get comfortable. They won’t operate on him. Did you know they won’t operate on you once you reach 90?”

“Yes ma’am, I did know. Can’t they give him anything for pain? Anything to help him sleep?”

“Oh, they have, but it don’t work. He won’t eat much I fix him because they won’t let him have any salt in his food – they say sodium, but they are really talking about salt. You know food don’t have much flavor without salt. I can’t do much for him. He just sits around day and night watching TV or out here on the porch.”

“Hey Buddy,” I holler. “Listen, you don’t need to be sitting around all day watching Fox News. You can’t do anything about the shape this country is in, so quit listening to those people talking about it all the time. Find you something good to watch, like Andy Griffith or Gunsmoke. Find you a good old cowboy movie.”

“I don’t watch Fox News.”

“Yes he does,” she says. “Yes you do,” she hollers.

“I don’t,” he says again. He has regained his composure. Now Stoic.

We talk awhile longer, Catherine and me.

“What can I do for him? Could I bring him something sweet to eat?

“Oh, I fix him sweets. He just can’t eat salty things.”

I’m running out of ideas. I try one more.

“Buddy, how about I stop back by in a couple of days. I’ll bring my buggy and we will take a ride over to the back side. Maybe you can show me where your grandaddy’s mule barn was? You told me about it one time.”

“I’d like that,” he says.

I get up to go. We shake again. “Well, I have to get home now.”

“Stop again next time you pass.” He always says this.

What was it all for?

It’s the question we all must ask ourselves if we live long enough.

I have my beliefs, but The Book says beliefs aren’t worth anything without action.

I chew on that on the ride home.

Maybe the answer is as simple as stopping by to sit on a porch every now and then.