Two Old Men

Most folks have, at one time or another, thought that they caught sight of someone out of the corner of their eye when they entered a room they expected to be vacant, or empty and which, in fact, was. Some have continued to feel that presence long after the initial feeling though without ever witnessing anything or being able to talk about it plausibly with their friends. The author does not guarantee that this tale is plausible.

Osborne Flank, a short, sure, and bald, retired fellow carrying only slightly more weight than he should began to see things, or thought he saw things, people mostly, many, many years before we find him on this day collecting his wife from the local municipal library. His wife, Melissa, a chatty and popular librarians assistant who was aware of her husband’s visions, if they could be called that, as well as his ways, and whose interests included the Tarot, Runes and other things ominous and supernatural noted her husband’s uneasiness as he followed her down a flight of wooden steps. He had arrived a little early that Friday afternoon to pick her up and take her home and had agreed to accompany her to the archive store in the basement of the building just before they departed. “Are you alright,” she asked without turning back to look at him. One of Melissa’s talents was a spectacular peripheral vision or possibly, simply female intuition. But whatever it was she was not one to miss any nuance in any situation especially where her husband was concerned. He told her he thought he saw someone, to which Melissa did not reply. She continued clip clopping down the stairs with a slightly jittery husband hard on her heels.

Let us not get banal here. The building had no record of a murder, a rape, a death of any kind or any sort of traumatic event ever happening there unless you count Mrs Morton’s hysterical outrage when a drunken Frank Forte mistook the alcove where Mrs Morton was perusing the gardening books for the male toilets, or that’s what he slurred, and began a copious watering of the books on the lower shelf until startled by Mrs Morton, jerked left and finished the job on her favourite, green shoes. Not even its original curator who had quite a history according to local legend could have possibly been present. He drowned in a nearby sound when the boat he was in, returning shortly after dark from a day’s fruitless fishing [how could they know? ed.], had its hull ripped open by a submerged something-or-other and sank. He was not a swimmer and nor was his companion, the boat owners brother and the local farrier. The curator’s relationship with the farrier’s may have been suspicious in that instance and in those circumstances but even if it was it has nothing whatsoever to do with where we are going here.

“Who did you think you saw?” Melissa asked opening the front door of their house.

“Monty Greenwald”

“Really? How strange?”

“Yes,” said Osborne, “I thought he was still alive.”

“He is,” said his wife. “He borrowed ‘Boots, Bras and Life at Twenty’ by Gosford South earlier this afternoon. Said he was going to have a quiet week end at home because his wife, Maud, was visiting her sister in Wattford for the weekend.

“Strange,” observed Osborne.

His wife thought about suggesting he drink a little less but then thought better of it. While she did not approve of his taste for bourbon he was not belligerent or aggressive when he drank, unless challenged and he left her alone in matters where she preferred to be left alone.

They both sat down to dinner shortly after walking through the door. The slow cooker had produced a succulent lamb stew in their absence. It was a magical thing that cooker. It went about its business while they both went about theirs. Osborne’s wife just had to feed it with something in the morning and turn it on before her husband drove her to work. She completed their fare with a little instant couscous seasoned and minted.

Dinner went in the usual way. Osborne’s wife talked about her day and those petty grievances she faced to which Osborne would nod, offer condolences, encouragement, whatever while complimenting her on the food. He had little social contact himself and so had nothing he could realistacally share. Realising this, his wife sometimes tried to solicit a conversation that concerned his day.

“Are you sure it was Monty?” Melissa asked.

“Certain,” said Osborne, “he was wearing that same dirty, pale blue baseball cap that he always wears.”

“There are probably plenty of dead folks out there with dirty pale blue baseball caps,” replied his wife without morbidity.

Osborne thought that a bit inane but he was not one to criticise his wife unduly so he did not. But then he did go on to describe the apparition, if that’s what it was, as wearing the same equally dirty grey work pants that Monty might, the same red flannel shirt that Monty might, smoking the same odorous pipe that Monty smoked (did she not, momentarily, smell the smoke that Osborne reckoned he did?) and sported, for lack of a better word, the same flaming red hair and beard that Monty did.

“Oh,” said his wife. And then after a pause and before going off to wash the dishes she said, “maybe he had come back to the library.”

Osborne did not comment further. What he saw was fleeting. And if it was Monty then it also wasn’t. He was perplexed but not disturbed.

*

Osborne’s day since retirement had become routine, not that it wasn't before. He awoke each morning at 7.00am exactly without an alarm clock, made tea and toast for his wife and himself, putting out the honey for her and the marmalade for himself and then waited while she did her thing before driving her to work at 8:20am. It was a ten minute journey. On his way back to their home he stopped off at the local convenience store and bought a paper and any other supplies he thought he might need on any given day but more often than not he bought just the paper.

After returning home Osborne then spent 2 hours on the deck overlooking the sound in which the first curator drowned with the paper - one hour reading it, the second hour doing the two crossword puzzles enclosed therein. It was a ritual for him. There were things to be laid out on the wooden table before he started, a mechanical pencil, a mechanical eraser and then there were a combination of refreshments to prepare, on demand, as he progressed through the various sections of the paper - two teas, one coffee. By the time he finished the sports pages he had one quarter of the only cup of coffee he drank in a day remaining in his cup. This was always cold by then and discarded. Osborne was so enslaved by this ritual that if it was not performed with cold meticulousness his day was ruined and he did not come good again until the ritual could be reinstated, usually on the following day. His wife knew this about him.

Two days after the incident at the library, Sunday, Osborne was unable to buy a newspaper at the local store due to some industrial disruption in the city by delivery drivers. In a word or four, he was beside himself. The Sunday paper was his favourite paper and something he looked forward to from Monday. It was different than the daily’s in that it had news, magazines and a completely different crossword puzzle. Good grief in a Sunday paper three or four weeks ago Osborne read that Jesus and his brother Ouriki [who knew Jesus had a brother? ed.] were in fact buried in Herai in the Aomotri Prefecture on the Northern Honsiu Island, Japan. You don’t learn stuff like that in the daily’s. Osborne paced up and down the news stand for a good fifteen minutes touched by a mauve scowl and stifling a perpetual growl beneath his breath before deciding to leave the store. He considered buying a crossword book, he considered buying a magazine but left frustrated and forthright without buying anything. The girl behind the counter, who was new, thought his behaviour strange and considered calling the police.

When he arrived home his wife, foolishly watering the marigolds by the drive noticed his agitation and was about to ask him what was wrong when she saw he was empty handed.

Osborne knew that his wife knew that he was not happy and bowed curtly in her direction in the hope of staving her off. It worked; she could not possibly fathom the depth of this breach in his usual routine and wanted to be left alone to work with it by himself.

Osborne continued inside and set the table as he always did. A mechanical pencil, a mechanical eraser and then made tea for his wife and himself. Leaving his wife’s cup by the kettle he took his to the table and set it in the usual place, to his right as if to leave room for a newspaper. He did not know what to do with himself. It was a warm sunny day but that was something he did not normally notice until returning from making his second cup of tea having already read that in the paper.

Shortly, his wife joined him with the tea she knew he made for her.

“No newspaper,” she said tentatively.

“No,” said Osborne.

“Spewin’,” she articulated.

“Indeed,” said he. “There is a delivery driver strike in the city.”

“Spewin’,” she said again as if to comfort him.

Melissa knew that she could not alleviate her husband’s anxiety at that point and so did not even try. They sat in silence. She, sipping her tea, he letting his grow cold, staring into the forest beyond their balcony and fidgeting as if in need of a cigarette.

After a while, unable to contain his angst any longer Osborne told his wife he was going for a walk in the forest and got up and left without waiting for a response. She had no intention of replying anyway. She watched as he crossed the yard below the balcony to the back gate and thought that maybe if he mowed the lawn, which definitely needed it, he might get over himself. But in her heart of hearts she sincerely doubted it - her husband was a slave to chancelessness who did things in his own time.

Osborne strode with determination along the forest path to the bluff where there was a bench on which he could sit and survey all that was his world. Something he suddenly felt he had to do. It was not cold but his hands were thrust deep in his pockets. His head was bowed so that he looked no more than two or three feet beyond his leading toe noting only the ruts and roots crossing the clay path. His mind was a mess. The pines and the gentle breeze bid hush to any that thought of disturbing him, though it was not necessary. Every bird, wombat, snake, echidna, waratah, wallaby and kangaroo in the forest could have stood at the edge of the track he trod and cheered him along his way but he would not have noticed. He was elsewhere.

He did not even raise his head, at first, when he arrived at the bluff and took a seat on the bench. It’s hard to say exactly where his mind was at the time but it was probably with the large colony of bull ants to the left of the bench that thus far had not breached his personal space. The bluff was created years ago by a quarrying company who harvested sandstone in the region and was a perfect suicide venue though not a popular one. One or two people had died jumping off it over the years – the farrier’s brother for one – they were an unlucky family, but so far there had been no jumpers, as far as any locals knew, where the reason had been that transport had been disrupted in the city.

Osborne thought he was dreaming.

“1 down, 5 letters – aids in a crime.”

“Abets,” he said complying.

“3 down, 5 letters – fables.”

“Tales,” said Osborne.

“Wrong, try again.”

“Myths”

“6 down, 5 letters again – lovers meeting.”

“Tryst.”

1 across, two words, 4 letters then 3 letters – Insect

“Army ant.”

“Very Good.”

At this point Osborne awoke or joined the real world again only to find that perhaps it wasn’t the one he expected. Sitting beside him on the bench was Monty Greenwald puffing on his pipe. Osborne feigned a start though he was not actually startled but he definitely had not heard Monty approach.

“Monty, what are you doing here?”

“Those are a few of the clues from the crossword you are missing today Osborne.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I say again, what are you doing here Monty?”

“I am not actually here Osborne but I did come to talk to you.”

“In all the time that I have known you Monty we have uttered, perhaps, three dozen words in greeting each other at close range and nodded toward each other in greeting perhaps two dozen more from long range. Why, today, now do we have to have a conversation?”

“You flirted with and encouraged my wife about two years ago but then, when the time came, you didn’t follow through.”

Osborne contemplated Monty’s remark for a few moments while he reacquainted himself with the profile of the ranges to the west beyond the sound. Then turning briefly to face Monty said, “Tell me Monty, which part of that upsets you the most? That I flirted with Maud or that I didn’t sleep with her.”

“You don’t deny it?”

“Would it make a difference?”

“No.”

‘What do you mean you are not actually here?”

“I am, at this point, lying beside my wife on our bed at home,” said Monty, “and have not left her side for 43 hours.”

“You must need to pee pretty badly ‘round about now then,” said Osborne.

Monty said nothing.

“Melissa said you said Maud was going to Wattford for the weekend.”

“My wife, as you know is dying,” said Monty, “And you know because while my wife was attending the hospital in the city for chemotherapy treatment you were also attending the hospital to have some tests done on those kidneys you abuse. My wife is embarrassed by her circumstance and I am mortified. She bravely, manoeuvres through her day job during the week but it extracts much from her physically and so on weekends she tries to recover. We use these excursions as an excuse not to be seen anywhere.”

“And you are not here telling me this.”

“I am not here telling you this.”

‘How?”

“When my wife learnt she had an inoperable cancer that would ultimately kill her and sooner rather than later she began to spend nearly every hour away from work and commitments simply lying on our bed. If I wanted to spend time with her, which I did, then I had to lie with her. It appeared to me, or appealed to my vanity, that somehow or other she gained strength from my close proximity.

“When we first tried this I jiggled and jostled until I found some comfortable situation where I could sleep. But it was not right for Maud. My restlessness and my sleep aggravated her condition rather than eased it. Eventually I learnt that I must lie in a certain way and not move at all until Maud roused herself, strongish and ready to face the next day.

“Initially they were relatively short periods of non-movement because she eventually fell asleep but as time went by even in her sleep she could detect the slightest movement from myself which would wake her and reinstate her pre sleep, screaming headache status.

“So I learnt not to move for hours on end. And in learning to keep my physical self still over a year or two I learnt something else – I could present my metaphysical self, if that is the right term, anywhere I pleased and to whom ever I pleased as if there in person.”

“Bullshit.”

“I am here aren’t I?”

At that his outline, silhouette, whatever, lit up like a sparkler hovered right, in an arc 90, 93 degrees, featureless, in the sitting position he was in until he was positioned opposite Osborne but on no bench and suspended above the bluff.

“I have a plan,” he said.

Osborne was about to ask what it was but realised, after uttering the first two syllables of his question that he was addressing dissipating smoke. Sitting quietly for a while, as he first thought he would do throughout; he pondered imponderables, the unusual milkiness of the water in the sound below, for one, a ghost that was not a ghost ultimately for another. A crow cawed as it flew past. Nothing else seated so eventually Osborne headed home.

Upon his return Osborne did not tell his wife about his meeting at the bluff and of his own accord mowed the lawns that afternoon after a lunch of deep fried oysters done in the Chinese way with a macadamia nut batter and wilted iceberg lettuce with oyster sauce and Melissa’s own secrets.

 

To be continued.....