Current Shareware 1994 January/SHAR194.ISO/articles/s_m1093.zip/OMAN

Text File | 1993-10-08 | 12KB | 243 lines

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 ░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░The Old Man and the Man from the Book░░░░░by Franchot Lewis
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     The old man rubbed his neck above the shoulder, allowing
     five seconds to pass, a break in his concentration, to ease
     the strain on his eyes.
     "Good book?" another man asked. "Would you mind if I sat
     here?" This man looked a few years younger. He began to sit
     before the old man made the jerky motion, giving a nod of the
     head. The man asked, "What are you reading?" He looked to
     see. The old man held the book flat to his lap, and placed his
     eyes back on the book pages.  The man said, "It must be good?"
     The old man said nothing. He kept reading. The man asked, "This
     is the red line train?"
     "Yeah," the old man mumbled.
     The man smiled. "By the way, my name is E.M."

     E.M. stared, kept his eyes still, waited for the old man
     to reply. The old man's eyes dribbled like a ball passing an
     intruder. Then, the eye balls returned, bouncing back and
     dropping onto the old man's lap, and onto the book. The younger
     man continued to wait. The wait took a full minute for the
     reply finally to come.

     "I take it that you're a tourist?" the old man said.
     "Nah."
     "You make sounds like a tourist."
     "I do?"
     "This is my time to read and -"
     E.M. smiled. "Before job and home?"
     The old man mumbled aloud his thoughts. "This won't be
     easy. Why won't he sit somewhere else? Bother somebody else?"
     "What are you reading?"
     The old man was about to curse. He stopped, took a pause.
     He rubbed a pained bump that suddenly came to the surface of
     his neck. He mumbled aloud, "This isn't going to work."
     E.M. stretched, squinted, as if straining to see
     through weak eyes. He looked at the book in the old man's lap
     and skimmed the top paragraph. "What kind of book are you
     reading? By a new author? I have never read him before?"
     The old man closed the book and held it between his legs.
     E.M. saw the title and exclaimed, "Subway reading,
     nothing to cause alarm or shame."
     The old man turned the book to its flip side, the side
     without the title, and put it in his coat.
     "Don't hide it on my account. Now days, everybody reads
     horrible books."
     The old man had a film of sweat on his lower lip. He wiped
     the sweat off with his hands. In a moment, the sweat passed
     from his hands onto the back of the book. He gripped the
     book as he spoke. "What game are you playing?  For a long
     time, I have taken this train and I have yet to meet one
     more disrespectful ..."
     "Sir?"
     "What do you want? Money? Are you a beggar?"
     "Sir, me?" The slightly younger man stared into the old
     man's eyes. "Do I look like I'm begging in these clothes?"
      The old man's eye balls started dribbling again.
      "Sir," the younger man opened his wallet, called for the
     old man's attention. "Sir."  He showed him the wallet's contents:
     fifty dollars, in fives, tens and ones, and two major charge
     cards.
     The old man looked relieved. The relief was short-lived.
     The younger man by a few years reached toward the old man's
     coat and with little difficulty took the book.
     "You're with the insurance company?" the old man sweated
     profusely. "I didn't know that they check on what you read."
     The younger man looked serious. "What have you done?"
     The old man protested, "I know you check on people, but
     this is too much."
     "What do you do?"
     "You're not an insurance investigator?"
     The younger man shook his head. The old man grabbed back
     the book. "You are gay?"
     "Sh- no!" The younger looking man snarled, then stopped,
     grinned and spoke calmly. "Nah. No. Just want to talk to pass
     the time. We're seat mates."
     "We're nothing. "
     "All right. We'll soon pass your stop anyway, and go on
     together."
     "Leave me alone, before I pop you."

     The younger man put his face up to the old man's and
     frowned. He moved another inch closer and the old man moved
     exactly an inch back, red-faced, his cheeks the color of
     fear. The younger man kept still as he stared, and took
     his measure of the old man. The old man's eyes went back to
     the book.
     The younger man said, "You can't pop me. Your gun's too
     short."
     "My fists -"
     "Mustn't. You'll catch what I have."
     "What is it with you?"
     "Something that comes with being a man, a 100-proof man."
     "What are you saying? I'm a man, 100-proof," the old man
     was angry.
     "Who said so?"
     "I do!"
     "You and the ladies, goddamn it?"
     "Sh-"
     The younger man grinned. "If your balls are all right,
     you have nothing to worry about?"
     "I'm not worried about you," the old man said.
     "But you keep thinking, I'm going to do something?"
     The old man raised his voice in anger. "I don't think,
     you had better try," he said.
     The younger man smiled. "Take it easy."
     The old man stared straight into slightly younger man's
     face. "You take it easy." The younger man grinned. It looked
     obviously that the old man was bluffing. He held in his breath,
     to make his body look leaner, his face meaner, and himself,
     younger, stronger.
     The young man smiled. "Take it that you use your sprout
     for more than to make water? You use it to please the
     ladies? You've made a few babies at your age, huh?"
     "It's no good talking to you." The old man stood. "Will
     you let me by?"
     "This is not your stop."
     "Do you think it will do any good?"
     "What?"
     "I'm changing seats."
     "Of course it will. Running makes some people feel
     better. Track and field stars, not cowards."

     The old man walked half the length of the train car to
     the front. He sat down and opened the book and commenced to
     read. The younger man could see that the old man had lost
     interest in the book. Now and then, the old man would look
     up and around, and then back, to see if the younger man would
     follow. The younger man called to the old man, told him that
     he would not follow, but after the old man finally stopped
     reading all together, the younger man changed seats too,
     taking the seat next to the old man.
     "About how long do you think it is going to be before we
     exchanged blows?" he asked.
     "What do you want?"
     "About how long will it be before you sock me and I
     sock you?"
     "You aren't going to sock me."
     "Oh, yes, I am."
     "What's the matter with you? Are you a nut?"
     "I've had men say that to me, a thousand, two thousand."
     "Did you hear what I said? If you put your hands on me,
     I'll kill you."
     "A hundred, two hundred have said that."
     "There are people on this car. I'll call for the engineer."
     "Operator. Subway operator. Yellow. Old, yellow sissy,
     asked me if I was a fag, sh- ! Don't call for help, fight
     like a man, with your fists and not with your mouth, with
     your guts and not with words."
     "You'll be arrested."
     "People don't give a doodle if two old cussers fight. We
     both look like we have a hundred and fifty years between us.
     We would look silly. It would give them something to talk
     about."
     "You would look silly with your jaw broken."
     "Old men fighting look silly, like their heads' broken."
     "Get away from me."
     "- Oh, yes, they do. When I was a young man in France, I
     watched to dutifully record for prosperity the conflict
     between two old men fighting over who did the most against
     the Germans back in '70."
     "Huh?"
     "Don't interrupt me, I'm telling you something
     important."
     "You're crazy," The old man shouted. The slightly younger
     looking man grinned and continued, "One old boy told the other
     that his contribution wasn't enough. That old boy couldn't live
     with that. They had forty-four years of anger to get out. You
     can't live with that kind of anger. That's been nearly eighty
     years now."
     "What?" the old man interrupted again, shouted, "This
     train doesn't go to the nut house. You're have to take the
     green-line and an A-bus."
     The younger looking man spoke sternly. "Old man, how long
     have you been waiting for a good fight? I mean a rumble?"
     The old man stood. His face, white now. The slightly
     younger man placed an intense gaze on him, from head to foot,
     as if closely examining him. Then, the younger man said,
     calmly and slowly. "Since five thirty this morning when the
     subway opened, I've been waiting all day, itching for a fight.
     I've waited all through the morning rush hour. It's nearly
     eleven, a good time to knock somebody's block off."
     "Excuse me."
     "Changing seats again?"
     "Will you let me pass?"
     "You, poor scaredy cat. Scared when the big bad hound dog
     comes to fight. Why don't you jump off the train, and lay down
     in front of the tracks?"
     "Sh-t."
     "Talk to me, babe?"
     "I'm going to kick you if you don't let me by."
     "Oh, you're a man? How many babies did you have? Boys did
     you make? Sons? A man makes sons."
     The old man raised his right foot. The slightly younger
     looking man didn't move. The old man stepped across the
     younger looking man's legs. Suddenly, the younger man grabbed
     the old man, held him tight, and whispered in his ear. "I had
     three sons who made male babies of their own, my sons are
     men. I made men and they've made men."
     The old man struggled, "Get off me!"
     The slightly younger looking man continued whispering in
     to the old man's ear. "Finally, when the son last had left me,
     I was very sad."
     "Help!" the old man called to the people on the train.
     People stopped and looked, but no one moved to help him.
     The slightly younger man kept whispering in the old man's ear.
     "But the next day, I was in the tub scrubbing my ass, and I saw
     my balls."
     "Get off me." The old man continued the vain struggle.
      The slightly younger looking man continued to whisper,
     "They looked quiet, were very quiet, but they hadn't died
     in their sack. They were there. Those magnificent creative,
     man-making things -"
     The old man screeched, "Let go of me or I'll kill you!"
     The slightly younger looking man didn't pause, continued
     to whisper: "- and every thing else was easy, and of no
     importance. That was so long ago."

      He stopped and released the old man. The old man
     shouted, "You are crazy."
      The slightly younger looking man shook his head, "Nah."
      The old man balled up his fists. "Why am I talking
     to you?"
     "Because you box with shadows. Your life is over. Your
     sons are gone."
     "I'm going to get you."
     "Every wife you had left you.  Your work is through.
     There is no one left for you to fight."
     "The next thing I'm going do before I get to my stop is
     punch you one."
     "C'mon, there's time. This train's doesn't stop."
     "It does! It does. I have a stop where I get off. I
     have things to do."
      The slightly younger looking man grinned, "That's what
     they all say."

                   -end-
           Copyright (c) 1993, by Franchot Lewis