The Old Man Roars

 The Old Man Roars                                            

                                                                         By Dan Gover    danielgover1946@gmail.com

     The old man was getting pissed off. “What the hell does he think he’s doing? I give a man a job to do and what happens? Goddammit, he runs away. I sent him to Nineveh to proclaim against their wickedness and he jumps on the first boat to Tarshish, in the opposite direction, just to get away from me. This jerk will never be on my crew, that’s for sure. He ticks me off. I’m going to bust his ass.”

    The Old Man was really angry with Jonah, who ran away from his task and foolishly took to the sea to escape. So the Old Guy slams the ship with a giant storm and everyone thinks they’re going to drown. Everyone except Jonah who was down in the bottom of the boat fast asleep. As soon as they wake him he knows exactly what to do. After all, he is the fool who ran away from his God, but why should everyone else die because of his shy cowardice? “How can we save ourselves from this storm?” they ask him. “Take me and throw me into the sea,” he tells them. They do that and the storm subsides. “And the Lord prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah, and Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.” [Jonah 1]. Today, we know that there are many large fish in the sea who could swallow Jonah, like an Orca or a great White Shark. In the old days they thought it was a whale, so let’s leave it as a whale. And when Jonah is in the belly of the whale, he prays to God for forgiveness. This is the turning point, when Jonah prays to God. And he said,

      I am called out of my affliction

      Unto the Lord, and He answered me;

      Out of the belly of the netherworld cried I.

      And Thou heardest my voice.

                   …I am cast out

      From before Thine eyes;

         … But I will sacrifice unto Thee

     With the voice of Thanksgiving;

     That which I have vowed I will pay..

     Salvation is of the Lord.

Dan Gover    Danielgover1946@gmail.com The Old Man Roars   1,000 words   page 1

And the Lord spoke unto the fish, and it vomited Jonah

upon the dry land.  [Jonah 2]

     Yuck.

     Second chance: So God gave Jonah a second chance and sent him to Nineveh, and this time he issued the Lord’s Proclamation: Because of its wickedness, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The people of Nineveh believed Jonah as the spokesman of God, and they fasted, put on sackcloth and sat in ashes. Led by their King, they turned away from their evil ways. And God saw this and he “repented of the evil, which He said He would do unto them; and he did it not.” [Jonah 3]. So things worked out well.

     Yet Jonah was angry–at himself. He beseeched God to take his life: “for it is better for me to die than to live.” But God told Jonah that he had to forgive Nineveh, saying, “And should I not have pity on Nineveh, that great city wherein are more than six-score thousand persons and cannot discern between their right and their left hand, and also much cattle?” [Jonah 4].

    If the Old Man could forgive Nineveh, where they couldn’t tell their right hand from their left, then he could forgive Jonah who didn’t know his ass from his elbow. So God didn’t take Jonah’s life, even though he didn’t trust him all that much. He was no Right Hand Man like Jesus or Benjamin [= child of the right hand], someone he could really depend on. Just another dumb-ass left hander. The Old Man said,” Next time I’ll send a guy with his head screwed on right.”

     Has civilization always been a conspiracy of right-handed people against left-handed people? The Romans called the left hand “sinister,” which means evil. The right hand they called “dexter” [dextrous] which means skillful or capable.

    So it goes, for far too long.

Dan Gover Danielgover1946@gmail.com  The Old Man Roars   1,000 words  page 2

     Look Out

    Yes, the Old Man tried to get me to join his Abraham Accord. He pulled the same loyalty trick that he played on Abe. He didn’t let me become a father until I was pretty old and then, finally, he gave me a son. Then two years later, he gave me another son. That was part of the trick—he thought that since I now had two kids, I wouldn’t mind that much losing one of them. One day when the elder boy was about seven, he sent his angel to prepare me for the sacrifice. I was to take my elder son out to the clearing where I usually slaughtered a lamb [it always had to be meat], and there I was to take my sacrificial knife and kill my own son. Now I knew how Abe felt, and it just made me mad. I looked at this innocent little boy and knew that I could never do it. Then I really got angry. Without thinking at all, I pointed the knife straight up into the air and yelled, “If you want this kid, you’re going to have to go through me!” 

      Wow, just like that. And you know what I heard? At first nothing. But then a sort of chuckle, and then a real laugh. It just kept getting louder and louder. Finally, the Old Man was laughing so hard that it sounded like he was losing control and might choke on his own laughter. It was that funny. I began to get worried for him. It took a long time coughing before he got control and quieted down. Then he just gasped out, “That is the funniest thing I have ever heard.” And he started laughing again. He lost control of himself again: laugh, laugh, laugh. Then all sorts of chuckles and grunts. He might have ended by saying, “I’ll see you around, pal,” but I couldn’t be sure because of all the snorts and snuffles. Then nothing: silence. I figured he was gone. Just like that. And I didn’t hear from him for a long time.

     That’s probably why I told Jonah. Apparently, he hadn’t done so well with the Old Man on his first trip. Maybe he could use my story to help himself gain some respect. When I told him, he thanked me. But then he told me that he tried to get tough with the big Man, but instead of laughter and snorts, he got fog, smoke and the ground shaking. Then the giant hand came down through his roof, poking its enormous index finger right at him, almost touching his face. Then the enormous voice boomed down on him. “Jonah,” it grumbled, “You piss me off!” Well, what do you say to that? Nothing, I guess. Jonah really looked bad. “Well, at least you tried,” I said. “Yeah, tried and failed,” he said. “Yeah, but you’re still here and you seem okay. Look what happened to Samson, to Adam and Eve, to Absolom.” Jonah said, “But I feel like dirt.” 

Dan Gover Danielgover1946@gmail.com  The Old Man Roars   1,000 words  Page 3

   Maybe that’s why I decided to see the Old Man himself on the third floor—to do whatever I could to help Jonah. Sure, I had heard about the third floor: the card games, the questionable company, but I had never seen it myself. It surprised me what a creepy part of town the Old Man’s place was in and what a dark street it was on. The place looked like an unused warehouse. The old-style elevator didn’t work. We had to find the stairs and hoof it up to the third floor. Even from way down the long hallway we could hear the card game going on. The door was almost completely closed but we could still hear the action coming from within, the laughter and coarse remarks. I opened the door and almost keeled over. The smoke and stench was overwhelming; it covered me and everything else. I couldn’t even see anything at first. It was all a big cloud burst of dead smoke pouring out of the door. Cigar smoke. I had uncles who smoked cigars when they played cards, but not like this. When I tried to smoke cigars in my early twenties, they made me sick. And this was much worse than that. I stood at the open door and tried to see who was there around the table. Somehow, I began to hear the opening line of an old poem: Now “a bunch of the boys were whoopin it up at the Malamute Saloon.” 

      There were at least five or six older looking gentlemen. Sitting right next to the Old Man, who was dealing, was a familiar looking shape: a burly old guy with a bushy moustache, a military hat, and a hanging pipe drooping from his mouth. He looked like Joseph Stalin, the Communist dictator of the old Soviet Union. But it couldn’t really have been him. Across the table there was another elderly man with a moustache and glasses, but much slighter than the old guy with the pipe and military hat: Could it have been Salvatore Allende, the left-wing politician who had been elected President of Argentina and then been overthrown by the Generals with the help of the US? But it couldn’t have been him. Maybe it was Augusto Pinochet, the General-Dictator who took over after Allende was killed. He had his enemies thrown out of flying airplanes. I couldn’t really say because of all that smoke. Some of the old guys were coughing , a few were spitting, and one or two were cursing. One of the old men looked familiar: bow tie, vest under a jacket with a chain on it, and he had a hat. He looked sort of like Winston Churchill, but it couldn’t have been him. Another one of the old guys had long hair and wore a head-band around it. He looked maybe like Geronimo, but he couldn’t have been. Finally, somebody said, “Shut up and deal, will ya?” and that quieted things down.

Dan Gover Danielgover1946@gmail.com  The Old Man Roars 1,000 words page 4

   I could now hear cards being dealt and could see them flipped around the table. Someone said, “Ain’t you gonna see what the kid wants?” I could see that he meant me, because a few of the old codgers turned in their chairs and looked at me standing in the doorway with Jonah hiding behind me. Their eyes felt like they were burning holes in my body. It completely creeped me out. Silence fell until I could only hear the cards being dealt. “Well, are ya?” someone asked, channeling the mood in the room. It didn’t sound like a good hand for me.

    “All right, all right,” the dealer said and he stopped the cards. The old voice barked out, “Well, what the hell do you want?” Now it was my turn on the spot. I coughed a little to get my voice up and finally said, “I actually came to talk to you about Jonah…” It wasn’t much, but at least I had got it out. “Jonah?” somebody said. “I don’t believe it.” And then they all started laughing real hard. “That loser?” one of them guffawed. “Yeah, yeah….Jonah…yeah yeah…” somebody else said.

    The Old Man barked out, “Completely inappropriate!” He started to lecture me, “You gotta learn some better timing kid.” That shut me up. There were a few grumbles around and then someone whispered in my ear, “The Old Man’s been losing. You gotta catch him when he’s on a winning streak; that puts him in a better mood.” Then the big old voice boomed again, “Get the hell out of here kid! Go! Make an appointment with the secretary.” He practically blew me out of the room with his voice. Well, what do you say to that? I tried, “Yes, sir,” but it barely came out as we left the room slowly. I think I heard someone opine, “That wasn’t a very nice thing to say to the poor kid.” “Poor kid, my ass!” someone else said as I ended up in the long hallway. As we walked away I heard guffaws and laughter from back in the room. My head and shoulders slumped as I walked down the three sets of stairs and out of the warehouse. Well, now I know how Jonah felt. Now I know how it feels to be really put down. Now I know what it’s like when the Old Man laughs off the kid’s good intentions. 

Dan Gover Danielgover1946@gmail.com The Old Man Roars 1,000 words page 5