End of an Era

End of an Era

John Smith, his alias, he asked I not use his real name to protect the family he never had but always wanted. He was that type of person; always thinking of others. I guess that is why it was so hard to pin him down on what he was doing and why. 

I was to meet John at a bar in the Village, a dump of a place not more than twelve feet wide and about fifty feet long. The bar and stools took up a good six feet of one side, so you had tables against the wall and a narrow path that led to a storeroom in the rear, a dual action toilet and what I was never sure was a sink. The floors tried to suck the shoes from your feet when you walked and the attempt at ambiance were votive candles on the tables and vinyl checkered table clothes that caught fire on a regular basis. Forethought had duct taped a fire extinguisher to a leg on each table and a sign that said, “You are here of your own accord.  Sitting at this table is acknowledgement that you are of sound mind and body, and that the establishment has no responsibility for what may occur should you not be paying attention to the circumstances surrounding you. Amen!

It was a poignant message that no one paid attention to. They were usually trying to figure out what the fire extinguisher was for. I met John on the bus from Hackensack. We got to talking, there wasn’t much to see it being midnight. I asked where he’d come form, and he told me, “home.”  Which is a reasonable answer I supposed, “but I was in Normandy France for eighty-two years. Decided it was long enough and I got so I kind of missed home.” 

So, he came from home and was going home, quite a trick. I asked him where home was exactly, I’d spent some time in Hackensack at the prison they got there, not a bad place to spend a few winters, but the summers were awful; no air conditioning and you weren’t allowed to smoke outside because of the fire danger; it never rained all summer and things just looked like they were ready to burst into flames if you said a bad word about them. Everyone, having no reason to go out in the heat, smoked indoors. The place was the illusion of a sauna, smoke and heat, and the feeling that the cancerous cells were having a gay old time trying to decide who to attack first.

“Where abouts in Hackensack was you living?” I knew it was none of my business but then we were on a bus and there wasn’t nothing else to do or anyone else to talk to.  We was the only riders that night. 

“You know where Furry Top Cemetery is located?” 

Well I sure did, I used to make moonshine with a guy lived right across the street; his house blowed up one night, I don't think I was there for that. 

“Yes, I’m awful familiar with the place. Got a friend who is buried there. He was supposed to be cremated, but being an alcoholic, they said it was too dangerous, and unless a friend or relative would vouch for being insured, they were going to have to pass. The cemetery people said they’d had a bad experience with someone blowing up while in the process of becoming ashes to ashes. Everyone and me, considering I was the friend, said we understood, and that we did understand being used to things blowing up unexpectedly but predictably. So, he got buried at Furry Top. I always wondered about the name but always forgot to ask about it when there was anyone around who knew anything about anything.

“Funny, I don’t remember you. Probably after my time, you look younger.”   

“I’m not very memorable.  I was only there once, and that was for about five minutes. The minister who was supposed to do the burying service got called on an emergency. He was also the dog catcher for the town of Hackensack and apparently some rabid dog had chased a mailman up a tree and he couldn’t deliver the mail til the dog got put under control. Now I knowed that dog and he weren’t rabid, he was just high strung and had a taste for moonshine, of which there was plenty around being that everyone on that block across from Furry Top had a still in the basement or garage, and they’d put the used corn mash out by the trash cans. Dogs being what they are would get to trying it and then the next thing you know they was addicted. But that’s another story for another time, and my listenin partner looked like he had something to say.”

“Course I was only there for about six months after I left France. I can tell you that moving once Is bad enough, but twice?  I wouldn’t recommend it to an enemy.”

“Why’d you leave if you hate moving so much?”

“They was closing the cemetery to make room for the new condos they was putting up to induce people to relocate there. The town was dying, no youngins wanted to stay, no good internet service you know. So the town’s economic development people decided if there were affordable housing, we called it cheap housing, young people would stay cause they couldn’t afford to live nowhere else after they left their folks basements and attics.

But to do that, they had to pass an ordinance that said any grave older than fifty years probably didn’t have much left in it anyways as the place was donated to the town by the Uranium Institute; that was before people actually knew what Uranium was good for, because of the things it did to you. People caught on right quick as the water leaching from the test holes got into the dirt and the plastic flowers people was planting all shriveled up, even though they had a lifetime guarantee. So to make a long story remain interesting they decided to close the cemetery. That was all happening before we had those superfund sites they got now. I was the last one they put in the cemetery before it was officially closed. I only got in cause they said I gave my life so that people could rest in peace. 

Well, I wasn’t waiting around for the Uranium to make me disappear, so I just up and left. You can do that once you give your body to your country for whatever reason they have at the time. So here I am, on a bus going to the big city, and talking to someone who seems to understand.”

Well, I did understand. I been forced to move more times than I can remember. And dead people don’t bother me none. I’ve slept many a night in cemeteries all over the East Coast and never been bothered once except by cops who said I couldn’t be staying there. “Desecrating the dead,” they said. I knew I was doing no such thing, I used the restroom at the gas station on the corner. I know Herb and he lets me wash up there every so often. 

Anyway, I told him I had to get off and If he didn’t have nothing planned he should meet me at the Village Bar. He wanted to know where the Village Bar was. I’d thought it was obvious but then he’d been dead for over eighty years and I can imagine all the stuff you’d forget in eighty years. I can hardly remember why I was in Hackensack other than I like to revisit memorable experiences.

When I got to the bar, Herb wasn’t there. We liked to play Penuchle there cause there was so little space, you’d get people offering suggestions all the time cause they could see your cards, and I found it’s a good way to meet people you wouldn’t normally consider meeting. I waited for ten minutes and when I was fixin to go, I remembered John…Smith, who asked that I not use his real name cause you weren’t supposed to be leaving the cemetery without official release papers, and he hadn’t bothered to get any.

I only waited a few hours and John showed up. His arrival caused quite a stir. I guess most people ain’t like me and didn’t spend a lot of time in cemeteries.  So when John come in looking pasty, like most of the cemetery people look until you get used to them, then they just look like they is a might on the transparent side. Either way I can’t see why you start screaming and running for the door, and I mean the back door, which is nearly impossible to get to cause of the tables and chairs and that’s when there ain’t no one there, so you can imagine with people pushing and shoving and getting on the tables and falling, what a mess it became.

Most of them left their drinks and beers on the tables when they decided they’d best git, so I had me a fine time listening to John tell war stories, and not letting already paid for real whiskey go to waste. I had no idea that so many people died in the second world war. John said when I asked if he knew how many, he said it was most of everybody he knew and some he could see off on a beach that he didn’t know I didn’t want to dredge up old memories of the hurtful kind so I switched the topic. He didn’t play Penuchle, so I said I didn’t know how either, which is probably why Herb and I never won nor lost; I don’t think Herb knew how to play either, although he was better at pretending than I was.

I asked John how he come to meet his maker, thinking that would be more uplifting than talking about those killed when landing on the beach. I was surprised by his answer seeing that he’d been around quite a bit. I had never been to France and never got into a war, so I thought he had a special life compared to most, except for the dying part. But then I got to thinking about that too. 

Most people just sit around knowing they is going to die, and kind of take it for granted. Hard to come up with a story about sitting around waiting, when John had a story about him being snatched from life for what he said, he had, “no idea. They told me to go to Fort Hood and then they told me I was going to France, but that wasn’t until I learned how to shoot and crawl under barbed wire with people yelling at me. They said I did good and gave me a private stripe which I never had before; there ain’t nothing private about living in a house with eleven other people.  And then off I went by myself.

I didn’t like the ride to the beach much. Where I come from there ain’t no place that gots more than about fifty gallons of water at any one time. We was riding on water that you couldn’t see the end of. I can see why Noah crashed the boat on the mountain, sometimes anything different is better than too much of the same. Course, I can only assume they weren’t shooting at Noah.”

“So how’d you get to the end of it?”

“I don’t rightly know. They parked our boat about fifty yards from the shore and we had no idea how deep the water was. Most of us didn’t know nothing about swimming. When you only got fifty gallons of water to play with you don’t think much about splashing around in it. Finally they blew a whistle and people started jumping in the water. I could see it only come up to their belts so I jumped to. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in a hole no bigger than I was, but it was in France. Well, I wasn’t staying there, it was dark and damp and everyone I met spoke French. It gets lonely when you can’t talk to someone, so after about ten years I got an old guy to teach me how to talk French. Couple of years later I was carrying on like a magpie at a pie eating contest.”

“So what made you want to leave? Sounds like you was fitting in, learning new things, making acquaintances.”

“There’s something about home, your real home, that can’t be beat. I got to missing the smells of leaves burning in the fall, the dirt smelling like new dirt smells in the spring, and the whole cemetery was all torn up by bombs and it looked like my back yard in Hackensack; that’s what finally did it for me. You don’t know what you’ll miss til it’s gone. That, and I didn’t have a lot to do but I’d always wanted to travel. So I said to myself, “Well, you got nothing but time and a world full of places to see and people to meet. So I took myself up on my offer and decided I was going home. But before I could get packed and find a way back, you can’t just wish yourself places you know, they got the idea to repatriate some of us so they could have room for those who spoke French the way it was supposed to be spoken.  They started digging us up and sending us home. 

So that solved one problem but I wasn’t going home-home, I was going to Furry Top Cemetery. I knew about Furry Top cause we used to go there in high school and drink beer with the residents and they’d tell us stories of WWI and even the Civil War. One guy said he was in the Revolutionary War but everyone said he was lying cause he had a Scottish accent. 

Then one day after I was settled in I decided I’d had enough of living under ground and I packed up and left. Then I met you on the bus and well, as they say, the rest is the stuff tales are made of.”

I was flattered. You don’t often meet dead people who think enough of you to let you know to be careful of people with Scottish accents. I was about to ask a question when he interrupted my thoughts.

“So how did you meet your maker?” I didn’t know what he was talking about, my maker?

“You are Scottish aren’t you? Well then, was it the war or were you in the wrong place at the wrong time? I hear it happens even though destiny often interferes, to keep things going along like they is supposed to.”

“What makes you think I’m dead? No body runs off screaming when I come into the bar, and those cops… they was telling me and this other guy to move along?”

“You ain’t ripe enough yet. You must be a recent one. I know what that was like. I waited for someone to show up and explain what I was doing in France, surrounded by foreigners. Now I know that there are lots of people dying form wars, genocides, plagues, and plain stupidity, so the greeting team are probably understaffed. But after eighty years, you kind of figure you got lost amongst the dearly departed and if you want to know you got to get out there and find out for yourself. You was telling me, or I was mind reading again, but you hang out in cemeteries a lot, talking to dead people, asking questions, and getting answers? 

Don’t feel too bad. It takes some longer than others to realize the glass is only half full and it ain’t likely to get any fuller. So, are you familiar with the city? It’s been so long that there were only a couple of those loud noisy things that took the place of the horse when I left. It was discouraging thinking about what they was thinking about doing. I grew up thinking I’d go to work at the buggy whip factory like my father and his father before him. Guess I’ll have to make other plans now. What you think you might be interested in doing for the rest of eternity? Me? I ain’t got a clue. And you know, we are always the last to know.”