Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Back to Reality: The Red Fedora
It has been a longish time since I last posted. I wanted to say something last week but with the rush of returning to work on a crutch and in a big velcro boot after a month of full-bore relaxation, well, I ran out of time, energy, and enthusiasm. So sue me. I thought I’d throw down some little blurb about what it’s like to return to the land of the worker bee, but I was too busy making the honey. You know how that can be. Walking has been challenging; my work really piled up in my absence; I’m not used to carrying stuff anymore. I tell you, the drama and stress were almost more than I could bear.
Then last weekend I got a phone message that put things into perspective for me, somewhat. It was a cousin of mine, or his wife, more accurately. I’d never heard from her before, but her husband had called me shortly after I moved to this city, having discovered a new entry in the telephone book with the same last name as his. It’s an unusual name and he called to find out what I was doing with it. We spoke for a few somewhat stilted moments and then hung up, and I never heard from him again - till very recently. After a pause of nearly 20 years, cousin Ken contacted me via Facebook, of all things. Though he was in his 70s and not exactly an “early adopter” type of cybernerd, he’d come up with a facebook page and used it to hunt me down. I didn’t really explore his page when I got a message from him suggesting a meet-up - rather, I just let him know I was going in for foot surgery and would contact him when I could get around again. He told me that he’d had some health problems but we’d meet when I could visit. That was early January.
When his wife Elizabeth called, it was to let me know that Ken had passed away. I don’t know the details but it sounds like it was hard for him and for everybody involved. Elizabeth and I spoke for a few minutes and then I let her get on with her paperwork and grieving, feeling like I’d missed an opportunity like I’d never missed one before. I just visited Ken’s FB page; I was one of five friends he accumulated. I’m sure he had many friends, but on facebook I was one of a very select few and I can’t help but think that I squandered that special status. Ken was a good man and I never got to meet him. Getting back out into the world has become more of an imperative than ever, in my book. Hence, the following recollection about getting out and getting something out of it:
On Mondays I start work at 1 pm. A few weeks back I was on my way up the block to the bus stop early one Monday afternoon when I met the Red Fedora. From my first glance at him I could sense that he and I would wind up in conversation, whether I wanted to or not. As it happened, I didn’t really want to, but it seemed inevitable.
Why wouldn’t I have wanted to engage in social intercourse with a neighbor, a co-commuter, a kindred spirit? The hat was the first thing that put me off. It was an exceptionally cheap felt hat, a broadbrimmed fedora in a shade of robin-red that men just don’t wear on their heads. The man wearing it was sort of short, but the hat was tall and jaunty. It would be hard for any outfit to keep up with it. This guy’s duds, though, seemed to have given up before he’d even put them on. They really put the “dud” in “duds.”
His jacket was lightweight blue canvas with numerous pockets, all very well-used; beneath it, his t-shirt was worn-out and tired. His trousers were not visibly filthy but certainly gave no impression of excessive cleanliness either, and they fit poorly, bunched at the waistband and around his ankles. His shoes were featureless white sneaks in decent repair but of no recent vintage. Noting about him seemed new or well-maintained - his self, most of all. His hair was long and shaggy, boyishly thick and casually swept to the side. His face was like a piece of leather, pale eyes watery in the midday sun, nose roasted by the elements, lips chapped and deeply cracked to the point I’d have expected them to be bleeding.
His hands, though, told the story most eloquently of all: they were covered with lacerations, up and down all his fingers, maybe a quarter of an inch deep and a ruddy carmine color on the inside, which was clearly visible where his skin parted and pulled apart the gashes. The first thing I thought was razor wire, but it probably wasn’t deep enough for that. It just looked painful. In contrast, the man upon whom these wounds had been inflicted smiled benignly as I approached.
I got this very good look at him because he was standing, adjusting his clothes and possessions, at the corner where I was obliged to walk right past him. That is to say, I would have walked right past him except that somewhere it had been decreed that he and I would interact. I knew it when I first saw him up at the corner, so at least I had some time to get used to the idea.
I approached the corner (and by extension, the fedora) and stepped off the curb just ahead of him, turning and crossing and maintaining what semblance of a street-face I could. The effort was spectacularly unavailing.
“Got the time?” It’s a common gambit of the underclass, a totally inoccuous question that initiates conversation and enables engagement with anyone. It’s even fairly low impact since, if you are okay with ignoring another human being’s existence altogether, you don’t even have to respond. But as regular Chucklehut readers know, that’s not my style. Plus, fate wouldn’t have had it any other way.
This was in fact my thought as I answered him automatically, “Twelve-forty.” That was all it would take, I knew. I had said it friendly-like. I’d made a social acknowledgment. He’d do the rest, I was sure.
“Yeah, just trying to make it to my dialysis appointment,” he shared conversationally with me as he swung into step by my side, his hideous fedora bobbing ludicrously along at my eye level. “...And I just missed the bus, but I had to go to the shop, right?” He nodded over his shoulder and his eyes twinkled sidelong at me, disconcertingly clear and blue in his scarred, grizzled face. The shop: he meant the medical pot place around the corner from my house. “Man, I can’t go through that without getting high first.” With the guileless trust of an age-old friend, he flashed me his pot-user’s ID. Three thin joints were strapped to it with a rubber band. “It’s tough to just sit there and take the treatment, but it’s sure better than the alternative, right?” He laughed convivially.
I mentioned some people who’d given up on dialysis when their hours on exceeded their hours off, and their bodies had no chance to recover enough strength to make life’s pleasures meaningful to them anymore. But we decided those were anomolous cases, not to be treated as generally typical. Typically, we do what we must to cling to life. He told me about his dialysis nurse, a woman he called a saint, who had been bringing comfort to the sick for thirty years. He considered hers a spiritual office. It brought to his mind the examples of some local preachers - not the ones in my own neighborhood, they apparently hadn’t much salt to speak of, but one down on 19th, south of the park, a Baptist fellow with a good friendly message; he serves breakfast and you don’t have to stay for the service but you want to, you want to, because he’s just that good, and he got a grant of $500 and he went out and got sleeping bags for the folk sleeping outside and he just went to the park and passed them out. Now that’s spiritual.
Red Fedora was taking a local bus; I was waiting on a limited. A local came and he climbed on board, waving goodbye to me jauntily. As the bus pulled away it was easy to see him inside, his red fedora vibrant amid the dull browns and greys of the transit crowd on the other side of the big smeary windows. When I saw that hat, it cheered me up even though I hadn’t actually been down. It’s not a look I’d choose for myself, but now I can see, there truly is a time and a place for the Red Fedora, and I was lucky enough to catch it between engagements.