FUCK!

I worked for this Attorney guy...nursing him and doing odds and ends for him...he was a quadraplegic man...dived into some river stones...on his eighteenth birthday, now he's going on sixty...long time in a chair...could happen to anybody...high German...that he claims he is, his pride has been the bain of him over the years...

I cannot work for anyone...I cannot make a friend of...and we butted heads, like two competing rams...again and again...then he would do the kindest things...out of nowhere...his catheter...his bath...his toilet regimen, we would perform in very early morn...his mother would look in...she's eighty four...all her youth she sacrificed to him...

I would whistle...he would bitch and would complain...where ARE those classic German geniuses he loved to quote, and listen to their opera...Nibelungin...I would disdain, but never raise my voice, nor ever say a thing..."Let's take the back way then" he would order...we would board his old decrepit van and drive away...he would explain every mile to me...

He wore this German hunting hat of wool...I gave it to him one Christmas Day...he was so proud of that thing...he could recite the codes of every county law...he ran a business office, in a busy rural town...he would have me stop for breakfast, at a drive through...and would always buy me coffee...or a sausage sandwich...we would drive away...

Yet...ever was he back seat driver...mother hen..."Not here! Drive there!...oh, you stupid thing!...where IS my classic German opera!"...he would never let me strap him in or tie him down..."Stop that!...he would declare,,,and I let him have his way...he was a stubborn man...pig headed friend...he might not admit he were...him and me...

One evening...setting out and driving home...through this busy rural town...streets slick...ice fog and frozen everywhere...my friend instructed me..."Go there! You'll make the light!" "It's yellow John." "Just drive, I said!"...he said...I stopped instead...to save our lives...he shifted forward in the chair...diving forward to the dashboard..."Fuck!" he uttered dismally...

His hunting hat was crushed...but he was ok...it went like that throughout our tenure of intimacy...you will not be forgotten friend...you were a hard and bitter man, but who wouldn't be...and you could be so kind, and never taking credit for a thing...oh, by the way...though I speak in past tense...he is very much alive..."Where IS my classic German opera!"...here's to you buddy...

Written by Bruce James Clyde 2015

Photo: October Fest, credit unknown