franksolich avoids a primitive boarder. Yesterday, Wednesday, happened one of those most harrowing events of my existence, when I opened the front door, only to see a specter from my past standing there.
I suppose one could call him a “nephew-in-law,†because he’d been married to a niece of mine for about three years, until her sudden unexpected death at the age of 30 in 1999 (rupture in the small intestine, leading to massive—and very quick—internal haemorrhage; it runs in the family).
I had two nieces; the other died in infancy. This niece was the daughter of a sister who’d gotten real big into the pharmaceutical scene, mood-altering (but legitimate) drugs, and daughter followed mother, of course. Not to mention both were afflicted with severe hypochondria.
The niece had a pretty good childhood, at least when she was with her grandparents (who weren’t around very long, alas, for her) and her uncles and aunts and cousins (six boys). But when she was with her parents, she was a different sort of person; this “oh woe is me†sort of person.
She went to work full-time straight from high school (and worked until the end of her days), and fell in with some guy a couple years older than herself, another one of these “oh woe is me†people.
After which she went downhill, indulging in all sorts of weird things. She and her husband, for example, were “married†in a “wiccan†ceremony in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
One never had to worry about them perpetuating themselves, though, because my niece was born infertile, a side-effect of her mother using so many pharmaceuticals.
I don’t mean to give the impression I didn’t care about my niece; in fact, I cared very much, but it was obvious this was one of those instances where one had to care from a distance, a far distance.
Her husband, in the manner of those doing all this stupid “Satanic†nonsense, didn’t like me, and his hostility towards me was stronger than his hostility towards other decent and civilized people. I dunno why, but it’s a phenomenon I’ve sensed, and others have seen. The guy was uneasy, very uneasy, around me, as if I were casting a spell on him.
It would be superfluous to add that he was a big fat slob, a lazy layabout, whose only ambition in life was to get a ticket aboard the social security disability gravy train because of “depression.†All the time that I knew him, he put more time and energy into getting that, than most people put working in a job.
Essentially, they both lived off my niece, and whatever money they made selling some sort of miniature toy a fad during the 1990s, at flea-markets. I forget the name of the things, but they were immensely popular at the time—furries or zombies or whatever; little miniature “animals,†of which there were hundreds of different ones. I dunno who made them, or where one got them.
Once in a while, they hit the “jackpot†on one figure or another, but not often enough to, really, lead anything but the most austere sort of life while waiting for the disability gravy train to chug into the station, taking him aboard.
Well, she died suddenly and unexpectedly, and as is custom, yours truly delivered an awesome eulogy; the new widower liked it—in fact, he even asked for a written copy of it, but I never got around to it—but wasn’t smart enough to understand the gentle irony in it directed against him.
He went into a funk after she died, and returned to western Nebraska. I saw him only one time after that, maybe about six months later, when he was in Omaha for some legal reason or another. He came inside the apartment, but acted really nervous about me, glancing at a crucifix hanging on a far wall, over the furnace thermostat. He never did tell me why he’d dropped in.
Well, that was that, until thirteen years later, this past Wednesday.
I immediately recognized him, even though he’s now nearly bald and circa 200 pounds larger than he’d ever been. He was driving one of those big 1980s sedans, but with, of all things, license plates from Wisconsin. He told me he’d been “around†the past twelve or so years, here and there.
The social security disability gravy train still hasn’t stopped to pick him up, and he hasn’t been working; I got the impression he’s been getting by mooching from women and from friends. He did say “social services†in Wisconsin were more generous than such services here.
But despite that, he wanted to come back to Nebraska; back specifically to western Nebraska where he’d been born and raised (in a blue family, by the way), and had friends. This is eastern Nebraska, not western Nebraska, but somewhere along the line he hinted it’d be nice if I invited him to stay here for a while.
My hair stood on end; I don’t have furniture strong enough to support him.
I briefly contemplated directing him to my good friend dutch508 on the other side of the Sandhills, which is western Nebraska; if nothing else, dutch508 sets a good table.
But no, dutch508 is still too far away from where he wanted to end up.
He hinted several times it’d be nice if I invited him to stay here, but even though I understood what he was hinting, I blithely ignored the suggestions, as if they hadn’t even been made.
There’s damned few advantages to being deaf, and this is one of them, and I play it to the hilt as much as I can, pretending I didn’t catch something. And as he knows my condition, it appeared he was thinking, “Aw, he’s not understanding me……â€
A foul dirty underhanded nasty trick, pretending to not get something, but damn it, we deaf have few advantages over hearing people as it is, and I’m sure God will forgive.
Gradually, I steered the conversation to his gasoline situation; my assumption was right, he was running on “empty†in the big vehicle. I counted out $122 in currency for gasoline money and got him going on his way, omitting to give him my telephone number and e-mail address.
Whew.
