08 December 2007

Tommy


Tommy, Up North in 1972

It was gray in the morning and gray through the day with a gray drizzle that melted the gray snow into forlorn patches of ice.

I thought about the Christmas letter that I used to write. It would have been out the door and gone by now, produced in November; printed, folded and stuffed into envelopes.

I don't know how the greeting card industry is doing these digital days. Not well, I would expect, and I always think about Mrs. Hitler at this time of the year, since she is a lobbyist for the National Association of Thoughtfulness.

I did get a card in the mail the other day, the first of the season. It was from my Certified Used German Car Guy, Muhammed. He invited me over to the office for spectacular seasonal savings on fine automobiles, and wished me the very best for the season.

I put it on the refrigerator as a mark of whimsy, and look at it when I fix my egg in the morning.

The office that morning was sparsely attended. That seems to be the case on most Fridays. The Company expects a certain number of Saturdays, and likewise at least a perusal of the e-mail on Sundays, if not a project.

I suppose it is a sort of compromise, though I am not sure I understand the balance between presence and absence any more. On the ten o'clock conference call I could hear road noises in the background from some voices, cars headed toward weekends or customer appointnments, though there were no dogs or children's voices.

The lawyer called on my cell before the conference was over, so I scrambled to mute the landline while talking on my cell. It is awkward in the cubical, since all my business radiates down the row of gray cubes. I popped my head up like a Prairie Dog to see who might be listening. It being Friday, there were not so many, though I could hear muted carols drifting over the top of the gray fabric demi-wall.

It was a bit confusing. It appeared that there could be downstream conflict-of-interest issues, another grim round of negotiations with the Ex and a Holly Jolly Christmas all happening simultaneously. I think I was able to keep the three data streams separate, though I am not sure.

I left the office after lunch, taking the computer with me to work on a presentation I have to give next week. I stopped by the Commissary on the way home, hoping that the weather would keep the other retirees pinned down and minimize the duration of the chore. There was a man outside the door in a red checked shirt, using the overhang of the roof to stay dry. He was telling people that the credit and debit card readers were not operating at the check-out, and even cash and check transactions were taking a long time.

I wondered if it was raining inside a data center somewhere, and trudged back to the car, the moisture producing drops on the inside of my glasses. I only buy groceries on credit, and besides, the prospect of food left me cold.

Wheeling into the lot at Big Pink, Leo the Engineer had the gang of Porters digging up the flower bed at the fence on the east side of the property. I stopped and rolled down the passenger-side window to ask him if they were planning on tearing down the apartments next door. It was supposed to be a joke, but Leo was not happy to be outside getting wet. I don't know what the Porters thought. They are a pretty phelgmatic bunch, and kept digging. Leo said the unaccustomed appearance of rain after the long drought had caused the security lights on the perimeter to short out, and they needed to trace the electrical lines to the problem.

“I gotta fix this before I can get out of town, you know?” he said. Leo likes to spend his weekends away from Big Pink, where the tenants and owners can't get at him. He has a cabin in the woods down near Fredericksburg, which is similar to what we had when we were growing up, a place in the North Woods where we could get away from everything. My brother and sister and I had some great times there, and some great North Woods pals. Like big Tommy.

He was a stitch. A real wild man with a heart of gold. He didn't give a damn what anyone thought, but if you with Tommy, you were there all the way. He was completely his own man.

I nodded in sympathy to Leo, and thanked him for his service to the building. I rolled up the window before it got too wet inside and put the car away.

I stopped to check the mail in the lobby. It was way too early for today's delivery, but with the seasonal load, the schedule has slipped so late that I am ususally cooking dinner upstairs by the time the boxes have been filled.

I put the key in the lock on the box to get yesterday's mail and it balked. I turned it to get more leverage, and the key lurched suddenly, snapping the blade off at the haft.

I peered at it in wonder, the village idiot. It was remarkable how perfectly smooth the face of the lock now was, the broken blade completely filling the aperture, leaving nothing on which to gain purchase.

I sighed. The locksmith, when he arrived on his last call of the week, managed to cut his finger getting it out. He was pretty surprised by the mechanism on the inside. He said they only had parts for this model at the Smithsonian, since it had been working perfectly well since 1964, when Big Pink was new. He showed me how to open the box with a screwdriver. He said he might be able to fix it, but he wasn't sure.

The sun was gone by the time he drove away, taking the lock with him.

I set up the company computer to check the e-mail before I turned on the Christmas lights on the balcony. The phone went off in my pocket, first vibrating in alarm before starting to trill. It was my brother. I had called him on his birthday, so I knew it wasn't about that, and the stupid Christmas basket I send each year probably had not arrived yet.

I knew what it was about. I looked out the window and saw the Hispanic guys trooping across the property from the Buckingham garden apartments to the Assembly of God evening feeding program.

My brother said that Tommy was dead. He lost the fight against his own pancreas. Tommy had gone from hale-and-hearty to wasted-and-gone in less than a year.

Big Tommy. Generous Tommy. Tommy the box-maker, Tommy the ski patrol partner. Tommy the cut-up. Tommy the world traveler. Tommy, the guy who stood up at my wedding and later held my sons in his giant hands on the beach in Hawaii.

My brother said that the arrangements were incomplete, and he would let me know when he knew anything.

I thanked him for calling and threw the phone on the desk.

“Man,” I thought, “what a season.”

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra

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