a friend 

Sun 10.2.22,

 Johnny  lived down the road from my home in the country.  We were introduced when he came over one Saturday noon asking for a ride to the village which was about a mile away.  Johnny, the town drunk wanted to get some more wine.  I had twenty million things to do so my husband volunteered to give him a ride.  Our friendship started that simply.  When I think about it now I realize that it wasn't just the ride he came after.  A man in his early sixties, he had been part of a world that truly welcomed the factories we find so abominable.  The romantic visions we hold about the simplicity of 19th century farms with horse drawn plows and candle lit rooms were in truth a never ending source of backbreaking work 7 days a week, 365 days a year, from early morning till bedtime, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, the kids, nobody was spared or excused.  Gardens had to be planted, ice had to be cut from the lake in winter and stored, animals had to be taken care of, trees had to be felled, cut and split to heat the house.  No chainsaws, no tractors it was all done by hand or with the help of animal power.  When the Corwin Rubber Co. came to our little village Johnny didn't have to think twice about the luxury of a 12 hour day.  They put him on a mixing machine and never left it.  

He also never left the area.  We would have him over for supper sometimes, he and my husband, Roger would sit around drinking wine and get loaded, or he'd come to watch TV.  A special treat because there was no electricity at his self built home (never wanted to bother with that expense.)  He became part of our family, sharing neighborhood gossip, outings, holidays.  After my divorce we became even closer.  I would see him 3 or 4 times a week, he chopped wood for me, roto-tilled the garden, even built me the desk I'm working on at this moment.  Once we were sitting around gabbing, talking about our wishes and I mentioned that if I could afford it I would have someone keep house for me, pick up the dirty clothes, sweep the floor, wash dishes, fill the wood box.  The chores.  Johnny was retired by then and he decided to do it, never said a word, just started doing it.  I would come home and the house was all straightened out!  

We had some damn good times together.  A lot of laughs.  He was game for anything and I took pleasure in introducing him to the wonders of modern society.  We went to Boston (what a mind blower that was,) I took him to fancy restaurants, a couple of strip joints in the Combat Zone, we even smoked some reefer together (I don’t think he even felt its effects.)  Once when we were sitting around talking, I asked him about his drinking, how he explained it to himself.  Now this was a man who hardly had any connection to the modern world with all its sociological/psychological mumbo jumbo, I don't even think he could read.  His explanation?  "Some people like to drink, others aren't that interested."  He knew who he was and that was OK by him.  Me too.

One bitch of a cold Maine winter when the air was so frigid it stung to breathe it in, he came up early one morning to chop some wood and get the stove going.  I looked outdoors by the wood pile and I saw that he was unwell.  "Come'on, come'on," I rapped on the window and signalled him to come in.  

"Sit down, Johnny," I motioned him to the rocking chair, then I turned to the electric stove to fix him a cup of hot chocolate.  There was a noise and I turned.  His body was rigid as a plank and his eyes rolled back in his head.  I rushed over and slid him on the floor.  He wasn't breathing, it looked like a heart attack.  My daughter heard the commotion and came rushing down the stairs to see what was happening.  Together we tried to revive him with mouth to mouth resuscitation.  Nothing.  I called 911.  The nearest ambulance was way over in the city, but a neighboring nurse could be summoned.  Johnny was on the floor dying and we had tried everything we knew, help wasn't going to come for at least 10 minutes.  He was dying.  A very strange thing happened then.  My daughter and I started wailing like you see women in Arab countries doing.  Both of us pacing back and forth, looking out the bay window for the nurse and keening away.

She finally got there,  and we again tried to revive him with no success.  She whispered to me that at this point it would be better if he died because his brain had been so long without oxygen.  I let go then.   My body slackened and I reached over  and fixed his hair, straightened out his shirt and sweater and I saw the same release coming over his face.  It was as if he had needed permission to die.  He wouldn't leave until I let go.  The ambulance people showed up after that with their modern equipment and zapped him in the chest, gave him a shot of something, all the time, I was standing in the back watching and praying they didn't revive him.  

He died on my kitchen floor in the service of his heart, doing a kindness for someone he loved.  Not a bad way to go.  Life's true heroes are never who you imagine them to be.