Wounded in time--unfinished piece
copyright Robert Fullarton 2014
I once knew
a man who was addicted to many things, bad things, the kind of things that ware
a man out from the inside to the shell. Prescription pills were downed in
glasses of vodka like an animal, sexual urges were met once a week with an
exchange with certain local “loose” women. The neighbour to his left was a
roaring alcoholic with a penchant for long drawn out rambles about “the good
old days”. The neighbour to the right was a gambling addict and the neighbour
to his right was addicted to the foul brown liquid we call heroin.
The man I
knew, ran the shelter for the homeless, he was kind (carried his convictions
wherever he went and wore his heart on his sleeve) he would care for his
elderly mother every week –cleaning and completing household tasks for his
ageing mother- with no reluctance or promptitude needed, but with an act of
faith in what he loved and believed in. The man was humane, he was unique on
that stance, he would stoop and rise to the needs of many colleagues, tried to
see the good in everyone, be it the dour girl at the supermarket checkout or
the old man that shuffled like a wounded snail up and down the neighbourhood
garden, the need to think and feel was there. Perhaps it was this great need
and depth to feel, that left him exposed and often easily hurt when his faith
in humanity was shaken, but the acts of cruelty he would encounter from one
workplace to another. Not everyone shared his mind frame and he learned that
early and the so-called tender years of early manhood.
“We are
struggles that breathe and work for a living”, said an old man he once met on a
chance occasion on a park bench in the inner-city park.
I think the
old man meant in the twilight of his years that the weakness, imperfections and
pains of humanity are universal, no matter who we are.
He would go
from being a man of strong inner convictions –wheeling and opening doors for
semi-crippled old ladies- to a man of deep doubt and inner corrosion (when he
would become the cripple and he would need a carer himself)
When he
downed his pills –into a state of social catatonia- the alcoholic, the gambler
and the heroin addict would each simultaneously be doing the same –the addicts
would weep while they gorged and lost themselves in the moment.
One day,
when the sex addict was leaving his house, he happened to meet the alcoholic
next door, who happened to be locking the front door at the same time.
The faces
that exchanged were somewhat stripped of their glow and beauty. These faces
were shaken and their demeanour was somewhat tightened by a static sense of
anxiety.
“Morning”
“Morning”,
said each man to each other.
“The
flowers are certainly blooming well, aren’t they?”
“Yes,
summer has finally arrived, after a hard winter.”
“Damn it
was hard winter.”
I know what
you mean! Hiccup”
The
alcoholic himself had once been a concert pianist, talented and with a
wide-open future ahead of him. The sex addict had once been a novelist with a
wide-open future like his neighbour –but he like his neighbour had never known
love and when the wounds of love came around to take his life, he capitulated
to the fears that took him day and night. The gambler was once the heir to an
estate left in equity as a legacy by his parental guardians. He as he stated,
“sold his wife” for the casinos of Las Vegas, the betting shops and the way of
the world. He said he loved her more than anything in the world. I asked him
“why?” and he said, “People used to say to me that I was perfect and that I was
a great man. I couldn’t take the compliments, and once I started gambling for
the costs of my mortgage, I couldn’t stop! I put my entire life on the line and
the fears within me took hold.”
Life is
long for some and in time a lion will become a lamb and it takes time for the
strong to be weak, at the wrong time and the wrong place.
Labels: short story
