Heavily Into Decency

In the late spring of 1979 I was about to conclude my employment as a clerk with an exports trader in midtown Manhattan.  The fact that my boss was also my uncle made for some emotional hubbub and discomfort as I disengaged from a job that did not suit my temperament, but which, regarding its offering, my acceptance and labors there for two and a half years, required some expression of gratitude. Past my mid twenties, familial concern for the direction of my life was a chief factor in proposing this opportunity. It took many years for me to fully comprehend and to appreciate the many gifts that I have received from friends as well as relatives. This job had been one of those gifts.  Am sure that there are more, perhaps many more, kindnesses and deeds, as well as good wishes, even prayers, that I have been the beneficiary of through the more than six decades of my life. My uncle, a shy and private man, was rather scrupulous in avoiding any probing of my emotional life and it was hard to glean any precise understanding of his opinion of my decision and of my future. Still, it was clear that he wished me well and the forward looking philosophy of life that he embraced, rubbed off on me, or so I hoped.

It happened about this time, during the kind of spring weather in New York that was so delicious in its mild loveliness, that one cherished it all the more, being most aware of its fragility as well as relative rarity. I met, during a lunch hour on the steps of the main post office on Eighth avenue, an old pal from a decade past.  It had been the summer after our graduation from high school and my classmate, Nicholas Xerxes informed me then that he was heading to Yasgur's Farm with his girlfriend and his old Spanish guitar. "Ya got wheels?" were the last words I yelled to him from across the avenue hard by our school's handball courts. "Man, we're gonna fly!" Nick winked with that irresistible smile that charmed us all, not just the multitudinous and pulchritudinous gals that so often flocked to and remained in close proximity to his manly Mediterranean physique.  He was always a happy and yet mysterious lad, sometimes suddenly lost in thought when a nano second before he had been shining his "little light" on one and all.  But Nick's grin did not fade on this particular occasion as he waved a quick farewell that August morning while beaming broadly and with a certain singular sunniness that was his alone.  It was the last time I would see him until nearly ten summers later here under the famed edifice's inscription with the immortal words of a proud American institution: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from their swift completion of their appointed rounds." Nicholas was now more than just ten years older.  He was different in demeanor and there was an unmistakable infirmity of his body that caused me to consciously bend every effort to seem to not notice. "Hey Nick!" I greeted him warmly, masquerading my concern as intense affection for shared old times. "What have you been up to?" I asked, hoping he'd ignore my less than innocent banality. He had never been morosely self-absorbed and even now he was not indulging in such; it was just that he always had a sense of truth about him and didn't like to play the usual societal games. "Hey man, I've got brain damage. Remember the guy who fell off a van's roof at Woodstock while dancing during Jimmy Hendrix's set?" "I heard about it…." "Yeah, that was me." "Gee, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was you. I don't know what to say….." "Ah, don't worry about it. See this cane?  See these biceps? Not atrophied yet. Remember Angela? Married the girl. We made two baby girls. Hey, what are you doing these days?" "Well, I was working in export, but I…" "Wait, don't tell me. You quit. right?""How'd you know?" "I can read a face better than I used to be able to read a chick's mind! Look, forget about it.  I just got one question for you." "You want to know if Vicky Todos ever married Mr. Briggs, our senior year history teacher?" I interrupted. "No! Not that! What a memory. But did she? Forget it.  Just got one question. Are you finally heavily into Led Zeppelin yet?" I frowned and wondered anew about his cognitive powers. "I'm kidding man! You were more a Peter and Gordon and Donovan type of fan. No seriously man, I want to know, what I really want to know is, are you heavily into decency?" "Say, Nick, what do you mean? What the hell are ya talkin' about?" He steadied himself on his walking stick and a flash of that old smile, only slightly marred by his now crooked lips and two missing teeth, favored me with a certain peace that he clearly was gladdened to share. "Hey, Rus, I mean are you really, are you really heavily into decency? Come on, I mean, do you do the right things? Do you open your mouth when you're supposed to? Do you shut it when you should? Do you listen to some boring guy, like me for instance, just because you can see that he has something he's gotta get out? Did you let that old gal go in front of you in the supermarket checkout?  You know, the one with the one item who then magically has got four others when you let her in, but her clothes are so ragged and she's ten times more crippled than me? Did you ever walk your neighbor's dog when he couldn't do it because of some emergency or somethin'? I don't know Rus, but ever since my brains got scrambled, I've had time to really think. Crazy when you think about it, now that the noodle is shot I'm giving it more of a workout than ever before. I gotta climb these steps now. Doc says it's a good idea. Gotta mail this letter to Cyprus too. Say, 'keep punching.' I remember that autograph your father's friend got for you. It was a photo of Joe Frazier and he signed it like that." "You still hang out in Astoria?" I asked. "Well, yeah, my folks are still there. See them almost every weekend." "Let's meet at the Neptune sometime, okay?" I suggested. "Ya mean 'let's do lunch'? Hell, I ain't  no stuffy Manhattan guy with a suitcase and stopwatch. Make a definite date and let's talk old times with no rush." "You're on. Saturday after next. 2 o'clock. I'll bring the yearbook." He smiled again, nodded, stuck out his big hairy arm and extended that once steady hand and shook mine trying to match his grip of yesteryear. But I could tell the difference.  He ascended more steps and I went back to my uncle's office.

On that Saturday I arrived at the Neptune one minute before two and I realized that I was looking forward to seeing Nicholas, not so much to further satisfy my curiosity about his accident and health, but to share more stories of our youth and perhaps, somehow, resurrect some remnants of them. The diner's air conditioning felt good. There remained a full week to June, but the solstice had signaled, more punctually than my arrival for the luncheon, the start of summer in all its blazing eggs-frying-on-the-sidewalk glory. "Hmm", the image had awakened and hydrated a slumbering, shriveled memory: those frosty days of hot coffee and fried egg sandwiches at the corner deli outside of school before the first morning class. Who the hell worried about triglycerides then? Were it not for a jar of hair pomade, some yellow goo labeled precisely "Cholesterol" that was on our bathroom shelf for years, I'd never have even known of the word's existence back then. The iced coffee looked good and I ordered a tall one and suddenly thought of Mr. Bartlett and his encouraging words on Commencement Day. The word leaked out back then that he was dying. Speculation raged but we never learned for sure what was killing him.  Yet every day, especially this last one of the term, he struggled to stand erect while his flushed cheeks and shuddering lungs forever betrayed his valiant effort to remain a "cool" teacher who didn't "sweat" the small stuff while he offered '"tough love" to each one of us. The sorrowful facts were that his clammy skin and the constant battle of his "stuttering" body "language" against his own unceasing dissipation were as painful to pretend to ignore as they were to see. He never returned to school having died that summer. Guess that Nicholas reminded me of him, though his zest for life seemed somehow even greater now than then. I determined to not pry, but would match my questions to his openess. His natural ways seemed likely to not inhibit me and I began to realize that my own fears of illness, death and destruction were the main stumbling blocks to communication. "More coffee?" the burly Greek waiter enquired as he sliced through the fog of my reverie. "Uh, yes. Yes, thank you. Easy on the ice, please." I drained this tall glass quite soon after he brought it and strangely, my appetite had abandoned me with all the succulent dishes carefully described on the menu not doing anything for my usually easily stimulated salivary glands.  I lingered momentarily over a description of a gyro deluxe special with extra tatzhiki sauce, but I couldn't concentrate. I thought of ordering a third iced coffee and glanced at my old Fortis wristwatch, the one my Dad brought home from the war, a souvenir gathered from a captured Wehrmacht soldier. It was almost twenty minutes past two. I became conscious of my impatience and felt that a third visit from my server would require at least bringing up the subject of ordering despite what was a still fairly empty restaurant. I then remembered the yearbook in my battered valise and an impulse to look for Nicholas' photo was probably a magical wish for him to appear. There he was, page 42: young, cocky but with that reflective look that so often took him far away from all of us until a loud series of repetitions of "Earth to Nick!" broke his reverie.  A noise at the diner's side entrance snapped my head around and I started to rise as a young hunched over guy walked through, but he erected himself quickly, completing the lighting of a small panatella and I saw in a twinkling that he was not Nicholas.

I decided to order. I was hungry now and Nick was never fussy about such things or quick to take offense. Besides, he was late, going on three quarters of an hour. I foolishly hadn't taken his phone number and cell phones did not yet exist in this waning era of the Carter administration. But why fret? The Manhattan clam chowder was particularly good and did not cause a lesion on the roof of my mouth thanks to a conscientious chef or perhaps to just a "luck of the ladling" or even the work of the air conditioner. Soon the souvlaki special arrived and I forgot my impatience and irritation completely as my also newly arrived hunger and the animal pleasures of ingesting and imbibing stifled any concerns. The thick sealed window panes and the view they afforded of the B.M.T. elevated subway above the usual congestion of the complicated intersection of Astoria boulevard, 31st street and the recessed Grand Central parkway parallel to the boulevard, were happily a kind of wildlife circus that I could enjoy behind the safety of said windows and in the coolness of this cozy booth with nearly all of the scene's sounds and certainly its grime and exhaust odors far removed from my present comfort zone of low humidity and delectable "vittles". As I pondered again that third iced coffee, the whine of an ambulance's siren penetrated the glass of those portals on the urban landscape before me and I was surprised that I had even noticed it, considering my years as a taxi driver negotiating tons of sheet metal so routinely and frequently through the usual din of this town's choked byways. I guessed that my antennae were sensitized now, despite my craving for food and peace as well as quiet. Time moved not. I noticed an ant on my table, speedily crawling in the direction of the sugar bowl. Though I had never been the kind of kid who incinerated little critters like this one with a magnifying glass and the aid of old Sol's rays, the usual impulse to literally rub out this living thing did not occur. Something stopped me from flattening it with my hand. A minute or so later my waiter showed his continued forbearance towards me as a cluster of customers and then a second came in from the sweltering air. There was room for all though without invading my booth, and my thoughts narrowed as I began to finally worry only about Nick. Maybe he forgot the date. His brain was scrambled after all. Maybe he really didn't want to see me. This I quickly discounted as a vestigial memory of a high school insecurity of not being "in with the 'in' crowd." I remembered quickly too how Nick never walled himself off from anyone he liked and that no clique ever ruled his social behavior. I was starting to miss him in a strange way now.

Dessert was the topic at this point, as the waiter politely but dutifully tried to encourage progress and movement. I hesitated for a moment. Then I reluctantly but emphatically asked for a dish of rice pudding, pretending to be the master of events. I knew that Nick was not coming. I don't know why, but I did. Most typically, I worry, wonder, imagine scenarios and then stick to the drudgery of my inclination to ponder. My confidence in an explanation that would satisfy and "solve" the unknown of a situation is turned over and over in my mind. In short, I always insist on believing in a rational, positive outcome that would be simple, logical and devoid of drama once it was "discovered." But the problem remained. How to contact Nicholas? I never had his parents' address or number though I vaguely knew where they lived. A mutual friend from '68 might still be in the area, but I didn't have his number either. It was time to go home.

Sunday was a busy day. Church, dinner with relatives on Long Island and some final paperwork I had promised for some bonus pay at the export firm rounded out the supposed "day of rest". I delivered these documents: invoices and purchase orders to my uncle early Monday morning. We shook hands for the last time as employer and employee. As I started to leave he handed me a newspaper, a tabloid, the kind that he would never read. "What's this?" I asked. "Oh, Daily News salesman got access to the building; it's a free sample. Maybe your Mom would like to read it." "Oh, she reads the Post, but thanks, I'd like to read it. Haven't seen a Jimmy Breslin column for a long time." I grabbed the 'E' train and headed home.

Well, Nicholas made the papers again after almost ten years. This time I saw his name. This time there would be no next time. It was a truck…an out of control one at one fifteen in the afternoon on Saturday on the westside, just a block or so from his apartment. The headline read "Hero Saves Mother and Child". Nicholas saw the deadly missile on wheels and he pushed the woman and her baby in its stroller out of the big van's path. It was that simple. There was no time to do anything else…no time to save himself. There was no time to contrive to attain glory. There was just instinct about the right thing to do and perhaps an infinitesimal moment of gladness that he was able to do it. Then, prayerfully (but now uselessly) there was not too much else that he was aware of. The photo adjacent to the article, no doubt the envy of shutterbugs long on wishes for the kudos flowing from such an iconic shot and short on the compassion and humanity depicted, was that of the mother clutching her dazed tot while caressing the head of the inconsolable truck driver, kneeling and lost. The woman was "heavily into decency"; she had passed on Nick's legacy.