The Long Happy Life of Taffy Slummings, part six

[Arroyos]

The Long Happy Life of Taffy Slummings, part six


“It’s a long story,” the burly man began as he adjusted his wire rim glasses, “but then most of them are, aren’t they?”

“You wrote a few, didn’t you?” Slummings asked. “I seem to remember one about you and your wife and an African safari and a lion, wasn’t it?”

“You remember that?” the burly man chuckled as he fiddled some more with this glasses. "Damnation!" he bellowed, as the frames snapped across the bridge and the two eye glasses ended up one in each hand of the burly man.

Slummings called the nurse away from her station and pointed out the burly man's broken glass frames. "Could we use some of your tape to put these back together for my guest?" The nurse pulled surgical tape from her uniform pocket and Slummings taped the two halves of the frames back together.

"Crude," the burly man said slipping the frames over his nose, "but functional."

Slummings returned the tape to the nurse with thanks, then said, "Excuse me for asking, but … aren’t you spozed to be dead?”

The burly man took a deep breath, expanding the size of his considerable chest, threw his head back and let out a laughing roar that had every patient, every nurse, and even the orderly who’d followed the burly man into the Men’s Ward cringing at the sound of it. Slummings winced, then whispered, “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Says who?” the burly man said and started to take another deep breath, but Slummings clutched his hand. 

“Don’t,” Slummings insisted. “They’ll send you to therapy.”

“Why? For laughing out loud?”

“They don’t like it. Any loud sounds. Makes them uncomfortable, I think.”

“Scared is what you mean. Bunch of lilly-livered lotus-suckers. They got no guts.”

“You wrote about that too, didn’t you? ‘Grace under fire,” that’s what you defined as guts, right?”

“Courage, amigo, courage is grace under pressure, I think that’s what I said, but who the hell knows. I said a lot of things, some I wish I hadn’t. Death focuses the mind wonderfully.”

Slummings nodded, wanting to say something profound, or interesting, or at the very least relevant, but nothing came to him. He just stared at his birthday guest. What a birthday! he thought. Then he remembered who it was that sat on his bed with him, and he blurted out, “Are you dead? I mean, you’re supposed to be.”

The burly man laughed again, without roaring, and put his hairy paw on Slummings’ shoulder. “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

“Twain!” Slummings chirped. “You’re quoting Twain, right? You admired him most among American writers.”

The burly man was taken aback. His hand came away from Slummings. “I’m not quoting anyone, except maybe myself. Certainly not Mark Twain.”

“But he’s credited with saying just that.”

“He never said it, take my word for it. Though he did once cable home from England that he had it on good authority that he was dead.” The burly man chuckled. “Witty old buzzard, our Sam.”

“So the rumors about you and the shotgun in Idaho in the Sixties, that was all some sort of exaggeration?”

“I’m here, ain’t I?” He slapped Slummings across the back. “I’m more likely to collapse and die on the 18th fairway in the middle of a game of golf.”

Slummings’ eyes got big, his mouth opened to say something, then closed slowly as he swallowed what he was about to say. The burly man grinned at him, so Slummings slapped him on the shoulder. “You just had to chuck that one at me, didn’t you?”

The burly man leaned back to roar again, remembered where he was, and muffled his laughter into something more like a guffaw, a chortle, a … chuckle. He winked at Slummings. “Death, my friend, is the great—”

“The great equalizer,” Slummings said, completing the quote.

“Oh, you’ve heard that one, eh?”

“It isn’t yours.”

“None of ‘em are, my boy, none of ‘em. We make it all up. All of it. But the key is to make it up so truly that later it happens that way. That’s the secret to art, to life, and to death. So,” the burly man stood up, “enjoy your birthday, you old fart you, and never turn your back on the bull.”

Before Slummings could ask what the hell that meant, the burly man strode the length of the Men’s Ward and banged his way through the double doors. As the doors swung in and back out, he was gone from sight. Only the sound of his boots on the long uphill hallway could be heard for a few moments, then nothing.

Slummings looked around the ward, but no one was watching him. It was as if … well, as if it had never happened, the birthday visit, his burly guest, the roaring laughter, the sudden and noisy departure. Nothing had changed. The nurse still sat in her station, the orderly spoke quietly with a patient, others slept or played checkers or read paperback novels. One, Slummings noticed, was reading The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories. Fitting, he thought, and left his bed to wander across the aisle to visit the man reading such a timely book. But before he could greet the reader, an orderly leaned in through the double doors and called out his name.

“Slummings?”

“Yes?”

“We’ve arranged your meeting.”

“My meeting?”

“With the patient you came to see? What’s his name?”

“Mayberry?”

“Yeah, him. He’s waiting for you in the courtyard.”

He’d almost forgotten why he’d come to this place, this hospital, this Hotel California—to talk to the man himself, the Arroyo GM, the long lost Mayberry.

“Coming,” he said, and bounded down the long, narrow aisle of the Men’s Ward.

[Sandgnats]

Please continue the epic story of Slummings - I love this Bob. Well done!

[Arroyos]

Please continue the epic story of Slummings - I love this Bob. Well done!

Thanks, RJ. You'll find my installments on the website. And more to come!

[Sandgnats]

Please continue the epic story of Slummings - I love this Bob. Well done!

Thanks, RJ. You'll find my installments on the website. And more to come!