Justice: Subsection 1.0

I was sitting at the mostly empty bar on Haggins alone one day during the heavy rains we were having late one summer, halfheartedly swilling on an ale I knew the bartender had cut with shit pilsner like the underhanded miser he is as I thought about odds and ends like what I was going to do with my boy who was plunging into the depths of teen nihilism and incivility with what seemed almost conscious malice and what I was going to tell the neighbor woman to whom I'd pledged an overly optimistic sum for a cancer walk she was doing when she had finally walked her miles and came round to collect, not to mention the other problems that would not go away like the bloody back taxes owed to every conceivable fiscal authority and all the financial loose ends that once discovered would put me out of a home, out of a home when the chickens came home to roost, of that there could be no doubt, they were facts as plain as the froth on the beer under my chin and I was considering them to no discernible practical end between my automaton sips when an older fellow of I'd say about sixty settled into a stool two seats down from mine.

Now when a bar is pretty much empty and a fellow sits down within, what would you call it, palavering distance of one of the patrons--when that happens I'd be inclined to think that that fellow, if not actively seeking conversation, inclines at least ever so slightly toward the positive side of perfect indifference to being engaged in one. Wouldn't you say?

After a moment I looked up from the swill that you'd be at pains to distinguish from the murky floods coursing through the gutters just outside the bar and asked the older fellow what he thought.

What do I think?
Yes. In a general sort of way. It's an open question.

He wore a heavy unkempt beard of the kind associated with the sea or with solitude, but you could tell that the face beneath was angular and somehow hollowed with the years. His arms were hairy and lean, almost fleshless. His eyes gazed at me flatly, for a long time, as the question completed its transit from the air to his ears and through the apparently vast conduits in his mind to the chamber that would hear it, weigh it, and either furnish it with an answer or reject it out of hand.

I don't think you want to know what I think, Sir, he said at last, smiling very slightly. Now if you don't mind.

He swung away from me and flagged down the barman for a cognac. It was set before him. He paid, then collapsed within himself to preside over the beverage like some vulturous sovereign. I was looking at him for something like five minutes, but he seemed aware of nothing but the cognac, his hand, and the space between them. I had an urge to prod him, to roust him from whatever stupor he sought, but in the end I withdrew back to the microcosm of my own beer, my own Catatonia. There was the matter of the lawn now that I could no longer afford the modestly priced service provided by the Jensen boy, that letter I had been meaning to send to my grandmother who by some trick of cellular metabolism was still alive in which I wanted to thank her, simply thank her for the gift of fortitude in having been able to live for so long, and also to remind her of some of the little trips we'd gone on when grandpa grew sick and it was she who decided where we would drive, always odd places like the dairy with the largest cheese wheel, the birthplaces of famous cooks and cooking personalities, parks with funny names, things like that, not to mention the delicate matter--to be included in the letter that it--of who she meant to inherit grandpa's rifle collection, which in turn got me thinking between one sip and the next of the possibility of taking my boy out into the country on a hunting trip as a means of connecting with him by teaching him something, in this case as essential as the disposal of another creature's life. I remembered how my father had taught me the patience to wait for the perfect moment, to gauge and anticipate the wind.

You want to know what I think, eh? It was the old man. I turned to him.
Well. Only if you do. I mean if you've come around.
You know, a man does want to talk. I mean it makes it all a lot easier. But it's hard to know if someone will understand. I mean if they have the imagination and the decency it takes. I've been going over some memories, to tell you the truth. Strange and sad memories. And I'd like to think you're a man who might understand if I were to confide in you, you look like a good enough fellow. But what's in a face right?

He lifted his glass and drew on it long and thoughtfully. I waited.

Let me ask you something, he said. And I'm sorry to put you through hoops like this, but there's something I'd like to know about you.
Okay. Like what? My name's---
No need for names, he cut me off. It's better that way.
Okay.
If you don't mind, I'd like you to tell me about the strangest thing you've ever seen.
I looked at him. It was a difficult question. I didn't know what to make of it. I mean I had been around for forty years and more, surely I'd seen some strange things. But now that I was on the spot.
Take your time, he said.
I smiled at him, awkwardly I'm sure, and lifted my nearly empty glass to my lips in lubrication. I thought.
Another round? It was the bartender, bleary and meek. I nodded.
All right, I said, leaning halfway into the space between us. Maybe this isn't what you were looking for...
Go on.
This was a long time ago. I was basically still a kid. Must have been my first or second year of college, back in Wisconsin. My girlfriend and I were walking home from a party late one night in the rain. A long walk. It was falling hard enough so that it made that tearing sound on the asphalt, but the night was warm and we were drunk anyway. Suddenly she gives a tug on my sleeve. What's that? She's pointing down the road a ways, off it, past a clearing. There was a glow sort of dancing up and down the sky and we hurried down to look at it. It turned out to be a barn on fire, just burning like I'd never seen anything burn before. I could see cows roaming around the pasture in confusion. The damndest thing was that we couldn't hear it for the rain. All we could hear was the rain and this faint hissing. As if only one of the things were real. I don't know if that makes any sense.
The old man was looking at me with interest. A glow had crested onto his cheeks above the beard and his eyes were illuminated with something like engagement.
Hell. Raining and burning to beat the band both.
He smiled, still looking at me intently, his smile fading into uncertainty as the seconds passed.
But in the final reckoning it's not very strange, is it? I mean wood burns, rain falls, sometimes they coincide. I'll allow it must have been peculiar not to hear it for the rain.
I nodded, waiting for him to go on. Then I remembered something. Something salvaged from the scrapyard at memory's edge, consigned there in the long ago as a matter of practicality.
There was something else, I said. Something better.
The man's brows crept up his dessicated scalp. He glassed me over the rim of his beverage.
I've never told a soul this before. I don't know why I'm telling you of all people. Maybe because I'm never going to see you again. This was also a long time ago. I was a young man and I had a summer to myself in the mountains. Real mountains, really to myself. A privilege in other words. One day I was out kind of patrolling the slope above where I lived with my rifle. Just looking around, hoping maybe to get a shot off at a rabbit. Out of the corner of my eye I see some movement up among the branches. It's a squirrel, has to be, I thought. I ducked behind a tree and waited.
I finished my beer and looked down at the bar, unsure how to go on.
Go on, the man said. Unburden yourself.
Well...all right, I'll get straight to the point. I shot the squirrel a few minutes later. Nice big one. I got my knife out to dress it, like you do. I spilled the guts and what not, then I dug through the diaphragm, you know. Hooked my finger around the cardiovascular system and gave a tug. Do you know what I saw? The fucking heart was artificial. A fucking electromechanical pump with a battery and wires and tubes and everything. May a bolt of lightning strike me where I sit right fucking here if it wasn't so.
The man smiled mildly, never taking his eyes from me. Then he raised his glass and drank, very quickly, as if there were no time to lose. The mirth was gone from his face when he set the glass down.
Now you're talking. Whether I believe it or not is another question. But I think you may be worth the telling, my friend. The strangest thing I ever saw wasn't a thing, really. And I didn't really see it either. It was something that happened when I was a young man living with my friends. I suppose the arrangement we had was what you would call a commune. We were all escaping something, trying to forget something, trying to reinvent ourselves, trying to be healthy and fair and moral. Hippies but with a good deal of seriousness if you see what I mean. It wasn't a word we used very often, but I guess the truth is that we were revolutionaries in our way. I guess that's strange enough to hear or remember in itself these days, but what happened back then was, it was, I still don't know what to think of it.
I inclined my head in interest, motioning discretely to the barman for another beer.