Rehash and Relax, Another Tale of Gusty and his Starry Gaze

I don't know his name, but I've known him through comfortable eye contact for about three years now. It's a 'smile and nod' relationship with a little something extra. As if we were pretending not to know each other. I've spoken to him enough to lose his name in a thick brush of accent and to learn he turned up here from India years back, to look for a better life. I know him from dumpster diving in the daytime.

Today was something very new.

I opened my hatchback to pick up a painting I had put together on glass. The glass was hot from the stay in the car, but I lifted and headed into work, because they all wanted to see it. As I approached the doors I saw his skinny legs like tree trunks growing from the dumpster. I laughed. When the air conditioning met the glass in my hands, it instantly shattered, leaving my hands full of slivered glass and blood. They all looked at me with that, "this kid can't catch a break lately" look, and all I could do was smile. At this point, these things are very funny to me. Keep the punches coming. I'm a masochist.

I washed my bloody hands and wrapped gauze around them to soak the spills. Pulled out the shards, headed to Register for the end of my shift.

He's over at Petco now, collecting bottles and trying to make conversation with the pretentious white folk in the Lexus. My attention drifts from my wounds to his attempts at tête-à-tête, and directly to the old woman buying Soy milk.

She looked at my hands, reached out and held them. The wrinkles under her eyes, like power lines. I imagined birds resting on them. "You are young, you will heal. I just hope I can finish the food I buy before I die", she says as she looks past me, over my shoulder. She lures me in with a finger curl and whispers in my ear, "St Peter is knocking on my door. I'll be with him very soon".

I drop my elbows to the counter with comfort and sift through her change for her. I'm photo-introduced to her four grandchildren and her poorly organized purse, and we discuss the fleeting options of hope and health. And she appreciates my smile and good intentions. She tells me their aren't many like me, she can see it in my eyes. My line disperses in frustration as we hugged like old friends. I helped her to her car, turned down a dollar tip, and my attention drifts to my Indian friend who's name I don't know. He's watching and smiling. He knows.

I walked up to his beaming smile and we walked together naturally, with a connection and expectation I cannot translate to words, and we headed to the back of the store. We had just bagged up bananas, bread and OJ, so I went in and took enough for the two of us. We sat in silence and broke bread and soaked in the sun. I went back inside, punched out and walked away. I heard the sound of cans dragging on pavement and thought of a car with "Just Married" written on it, dragging aluminum over cobblestone.

All day I had been greasing my palms with my forehead, now leaving it quite crimson. Exhaustion struck. Life in general made my knees shaky and I sat on the curb. On the warm Shrewsbury pavement, I slept in the warm luminosity. The ubiquitous feeling that life is beautiful and tragic took hold of my joints and told them it was quitting time. The moment was a bona fide masterpiece.

The sunlight oversaturated the license plate as I awoke in time to see the car strike the cat. The feline was struck but not run over, and as my blurry eyes reminded me of where I fell asleep, my weary legs told me it was time to punch back in. My Indian friend was across the lot, but saw the hit and run, and he ran.

The feline saw the gutter as womb, and crawled onto it's side hoping to find an answer.

I picked the cat up, ignoring the wounds, the germs. Ignoring them to hold the animal in time for it to die in my arms. It looked up at me, and then the little guy died. That moment is frozen. I think of the old woman, the dreamer by my side, the driver who fled the scene. I wonder what he had for lunch, what he was listening to in the car. I wonder if the woman will die with the quickness of the cat, and if the painting breaking was just a metaphor. The dried blood. The bread.

All this death, all this life. All the moments where the two meet. Existence, it has no pyramid of value. To exist is to exist, whether you are in a Mercedes or a dumpster.

He looked at me with compassion and took the dead being from my grasp.

We dug a hole together in the shade of the trees, language barrier in place, and held a funeral with Jim Beam and crusts of bread. I named the cat "Jack", because the author is always on my mind, and couldn't help thinking I was burying the old woman at the register. My grandfather. Myself.

We collapsed to our knees and prayers from India were thrown into the breeze. I cried with a man who came looking for a better life. He realized, like we all do, that there is only life. There is no better or worse. It's the myth of "meant to be".