The City of Old Men

A Fable

Dear Scrooge,

I hardly get out of bed anymore, and when I do I can’t walk. I hate the walker, so I crawl around on my hands and knees. It’s safer, anyway, but hard on my knees. I hardly eat anymore. I don’t have an appetite. Randy (I’ll get to him in a minute) used to take me to the grocery store and wheel me around in a wheelchair and ask me what I wanted. I used to play along and point to things, and Randy would put them in the shopping cart. But over time I lost interest. I’d just say, “You decide.” It didn’t matter what he picked, because I was never hungry anyway. Randy forces me to eat something. It was part of his job, so it isn’t abusive. It keeps me alive, anyway, but without gusto. Unlike me, Randy is young, strong and full of life. I don’t know why he puts up with me. The pay isn’t very good.

Do you ever hear voices? Sometimes I hear a voice that tells me to stay in bed and not get up, to just lie there until I die. Do you ever hear a voice like that?

If you are able (from one old geezer to another), please come up some time for a visit. I feel so lonely and isolated sometimes, since Millie passed away.

I’d like to have a těte-a-těte— in other words, not phone, not letter— in person. We could meet at Audrey’s on the main drag up here. You know Audrey’s. Lunch, coffee afterwards. Come up, while you still can, and while I still can get out. I promise I’ll get there. I’m older than you are, so you don’t have an excuse.

Your friend,

Methuselah

They were old friends in the helping profession. But there comes a time when you can’t help yourself, so you can’t help others, either. But you still try. It’s hard to let go.

Eben (Ebenezer) and Methuselah tried to help each other. It was tough going, because they lived apart in separate cities, although not that far away. Methuselah lived in Santa Rosa. He read Balzac in the original French. He thought Balzac was everything. Eben lived in Point Richmond in a condo that had a view of the bay and of a large green storage tank of some kind— maybe water, maybe oil, he didn’t know. He liked to watch the birds roosting on it. The guano didn’t bother him much. The birds were noisy and full of life. He liked that.

One day, someone— a repairman of some kind— got into the condo through the locked gate and into the garage and stole his car. Eben didn’t mind the car so much, but he had an old straw hat in there that he was very fond of. He eventually got the car back but not the hat, so he wasn’t happy. Some things you just get attached to over time, even though they wear out. You don’t want to throw them away or get a new one, like an old coat or a comfortable pair of shoes. He liked to tell Methuselah about these things, because Methuselah would listen, unlike his wife.

Old men can be tedious at times. They live too much in the past, although living there serves a purpose, when you get older. Sometimes old men tell the same story over and over, because they forgot they had told it before. It’s like mental furniture, or a comfortable old coat. You don’t want to get rid of it. The story was funny the first time, so why not tell it again, even though it’s not funny anymore? Methuselah would understand.

Methuselah was even older. His parents named him Methuselah, because they read the Bible and liked the name. But Methuselah wasn’t religious like his parents. It was a funny name to give a kid.

Once Methuselah said to Eben, on the phone, “Maybe you should get yourself a man like Randy, my valet.” Randy wasn’t really a valet, but Methuselah like to refer to him as one, as a kind of joke. The joke wasn’t funny, but he said it anyway.

Methuselah suspected that Randy was ripping him off in small ways, but he couldn’t prove it. He worried that he was becoming too dependent on his man— not just to cook for him and force him to eat, but in other ways, too. When he couldn’t find something, he suspected that maybe Randy had taken it, even if it was something of little value. He began hiding things, but then he forgot where he put them. Maybe he was just getting paranoid. The world wasn’t as friendly as it used to be, in some ways.

When he got older, Eben gave up certain things, like going to the barbershop. He didn’t have much hair anymore, so he figured, what’s the point? He could cut it easily himself, he thought, with an electric razor. The only problem was cutting the hair on the back of his head and on his neck, since he couldn’t see that part of the job. He worried that it looked funny back there, and other people could see the mess. But looking perfect was just one of those things he had given up. If he was worried, he could wear a turtleneck. It covered up the turkey waddle, too. But that strategy didn’t work very well when the weather was warm.

Eben still saw patients. But they had begun drifting away, until only one was left. You’re not supposed to expect a patient to be loyal. It’s not supposed to work that way. You’re not supposed to project, onto a younger man, your longing for the son you never had. Or if you do, you’re supposed to be conscious of it, so that it doesn’t get in the way of the therapy. But sometimes it does anyway. It’s part of the process, part of the humiliation, part of what happens to your ego. It’s supposed to be transformative in the long run, but it still hurts.

Eben had difficulty getting to the office and difficulty when he was there. He suspected that sometimes he fell asleep during a session, but he wasn’t sure. Patients sometimes droned on for a long time, talking about the same thing they had talked about before. Eben knew he was too old for the job; he knew he should hang it up. But he was afraid. He was afraid to give up the routine, to give up the life he had led for so many years. He was afraid he’d wind up crawling around the house on his hands and knees like his friend Methuselah.

His daughters had tried to make him hang it up. They took him once to an old-folks home up in Santa Rosa, to get him used to the idea of living there, where he would have help. At the time, he wasn’t sure where they were taking him. Maybe they had told him, but he didn’t understand. Maybe he just went along because he didn’t want to get into an argument with them again. He’d get a discount, they told him, because he was a war veteran— as if a discount would make that pill easier to swallow— the pill of losing his freedom and going to live with a lot of people he didn’t know.

When the tour of the grounds and facilities was over, he listened to a presentation about life at the Home. The speaker asked newcomers to introduce themselves. When it was his turn, he stated his name and blurted out, “Me and Patton won the war.”

People laughed, as he knew they would, in a patronizing sort of way— the way young people laugh at old people when old folks behave like children. Or the way a waitress will talk to you in a loud voice, even though you can hear her perfectly well.

But it didn’t matter, the way they talked. He knew he had told a lie. He had gone to Europe in the last wave of soldiers and hadn’t been in combat. He wasn’t with Patton or at the Battle of the Bulge. He had lied, just as his own father had lied when he used to talk about his war wound. His father knew perfectly well that he’d accidentally shot himself in the leg one day, when he pulled his rifle off the bunk, where he’d left it. Nobody wants to admit that they hadn’t really helped to win the war.

Now he was losing another war. He knew they had already won. His daughters had won; the Home for Aged Veterans had won. They had already reduced him to a babbling old man who told stories even he didn’t believe.

But he fought on anyway. He resented the fact that his daughters were trying to put him in storage like excess furniture. “After all I did for them,” he would say.

Once he got lost on his way to visit one of them and wound up on a military base. The MPs stopped him. He saw a stroboscopic red light flashing from somewhere. He was already confused, because he had lost his way. The flashing light just made it worse. He almost ran off the road but managed to stop, although the car wasn’t all the way on the shoulder. An MP came up and tapped on the window next to him. For a moment, he couldn’t find the switch to lower it. A different window went down. Finally he found the right switch. When the MP asked for his registration certificate, he couldn’t find his documents. When he tried to show his driver’s license to the officer, the contents of his wallet spilled out into the footwell.

The MPs didn’t arrest him but wouldn’t let him go, either. They called his daughter, who came to get him. She was in a huff because he was late arriving, and she had appointments that day. The MPs said he shouldn’t be driving a car, if he often got lost on his way. After all I’ve done for her, she’ll take my side, he thought. But she didn’t. She was angry with him and sided with the MPs. He felt betrayed; he felt humiliated. But what could he do? Afterwards, he kept driving anyway.

---

If your name is Ebenezer, thought Eben, on his way to Santa Rosa, you’re supposed to change in some way when you get older. You’re supposed to see the light. You’ve seen a headstone with your name on it; and you know you should change before it’s too late, like Scrooge did. The ghosts had given Scrooge one more chance; and he had taken advantage of it.

The drive up was pleasant, if monotonous. He began to feel sleepy, like the cows he saw on the hillsides as they grazed. The hum of the motor dulled his senses further. He opened a window to let in some bracing air, but the noise of traffic also came in, so he shut it again.

At least he knew the way. He had been to Audrey’s Café before and had studied the route ahead of time, just to make sure he could get there again.

But he hadn’t counted on the road construction.

When he got close to the usual exit that would take him into the town, he began to see signs directing drivers to an alternate route. He passed a lot of directional arrows and barricades and big square- and diamond-shaped orange signs. He was tempted to ignore the signs and drive around the barricades, so he wouldn’t have to deviate from his route to the café. But instead he followed the directions and took a different exit. At the intersection, the detour signs took him into a rural area he’d never seen before. He saw more cows, grazing in damp green fields. He passed through a place that looked like a ghost town. A large painted sign on an old red brick building said “HATCHERY.”

Eben continued to follow the detour signs, shaped like arrows. He had seen other cars at first, but now he didn’t see any. The detour signs were few and far between. Who had put them there, he wondered, and why hadn’t they put out more of them? The distance between the signs was causing him anxiety. He felt relieved when he finally saw another one. Then he didn't see one for a long time. Maybe he had missed a turn.

The rural road he was on now passed through agricultural land. The fields lay fallow. In the distance, he could see farmhouses, barns and silos, but no people. No one was working in the fields. He thought about turning back and finding someone who could tell him how to get to Santa Rosa. Maybe he was just letting his anxiety get the better of him, he reasoned. Probably the next sign was just up the road. If he didn't find one, then he would turn around.

Eventually the road petered out. He felt bewildered, as if someone had tricked him. At any minute, a squad of MPs would arrive. Even more than the MPs, he feared that his daughters would find out that he had lost his way again.

Eben was beginning to turn around when he noticed the entrance to a private driveway. The driveway led to a white clapboard house and a barn. He decided to stop and get directions. Feeling like an intruder, he drove past the mailbox and up the gravel driveway and stopped in front of the house. It was an old two-story farmhouse with tall windows. The white paint was peeling off in places, exposing the bare wood.

Eben got out and knocked on the door. He waited a long time, but no one answered. He thought about turning the knob. The thought made him feel like a trespasser, even a thief or a murderer. But he wanted to get into the house. He imagined he’d find someone inside, perhaps an old man whose family had forgotten him there. Or maybe the old man had refused to leave, even though the farm had failed. He was a man like Harry R. Truman, who stayed in his house when Mt. St. Helens erupted. This man— the one in the old farmhouse— refused to leave, not because he was stubborn but because he could no longer adapt and didn’t want to try. The world had changed around him too many times, and this time he wouldn’t go along. He would just stay there in the old farmhouse with peeling paint, with the shades drawn, and rock himself in his old rocker. Maybe he had a cat to keep him company. Maybe, like Truman, he had a lot of cats.

Eben didn’t knock again. Instead he tried the door, feeling even more like a criminal. But the door was locked. He even thought about breaking in, breaking one of the windows so he could crawl inside like a thief and steal something, anything, as some sort of memento. The old man inside wouldn’t mind. He’d say, “You don’t have to steal it. You can have it.” The old man would invite him in for a powwow, maybe for a smoke or a shot of whiskey. They’d swap old war stories— not about the Battle of the Bulge or how they had won the war with Patton, but about growing up and the fights young men fight growing up, with fathers that don’t understand them and daughters that betray you.

As he stood there on the threshold, lost in thought, he felt a sort of tremor coming up from the ground. Looking up, Eben saw a plume of smoke and a fiery streak across the sky; and he knew, somehow, that his time was up. He knew he ought to run, but he also knew he couldn’t get away. What was coming was swift and relentless and would catch up with him no matter what.

Instead of running, he tried the door again, and this time it yielded, groaning softly on rusty hinges. He pushed it open.

Inside he saw an old man sitting resignedly in a rocking chair, rocking softly in a shaft of sunlight, with a cat curled up in his lap and a faint smile on his lips.

“Go back the way you came,” said the man. “I don’t want no company. And anyway, it ain’t your time yet . . ..”

---

Methuselah was still waiting patiently for him at Audrey’s.

“Randy dropped me off,” he said. “What took you so long?”

Eben wanted to tell his friend all about it— about how he got lost on the way to the restaurant and everything else that was distressing about being an old man. He knew his friend, Methuselah, would understand, because he was an old man, too. He, too, got lost sometimes.

Eben began spilling his old guts about it. He got so involved in his story that he almost forgot where he was or who he was with. He might’ve been anywhere, with anyone, secure in the knowledge that someone was listening finally, someone who understood.

When the waitress came over, he stopped talking and looked at his friend. Methuselah’s head was nodding. His eyes opened and closed, as if he might have fallen asleep.

The waitress refilled their coffee mugs. She had probably seen the back of his head and the way his razor had gone through his hair like an errant lawn mower. It didn’t seem to matter anymore, like it didn’t matter that his friend had fallen asleep.

Methuselah woke up briefly and picked at his food.

“You really should get yourself a valet,” he said.