The Spectator Bird

  The chances we take, getting born so accidentally.

  I turned the stopper handle and let the water start running out, and while the Jacuzzi roared on—it runs as long as the water level is above a certain mark—I put my distorted feet back into the jet. Halex rigidus, the X-ray man says, looking at my toe joints. Pretty soon Homo rigidus. Toes, ankles, knees, hips, fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders. And bald head, eroded stomach wall, numb-white finger ends. I am a God damned museum exhibit of deteriorations.

  The Jacuzzi, as the water dropped to the critical level, cut off, revived when my sloshing sent a wave against it, gave one suggestive ejaculation, and quit. That too. Hail and farewell.

  I stood up in the tub and toweled off, looking out the window. Linnets and golden-crowned sparrows were chasing one another off the bird feeder. The morning was crystalline and inviting, but I could see from the way the trees and shrubs blew that the wind was from the north, which meant it was cold.

  Dressed and sweatered, but in slippers, I wandered into the living room and dug out the Britannica and looked up rheumatoid arthritis. The unexamined disease is not worth having.

  It turns out to be a disease characterized by destructive changes in the joints, its origin unknown but presumed to be either micro-organisms attacking the joints directly or the absorption of toxins of other micro-organisms in other sites such as mouth or intestines. Injury often appears to be a determining factor, and any condition tending to lower the general health may be a predisposing cause.

  The acute or periarticular type, more common in women than in men, and making its onset between the ages of twenty and forty, appears not to concern me.

  The chronic or osteoarthritic type, whose onset comes between the ages of forty and sixty, and whose causes seem to be injury, general ill-health, and exposure to cold and wet (chalk one up for Césare), has features that I recognize. Pyorrhea alveolaris or decayed or deficient teeth practically always present. (Yes.) Onset chronic and generally polyarticular. (Yes.) Pain variable and may be slight throughout. (Speak for yourself, John.) Swelling of joints nodular in shape and practically confined to the joint itself. (Don’t know, have to look.) When the condition is polyarticular, usually a few large joints are affected, but none is immune. (That’s the thing to remember, none is immune.) When monoarticular the hip or knee most likely to be affected. (No monoarticulate I. Since injury seems to be Fate in these matters, it’s just as well I didn’t knee Ole Sieverud instead of kicking him.) The formation of new bone occurs and may cause great limitation or even ankylosis; when this occurs in the spine the condition known as “pokerback” results. (Be patient-that’s for later.) In the later stages the limitation of movement and muscular wasting may render the patient absolutely helpless but the condition is then often quiescent and painless. (God is kind.)

  Now about treatment: Early diagnosis essential, etc. General health, etc. In the acute stage the joints should be given complete rest in a good position and oil of wintergreen applied. (What’s a good position? What’s oil of wintergreen?) In the chronic forms and as the acute stage passes off, the joints should not be kept completely at rest, massage and passive movement followed later by active movement up to a moderate amount of exercise being desirable to counteract muscular wasting and contractures. Spa treatment, radiant heat, hot air baths, and electric treatment sometimes effective. Adhesions may have to be broken down forcibly under an anesthetic.

  Having no impulse to have any adhesions of mine broken down, with or without anesthetic, I resolved to accept counsel, submit to Ruth’s management, and earn gold stars. She would come home to find me taking care of myself.

  I found her infrared lamp in a closet and set it up so that as I sat reading with my feet on a hassock it would shine on my knees, ankles, and feet. The encyclopedia did not mention bourbon as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, either because the learned man who wrote the article did not deal in the obvious or because he wasn’t that learned after all. The Britannica used to be a British publication, and perhaps did not know about bourbon, an American invention. It probably spelled whiskey without an e. When treatment is indicated, I say pile it on. So I got a tall drink and set it at my side outside the radiance of the lamp, and sat down to a spell of healing, a man safely and comfortably in out of the cold.

  I had just about begun to enjoy looking after myself when the telephone rang.

  It was Edith Patterson, calling for Tom as she always does. He has trouble making his unvoiced whisper heard over the wire. She wanted to know if I had a shredder for making compost.

  Literally, I felt a thrill of pride for Tom. If you know the world is going to end tomorrow, plant a tree, that sort of thing. If he was going to garden, he wasn’t giving up. But I couldn’t help.

  “Damn,” I said. “I don’t. I’ve been going to get one for the last two years. If Tom wants one right away, I think he can rent one. But if he’ll wait a day till I can get around to buying one, he can break it in for me.”

  I had it wrong. “He doesn’t want one,” Edith said. “He’s got one. He won’t be using it for a while, and he thought a demon gardener like you might get some good out of it, with spring coming on. It grinds up everything, even good-sized twigs, and spits it out as the most perfect mulch. Could you use it?”

  Her voice over the telephone is extremely soft and pleasant. She sounded like a friendly neighbor trying to give away surplus zucchini. But my initial thrill of pride had already chilled, and I was uncertain. Should I accept the shredder as a gift, and thus make it clear I knew why he was giving it away, or did I pretend it was a loan that he would eventually want back? I said, hearty and cautious, “I certainly could use it, but I wouldn’t want to deprive Tom.”

  “It would just sit in the shed,” Edith said.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll take it, and gladly, on condition Tom will call me the minute he needs it, or the day before he needs it, so I can load it up and bring it back.”

  “It doesn’t need to be loaded. It’s got its own little trailer. If you’re going to be home, we’ll drop it off.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble. I can come for it as soon as Ruth gets back with the car.”

  “It’s no trouble. We’ll be coming right by.”

  She hung up, and I went back to the living room. The infrared lamp was shining on the hassock, where I had left it, and right in the middle of the cone of heat, practically smoking, was Catarrh. When I lifted him off it was like taking something out of the oven.

  “You poor old bugger,” I said. “Here, make yourself at home down here.” I put my feet up onto the hassock and folded Catarrh down on the rug close to it. But warm as the rug was, he didn’t like it. He sat up and eyed the hassock, and I could see in his mind, sluggish as an earthworm in adobe, the idea of jumping up on top of my feet. So I took him in my lap, and he settled down. He was bony, and his coat was dry and thin. Patting his scrawny shape, and thinking about Tom, I couldn’t get out of my mind certain words like “relinquish” and “divest.”

  In about twenty minutes I heard the car door slam, and hobbled into the bedroom and got into my shoes and put on a windbreaker over my sweater. The wind outside was cutting. The grass flattened under it, the globulous eucalyptus trees around the water tank turned inside out in a gust. Edith and Tom were both out of their car, working at the trailer hitch. She was as usual imperturbable in her shades and a vicuña coat. Tom shocked me, he had grown so thin in the three or four weeks since I had last seen him. He was pale, too, and slow in his movements as if afraid he might break something. And one odd touch. He was wearing an old baggy tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, but in its lapel buttonhole was the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. On the way to the scaffold, decorations will be worn.

  He straightened up between the car and the fire-red shredder on its trailer. “H‘morning ... H’Joe.” Having no vocal cords, he has to shape each word or short phrase separately and force it out on a hoarse blast of breath. ?
??Where do you... h‘want this... h’rig?”

  “Let’s unhitch it right there. The yard kid comes tomorrow, he can deal with it.”

  I saw Edith’s eyes focused on Tom’s hands, long, thin, and strengthless, trying to unscrew the lock knob on the hitch. “Here,” I said, “let me get that.”

  He paid no attention. After a good minute, using both hands, he got the knob loosened, and together we lifted the trailer’s tongue and pushed trailer and shredder back against the bank.

  “I’m going to enjoy that machine,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to try one.”

  “H‘it’s a ... hell of a good... h’machine,” Tom said. “H‘like a ... h’mechanized ... h‘mouth. But don’t put your... h’foot in it.”

  We laughed, standing in the chilly wind. He had none of the look around the eyes, at once purified and overeager and desperately attentive, that I have seen around the eyes of some who have got the word. He is my age, maybe a little younger. With his bony face and his elegant lankiness and his short haircut, he belongs to that type, academics and professionals generally, ectomorphs, who never cease to look boyish no matter how old or sick they get. Mystery. If I felt an uneasy adolescent peeking from behind my old-age make-up, as if I were a sixteen-year-old playing Uncle Vanya in the high school play, what did a Tom Patterson feel, knowing the play was almost over? Was the boyishness simply appearance, physiology, bony structure, or did some unknown boy or young man still operate in the internationally famous architect behind the death mask and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor?

  He stood in the wind regarding me mildly, a friendly and helpful neighbor. Behind him Edith’s dark glasses were watching him, not me. He said, “H‘Minnie says you had a ... h’distinguished guest the... h’other day.”

  “Yeah. Césare Rulli. Right in the middle of the downpour.”

  “Is he fun?” Edith said. “His books are pretty saucy.”

  “Saucy is the word. Yeah, I suppose he’s fun. If he hadn’t just popped out at us we might have had you over to meet him. Just as well not, though. He sort of complicated crisis for poor Ruthie.”

  “That’s what Minnie said. It must have been an Event.” The eyes moved obscurely behind the dark glasses, and were on Tom again. “Is Ruth down at the home now?”

  “Yes. Leading the lamentations at your absence.”

  “She doesn’t need me. She’s great, they love her.”

  “Her story is that they love you.”

  “I hope so. That’s one of the things I’m most pleased to have done in my whole life. Well. We’ve got things to do. Ready, Tommy?”

  “H’set.”

  “Oh, come in!” I said. “Have something to warm you up.”

  “Really, we’ve got to run. Give us a rain check?”

  “I’ll give you a season ticket. I guess we’ll see you tomorrow at Ben’s.”

  Tom was kinking himself into the car. Edith, opening the other door, turned her full face toward me, the lips still, the eyes hidden. They waved, smiling, from inside.

  “Thanks for that machine,” I said. “I’ll be king of the compost heap.”

  Casually waving, they drove off as if that red machine did not mean any of what we all knew it meant, as if we were just parting after a drink or a game of badminton.

  The shredder sat on its trailer. Temptation or obligation? I looked in the gas tank: full. I read the instructions that Tom had taped to the hopper. Nothing complicated. So I lifted the tongue and steered the trailer to the other edge of the drive and over the bank into the sunken area sheltered by woods, where I have a bed of herbs and things that will stand partial shade, and where I do my woodcutting.

  On the second yank of the lanyard, she started. I threw into the hopper some leaves and twigs, and they flew out the blower as coarse dust. A little rain, a little time, the intervention of some sow bugs and earthworms, some enzymes and soil bacteria, and they would be back to the stuff out of which we are all made and to which we all return. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Compost Shredder.

  Down there it was sheltered from the wind, and the sun had warmth in it. I got the wheelbarrow and some clippers and pruned the pyracantha bushes that deer had gnawed and broken, and threw the prunings into the shredder and watched them blow onto the heap. I got a little too interested in what I was doing, and the noise of the engine kept me from hearing the car on the hill. Ruth drove in and caught me before I could duck into the house: old Rheumatics himself, too achy to talk to the geriatric ward, out working in the yard without hat or gloves.

  “I don’t know!” she said, looking as if she might cry. “You complain about your joints and then you go and do exactly what you shouldn’t. Sometimes I get hopeless.”

  “Why get upset?” I said. “What are we saving me for?”

  “That’s all right for you to say. You don’t have to deal with yourself when you get achy and crabby. I have to.”

  “I’ll come in if I get to hurting.”

  “Oh yes! Yes! You mean you’ll stay out till you start hurting!”

  “Well, the Jacuzzi made me feel a lot better,” I said, not without cunning. “Then I took a good infrared treatment...”

  “You did? Without anybody telling you?”

  “All by myself. I was taking it when Tom and Edith came over with the shredder.”

  “Why did they bring that over here?”

  “They’re giving it to us.”

  “They’re what? Oh.” I could see comprehension darken in her eyes. Her scolding tapered off in a sound she could only have learned in Denmark, that half exclamation, half sigh on an indrawn breath that I remembered from kitchens of my youth where Norwegian and Danish and Swedish hired girls gathered for coffee and gossip. Standing by a Nandina bush whose new leaves were mixed red and green, whose berries were scarlet, and whose flowers were spread cones of white, she stared down at me. “Oh, Joe.”

  “Exactly. It sort of brings it home.”

  “Did they say anything?”

  “No. Just they weren’t going to be using it and thought I might. I sort of had the feeling I should try it out before tomorrow, so I could tell him.”

  “I suppose. Oh, that’s sad. How did he look?”

  “Bad. Waxy. Tottery.”

  “She?”

  “Imperturbable, as usual.”

  “I wish I’d been here. Maybe I should call her.”

  “You’ll see them tomorrow.”

  “That’s right. Well, damn, I guess I’d better get us some lunch. Can you bring in the groceries?”

  “Sure.”

  I was down below her, with one foot up on the low wall. With a heave ho, I jacked myself up to her level. You could have heard the adhesions crack clear over at LoPresti’s. Ruth’s startled eyes flew to mine. “My goodness, was that you?”

  “In person,” I said, hobbling.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, of course not.”

  But she continued to look scared, as if the sound of my snapping joints had suddenly revealed my mortal danger. Dead stick sounds. And she had been thinking about Tom. I could read her scared mind: Oh, my darling, what if it were youl

  Getting old is like standing in a long, slow line. You wake up out of the shuffle and torpor only at those moments when the line moves you one step closer to the window.

  That evening we were in our customary places in the bedroom, Ruth in bed, I in my chair, like a couple of Plantagenets on upholstered tombs. We were watching television, but she could not have been very attentive, because right across the grain of some upstairs-downstairs crisis she said, “I hate the thought of Ben’s dinner tomorrow.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry. Tom and Edith are completely on top of it.”

  “I hope so. Will it be big, you think?”

  “I don’t think we were ever at anything small at Ben’s.”

  “Do me a favor?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like making a special effort to see Tom isn?
??t left out? He has so much trouble talking, people might avoid him. It’d be awful if he got stuck off in some corner. Even if we aren’t supposed to say so, this is his party.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “You do the talking. Don’t make him do it Just be yourself.”

  “Strange prescription. Who else might I be?”

  “You know what I mean. You can be very thoughtful when you try. Do you want to watch that? Why don’t we turn it off.”

  I turned it off.

  “Edith too,” Ruth said. “Show her some attention. Make her laugh.”

  “The way I’m going to make your shut-ins laugh when I tell them about the contemporary novel.”

  “You’re good at making people laugh.”

  She smiled and blinked, beguiling and encouraging me to be better than my opinion of myself. She looks upon me as a potential superstar who for numerous reasons has never got it all together, as they say on sports broadcasts, but will one day break out in a rash of base hits and runs driven in.

  “I’ll get her behind the pantry door,” I said. “You’ll hear lewd noises like the offstage cackling in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Which incidentally is about as realistic as the rest of modern literature’s commentary on sex. Who cackles while he humps his hostess, for God’s sake? Sex is the most fun you can have without laughing.”