There comes an unexpected brusque knock at the front door, which really sucks what with Wheel of Fortune just coming out of commercial and Buster having astutely deduced the phrase-in-question to be FLYING FUCK (which if correct would be delightfully refreshing for daytime television and might mean that the correct phrase is in fact FLYING FROG, even though that makes far less apparent sense than his guess, but he supposes it is equally likely at this point being as how neither U, C, K, R, O, or G have been guessed yet by either contestant) besides which he is one hundred and seven Christ-awful years old and how in the hell can’t whoever is at the front door know or at least reasonably infer that it takes him no less than ten tortuous minutes to pry himself out of the barco-lounger in which he ensconces himself all day and half of the night because his cheap-ass son-in-law won’t buy him the pneumatic self-lifting chair that he (Buster) really wants and could use at some point before shuffling off this mortal coil in what promises to be a final self-soporific puff of dust, at least to hear it said.
Well goddamned if after spending a couple of minutes puffing and shuffling his way to the front door and struggling to pull it open it isn’t some short skinny mostly bald guy from KTFU TV (so the van in the driveway says) standing on his front porch wearing one of those ridiculous polyester short-sleeved white dress shirts favored by engineers, the type with the fold marks still showing from the dry cleaner and a red clip-on JC Penney tie that stops about halfway down his chest. He stares through the screen door with the biggest shit-eating grin on his face and announces to Buster that effective at 7:35 this very morning he has become the oldest living soul in the sovereign state of Texas, being as how the previous holder of that distinguished honorarium expired at the aforementioned inauspicious moment amid a cacophony of gurgling and gasping that was just about the most undignified display seen this decade up at Stevenson’s Nursing Home in Denton. It had been, the idiot from the TV says (Buster assumes every new person he meets is an idiot and is seldom proven incorrect), Miss Roberta Freeland, who at a hundred and seven and five months had exceeded Buster in longevity by a scant seven weeks, a fact neither known to him nor once given a rat’s ass about through all these past years, though it might have been of passing interest to have had someone tell him that he has been in second place in the state for nigh on the prior year and a half (Miss Roberts having inherited the title from Upton Cramer of Houston, who against all sage advice to the contrary had continued driving well into his second century and had predictably driven his 1968 Ford F150 pickup off the Ship Channel bridge and into the Turning Basin, the well-worn vehicle with its mismatched paint on the passenger-side door executing two complete flips and a half pirouette while traversing the one-hundred-and-seventy-five more or less vertical feet between the roadbed and the water’s black surface) in which case he might have kept track of Miss Roberta’s progress in recognition of her lofty attainment. All milk under the bridge now, he supposes, mixing his metaphors like he mixes low-fat milk into his afternoon tea.
And now damned if the guy from the TV, having delivered his revelatory bulletin, isn’t asking can he come inside and do a proper interview what with Buster now being the oldest Texan and exhibiting no sign of having any other competing activity on his personal agenda at the moment (the TV being on and more than a little loud notwithstanding) that might preclude such an interruptive interlocution. Sure, what the hell, Buster asserts, pushing open the screen door that narrowly misses the newsman’s forehead and slaps back loudly against the side of the house because the same thoughtless son-in-law who won’t buy the pneumatic lifting chair also can’t bring himself to replace the door’s pull-back spring, which as far as Buster can recall takes maybe ten minutes and fifty cents or so worth of hardware to effect. And it isn’t bad enough that the idiot (newsman, not son in law) has to traipse into his house with its cat smell and dustiness and disorganization and overall really-old-man-living-by-himself-for-years joie de vivre, but he has to drag his cameraman in behind him who immediately, without so much as a would-you-mind-terribly-if-I-completely-reorganize-your-house sets to pulling open the curtains and Venetian blinds and raising small local dust storms as a consequence, all the while apparently striving to create a sort of lighting that will flatter in all likelihood the short skinny bald newsman since Buster is so obviously beyond flattering that even the most clueless cretin could discern that.
How’s about you sit there in the barco-lounger, says the short skinny bald newsman as if suddenly it’s his house instead of Buster’s, and I take a seat here by the TV so as to create a casual sort of air of two friends just having a chat like it’s the sort of thing they do every evening, which suits Buster fine since the barco-lounger is where he had meant to spend the evening anyway and he hasn’t occupied any of the other three non-matching chairs in the living room since the Eisenhower administration, which he remembers perfectly well by the way and why in the hell, not to digress too awfully, can’t the Republicans find another genuine hero like Ike now instead of hanging their hopes on bad actors and guys who aren’t fit to run a hotdog stand much less the free world?
After much lifting and setting things up and screwing things down the camera man appears at long last to be ready, having apparently achieved the desired Bergmanesque combination of lighting and composition certain to bring a tear to the eye of every viewer of this evening’s newscast and having balanced the camera between Buster and the short skinny bald newsman who appears now ready to begin the interview proper after judiciously pretending not to notice the wind poignantly broken by Buster as he settles heavily back into the barco-lounger.
So, Buster, comes the utterly excruciatingly predictable first question out of the short skinny bald newsman’s feebly thin lips, to what do you attribute your extreme longevity?
Buster pauses for dramatic effect, even raises his right hand and academically rubs his chin in thoughtful rumination. I have eaten thick untrimmed bacon and eggs fried in lard every single morning of my life and I’ve smoked two packs of non-filter Camels since I was twelve (extracting one from his shirt pocket to illustrate). I haven’t laid eyes on a doctor since my last physical which I had when I turned fifty (I think Truman was still President) and I will bet you quite a lot that whereas I am still around, he (the doctor, that is), I expect, has gone to his reward. I fought in three wars, got wounded twice, then watched four more on the TV after I got too old to go any more. I can’t hardly think of a single thing I’ve done in my life that ought to by any right contribute to a long life span, yet here I am. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it must just be damnably good luck.
Buster leans forward in the barco-lounger with some effort and taps the as-yet unlit Camel on the arm of the chair a couple of times before inserting it between his lips, deftly striking a match with one hand in his palm and lighting it. He saw Clint Eastwood do that once in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and he made up his mind then and there that he was going to learn to do it seeing as how it looked so cool and manly and insouciant if you did it right. It took him a month of trying but he finally got it right and now uses the skill every chance he gets, which according to his previously declared smoking frequency, is roughly forty times a day. Doesn’t matter whether anyone’s around to see or not. His cheap son-in-law has bought him several cheap lighters in the past and they all lie in a drawer in the kitchen untouched, just one of countless small sources of unspoken passive/aggressive friction between the two men.
So, the short skinny bald newsman continues, after thoughtfully consulting a clipboard of notes (or, Buster supposes, it could be a grocery list for all he knows since all he can see is the back of the clipboard), now that you’ve attained this new distinction, how do you suppose your life will change?
Buster ponders this only slightly more probing question for a long moment before deciding to forego his first instinct which is to say something pithy like not one goddamned bit and instead conjure up something a bit more rich. Well, here’s the thing, Buster intones exhaling a massive cloud of cigarette smoke in the short skinny bald newsman’s direction, unless the governor is meaning to drive down here and pay me a personal visit or the state has budgeted to screw a brass plaque onto my front door or there is some other financial remuneration accompanying this august recognition, I don’t expect much will change at all, particularly in regards to my no-account son-in-law who scarcely gives me the time of day anyway and isn’t likely to change none just because of this. There, thinks, Buster, let’s see if that little morsel makes it onto the evening news.
The short skinny bald newsman is momentarily taken aback by the unexpected candor and the now not entirely comfortable silence, Buster having ceased abruptly to talk following the diatribe about his son-in-law. Buster only sits quietly smoking and watching the muted TV, noticing that the contestants have moved on to a new phrase, meaning that he will never know the answer to the FROG or FUCK riddle. He begins going through names in his head of friends he might call to find out what happened.
What do you, interjects the short skinny bald newsman after staring very seriously at his clipboard through an entire commercial promoting one of the three or four ED medicines that seem to be all over the airwaves these days. More than once Buster has marveled, both to himself and to friends, that while modern science still has created no defense against cancer or any of several other horrific diseases, they can nonetheless now produce, even in men his age he supposes, erections so profound that they have to provide warnings on the package with emergency numbers to call in case the effects last longer than four hours. This particular commercial features a meadow and a couple romping through what appear to be daisies under a deep blue sky adrift with puffy clouds. Do people actually do that, Buster wonders, actually get a sudden urge and jump each other right there in the middle of a field of daisies? And how would you plan for such a thing? And when exactly would you take the pill?
I’m sorry, what was that? Buster responds as the ED commercial fades to another about laxatives and he suddenly realizes that there are sounds emerging from the short skinny bald newsman’s mouth.
I said I was wondering if you might share with us the sorts of things that a man thinks about once he is well and truly into his second century. Do you find yourself reflecting on your life? Contemplating eternity?
Well, let’s have a think about that, Buster says gazing up at the once-white-but-now-eggshell-colored-from-years-of-cigarette-smoke ceiling. Not given to figures of speech, he actually continues peering upward in silence as the short skinny bald newsman glances over to the cameraman as if questioning the need to continue filming while their subject conjures something to say. It is nearly a full minute before Buster, as if testing the resolve of the short skinny bald newsman, blurts out I think…and then pauses yet again, apparently what he thinks not yet having quite congealed in his centenarian mind. I think first of all that I am thankful to have the use of more or less all of my senses and faculties. Don’t get me wrong, my memory isn’t all that it could be, but then it was all I could do to memorize a Shakespearean sonnet when I was eighteen, so I don’t see that I’ve lost anything much. At least I can carry on a conversation for ten minutes without saying the same damned thing five times, which is more than my sister Agnes could do when she was fifty years younger than me. I can manage my bodily functions as well as anyone, I suppose. Nothing more embarrassing than having to have the relatives over just to make it through a bowel movement, if you know what I’m saying. And I can still do a respectable walk around the neighborhood nearly every evening, which I dare say my idiot son-in-law hasn’t been able to do in nearly ten years, or if he can he certainly doesn’t bother, at least not with me anyway. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m pleased to be self-sufficient—you know, not a burden to anyone else. The way I see it, when my time finally does come, it’s likely to be the instantaneous result of my having done something stupid rather than the slow lingering decay so favored by the majority of humanity. With any luck, I’ll just step out in front of a bus or something like that. It’s quick and inexpensive and you have the added benefit of getting on the news that way.
Buster pauses to gauge the reaction of the short skinny bald newsman to this final bit of hyperbole. To his credit, the man seems to take it all in stride, or if shocked he keeps it well hidden. What’s your view on the hereafter, he follows with. I mean, being as how you’re a good deal closer to it than the rest of us, do you pay it much mind?
Well, I have to say, Buster begins, there’s a part of me hopes there isn’t one. What I mean to say is I’m not especially keen on either of the two proposed destinations. Hell’s got to be annoying, what with all the wailing and thrashing about and general unpleasantness the Reverend Felcher is always going on about. Not that I expect he knows a great deal about what he’s talking about, but he certainly makes it sound like a dreary place. I visited my Uncle Chester out in El Paso once about thirty years ago and it must have been a hundred and fifteen out there, so if hell’s anything like that, I’ll take a pass, thank you. Which is not to say that the alternative sounds like any great shakes either. To hear it described, heaven is nothing but a bunch of sanctimonious busy-bodies who were gullible enough to walk down the aisle at church cause they happened to play “Just as I Am” on the organ and they didn’t want to make the Reverend feel like he was wasting his time droning away up there every Sunday. In any event, I expect it’ll be terribly boring up there, what with everybody being more or less the same and walking around with harps and singing hymns and what not. Best I can tell from Felcher, it sounds like being at church pretty much twenty four seven. You know though, an possibly ironic thing occurs to me. If the whole point of hoo-hawing and singing and tithing and being holier-than-thou here on earth is to get into heaven in the first place, what’s the point of being that way once you get up there? The way I understand the story, once you’re in you’re in. I mean it’s not like they can toss you downstairs for bad behavior. You ask my opinion, and I guess that’s what you’re doing, I think it’s all a big steaming pile of horseshit and you just pretty much lay in a box and feed the worms. Can’t say as that seems any less appealing than the other choices.
The short skinny bald newsman looks a bit more taken aback then before at the frankness of Buster’s responses to the hereafter question. You know, he says, you’re likely to upset some of our viewers with that sort of controversial view of things.
Can’t be helped, Buster responds, leaning back in the barco-lounger and leaning to one side to look beneath him for the remote. He supposes that producing it will serve as subtle hint to the short skinny bald newsman that he ought not consume what little time Buster has left on this earth with a continuation of inane questions, particularly if he’s not crazy about hearing the answers. Buster supposes this will all just get edited down to a thirty-second sound-bite anyway, and knowing the conservativeness of the local news station, only the most innocuous bits are likely to make it onto the air, if any at all do.
You know, says Buster as a peremptory, and, he hopes, parting thought, see if you can work into your story that the new oldest man in Texas is paranoid as hell that the second oldest person in Texas is out there someplace plotting how they can bump me off so as to attain this lofty title for themselves.
The short skinny bald newsman takes the hint, taps his pen hard on the clipboard one last time as if providing the final period to the final sentence and nods to the cameraman who flips a switch extinguishing the red light on the front of the camera.
I expect we’ve taken up enough of your valuable time, he says.
Particularly, Buster interrupts, unable to resist one final dig, what with me having so damned little of it to spare!
Your words, sir, not mine. The newsman rises with an audible creak from his left knee and a brief grimace on his round face. I hope, he adds, I’m in your shape when I reach half your age.
Well thank you sir, and I’ll take that as a back-ended compliment and trust you to show yourselves out. Buster accepts perfunctorily the newsman’s proffered hand, responding with a brief shake and a suitable smile.
Too late to make the edit cut tonight, the short skinny bald newsman says as he steps toward the door, so I expect this will make the six o’clock broadcast tomorrow.
Buster offers no response, having already turned back to face the television. The Price is Right is near two thirds over and they’re just getting to the showcase. He raises the volume just in time to drown out the bang of the screen door as it slaps against the outside of the house and the clunk of the two men’s shoes descending the front steps.