My Friend…

Image via Wikipedia

I took one of my regular walks this morning around the lake. As I was nearing the end a man on a bicycle rode by heading in the opposite direction, the direction from which I had come. I heard a muffled sound as he passed by was too enthralled with the Faure playing on my shuffle to turn and investigate the sound. I continued to my old Chevy parked at the end of my route, got in and started it up, buckled up, lit a smoke, and pulled out of the parking place and headed for my next scheduled destination. I drove toward the mountains heading west on the busiest boulevard in town for about a mile and a half and pulled into the MacDonald’s. I had my journal in my bag along with the current books I was reading and was ready for a fresh cup of that wonderful coffee and a couple of those magnificently delicious apple pies. I parked and put the cigarette out, grabbed the bag and went inside. There were a million kids in there celebrating someone’s birthday. It was perfect MacDonald’s day; kids screaming, mom’s talking on their cell phones, old men talking about the perfection of their lawns last summer, a very omni-racial staff behind the counter, and… my friend Bill whom I had not seen for months.

I was ordering– or trying to order– when Bill walked up behind me, placed his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Hey, I just passed you on my bike, I yelled like all hell breaking loose but you ignored me.’ ‘Hi Bill’, I said, ‘so that was you, I didn’t know that you rode a bike, I always look for your car. I was pre-occupied anyway and there was a piano sonata blasting into my ears.’ ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘this must have been our day to meet.’ ‘Yeah, it must be our day cause I thought you were in Denver. Do you still have a place up here?’ ‘I’ve got the office downtown, I come up here for the week-ends. It’s above the Cove downtown.’ ‘I know where that is, down by Dave’s Barber Shop, no, no, now I remember it’s over across from the old Lincoln Hotel.’ ‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Bill said. I continued, ‘that’s why I see you there sometimes in that Mini City Park there at the corner of 4th and 287 huh?’ ‘Yeah, my office is 2 doors down.’ ‘So, where are you sitting Bill, I’ll be over when I get my stuff.’ He pointed to a table right in the middle of the birthday party and I thought, well, he’s been here for a while, he definitely would not have sat there if the party had been going on when he got here.

I finally got my coffee and apple pies. A pretty little Black girl named Falon finally got around to me. I had only started seeing her here a few weeks ago. Hell, twenty years ago there were only 2 or 3 Black people in this county, now I’ve seen more of them here since the depression started a couple of years ago than I saw the previous 20 years. I think they’re all moving out of Chicago, Detroit, Dayton, and probably even Pittsburgh looking for some peace and quiet. Some of them, I’m sure, probably had good paying jobs in the auto industry before shit hit the fan, now, they’re like many of us, taking whatever they can get just to pay the rent and believe me, the rent is a lot more here than back east. Anyway, just like the Mexicans; it’s the smart and desperate that are moving here. I respect that. She is a little cutesy, needs to work on them buns a little bit.

So I work my way over to Bill’s table through the gauntlet of kids, sweet-smelling moms, trash all over the floor, and old people trying to escape, and then sit down facing him. ‘Damn, you look really good Bill, what’s up?, I’ve never seen you look so good!’ ‘It’s the dialysis three times a week Charlie, it just makes me look better not necessarily be better, and I’m just beginning. They don’t even have all of my hardware installed yet. I still am going to have to wait another month for them to get this part connected.’ He lifts his jacket and shirt and shows me the work they’ve done on him. I’ve seen it before in another friend, a man that is no longer here. That friend ended up dying after a few years of problems, one new kidney, multiple infections, heart failures, you name it, he was only 41 years old. I didn’t say this to Bill of course. Bill suffered from a genetic kidney disease called PKD, and still does, but now it’s gotten so bad that he has to have his blood cleaned 3 times a week. Like my other friend Don he just keeps on going somehow. These people like Don and Bill just break my heart because it is nothing that they have done or not done to themselves. Then, guys like me that have constantly abused their bodies all their lives are walking around healthy as baby pigs. Of course I’ve stopped many of the old habits but not necessarily because I chose to but more because I was fearful of the consequences. So not for courageous or worthy reasons like my friends Bill and Don have I ever done anything. Sad.

Bill was telling me, ‘the VA has given me the run-around because of the Medical Marijuana issue. They refuse to pay for many of the things I need right now so I’ve had to spend a lot of time with the Feds trying to get all the Medicare crap in order.’  ’Well’, I said, ‘I sure don’t see why they’re giving you a hard time about the pot, I mean come on, look at you and your history. So, the bills are getting paid right?’ I asked.  ’Absolutely not,’ Bill answered, ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen. The search for a kidney is getting no where. I’ve had to go to all the food banks around here and down in Denver just to eat and the banks are really hurting. I got caught driving from a food bank 2 weeks ago with expired tags and expired Driver’s License and now I have to go to court next week. They scheduled me into court at a time when I will be on the machine so I took a note from my Doctor to the court and they acted like, well?, you just better be here, we can’t re-schedule. Then the woman had second thoughts after probably looking at me a little closer. She told me to wait there for a few minutes as she ducked into a room behind her office. After about 30 minutes she came back and told me not to worry and handed me a revised schedule. It’s been crazy Charlie.’

So we sat there and gabbed for at least a couple of hours while some greasy little boy crawled around behind Bill doing every thing he could to get our attention. Poor kid; I call it ‘Male Deficit Disorder’. The little boys are sad to me because it seems they just yearn to be around men. Most of the time anymore in our culture there are no constant men. Well, maybe constant men but always different ones. His mom wasn’t paying any attention to him so Bill and I talked to him a little bit, just enough to bore the little fella. Bill is a very intelligent man and, like Don, knows all the terminology associated with his disease and now, all the same associated with kidney failure and dialysis. I sit and listen as I did with Don. ‘So have you been eating and sleeping well Bill,’ I asked. ‘Yes, very well,’ he said. ‘There was a period about 2 months ago that I had a problem eating, or, I should say, getting enough to eat. I lost 10 lbs. between dialysis appointments and they were concerned about the dynamic weigh loss. The guy beside me always brings his dinner in from Subway and eats while he’s on the machine, well anyway, he said to me, ‘damn Bill, if I would have known you’ve had problems getting food I would have helped. The man then recommended a local food program that delivers meals everyday to the disabled and they began to bring me prepared frozen meals everyday. In fact, when I get home tomorrow there will be 2 meals waiting there for me.’

We decided that we had worn out our welcome and prepared to leave. He was riding his bike of course having hid his car somewhere downtown when he drove up from Denver. He thinks they’re watching him. They probably are, he’s kind of radical and knows that he doesn’t have any thing to lose by always telling the truth. So he puts his hat and gloves on and unlocks his bike and reminds me that my phone number is no longer working. We exchange numbers and say goodbye. I drove to the grocery to get a few things because there is another storm coming in tonight. It could snow for a few days and I don’t want to run out of water, eggs, and coffee. I called him around 9:00 p.m. this evening to see how he was doing and to ask him out to breakfast in the morning. He said he would enjoy that and so, I have a date with a friend in the morning. What a guy. I only wish when I’m around Bill for a few hours that I had taken the time to be around my friend Don just a bit more. I miss him….mz