Non-Renewable Resources

 

 

The spotlights from the titty bars along Interstate 20 move restlessly about the bottoms of the low clouds; silent siren calls to the truckers on their way to El Paso and the oil workers on their way home. We take this in from the balcony of his apartment, my upstairs neighbor and I: inhabitants of this barracks-like apartment complex. He has invited me up for beer to tell me he is leaving for the hospice tomorrow. I don’t need to ask why.

Nobody lives here without good reason, he says. He has befriended my companion downstairs who is also familiar with hospitals and mortality. He knows about my unfruitful search for employment, my distance from home and friends, my distance from familiar habits and solitude. My neighbor’s fondness for my dog--a mean uncut Chihuahua--is considerable. He allows him to enter his apartment at will. To my knowledge the dog has never pissed or crapped inside. If so, my neighbor has never mentioned it. But there are other things we don’t discuss, things I imagine well-bred country people don’t talk about. I think our unspoken agreement to avoid certain topics preserves our God-given affinity. We recognize each other as men of faith although our respective churches might not see the other that way.

A native, he welcomed me the first day I started to drive down here, a distance of 400 miles. Every week for the last two years. I was smoking then but trying to quit which only made me mooch off his kind, the kind who are committed smokers and no longer flirt with quitting. “Nobody likes a quitter,” he winks. When I rode down on the motorcycle, he warned me about 42nd and Dixie. In his opinion, the only reasons to go to the Southside were crack or barbecue. “There’s not much to do here but go to church.”

When he was a young man with a dirt bike he scooted around the arroyo that is now a bridal path behind the lavish dorms of the University, dove hunting. He genuinely admires iron, and eyes the balcony railing for imperfections I think. I have noticed him scrutinizing my motorcycle. I dropped it years ago and the footpegs have never been exactly right since. A fractured weld galls him. I have never met so many welders and I wonder if he is among the best.

I feel sorry for myself over my neighbor’s departure. It has been hard to make friends here. I have the ample family of my companion. Their acceptance-- overwhelming, surprising and liberating at first-- has settled into something more like real family. There are some I tolerate and some I like but all are his family. I am still a cautious stranger. I fear it may be my permanent place here.

I don’t get falling down drunk anymore so it is time to go downstairs and relieve my anxious roommate, expectantly reading the paper in his recliner. He trusts our neighbor with me, indeed was relieved to see me make a friend. He will miss our neighbor. I fetch an oil painting as a farewell gift. In my maudlin imagination I can see it near him in the hospice. Once again upstairs I hand him the landscape in its thick silver-gilt frame. He sets it carefully on his barren mantle and examines the craftsmanship as if he were looking at the railing. After a while he notes several things: “This pumpjack is near Andrews. The thistle is a Scots symbol; Andrews a Scots name, so is mine. The contrail in the sky make a cross, right? Beautiful. A blessing over the land. You made the yucca from a paint knife--Lord knows how many times I have been stabbed by those things.”

My neighbor pulls a hat box from among his neatly packed possessions. In it is a Stetson beaver felt hat. The inside headband reveals it’s style: “The Open Road.” It fits me perfectly and I am touched.