The Twilight of the Bums (2 page)

A lovely glittery sunny day ice in the boughs a special glare the old friends sitting on the porch wrapped in blankets are thinking of nothing except the bright sea that bore them to this foreign country.

They are not thinking of all the lovely women they did not fuck nor of all the bucks they did not make nor of all the sausage & pickle kraut they did not eat in their salad days nor are they thinking much of the big smokes they used to smoke nor of those dangerous but exciting days on the front line getting shot at.

No, none of the above. What they are thinking about each in a separate private way, is how much time and energy how much affection and even money they could have saved and stored away had they not wasted all that time energy affection and money on each other.

But then would this be a lovely glittery sunny day?

The Bums have been friends for so long they have totally forgotten how they became friends, but now that they are approaching the moment when they will have to change tense (this is unavoidable), they often ponder, separately or in unison, this matter of friendship, sometimes in the form of sentences or statements, other times as maxims, or adages, or aphorisms, or proverbs, or pensées, or philosophical propositions, and at other times just words without any form.

We are delighted to be able to present here a dozen of our bums' reflections on the subject of friendship:

1.     Do not become friendly with a person inferior to you.

2.     To have too many friends is to have none.

3.     Friendship is never profitable.

4.     A friend must learn to endure his friend's successes as well as his failures.

5.     Friends are thieves of time.

6.     It is more shameful to mistrust a friend than to be betrayed by a friend.

7.     Women may go further in matters of love than most men, but men are way ahead in matters of friendship.

8.     A friend is someone with whom you want to do something bad.

9.     A friend is there to be abused.

10.   When a friend pays you a compliment you can be sure it's bullshit.

11.   There are three types of friends: those who love you, those who worry about you, and those who hate you.

12.   If a friend can only see with one eye, and as a result wears a patch on the other, always look at him from the good side.

B 1:  I mistrust people who say they have a good memory.

B 2:  Did I say that?

B 1:  No, you didn't, I'm just speaking in general.

B 2:  I prefer when you're specific.

B 1   Okay, but still I mistrust people who …

B 2:  I heard you the first time.

B 1:  Alright, alright! You don't have to get up on your high horse.

B 2:  And why, may I ask, Mon Cher Ami, do you mistrust those who …

B 1:  It's obvious. A guy with a good memory does not remember anything because he never forgets anything.

B 2:  I never thought of that.

B 1:  You see what I mean. That's why I do all the thinking and all the remembering for both of us.

B 2:  I wouldn't go that far.

B 1:  I'll go as far as I want, and if Monsieur doesn't like it he can shove it.

B 2:  Now look who is getting pissed.

B 1:  You made me forget what I wanted to say.

B 2:  You were saying that people with a good memory cannot …

B 1:  Oh yes. Well …

B 2:  But suppose, somehow, the guy who has such a great memory suddenly forgets something, or for that matter everything he knows.

B 1:  That's not possible because his great memory would not let him forget.

B 2:  Suppose he gets hit on the head by a mugger, or has a car accident and bangs his head on the dashboard, or he falls off a tree and hits his head on a rock, or his wife hits him on the head with a pot because she found out he was screwing around, I don't know,there are so many ways you can get hit on the head.

B 1:  Still, it's impossible …

B 2:  Let's say he suffers total amnesia.

B 1:  Why do you always have to contradict me.

B 2:  Because I'm smarter than you.

B 1:  Go to hell!

One day the two old friends were sitting on a river bank each lost in his own thoughts. Friend Number One was thinking about the water in the river rushing playfully before him.

Suddenly he turned to Friend Two and said: Isn't it interesting, mon ami, how one can dip a pail in the river just about anywhere and it will always come up full of the same water, and yet each time the nature of the water is different according to the circumstance of the moment?

Friend Number Two looked at his old buddy and said: Unglaublich, but what you just said is exactly what I was thinking myself.

Old age was sitting beside the bums long before they knew him.

Well, you bums, he asked, who's going to get up first?

One snowy day the bums went out rabbit hunting with their friends. A fresh fall of snow on the already snowy icy ground being perfect for tracking the little hoppers, wild game makes a delicious winter stew.

Having, at their age, seen quite enough of hunting and killing, but still feeling sociable, the bums went happily along, but soon fell so far behind the main hunting party as to lose sight of the pertinacious hunters, their only evidence being the tracks the bums followed, tracks quickly disappearing in the fresh fall.

From time to time they could hear far ahead the blast of shotguns, but these reports were muffled by the distance and the snowfall. The two old men trudged on silently, each absorbed in his own reflections, disturbed only by the blasts of the 12 gauges.

Bum one quietly asked the other: Do you suppose we are in any jeopardy? The main party might circle back and in this low visibility mistake us for hares?

The other considered this, then responded by taking off one glove and creating the image of a rabbit with his fingers, of the sort one made shadow figures on a wall, way back in childhood.

Then they trudged on, the snow now at a full, deliberate, serious fall, and a wind beginning to herd the snow into drifts. Suddenly a blast sounded, too close for comfort, and one of the bums dropped to the snow -- I am
shot shot
, he shouted.

Prostrate on his back, in the attitude of death, the one who fell extended his arms sideways in the snow and began to plow it back and forth. With his legs he did likewise.

Are you dying? asked the other, kneeling by his side.

Not yet, was the reply.

What are you doing then?

I am making angels. Go ahead, you too.

The other bum followed suit. He dropped on his back and began to plow the snow back and forth, his arms stiff, his legs stiff, to make a deep secure impression on the snowpack.

This is the sight the hunting party came upon shortly thereafter, their bloodied kill dripping from the baggy game pockets of their shooting jackets.

What a fine rabbit stew to eat that night around the fresh fire in the hunting lodge, and what great stories to tell about the brave hunters, about the game missed, and the game found, and about the two old guys making angels in the snow.

The two angels … no, the two old bums -- what are we thinking about -- seated side by side, at the head of the table befitting their status, made the first toast, as was their right and privilege:
May this day remind us forever of that which passes. May it remind us, as long as it needs to, of angels, and rabbits
.