Page 62 - WTP VOl.VII#5

The Couch Was Never Mine (Fnord)
Russell Raymond Walker had not decided to end his life on a whim. The concept of self-destruction had been pondered, with varying degrees of serious- ness, off and on, for many years, usually when his depression grew back from a nearly overcome speck, like recurring cancer, or a sliver of moon waxing back towards cyclical fullness. Sometimes his depression would attack without warning, like pillaging vikings arriving at an unsuspecting dark ages seaside vil- lage but, most commonly, the condition manifested
in the wake of difficult life events. The past few years had delivered Russ plenty of those, too: his mother’s death; the collapse of his marriage; the rut of his community college adjunct instructor job; the failure of his second novel to find a publisher, the same fate that had befallen his first, as well as his collection of interconnected short stories.
However, despite each of those hard blows, the cata- lyst for Russ’ final emotional downward spiral was a Saturday spent with family.
He was up early, to be thirty-five miles southwest of Portland, Maine, where he lived, in his hometown
of Mousam, by seven o’clock. Russ felt a pang of foreboding as soon as he saw Dominic Walker, his seventy-four year old father, standing beside Albie Ross, his dad’s best friend since their days of high school baseball. To look at his father and Mr. Ross, two superannuated senior citizens, the Mousam High Class of 1949 middle infielders were hard to imag- ine, even for Russ, who had known them, and their yearbook photos, his entire life. They had a long day of driving together ahead, and both his father and Albie were natural talkers, so much so that the pros- pect of unavoidable conversation, full of their ques- tions, and then the talking that would follow upon those questions, in an endless, aggravating cycle that would devour his entire day, was weighing upon Russ. But once he detected their moroseness, saw their downcast eyes and their slightly stooping shoulders, very noticeable in two men who had made a point to ambulate with an ever more upright posture as they aged, Russ knew that he needn’t have worried. They all climbed into Albie’s ancient Toyota Land Cruiser with only the slightest nod hello. Nobody spoke until they ordered coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive through on the way out of town.
Heading to nearby Parsonsfield, they intended to try and convince a long-term alcoholic named Lucien, Russ’ cousin and his father’s nephew and godson,
to let them deliver him to Togus, Maine’s Veteran’s Administration Hospital, in Augusta, where a treat- ment program bed had been prearranged, provided Lucien consented. From past experience, none of them believed Lucien would go quietly. Dread of
that anticipated battle was thick when, just as they reached Mousam Lake and Albie turned north, along the Shapleigh Corner Road, Dominic looked at his son in the backseat.
“Russ, how’s that Danielle? Still seeing her?”
“Yup. From time to time,” Russ replied. “The thing between us ain’t a house on fire, though.”
“I like her.”
“Me, too,” Russ sighed.
Then his father asked, “Russ, you heard of this thing, facebook?”
“Sure.”
“Figured you had,” Dominic replied, nodding. “How about my friend Jackson McGinn’s daughter, Natalie? Remember her?”
“Wicked pretty. Year ahead of me in school. Never knew her that well, but a girl that pretty is easy to recall.”
“Natalie started those facebooks for her dad,” Albie said, joining the conversation, “but I never seen them, ‘cause I don’t do the computer none.”
“Um, am I remembering wrong? Didn’t Mr. McGinn die last year?” Russ asked.
“Jackson’s been in Saint Iggy’s Cemetery nigh on two years, and his daughter did the Facebook page— they’re just one page, Albie—to solicit her dad’s friend’s help paying for the funeral. They’re trying to raise cash because the funeral was financed and it’s killing their family, financially, according to her on the computer.”
“That’s too bad but, I mean, really. What are they go- ing to do, dig his ass up if the funeral defaults? Who cares?”
“Natalie and her family care, I’m pretty sure,” Domi- nic said.
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