Panache

 I think it must be that I am either in, or close to, my own dotage, that I feel a certain urgency to get as many stories of my father's on the ether here. Will it last? Will it get seen 50 years from now, or beyond? I don't know. When I am gone it won't matter. It only matters now, and I do what I can do, albeit not much to give my father (and at some level me) a bit of earthly immortality. So, yesterday I posted one. Today I post an even shorter one.

Panache

I recognize him immediately as he descends the stairs of my building to greet me. It is my old street-bum friend Diogenes, who I have not encountered for more than a year. He is greatly changed. I sense this immediately since he does not extend his palm and ask for spare change immediately.  I am concerned for my old friend.

"Diogenes," I sy warmly ". . . it is more than a year since your last visit. I sense there has been some travail in your life."

"Indeed," he replies, "I just return from New York, where I spend the last eleven months in the pokey.  I get one month off for good behavior."

"How horrendous," I say, "does the IRS get you for tax evasion?"

"I will tell you, but first, can you advance me a few bob, as you are the first friendly face I see in these warm environs.  I get a chill in New York one January night and have not felt warm since."

I hasten to accommodate my old friend as he continues.

"I get caught in a blizzard in Washington Heights so I seek shelter in a posh apartment house lobby. It is one o'clock in the morning.  I am wearing an old pair of Italian shoes which I find and is no protection in snow. I notice that the tenants leave their galoshes and rubber boots in front of their doors, as they do not wish to track in the snow. I find a pair of Western boots that seem my size, so, I appropriate them. The long and the short of it is that I get a twelve month stretch."

He recites his tale with a kind of humility. Diogenes seems chastened. I am curious as the Diogenes I know is a real bum, but he is honest.

"What makes you do such a thing?" I ask.

"I do it because I could," he answers, looking me directly in the eye, though I am almost sure there is a tear breaking in the corner of his left eye.

I feel that a little more spare change is in order. Somehow, there is something heroic about the act and the manner in which he faces up to sin. I watch him depart, his shoulders bent, disconsolate but courageous. There will be no memorial library for him, but he does have an air of greatness, a kind of panache of great rogues.

Written May 2004.