He was a salesman in Southern Louisiana, of the Cajun French heritage, Ed - a face like a sweet and sad bulldog. His doctor said he had to cut back on the boudin balls if he didn't want to undergo more heart surgery. His eyes were deep-set and darkened when he spoke of his mother. His dream was to buy a ranch in Wyoming or Montana and retire by fifty-five. He was always one step away from making that deal, that deal that would ensure his retirement. For the decade I knew him, I never saw it come.
He had seen heaven, though. He was having by-pass surgery:
"I saw light coming from light. I saw golden shadows around my long-lost ancestors, my family, my friends...they all came to greet me..."
We sat at his pine oval kitchen table that was meant for four, but had room for two. The other patch-dusted chairs were weighted down with file boxes full of papers. It was his office that traveled with him.
Coffee - chicory chips soaked, too, with the beans - dripped dark, strong, heavy, and was unwilling to pretend to be fancy. A mammoth pot of roux, chicken, and sausage simmered on the gas-lit stove, and a curved spoon lifted the green onions to the surface
"It was nothing like my second by-pass surgery, at 43." His eyes welled up and his chest kind of rose, as he told his story.
"It was the exact opposite...all I could feel was blackness, darkness, emptiness, nothing. It was a place where I just wanted a friend to talk to and I heard a voice tell me, 'If you don't want to come back here, change your life.' When I woke up from the anesthesia, I was a new man."
The gumbo was ready. The rice glowed white and I got a whopping in a chipped bowl. He told me, "be sure and get plenty of that juice - that's the good stuff."
No matter how much roux I poured into my bowl, it was never satisfactory. He would grab my bowl and say, "Get you some of them onions, girl." Then, lick his fingers. "Compliments to the chef."
After we ate, the thunder clapped above the neighborhood and blurry sheets of rain slapped at the drawn windows, in a hurry, heading East.
I sat on the living room couch and sank several feet - a sharp object hit my tailbone. All but a few of the springs were missing. He sat in his lazy boy; it had been with him since his first marriage "and the wife took everything but that."
"She threw it out in the street for the garbage men to pick up. Can you believe that?" His favorite chair was close to becoming a larger part of litter, just like most things in his life - friends, cousins, wives, kids - a larger part of his litter he had yet to sift through and sort out.
His last wife would remain in the compactor of his mind. She had committed the forbidden. She had slept with his first cousin, Hubert, in their own bed.
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