It’s Tuesday morning, and since yesterday a lot has happened.
Here’s how our day began…
We were having breakfast and there was a knock on our front door.
June swung it open automatically, without checking the peephole because that’s how safe we ordinarily feel, and who was on the other side but…
Lester Buckingham.
Dressed in a suit that must have been thirty years old, if not older, cheeks rosy red like a little boy, piercing blue eyes glassy with emotion, there was Lester Buckingham, middle name unknown...
He had with him a bouquet of red daisies and his hair was neatly combed, stiffly held in place by some sort of 1950s-1980s era type gel product. And he smelled of the distinct odor of lavender, as if he had rubbed lavender bush all over his body to make himself more palatable.
“John!” June called for me before she had even said hello. And so I came and made my way shoulder to shoulder with my wife.
Of course maybe our natural fear of Buckinham is hallucinatory and unwarranted, but nevertheless it is real fear, whether he comes bearing gifts or not.
My heart was honestly racing, about to leap through my throat, as I calmly said “Hello Mr. Buckingham, what can we do for you?”
“I know it seems extreme, me showing up at your door and all, come all the way from up North, but the way I look at it extreme times call for extreme measures. See, I’m facing the possibility of losing my home here to you good folks and I just feel I need to do everything in my power to persuade you to reconsider what you’re doing here.”
“We have considered it,” I told him, “And we recognize that we’re putting you out. But you’re of able body, so why can’t you follow the rules like anybody else, get some paying work and rent yourself a legal unit?”
The moment after I said it, I could hardly believe I had said something so ice cold.
I half expected him to leap at me and choke me to death right then and there but he barely reacted. Which was all the more frightening.
June then filled the silent void with a surprisingly generous offer. She said, “Are you going to say something Mr. Buckingham? If you want to say something, we’ll listen.”
And then we stood there by the door while he pled his case, Juliet creeping up just a few feet behind us, listening attentively.
When he started speaking, he did not stop, not for a moment to let us get a word in edgewise, and it was unclear how he was managing to breathe between his sentences.
Now I have never written down a person’s monologue before, especially one like this, but I will try to capture the feeling he gave and the words he used as accurately as I can. The fact is, he was remarkably articulate and seemed very sincere in his approach. But why should I editorialize kindly about how I felt about his speech? To ease my guilt that we would ultimately, inevitably reject him?? Probably. I don’t know.
Whatever the case, more or less, this is what he said, without stopping:
“Mister and Misses Johns if you would please try to see this situation my way, I would be obliged to you forever, I would gladly be like an angel for you, I would be a caretaker of your property and a handyman of your house and I would keep out of your way completely.
It gives me no pleasure to have to beg you this, Mister and Misses Johns, but I come to you humbly, even as your lawsuit against me flies in the face of all my beliefs.
What are my beliefs, you must be asking yourself. First and foremost my views are not the normal ones compared with the way the civilized world views property. And these are not uneducated views, Mister and Misses Johns, I attended a four year university in my day.
[Thinking about it in retrospect, I can't quite calculate when Lester would've gone to a University since he must've been 18 when he went to Viet Nam; maybe he was just trying to impress us?]
See, I believe that God gave us our land to do as we please--it's our natural right--and so all the rules that we have to regulate it—you with your fence and me with mine and so on and so forth—these are bogus laws, ancient laws, but bogus, for as far as I’m concerned though men have been worshipping the false prophet of gold from time immemorial, nevertheless it is still false.
In fact I believe that the hammer of the law which you have swung at me is just a signature of our mutual corruption here on earth, or more correctly, a signature of the devil, if you go in for such things.
I doubt in heaven there are walls or fences or city ordinances.
But even though I don’t agree with that man made law which gives you the authority to take me to court, I recognize that you adhere to that structure and I can’t fault you for it—you people are no more unholy or holy than anyone else who is a law abiding citizen. So I can’t fault you for the direction you’re taking—you’re taking the route most men and women would take. And neither can I pretend any longer that I am my own master, as clearly I am subject to all the earthly rulea even if I would wish they weren’t real.
So what am I here for? What am I asking of you Mister and Misses Johns? I’m asking you to search your hearts and be generous to a poor soul like me. Let me be, that’s all. Live and let live, and let that be a lesson to young Juliet, your precious daughter…
[How he knew Juliet’s name, I do not know, but it startled me]
…All I’m asking you for is to look the other way and allow me to maintain that tiny piece of Eden that I’ve been laying my bones on all these years. I’m not asking for none of yours or to take what ain’t mine. I ain’t even asking to be in your line of sight. Just let me disappear into that wilderness and I’ll be like a quiet little beetle that lives in the bark. I’ll die there and I’ll pay men to remove my house and bury me after. Hell, I’ll probably die young since I’m too stubborn to see a doctor and since I don’t believe in medicine.
Even if you want, Mister and Misses Johns, I’ll move my whole house even farther away from yours. It would be back breaking work and take me the better part of a year, no doubt, but I’ll do it, if it would satisfy you.”
He said a lot more, but that was the essence, except it should be noted that I thought for a moment he was going to cry.
And when he was done, June said, very politely, “We feel for you Mr. Buckingham, we really do, and we take what you have said very seriously.”
“Thank you Misses Johns,” Lester replied, thinking he’d made some headway.
But he hadn’t made any headway, he’d just provoked June to be as politic as humanly possible, because she did not want to incite his ire.
“We’ll think about it,” she said, as she smiled a false smile and shut the door.
But she had already done all the thinking she was willing to do.
We double locked the doors and made sure the windows were all locked.
And then we all watched from the front of our apartment as Lester wandered out of our stairwell, still clutching those red daisies June had never received from him and which he must have forgotten he’d brought to give to us in the heat of the moment.
He set the daisies on a blue recycle bin, glanced up at our window and we all jumped back before we even saw the look in his eye.
We laughed at each other about what a fucked up situation we were in and about how tense we all were.
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