The Man Who Wasn't

I have never spoken about Jonas Thompson because I knew no one would believe me, but since I'm on my deathbed nothing matters anymore so I might as well let the cat out of the bag. When you get to my condition you know that what people think doesn't mean squat anyway.

If I were young and in good health I'd say brace yourself, you're in for a ripper, then I'd beat around the bush giving a whole lot of paraphernalia and tangential stuff that would veer us from bull's eye. By the time we hit the target we'd be as worn out as the jock who'd pumped iron all night after running a Marathon and doing two Decathlons as a warm-up. But since I'm eighty and on the way out I'll dispense with the round-Robin stuff and get right down to why I'm even mentioning old Jonas.

You see, at any given moment, the old bird both was and wasn't. That is, he was both sides of the coin simultaneously, and what you saw depended on how you flipped him. If he landed heads you'd speak to a level-headed, just-like-you-and-me fellow, an accountant by profession. But if he landed on his tail there was no telling what you were in store for. For one thing, Jonas' eyes might go wobbly, one heading Northeast while the other veered West, his voice could faint off like he was talking to a whispering machine so only if you were inside his head could you know what was rattling around and then you probably wouldn't care anyway. That was Jonas Thompson to a T, all right: wild eyed and bushy tailed, if that's the side of the coin that showed up.

Everyone knew why Mr. Thompson was the way he was: he had thirteen children and no wife. That is, no wife who stayed at home when she wasn't sleeping. During the day and half the night she was in and out more than a woodpecker with Saint Vitas Dance since she did Avon, Tupperware, and one of those herbal supplement companies that promised long life and immortality if you spent $87.50 a month sucking down lozenges and capsules that smelled like cod liver oil and raw alfalfa sprouts that had danced together a month without changing their socks. So poor Jonas ended taking care of the bairn more hours than she, and that all the while he was balancing the books for his clients. And everyone knows that an accountant who has thirteen kids and a wife that's as ubiquitous as a ghost in a sheet factory has to be something else, right? So at one time poor Jonas was changing three sets of knee-baggy diapers, bobbing a couple in the bathtub to see if they were still breathing, trying his best to keep the three year-old from sticking his sister's bobby pins in the light socket,andtrying to keep those numbers adding up right so the IRS wouldn't send anyone to jail. Those are the reasons people gave why Jonas Thompson was the way he was.

One day I went to pick up my books and found my friend in the backyard smoking a cigar. He held a length of stove-pipe in front of his face and every time he exhaled he blew into the cylinder. The other end gave the prettiest notion of the chimney of a cabin in the north woods in the winter. Jonas said smoking that way and burying his stubs and un-smoked stogies in a bean can were the only ways to keep his kids from chewing the tobacco. It all seemed right the way he explained his eccentricity: he really WAS being a responsible parent in spite of how his actions appeared. By the way, he never made a mistake adding numbers unless he happen to look out both eyes at the same time.

But I'm not mentioning Jonas Thompson after all these years to tell you of his personal habits or family life. I'm here to relate what the man did that has kept me keeping him a secret. So here goes. Mr. Thompson ran a worm farm in his backyard nights. No one knew about it, not even the thirteen kids and certainly not Bessie since she was never there nights except once every nine months to get another reason to leave. For the life of me I will never understand till the day I'm ninety how a woman can have kids without sticking around to take care of them. But -- the worm farm. Jonas raised worms not for the reasons most people do: to sell to fishermen, enrich gardens, or supply the Guinness World Records outfit to give to contestants to break the mark for how many of the squirmy buggers they could swallow in thirty seconds. The reason Jonas raised worms was because the father of a close friend told him that if someone had the foresight to build up a twenty-acre plot of land, some day he could make a fortune raising dried Mullein leaves. You see, this friend said he predicted the entire tobacco industry would some day collapse, but since people were so used to smoking, he'd dry the fuzzy Mullein leaves, roll them in paper, and say buythese, they aren't even carcinogenic. But to get a good crop and beat the competition, the soil had to be top-notch.

Well, once a month Jonas would sneak out of the house hoping his thirteen were immobilized for the night. He carried a couple of pails full of finger-thick, squirming nightcrawlers, and haul them to a field he'd bought surreptitiously. He'd scatter the annelids into tiller-plowed furrows, then tip the soil over, say a benediction, and pray they'd do their thing to ensure a grand future for the accountant because he was getting sicker and sicker depending on the revenues from accounting, Avon, Tupperware, and smelly herbal supplements. The kids did need to eat.

Before we go any further, you should know that no one, not Jonas' wife,

a single one of his thirteen kids, the IRS, or even his advice-giving friend knew a thing about his agricultural experiment. This meant that for all anyone knew, the strange man with eyes askew was having nightly rendezvous with beautiful women or talkative trolls. This is important because it explains why no one suspected Jonas of doing anything wierd like raising nightcrawlers.

At any rate, one night a stranger thing happened. While he was tiling his mouth-watering furrow, the tiller tines tinked against a decidedly metal object. Jonas swore, something he never did during the day. He swore because the tinking stalled the motor and he knew that meant he wouldn't get home to change diapers until just before breakfast. Upon investigation, the man found the cause of the tinking: a metal box hermetically sealed. It was also welded shut and cacooned by a thin coat of lead. Which suggests that the tiller tines didn't tink but tonked, but no one was there but Jonas and don't you knowhewasn't about to tell anyone.

Now, one of the traits of the accountant-by-day that I haven't told you but surely you cold surmise, was that he leaned toward the superstitious. Before adding a column he would always throw a piece of eraser over his left shoulder. Before changing a diaper, he would always throw a pin over his right. And before planting his worms, he would always throw one over his head. All for good luck and keep the number demons, pee freaks, and earth creatures from hexing him. So when he found the metal box that tinked or tonked he sneaked to the two-hole outhouse to inspect it lest he be seen. Unfortunately this was the night of October 31, the night red-blooded farmer boys scour the countryside spreading their merriment. And this particular October they found the two-holer silhouetted against the harvest moon hovering in a black sky and tipped it over. The two-holer,

that is. And Jonas Thompson and his hermetically sealed, welded, lead-enveloped box that tink-tonked when his tiller tines touched it, both fell into the poop pit beneath the outhouse.

But before you wretch and hold your nose or spit, wash your hands, and exhale deeply, you should know that the pit in question hadn't been used for years, so all Jonas and his box fell into was a humus-bottomed depression. But the boys thought they'd hit the jackpot. They thought they'd pulled off the grandest coup ever. Well, wouldn't you if you'd heard a man yell bloody murder from a poop pit? Anyway, the fall wasn't as great as it might have been. The truth is, it turned out to be a blessing, because after giving up trying to climb out, Jonas found his flashlight and saw that inscribed in the sides of the box were initials and numbers: BDG and 1850. And that made his curiosity bound past his superstition and the peculiar circumstance of being in a poop pit at midnight after burying earthworms. At any rate, in time the thirteen-time father undid all the surface protectors and found what was inside the mysterious box.

No, it was not full of gold or jewels or the real will of Howard Hughes. It was mostly empty. Except for a note written in the most beautiful hand. The note read, "Meet me at midnight and I will be ALL yours and forever." Jonas' imagination soared. Out of the poop, past the worm furrow, even beyond the harvest moon. Once free, it knew no bounds. It flew over the heads of the thirteen children, richocheted off his wife's Tupperware boxes, and even transcended his accountant columns. Glory to Jonas Thompson: he was a free man!

A farmer found Jonas lying in the black pit, the upturned outhouse resting quietly on its side. The accountant clutched the lead box in the crotch of his left elbow and the note in his right hand. Smiling, the man just stared into nowhere. The farmer told the police and men in white

coats that the only words he heard Jonas mumble were numbers, diapers, worms, Mullein, and beautiful woman. The farmer said he couldn't make head nor tail out of it all, but guessed that when a man flips he can jabber most anything.

Well, I'm headed to my just desserts pretty soon myself. I don't know what they'll be -- I suppose only Saint Peter and the Book of Life know that secret. But before I went I wanted to get old Jonas out of my mind. And now I have. And wasn't I right -- you didn't believe a word I said, did you?