A good man is hard to find
by Terry Berkson |
Late last fall, Tiger Goodale and Rootie Marriott, two lifelong
natives of Richfield Springs, drove up to the farm to say that they had
a great story for me to write. It seems this one-legged guy they knew
was up in an oak, building a tree stand when his new prosthesis, which
he didn’t secure properly, fell to the ground and rolled into a ravine.
The guy had a rather large dog with him – they thought it was a
Rottweiler, but they weren’t sure.
The dog thought the man was playing fetch and dashed down the ravine
after the “big bone.” When he retrieved it he didn’t bring it back and
put it before his master but, instead, kept it a playfully safe
distance away, laid down and began to gnaw at it. Meanwhile, the guy
had climbed out of the tree and was “scrambling or crawling, I’m not
sure,” Tiger said. Again, the big dog thought his master was playing,
and left the bone to jump on the man and roll him around in the
freshly fallen leaves. “I got his number,” Tiger continued as he dug
into his pocket and pulled out an Old Milwaukee beer coaster with some
writing on it. “You’ll have to speak to him to get the facts straight.”
“Did he get the leg back,” I asked.
“We don’t know,” Rootie answered. “You’ll have to call him,” he said pointing towards the phone.
I was definitely interested. Their story reminded me of a tale
written by Flannery O’Connor where a traveling salesman seduces a
one-legged milkmaid in a haymow, and when she falls asleep, he makes
off with her artificial leg, never to be seen again.
So, I called the number and, after it rang several times, an
answering machine came on. “I write for the Mercury,” I said. “I got
Tiger and Rootie here. They told me about your leg falling out off the
tree and I’d like to know – the rest of the story.” A couple of days
passed but the guy didn’t call back. It occurred to me that in spite of
him telling his friends about the experience, maybe now he didn’t want
to talk about it anymore. Still, I was impressed with a one-legged man
who had the gumption to climb trees and I couldn’t get the phenomenon
out of my head. Subscribing to the belief that the end product of
existence is story, I felt justified in tracking the guy down. A second
message left on the answering machine yielded no response.
So, where do you find a man who knows Tiger and Rootie? I checked
the Genesee and kicked every shin that was bellied up to the bar but
didn’t get the hollow sound I was looking for. I didn’t kick hard but
several of the guys were indignant yelling “ow!” What’d you do that
for?”
“I’m looking for a one-legged man,” I said. One guy kicked me back!
Hard! Nevertheless, I persisted. The next time I went in, everyone
moved down the bar to get away from me. I guess they thought I had gone
nuts. Still, I needed to find my man, so, anyone who came in with a new
face got a kick. By now I had learned to sometimes do it
“accidentally,” especially after one guy said, “You kick my shin, I
kick your a.... I checked out the Schuyler House, the Park Inn and the
Vets’ Club, but none of the shins I kicked would appeal to a termite.
Predictably, all the beer drinking was making me quite bloated, if not
tipsy. To add insult to injury, I was getting the reputation of a
gadfly.
My obsession began to enter my dreams. One night I saw a man putting
a poster on a bulletin board in the park on Main Street. It said,
beware or you’ll GET YOUR KICKS ON ROUTE 20. I still haven’t found my
man, so I don’t know what happened. Did he complete the tree stand? Did
he shoot a deer? Did the dog finally return the big bone to his master,
or did he bury it somewhere for use on another day?
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