Just before he died, my husband started rambling this story to me (roughly, I transcribed it as fast as I could). He never said anything like this; he worked as a figures man and told maybe three or four jokes I can remember. They were very good jokes. He was a good man. But anyways, here are his last words:
Bog-o Dog Din had a ridiculous bone which he loved and slobbered. His owner was a scruffy kielbasa kind of man. His hair was moving south, down to the chest and testes. His wife was away, so now he never shaved. He was bald flat out. He hadn’t picked that name, Bog-o Dog Din, and he didn’t like it. But Bog-o Dog didn’t mind. He just slobbered and loved that bone so much he summoned a ghost with it. The owner went outside, tee totally snockered, to the cracked veranda and yelled: Oh what the hell. Fuck that. That's ghost!
The ghost said: howdy, howdy, here’s lookin’ at you. The ghost was from way south the Rio Grande. The ghost used to rent the Velour Room of Señora's Saloon and he hustled aces downstairs. The ghost lost all faith when the first booger-boy gunked an iPad.
Ghosts don’t smell, you know, so Bog didn’t notice cowboy ghost. He just kept slobber-loving that bone, which summoned a second ghost: the ghost of Alaín Reád. [Here my husband spelled out the diacritics.] This ghost was first brigadier. This ghost couldn't help but scour each and all Napoleonic biographies, trying to find his name. He searched for those little ticks but only found Pía, Astría, Ramón.
The owner tossed gardenia heads at the ghosts. He said: shoo, shoo, shoo. The ghosts were contrite; they gave you a headache to look at them. They said they came here because it was a hotspot for love. That’s how it worked with them. They said they’d been afraid of death since they treasured life so much, especially the people in their life, and especially the strange little things those people did. That was love, maybe. They said by nature of their time and their occupations and their confines of race, sex, class, etc., they couldn’t properly express this love to those people. They said they were envious of him; he could, in this modern climate, right now!
Of course, the owner couldn’t express his love any better. But the ghosts didn't know that. They didn't know he'd haggard his wife, always playing big boss over trifles until she snapped. She was almost home from her one-woman vacation, but he texted her the water bill: those showers add up, so she bought a new ticket and kept buying tickets and still hadn't come back.
The ghosts didn't know about the hundred or so drafts he’d written. His inability to combine sorry, plus that he loved her, plus that he crumbled when she wasn't there, and all that plus mean it. They certainly knew how much he meant it: more than anything. I love you. I love you! [Here my husband straightened in the hospital bed.] But how to write a note like that? You never seem like you mean it; it always seems like rhetoric, as much a number, a hustle, a way of pronouncing.
Instead what they saw was a bone-loving dog who caterwauled low as the rain came in. They saw the owner now paler plus colder. He called the dog inside: Bog-o Dog Din, Bog-o Dog Din. Then, one by one, he closed every window of the house and sat at his desk to try again.
But the bone was left outside, that’s important. The ridiculous bone under a kind of moon, you remember the one in our bird bath? When you put your hand under my rump, how you’d never done till then, and the beeping whip-poor-will call? That’s the moon. [Here he smiled finally. He pointed forward then took my hand.] Hear that night before the storm? It’s very fine; it’s how we had it. And the three-odd ghosts, they get to close their eyes too, they get to think of all the better ways to say it too because the night itself was so, so, so fine.
