Valediction

Just before he died, my husband began to ramble 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. She 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 faith when the first booger-boy gunked an iPad. And he regained it all when the boy became a better dad.

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 general. This ghost couldn’t help but scour each and all Napoleonic biographies, trying to find his name. He searched for those tiny ticks but only found Pía, Astría, Ramón.

The owner plucked white heads from the gardenias and hucked them at the ghosts. He said: shoo, shoo, shoo. Contrition hit those ghosts, and they flickered to make your temples ache. They tried to remove their hats, but their hands went through; they tried to bow but they kept going and twisted around themselves. They treasured life, they said, that’s why they never were ready to die. That’s why they came here, they said. Because life is love and here tonight is ten tons of it in a two pound bag. And they kept on about hotspots for love and spectral whatever.

The whole time, Bog-o Dog never stopped with the bone, even as the ghosts bumbled on. They went on and on. They talked about those they loved: How she stamped loose nails back into the floorboards, or how badly he danced the tarantella. But they saw the owner’s mind had gone elsewhere, so they grew four times as big. [Here my husband straightened in the hospital bed.] If we had your time! Then we could tell them right. For us, everything in the way: war and class and machismo. And name a prejudice, yes. But this new, living world lets you. You can, my god, my god… And they rose into the highest branches with jealousy.

Of course, the owner couldn’t express his love any better. But the ghosts didn’t seem to know that. They didn’t know he’d haggard his wife, always playing big boss over trifles until she snapped. A month ago, she was almost home from a one-woman vacation, and he texted her the water bill: See? Those showers add up. And she bought a new ticket and kept buying tickets and hadn’t returned.

The ghosts couldn’t see the hundred or so drafts he’d written. His inability to add together a sorry, plus that he loved her, plus that he crumbled without her, and all that plus mean it. They certainly knew how much he meant it: more than anything. I love you. I love you! But how to say it right? You never seem like you mean it; it always seems like rhetoric, as much a number, a hustle, a way of pronouncing.

It started to rain. Finally the bone-loving dog looked up and began a soft, low caterwaul. The ghosts saw the owner below was paler now plus colder; they understood wires had been crossed. The owner called: Bog-o Dog Din, Bog-o Dog Din. Then, when they were both inside, he went one by one and closed every window of the house. He sat at his desk. Soon, he felt, so he’d give it another whack. Anyways, pretty soon…

But the bone got left outside, that’s important—that ridiculous bone under a kind of moon. You remember, the one reflected in our bird bath? When you put your hand under my rump, how you’d never done till then, and that whip-poor-will called. He just kept beep-beeping and shitting and splashing in the moon? [He laughed.] That’s the moon. [He pointed forward then took my hand.] Hear that night across the storm? As the rain moves in. It’s very fine; it’s how we had it. And those two, maybe three ghosts, they get to close their eyes too; they get to imagine better ways to say it too because the night itself was so fine.