The Snows of Yesteryear

"Where is Echo, beheld of no man,

Only heard on river and mere,

She whose beauty was more than human?

But where are the snows of yesteryear?"

-from "the Ballad of Dead Ladies"

by Francois Villon (1431-1489)

Old Flames and the Old Timer

I sat and drank with the old man for a while.  He'd clearly seen better days and kept looking at the clock as if hoping by some miracle it would run backward instead and deliver him to a past so much sweeter than the present.  He satisfied himself instead to talk of old loves over beers and well tequila and we were the best of friends for two and a half hours.

First there was Carla, whom he'd known since grade school.  She'd been his first, not his first love but the first woman with whom he'd performed the act of love, an act that over the years had become so far removed from the gentle purity of it's essence it was hardly worth that lofty title.  She'd gone on to work in a library and retired some years ago, a grandmother with a husband obsessed with ham radio.  They'd seen one another in the grocery store once around Thanksgiving time, she with her cart full of dressing, cranberry sauce and fixings for desserts and he with his full of wine, baloney, and day old bread.  There was no glint of recognition, no echoes from that distant past in which they'd been so hopelessly enamored as to allow one another the gift of physical consummation.  "She looked at me like I was a goddamned thief," he laughed, "but she knew right well that what I took from her she gave to me."

He next spoke of Elizabeth who'd been "rich and smart" by his estimation.  A thin redheaded student who waited tables for gas and rent money while he toiled as a dishwasher to support himself in a very modest fashion.  "She was from way down south and had a grandmother that called any northerner she met 'murdering yankee scum' to their face and mean every word of it".  They'd spend days off in her apartment naked, making food, watching television, holding and enjoying one another as only young people can.  "I loved those days we spent together," he said, "but I never loved that girl".  He wasn't sure what had happened to her, but was sure she had done okay for herself in life.  "She was that type."

Dana was young.  "Young and foolish," he said, "but the most beautiful woman I ever saw."  She had dark hair and eyes and skin "brown as a nut."  She drank with him and laughed with him and they went dancing together.  "The trouble was, I was living with another woman at the time." He shook his head.  "A good woman, too.  Two good women wronged by one shit-heel at the same damn time."  One day he'd told himself to break it off with Dana, never bothering to tell Dana herself.  "But, like I said, she was young.  It's easier to take that kind of thing when you're young."  She'd gone on to become a flight attendant and, as far as he knew, hadn't married.  "Which shows you she wasn't so foolish after all." he said, and we laughed.  

Marie was going to be his wife.  "She was the end of it." he said, but not bitterly.  She was a big woman, with a big laugh and a vibrant spirit.  "Everybody loved her," he said "My momma loved her to death."  He told story after story about her, funny happenings, trips they'd taken, and the colorful things she'd say.  "She was sassy and didn't take no stuff."  The inevitable question, "What went wrong?" went unasked for some time as he shared his recollections.  When  finally asked, he smiled again.  "I was a fool." he said simply.  He'd tested her a little too much, was drinking too much at the time, "Which wasn't entirely my fault." he said, raising a glass.  One night he'd been given a bottle of Pusser's Rum as a gift.  He came home, made hamburgers for dinner, drinking rum all the while, and everything was just fine until right around bedtime.  "I don't know what came over me." he said.  "Every man, no matter how content, has some itch or another that he can't scratch.  He's got a body or two buried deep inside, and I loved this woman so much that I wanted her to know all about it.  All about me.  And so I told her everything.  Everything I wanted and everything I'd done.  We made love that one last time and the next day she was gone."  Not physically gone, but emotionally.  "Turns out she wanted things I didn't know the first thing about.  Things I guess I just couldn't give."  One attempt at reunion came to nothing and before too long she and all their old friends drifted away and familiar haunts became hostile and foreign places.  "I begged her," he said.  "Made a pest of myself with her friends, her momma, even.  Nothing.  Damn near drove me crazy."  Marie had married some time ago.  "A minister down in South Carolina.  Real nice guy, I've heard."  He shrugged his shoulders and we ordered another round.

I'm sure there were more women to talk about, but there wasn't however, more time in which to discuss them.  He looked at the clock one last time, his eyes closing dreamily.  "Young man, it's been a pleasure." he said.  He shook my hand and was gone.  I asked the bartender if she knew his name and she said she didn't. She called him an "irregular regular" who came in on occasion.  I haven't seen him since, but I look for him there at the bar.

I look at the clock wonder when I'll hope it runs backwards.  

"A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams"

-John Barrymore, who portrayed the poet Francois Villon in the silent film "the Beloved Rogue" (1927)