Coffee With Alfie Needler
By Bernard Bomba
With old age firmly straddling his back, a compact man in a blue ski jacket and a Stormy Kromer cap strides boldly up the steep hill of Front Street, and just when it seems as if the dome of the world is beginning to crack, he is here. The handle of the door is smooth and cold and the door opens with the jingling of a bell.
Feeling chilled from his morning walk, Marty Beamish enters the Brewed Awakenings Café and is immediately warmed by the convivial atmosphere—the laughter, the hubbub, the hum of conversation, the large steam coffee machine percolating behind the counter, where the baristas perform a graceful dance amidst the clatter of cups and saucers. They weave through and around each other, quick-stepping here and suddenly stopping there, or leaning back to let slip by a coworker balancing cappuccinos. Marty admires their good humor and efficiency.
Rita, a tall red haired young woman, greets Marty with a smile. “Hello Marty, cold this morning isn’t it. What can I get for you?”
“Hi Rita, I’d like one of your artistically poured Americanos please,” he replies, rubbing the palms of his hands together. Rita is an art student, and Marty always asks how her classes are going, or how her latest project is progressing.
“I love my oil painting class; it’s exhilarating, and my teacher is awesome, but Graphic Design?” She shrugs her shoulders and squinches her face. “It’s kind of tedious. I guess I’m just too impractical.” She sighs, smoothing back a stray strand of hair.
“Hey, you’re an artist.” Marty smiles reassuringly. Rita has a particular way of emphasizing certain words, like “exhilarating” and “awesome” with a slightly breathless lilt in her voice that Marty finds charming.
Rita promptly returns with Marty’s coffee, and he wends his way through the crowded shop and finds his favorite table in a corner by the window. He hangs his jacket over the back of his chair and carefully places his cap on the chair seat next to him. He notices the usual number of cell phone junkies, wearing smooth their thumb prints and tickling the bellies of their touch screens. At one table sits a group of high school students. Every one of them is staring raptly into liquid crystal, occasionally nudging the person next to them to share something of great interest on their screen. But they seldom look at each other, never make eye contact. Marty directs his attention elsewhere.
He takes a small brown notebook from his shirt pocket, sips his coffee, and settles in to observe the human drama unfolding all around him. He likes to eavesdrop on conversations and watch the changes in facial expressions and body language of people absorbed in discussions, reminiscences, or courtships. Several people are working on laptops, but one young man is engrossed in reading Moby Dick, and surprisingly, a young woman is reading a nursing textbook and highlighting passages with a green fluorescent pen.
At a nearby table a young couple with a little girl are drinking lattes and discussing whether or not they should proceed with a plan to move to Nova Scotia. From what Marty can gather, the young woman has family there, and both she and her husband are concerned about raising their daughter here, given the current political climate. The mom and dad are painstakingly sorting out the details involved in such an undertaking. Their little girl is eating with gusto a very large chocolate croissant.
The teenagers are still frolicking in cyberspace. A pretty girl with a hot pink phone is suddenly startled by something she sees while scrolling. She blushes, then begins to laugh nervously, then she gasps and immediately goes quiet. She covers her mouth with her hand. Abruptly, she grabs her backpack and rushes out the door. Her friend follows close behind. The two other girls are alarmed and begin to whisper to each other. The boys at the table snicker and laugh self-consciously, ignoring the whispering girls.
Three older women, all with beautiful gray hair, are enjoying coffee and pastries and talking animatedly, smiling and laughing, and gesturing with their hands. They are so calm, and their conversation flows so easily. “How much easier it is for women it seems,” Marty muses, “to enjoy each other’s company.”
In walks Oscar Gallant, the young man whom Marty homeschool tutors in English twice a week at the library. He smiles and waves to Marty, and walks up to the counter and orders a takeout coffee. He is tall and slim and walks with a long, easy stride. His brown hair falls to his shoulders from beneath a multicolored watch cap. A touch of irony plays about the corners of his mouth. Marty invites Oscar to join him at his table.
“I wish I could, but I have to be at the shop in ten minutes; Uncle Frank is letting me help him work on a Hermes 3000 today.”
“Wow! I’m jealous.”
Oscar smiles a Duchenne smile. “Stop over and have a look if you have time. The Hermes is hard to come by these days. Uncle Frank made a special trip to Hartford to pick it up.”
“And we are on for tomorrow, right?” Marty reminds him.
Oscar gives a thumbs up. “Ten o’clock sharp at the library.”
Marty watches through the window as Oscar jogs across the street and walks briskly away. He has a bounce in his step, and his eyes are on the horizon. For Marty, the image brings to mind the lyric from a John Prine song: “And it’s far…, far from me.”
“Oh, to be young again, hey Marty?” A familiar voice with a Brooklyn accent awakens Marty from his reverie. He looks up to find Alfie Needler standing by his table and gazing out the window. His profile against the window light accentuates his aquiline nose and high forehead.
“That kid is so full of energy, so confident. Who is he? He looks familiar.”
“He’s Oscar Gallant, a courageous young man embarked upon a quest of self liberation. He has traded in his ‘smart’ phone for an old-fashioned flip phone, similar to the one I use, and he has signed off of social media for good. Last year, he and a few classmates formed a Luddite club, like the one started by high school students in Brooklyn to help liberate young people from the grip of social media and Big Tech. There was an article about the Brooklyn kids in the New York Times.”
“I remember reading that story. Apparently that movement is catching on with young people.”
“Oscar went a step further and left his high school in favor of homeschooling, in protest against the endless school shootings and widespread bullying.”
“A rebel!” Alfie smiles, then shakes his head in admiration. “Youth is the key. Youth can overcome almost anything.”
The two old men are silent for several moments. Then Alfie muses wistfully, “Those were the days, hey Marty? What became of us?” He runs his hand through his thinning gray hair. “Where did they go? Those idealistic Young Turks, those rising stars…; lost boys, wandering through the mists of time.”
“Alfie, stop lamenting the past, and sit down and enjoy your coffee. Treat yourself to a cinnamon bun, and give me some good news.”
“Well, the not so bad news is that I sold my first edition of Player Piano for a tidy sum, but the very bad news is that our country is being taken over by white supremacists, and fascist forces are terrorizing our people. The United States is now considered a threat to world peace. So, it is difficult to get excited about selling a book.” Alfie and Marty commiserate about the fall of America, but end up speechless and shaking their heads in disbelief.
Alfie is a worrywart, a hypochondriac, a nudzh; he is preoccupied with growing old and frequently alludes to his impending demise. He is also well-read, a collector of books, a writer of elegant, satirical essays, and a longtime practitioner of Zen Buddhism. Marty appreciates that Alfie is able and willing to talk about death. Most people avoid the topic at all costs. They both attend the Death Café monthly gatherings at the library, led by a young librarian whose name, ironically, is Aurora. She is intelligent, well-spoken, and quite beautiful, and she always provides homemade cake and tea.
With elbows on the table, Alfie holds his coffee cup with both hands. He sips, sighs deeply, and levels his gaze at Marty. Beneath his bushy eyebrows his eyes are the eyes of a boy. “To quote Willy Loman,” he says, ‘I still feel kind of temporary about myself.’ Are you going to the Death Café on Saturday?”
Marty nods his head. “I think so. You know, tea and cake, and I like when those three kids from Bowdoin show up. Apparently, young people think about death too, but just not as close up as we do. But you know, Alfie, talking about death is like walking down a long hallway of mirrors; at the end of the hallway, you always end up facing a blank wall.”
Alfie’s interest is sparked. “That’s why we sit zazen, isn’t it Marty? The Five Remembrances? ‘We are of the nature to grow old. We are of the nature to suffer ill health. We are of the nature to die.’” He sits back in his chair, becoming pensive, and looks around the room. “All of us.” Marty detects a fleeting look of disbelief pass over Alfie’s face. “We all will suffer great loss,” Alfie muses, his voice trailing off. “So, we sit. There is nothing else for it.”
Marty nods his head and smiles. “No separate self. No two things. It is all one big Whoosh.”
Gazing out the window, Alfie ponders: “Stillness, profound calm…, it’s out there in the slant of light, in the windblown snow, in the trees—always in the trees.”
They fall silent.
Alfie sighs deeply, rubbing his forehead. “And yet, Hungry Ghosts are always amongst us. Hungry Ghosts are the masters of separateness; it is always ‘Me’ opposed to ‘You’; they see the world in terns of ‘Us’ against ‘Them’. They are always at war.”
The two friends sit in silence, watching at the window: bright sunshine, and suddenly snow flurries shimmering in the air. A little girl in a red hat is dancing and laughing, fascinated by the brilliant snow shower, and her mother, in wonder watches her dance. The two old men smile as the girl passes by the window and waves to them. Long after she has danced away, they continue to stare into the dazzle.
Alfie stands up and reaches for his coat, a long, gray, wool overcoat. “Now that ICE is in Maine in full force, I plan on joining my son on his neighborhood watch rounds in Portland. He’s on one of those rapid response teams, like the ones that the heroic people of Minneapolis formed to alert their neighbors when the goons are in their neighborhood,” he says, putting on his old- fashioned earmuff cap and fastening the strap under his chin. “I think I will go along for the ride.”
“Be careful Alfie,” Marty cautions.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be wearing a whistle.”
Whenever Alfie takes his leave after a visit, he will always say something like: “See you around…--maybe; if these tattered sails hold up in this wind.” Or he might quote something appropriately alluding to death from Shakespeare or Keats. Today he recites a passage from Joyce’s The Dead: “One by one they were all becoming shades. Better to pass boldly into that other world, in full glory of some passion, than to fade and wither dismally with age.”
With that he is out the door. Marty watches as he makes his way down Front Street, a not so tall, slightly bent and crooked man with a purposeful stride and fire in his belly.
Marty lingers a while longer. The young couple and their little girl have departed. Marty wonders about what they decided. Will they be leaving for Nova Scotia to make a better life?
The teenagers are long gone, and at their table sit two shipyard workers. Marty recognizes Jack Higgins, a bright young man with a ready smile, who Marty has talked with often. Jack is passionate about social justice, and protecting the rivers and breathing clean air. He has solar panels on the roof of his house. He holds fast to his values when controversial topics arise in conversation amongst his fellow warship builders at “The Yard.” Marty admires Jack’s courage in standing up for his beliefs in a workplace that often is inhospitable to his view of the world.
The three beautiful gray-haired women have been joined by a fourth beautiful woman with long gray hair. Marty is taken aback as he realizes that the newcomer is Claire--his wife. He suddenly feels a wave of euphoria pass over him. He will give Claire some time to enjoy the easy camaraderie with her friends. Then they will walk home together holding hands.
THE END
Author Bio: Bernard Bomba’s poems and short stories have been published in the North American Review, The American Poetry Review, West Branch, PANK, and others over the past forty years. He lives in Bath, Maine.