Sometimes

Sometimes
by Tresa Martin


Sometimes bad feelings invade our souls for no apparent reason. Nothing is wrong; there is no cause for despair, but the feeling stubbornly refuses to acknowledge sensibility and just will not go away. This was the way I felt that day.

Granted, many things in our lives had changed since Jon had gotten the job with the Small Business Administration and these alone could account for it. He had been sent to Houston, Texas to verify losses caused by Tropical Storm Allison. But for the most part, we liked the changes. Life was certainly not boring. I had joined him in Houston and was staying in the hotel. I was spending a lot of time alone, but planned to use the time to write as soon as my laptop was shipped. We were doing a lot of eating out, swimming in the pool and regularly enjoying the hot tub in the evening. All in all, it was sort of exciting. There was no reason to cry, but I found myself on the verge several times that day.

When Jon got off that evening, he and I and Tom, who was a fellow SBA man, decided to check out Galveston, which was only an hour away. All during the trip, I fought the feeling of melancholy that threatened to overwhelm me. Jon and even Tom, who didn't know my normal demeanor well, repeatedly asked me if everything was all right. This can be awkward, especially when one doesn't have a clue why they are feeling blue. I tried to assure them I was fine, but I know I didn't fool Jon, at least.

We decided to eat dinner at a crab shack, which Tom claimed was the best place in town. I love seafood and this should have cheered me up considerably, but it didn't. After we finished, we decided to walk along the beach a bit before heading back. Tom wasn't keen on jostling his dinner around, so he stayed behind while Jon and I walked down to the water. Sea gulls were everywhere. The sun was going down and a pleasant breeze redolent with the scent of the ocean, gently tousled our hair as we stood arm in arm for a moment contemplating nature.

"You can have all the concrete in the world," I said, "but Mother Nature doesn't care or even notice."

"Yeah," Jon smiled. "She can destroy all our petty little dwellings in an instant. No sweat. I see it every day." We turned and began back up the asphalt walkway that lead to our car.

"Excuse me, sir. Do you have the time?" The old man seemed to be waiting there for us, like maybe he'd been watching.

"It's 8:02," Jon said checking his watch.

"Boy howdy. Sure something wrong with my watch, I guess." He fiddled with it for a moment and mumbled a long string of unintelligible words. His speech had a strange quality about it as though he was speaking to himself even when looking at you. We continued on and he fell into step beside us.

"We were just discussing how powerful nature can be," Jon offered after a moment. The old guy seemed determined to keep up with us. We weren't obviously trying to get away from him, but we hadn't slowed our pace either.

"That's right," he puffed. "The Bible says there will always be wars and rumors of wars. But that doesn't change nothing. It's not what matters." Just as I decided this man wasn't following what was said to him, he commented. "Nature's bigger than all of it . . ." A finger jabbed in our direction, back at his own chest and then out toward the expressway. "Bigger than you, me and anything we can build or tear down with our damn wars. That's why you gotta make every day count. The man upstairs might just decide it's your last."

"The man was really breathing hard now and Jon pulled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket and handed it to him. "Listen. Here's you something to get a cold Coke with and get cooled off, ok?" Without hesitation, the old man took the bill and smiled. We stopped a moment for him to catch his breath and for us to make our escape.

"Thank you so much, sir, and God bless you." He turned to face me and for the first time, I could smell the distinctive fumes of alcohol on his breath. "You too, ma'am." I nodded and smiled at him.

"Well, you take it easy now." Jon said. We resumed our pace and left him standing on the sidewalk.

I hugged Jon's waist. "That was sweet of you. You know he'll probably just go straight to the liquor store with it though."

"I know," he shrugged. " But it felt like the right thing to do." We could see Tom up ahead. He was standing by the car and seemed to be looking past us.

Suddenly, hurrying footsteps and ragged breathing came from behind us. It was the old bum, urgency on his worn face. "Just had to catch you," he gasped. We stopped and he continued, pausing to catch his breath. "Just had to tell you one more thing. It's important." He stopped again, gulped in the sea air and went on. "You take care of each other. That's the most important thing in life. Keep loving each other, coz that's all ya really got in the world."

A little taken aback, we gawked at him. Together, we finally managed, "We will."

Obviously relieved his message had been delivered, he wiped his brow with a dirty handkerchief and added, "Just wanted to tell you that. Wish I had known it when I still had somebody, before I . . . Well, that's all I wanted to say." With that, he turned back the way he'd come.

A lump the size of Texas rose in my throat and wordlessly we got into the car. "You gave that old coot some money didn't you?" Tom laughed and added, "You old softie."
"Not much," Jon mumbled. "And anyway, you've done the same thing. You hypocrite."

I listened to their banter with half an ear, while the tide of emotion I'd been pushing back all day welled inside. It wasn't sadness exactly; it was more a feeling of having glimpsed something vast, something neither wonderful nor terrible, just something real and honest about the world in which we live.

In the rear view window, I caught a fleeting glimpse of an old man hurrying inside a package store across the street from the strip of beach where we had been. The tide broke then, not on the outside, but in the depths of my soul, where the heart lives and also cries sometimes, over things unnamed.