Thick as Thieves
He picks up his singing cell phone, “Hell-O.”
“How’s ‘ole Good Eye?” the voice on the other end of the line growls. Snickering self-amusement pulses through the speaker as he poses for the hundredth time the question he isn’t really expecting or wanting an answer to.
The two men cackle like a couple of termite-hunting kookaburras.
For the past several months, their daily banter has started out exactly in this way. The conversations don’t last very long—maybe five-to-ten minutes tops. They consist, mostly, of a running bit of corny rhetoricals (after which they giggle predictably in unison), a comment or two about the weather, and maybe a vague run-of-show of the Groundhog Day ahead. You could cut Monday’s call and paste it on Thursday and neither one of them would know.
These talks have no specific end game. Except, perhaps, to be sure both parties are still alive.
Lou and Norm have touched base almost every morning for years—more years than either one of them can count or could remember if you pressed them—though the “Good Eye” bit is new. The temporary nickname, earned by Lou after a fall tattooed the left side of his face in a puddle of purple that would make Rocky Balboa proud, has stuck, at least for now. It gives the octogenarians a brotherhood hook to hang this season of their friendship on.
Photo: Celine Ferre / The World Bank. © The World Bank. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Source: Flickr, World Bank Photo Collection.
Of their “fun bunch” group of ten who used to golf, fish and hunt, travel, play endless games of high-stakes poker and gin rummy, Lou and Norm are the only two still breathing.
This happens when you are awarded a long and lusty life.
The crew became a crew because of geographical proximity, work that collided, hobbies that were one’s and then became the others’ over time. Baiting a hook while lamenting the price of oil braided their souls together. Shuffling a deck of cards while laughing at nagging-wife jokes loosened many a knot that felt—before the game began—as if it had no shot to come undone.
Throughout the years, their wives gave birth to babies who grew up to build families who had babies of their own. The men’s individual businesses flourished, then they flopped, then they bulked back up again. The gang spent hours and hours and hours together, and eventually their edges bled. They moved through life, despite their changing addresses, together. At some point, though it’s impossible to say exactly when, they became a blob that one grenade could get.
From the blue tees to the yellow, the men grew thick as thieves.
Then, slowly, time began to take its toll. There were bouts of cancer, back surgeries, knee and hip replacements, heart conditions and of course, denial. Medications kept colds and flus and worse, more-or-less in check. Their group-size, once dependable, grew into a last-minute wait and see. Six this weekend, eight the next. That trip with the ten-bedroom rental to find the elk reduced to four. Still, if they could find a way, they hobbled to the boat, the plane, the buggy, the cart and they went—hard—until their maker called them home.
Norm and Lou keep golfing when they can and telling silly jokes into a cell phone when they can’t, but they miss their buddies every day.
The cost is that they’ve lost them; the gift is that they had each other to lose.
P.S. Goodbye Edward Cole