Aloysius Bamblebee

I see him lounge beneath the pecan tree, nursing his alcohol as he hides from his young cousins. They want to play army men with him some more, but he has already been losing for hours. Poor boy! He thinks he is a man. Yet, with better rules, he still plays different games. Watch him as he returns to his profession. He thinks it his calling because it makes him enough money: To impress some pretty little brunette some day, and raise his own children in Catholic school, and send them off to college, and cry when he sees his daughters married, and laugh as he rocks his grandchildren upon his knee, and die as he dreams of the delights of heaven. I see it all in his eyes; the scope of seventy or so years, caught up like a tear drop ready to fall and burst upon the earth. Sometimes, I wonder what it is like to have cousins. I forget what that felt like. Sometimes, I wonder what it is like to worry about the future. I forget what fear tasted like. Sometimes, I wonder what it is like to plan for things beyond this Earth. I forget what it feels like to plan anything. Part of me wishes to clap a hand upon his shoulder and speak with him, but I'm not sure what that conversation would be like. He'd see an old man with a gray-white beard. Maybe he'd notice my eyes; or my carefree, wrinkled smile. That's what catches most people: the look of not having any particular problem. Somehow they can see that in my face. He knows me, I think, at least by name, but he can't figure out what questions to ask me. Most likely, he will ask me who I am. Thousands of others have asked me that. Well, a lot more than thousands, if truth be told, but I don't much like counting; I never saw the point of keeping track. The ones who know me well will ask about the past, knowing that I have seen more than the prophets. I knew the desert before them all. The ones who know me best do not ask at all. They can see the same riddle that I have faced for aeons. They are still looking for the question. What good are answers that lead in circles? And that's my doom, I suppose. Endless circles. At least this boy lives upon a line, maybe a ray if his priests are correct. I can't say it is better or worse, really. It just changes how you look at things, and conversations become a lot less urgent. I don't think I'll bother him; he's so peaceful now. The sun has set and the Texas summer has become bearable. He's so fragile, so bothered by having answers. But he needs questions, I fear.