The Feet of God

125 - THE BIG PICTURE

Crespo reached under and pulled up a bottle of rum.  “How about an eye-opener?”

“Aaarrrggghhh,” I tried to sound like a pleased pirate.

Crespo laughed at my attempt to talk piratical.  He took down two glass tumblers and filled them with ice from a freezer compartment.  “Orange juice?” he asked.

“Screwdriver juice, definitely,” I nodded.

He poured our drinks then toasted, “To Baby Harmonica!”

“To Baby Harmonica!” I repeated, as our two glasses clinked together.

“Tell me, mate,” Crespo asked, “what do you do to try and achieve happiness?”

“Happiness?”  I scratched my chin.  “Ya know, that’s kinda a hard question.”

“And why is that?”

“Well, only because happiness and sadness come and go of their own accord.  I mean, if ya find money on the sidewalk, you’re gonna be happy about it.  If your dog dies, you’re gonna be sad.”

“So you’re saying one shouldn’t try to be happy?” Crespo squinted.

“Not exactly.  I guess you just gotta endure whatever happiness and sadness life sends your way.  Hopefully it’s mostly good stuff.”

Crespo laughed.  “Do you know Hope was the last thing that crawled out of Pandora’s Box?”

“I never knew that fact,” I owned up.  The longer I conversed with Crespo, the more I was developing a mild inferiority complex.

“So,” Crespo continued to laugh, “is Hope a blessing or a curse?”

“Well, that’s beyond me.  I don’t know enough to have an educated opinion.”

Crespo changed gears.  “Do you know what it’s like to kill a man?”

I shook my head back and forth.

“I do,” he solemnly said.  “It was in a bar fight in Puerto Rico.  There was a really big guy with long hair who called himself Sampson.  He challenged me to arm wrestle with a hot coal on either side for the losing contestant.  So we arm wrestled, and it was a mighty struggle indeed.  I, however, prevailed.  He screamed as the burning coal seared into his flesh.  Sampson stood up in a rage and tossed the table aside, then he came at me with homicide in his eyes.  He was a strong man, as his name would indicate, and I must admit, he was having the better of it.  But I improvised.”

“What’d you do?”

“Fortunately for me, there was a mounted trophy billfish on the wall.  I grabbed it off and stabbed Sampson.”

“Wow.”

“Through and through, actually.”

“You killed him?”

“Dead.”

“Didn’t the cops come after you?”

“I imagine.  But I sailed away before they had a chance to get me, or know who I was.”

“Amazing.”

“I’ve thought about that incident a lot since,” Crespo tugged his beard.  “I’m sorry it had to end that way, but he left me no choice.”

“Seems like you was in one of those life-or-death struggles.”

“Yes, it would seem.  The funny thing is, after that, I couldn’t stop my mind from wondering what happens.”

“What happens?”

“Yes.  When you die.  What happens?”

“Well, I’m in no hurry to learn the answer,” I half-joked.

“Of course not,” Crespo chuckled.  “I can’t say if there’s any kind of afterlife or not.  But one thing’s for sure, when you die, you, the individual, may be gone forever, but your corpse is eternal.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if you have an immortal soul or not.  But your dead body lasts forever.  It will rot and molder and eventually decompose all on its own.  But the atoms in your dead body will exist in one form or another.  Stardust.”

“Really?”

“Forever.  Well, for as long as this universe exists.  Isn’t that perfectly ironic?”

Crespo continued talking about issues of life, death, eternity and infinity.  I couldn’t tell if he was a wise man or if he had snakes in his brain.