There was this man in our extended neighborhood back home. I
can’t remember his name. Folks mainly called him “Good Boy.”
They called him that because he would start every greeting
with, “I’m a good boy, ain’t I?” He was of indeterminate age, maybe somewhere just
short of his sixties. He wandered the county in the company of two or more dogs
who had an uncanny ability to determine whether one was greeting, teasing, or
threatening harm to their master. They enjoyed the first, tolerated the second,
and you didn’t want to fall into the third.
It’s scarcely an exaggeration to say you could smell him
coming before you actually saw him, and you might see him anywhere, at anytime
of day or night. You could buy a smile and harmless chatter, along with a day’s
tolerance from his dogs, with no more than a cigarette and a friendly ear.
I don’t know his full history. According to my mother, he
was from one of those pioneer families of the county whom a stranger would have
classified as lower-middle class but whom locals knew as possessors of significant
wealth. In the land where I grew up, the highest and most honored classifier of
“class” was to be secretly wealthy while giving all appearances of a modest existence.
A family who, particularly if it had inherited wealth, displayed opulence of
any sort were so far beneath contempt as to be socially invisible.
So, it probably was true that "Good Boy" had been eligible
for an education and a comfortable life, but something went wrong. My mother
explained it in the common language of the day. “When he grew up, they just
couldn’t do anything with him.” That was the local euphemism for “he went
crazy.”
I subscribe to theory of his being educated for one reason.
The man was some sort of musical savant. I know. I’ve heard him, from having
worked at the swimming pool of a local country club for four summers while
attending college. It wasn’t uncommon for the subject of this post and his dogs
to wander onto the club grounds to watch the excitement and chat with old acquaintances.
Sometimes, when the club guardians failed to notice him, he
would ease into an empty ball room, sit with his dogs beside him, and launch
the club’s grand piano into sounds of breathtaking beauty. The most educated
and knowledgeable person associated with the club was a head waiter who had
previously taught English at our city’s African-American high school. He would identify
the day’s music as Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven, or the likes from the brief
snatches played ere the authorities chased the performer and his dogs away.
I’ve heard that churches in the county, particularly those
with powerful church-organs, locked their doors at night to keep "Good Boy" from
terrifying nearby residents with midnight serenades. I can’t swear to that, but
it’s too good a story to omit.
Don’t know what ever became of him. I fled Arkansas and
Orval Faubus while the man, his dogs, and his music were still wandering the
county. I thought of him this morning after I located a particularly exquisite
rendition of a Chopin nocturne. I do an exercise I call “The YouTube Thread Predictor.”
I simply count the thread of comments related to a particularly sublime piece of
music and count the entries before one appears that involves either the “F-word”
or an ad hominem attack on the
previous commenter. It stands at about five on some pieces now, down from about
ten at the end of last year. As with the so-called “Doomsday Clock,” a further rise
may signal the end of civilization as we know it.
In the meantime, I’ll try to remember that one should never
presume to predict from where pure beauty—or a pure lack of class—may emerge.
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