“My teacher sent me here,” Robbie answered, his mouth oozing the chocolate brown of the half-masticated candies. “She said you could help me with my composition. I have to have it finished by Friday.”
“She thought I could help you? What is your theme about?”
“I had a funny idea. Are you a funny man? Maybe she thought you were funny and you could give me funny ideas I can put in it.”
“I haven’t been feeling all that funny lately, son. Uriah, do you think I’ve been very funny lately?”
“No, sir. Not for some time.”
Robbie was eyeing those M&M’s again. I picked up the bowl and set it in his lap. “So what is the idea?”
“I wanted to write a story about a boy who joins the circus. There is a very special thing about him. He has three legs.”
I shooed Uriah away, afraid that he might divulge an important fact that I had no desire at that moment to convey to the boy. Then I leaned forward, feigning intense interest in this most amazing anatomical phenomenon. “Three legs! My, oh my. Now, young Robbie, why did you decide to give this boy three legs?”
Robbie shoveled another handful of M&M’s into his chocolate-daubed mouth and replied, “My grandfather told me about a boy he knew who had three legs and he went to the circus and later he became a great man.”
“A great man? Hmm. What did he do that made him so great?”
“He helped Granddaddy not be so afraid of squirrels. I think that my grandfather now knows more about squirrels that any man alive.”
“And that makes this three-legged man a great man?”
“Granddaddy says he helped other people, too, this man. He spent his whole life helping people. My grandfather says that third leg — that’s where his heart is.”
Uriah dropped something in the dining room that made a loud crashing sound — a sound very near the door to living room. Uriah had apparently been eavesdropping. He’d rib me about this statement for the next month, I was sure of it.
I looked the boy squarely in the eye and said, “And that’s why you want to write about this man?”
Robbie nodded. “Do you think you can help me?”
“I just might be able to.”
“Why do you think my teacher Miss Lyttle sent me here to see you?”
“Probably because I used to know that man, too. Used to know him very well, in fact.”
Robbie set the M&M’s aside. The thing about their not melting in the hands isn’t entirely accurate. I called for Uriah to bring the boy a napkin.
“Did you know my grandfather, too?”
I nodded.
“What was he like — when he was young?”
“I’ll make a deal with you, Robbie. I’ll tell you everything you want to know about your grandfather as a young man. But do this for me: don’t write a story about a three-legged man. Write one about your grandfather. He was a fascinating man. He was a good man. I’ve known a lot of wonderful people in my life — people whose stories hardly ever get told. His is the story you ought to tell.”
I convinced Robbie. I also convinced myself of something: that there is no one great man. Only millions of men and women in possession of tiny pieces of greatness, which when put together, when assembled in the aggregate make the whole. I am a piece of a very large jigsaw puzzle. One of the corner pieces. The one you go for first — important for a time, different from most of the others. But then, in the end, in the big picture, just one of many. Maybe this is what had been percolating in the back of Bloor’s mind all those years. All that wondering over how I was to fit in. How I was to contribute in a big way to that something bigger than myself. I wished that I could write to him and tell him what I now knew:
“Dear Professor Bloor,
It should interest you to know:
I am a corner piece.”
I regret that I didn’t have the chance to make things right with him before he died. He would have been proud that I’d finally figured it out.
36. “Jonathan died as he lived — warm, funny, and generous.” New York Clarion, 3 August 1962. It seems only fair that, as the last person to see Jonathan Blashette alive, manservant Uriah should be entitled to such a poetic, tidy assessment of his employer’s final minutes on earth, (which, of course, made good copy for the morning dailies). When one reads Uriah’s account of the conversation that comprised Jonathan’s last words, one is struck by the fact that these words, while somewhat banal, were spoken by a man who had finally taken stock of his life, found it not so wanting after all, and could now relax and enjoy the remainder of his days in a way in which he’d never been able before. According to Uriah, Jonathan’s spirits had greatly improved after the visit from Jiminy Crutch’s young grandson. The cloud had lifted, and this fact offered Jonathan the chance to spend many happy moments in that final summer working jigsaw puzzles, watching old movies, and continuing to give money to an odd assortment of petitioners, including a man who wanted to manufacture “word” soup:
“You see, Mr. Blashette, it would be like alphabet soup except the letters would actually be fixed together in words and by moving them about in the bowl, one could easily construct purposeful sentences, such as ‘Will you marry me?’ and ‘There is a fly in here.’ I would not require much money. I will take preexisting alphabet noodles and link them together using some form of edible adhesive.”
The final exchange between Jonathan and manservant Uriah Hensley follows.
JONATHAN (watching television): Uriah! Uriah, where are you?
URIAH: I’m coming, Mr. B.
JONATHAN: I want you to see this. That man is wearing a diaper.
URIAH: Will you look at that!
JONATHAN: Full-grown man wearing a big baby diaper. Say, do we have any more of that pea spread? I’d like to have some on a saltine or two. And make some for yourself.
URIAH: Would you like some Hi-C with that?
JONATHAN: Not tonight, Uriah. I’m in a Hawaiian Punch mood. Oh look at that! The man in the diaper is chasing a creature of some sort.
URIAH: It’s a wild pig, Mr. B. See the tusks?
JONATHAN: That’s a sight, isn’t it Uriah? A diapered man in a baby bonnet chasing a wild boar. And in a glass shop, no less! Homph, homph, heh, hickle, heh, homph!
URIAH: It’s something else, all right, heh, heh.
JONATHAN: My chest hurts.
URIAH: You’re laughing too hard! Mr. B? Mr. B?
37. Davison and Caldwell were both hit hard by Jonathan’s death. Both men lapsed into deep depressions. Although I do not discount the enormous loss that each must have been feeling from Jonathan’s sudden absence from their lives, correspondence between the two men at the time also sheds light on other potential reasons for the depression: the possibility of global annihilation by a hydrogen bomb holocaust, thalidomide babies, a $300 billion dollar national debt, and the inscrutable popularity of The Beverly Hillbillies. Reinhold, The Story of Dandy-de-odor-o., 299–309.