More Bullfrog Than Prophet

Joaquin Reyes stopped in to say hello to his old friend, Jesse Brewer. The two went way back, back to when they were both devil-may-care troublemakers at Travis High School in Dos Peso, Texas. Now Jesse was a bigshot insurance agent in El Paso with his own agency and a dozen or so employees under his wing while Joaquin struggled as an instructor in the English department at a small South Texas university. The eager-to-please, yet sometimes-difficult-to-get-along-with teacher was in town to attend a two-day seminar on the relevance of Chaucer in the twenty-first century at the university in El Paso, a boring affair, but what the heck, it got him away from his office and the classroom, and it got him out of Ripton City for three days, a town he found unbearable, yet a far cry better than the pathetic wide spot in the road he and Jesse had grown up in.

“Is Jesse Brewer in?” asked Joaquin as the heavy glass door to the office closed behind him.

The young woman at the desk just inside the door looked up, blinked then sniffled. “Do you have an appointment with Mr. Brewer?” she asked.

Joaquin shook his head. “No, but Jesse and I are old friends. We used to raise hell together back in our hometown of Dos Pesos. I’ll bet he’s never told you about Dos Pesos, has he? Just tell him Joaquin Reyes is here. He’ll see me.” He grinned at the girl, hoping his small town charm might win her over. Often it did with his students, about the same age as this young woman. But not always. Not nearly often enough. Too often he knew he appeared to be nothing more than a dopey, down-on-his-luck washout to eighteen and nineteen-year-old freshmen, youngsters full of piss and vinegar with little between the ears, scatterbrains who couldn’t care less about composition and grammar, the only students the university dared to entrust him with.

The secretary, obviously in a state, did her best to be as officious as she could. “I guess you haven’t heard,” she said. She removed a tissue from her desk drawer then blotted her heavily-made-up eyes. Her hands trembled. “Mr. Brewer died last Thursday. Mr. Gutierrez is taking his appointments.”

“Died?” said Joaquin. “That can’t be. What the hell happened?”

“We’re all in shock,” said the girl. “Nobody knows for sure what happened.” She sighed. “He came into the office that day, then on his way home he called his wife and told her he wasn’t feeling well. He went to see if his doctor was still in her office. She wasn’t. Then he died in the parking lot of the doctor’s office. In his car. His BMW. They didn’t find him until late that night.”

Joaquin caught a glimpse of her name tag. Carmen Gallegos, it read. An attractive young girl, thought Joaquin. That’s so like the Jesse of old to surround himself with good looking young women. “Has there been a funeral? Or a memorial service? Hell, he’s my age. Exactly my age. Thirty-eight-year-old men don’t just up and die.”

“His wife hasn’t made arrangements yet,” she said. “None that any of us know about. Do you know Ruth Ann…Mrs. Brewer? From what I hear she’s beside herself. We all are.”

Beside herself, thought Joaquin. How quaint. I wonder if this girl has any idea the expression is biblical. Probably not. My students would never use such a term. Most of them would never have heard it. Most of the people I teach with wouldn’t know the expression. “I’ve met Ruth Ann,” said Joaquin, “just once, and briefly. I was Jesse’s best man. Though I suspect Ruth Ann wasn’t all that thrilled with his choice. She would’ve liked one of his friends from here in El Paso, but what could she say? I was what Jesse wanted. That was what…twelve years ago? Thirteen?”

Again, the girl sniffled then shrugged. She patted at her puffy eyes. Her mascara lined her cheeks with rivers of grief. A bit over the top, thought Joaquin.

The instructor surveyed the office, a large, yet somehow, cramped room, with a half dozen young women watching him from behind their computer screens like timid novices in the unexpected presence of the bishop.

“I wonder if you could give me Jesse’s address,” said Joaquin. “And his wife’s phone number. I have Jesse’s cell number…but I doubt that he’s taking calls.”

The girl’s eyes widened. Apparently, his humor misfired, as so often was the case with his students, a bunch of priggish youngsters frightened to death of anything out of their narrow experiences with their cellphones and computer screens. “Why don’t you talk to Mr. Gutierrez,” she suggested, suddenly in a curt, overly professional tone.

The house, a palatial monstrosity, Jesse and Ruth Ann’s home, clung to the side of the mountain like a pretentious version of Heidi’s grandfather’s cabin, not all that far from the campus where Joaquin was suffering through one hideous lecture after another. Certainly, one of those fossilized coots doing the presentations should’ve stumbled upon the humor in Chaucer, Joaquin thought as he approached the seemingly endless one-story mansion. But not so far. Not a one. The humor seems to elude all of them. What a bunch of stiff necks. Holy cow, can this really be Jesse’s place? Really? It’s his address, but wow. Jesse Brewer lives here? Nothing like either of us would’ve ever dreamed possible back in Dos Pesos.

A middle-aged Mexican woman let Joaquin in. On the phone, Ruth Ann hadn’t seemed all that pleased to hear from him…but, after all, she had just lost her husband. Joaquin would cut her some slack. At the wedding, she’d been pretty darned standoffish for some reason. He never knew why.

Inside, he sat on a leather sofa and studied the artwork on the walls. All originals, he guessed. So, when did Jesse become an afficionado of western art? Cowboys and horses and cows. We used to call this kind of stuff shitkicker art, back when we were surrounded by nothing but shitkickers. Shitkickers and oilfield roughnecks. Where’s the velvet Elvis? In the bedroom? In the poolroom? In Jesse’s man cave? Where’s the bullfighter?

Ruth Ann, much shorter than Joaquin remembered, came into the room from somewhere deep in the interior of the estate. Dressed appropriately for the occasion, a long dark green dress and an oversized, loosely-knit sweater—also green, though not quite a matching green—the woman smiled then sat in the chair beside the sofa.

“How nice of you to come,” she reached out her hand to Joaquin. “We tried to notify you…but I wasn’t certain where it is that you’re teaching. Jesse used to call it some piss poor little college in some shithole little town. That was all I knew.”

“In Ripton City,” said the teacher. “At the University of Texas at Ripton City. It’s a mouthful. I know. Like the University of Texas at El Paso, only you’ve successfully shortened it to UTEP. UTRC hasn’t caught on. It’s a small school. No football team. No basketball team. But we’re ready. They’ve branded us the Guardians. Guardians of what? I don’t know, but someday we’ll catch up with the other universities in the Texas system.” He nodded to the attractive woman, more attractive than he recalled. “Nobody’s ever heard of it, but it is a pretty decent school.” Shithole college? It’s not that bad. It has its charm, as does Ripton City…in its own way.

“All I know is that Jesse felt bad that you were stuck there without any hope of advancement. He often talked about you, about how you had settled for so little.”

Joaquin took a deep breath. “When I heard about Jesse,” said Joaquin, “I couldn’t believe it.” His lower lip betrayed him. It quivered like a three-year old’s at bath time. “What in the world happened? To Jesse.”

“We don’t know for sure,” said the widow. “They’ll perform an autopsy, of course. The police have questioned me since he was found in a parking lot. They don’t suspect to find anything suspicious. But I suspect the usual. Jesse was burning his bridge from both ends. Although, in his case it wasn’t merely with hard work. It was the women, the booze…not to mention the gambling. Whatever he could stuff up his nose. Who knows, prostitutes maybe?”

“That’s not the Jesse I knew,” said Joaquin. Burning his bridge from both ends? Talk about mixing your metaphors. But she’s distraught.

“Did you go by his office?” she asked.

“I did.” Joaquin leaned forward. He wished she’d offered him something to drink. Ice water or a Coke. He was parched. Too much information. Too much Chaucer.

“Didn’t you notice all the cute little nymphs?”

“The young women? I guess so.”

“And there are four other locations of the Brewer Insurance Agency in town, with one scheduled to open in Odessa in the summer. All with tempting little playthings for Jesse. At first sight, Jesse was quite the success story. A couple of magazines wrote articles about the great young man in El Paso. He basked in the spotlight but he was a deeply flawed man.”

“That’s definitely not the Jesse I knew,” said Joaquin, “Not at all. We raised a little hell but we were pretty decent kids when you get right down to it.”

The woman smiled. “You do know that Jesse was left-handed, don’t you? He would never admit that that was his problem…one of his problems, one of his many problems.”

“Jesse was left-handed. He pitched on our high school team until Coach Rivera kicked both of us off of the squad for being late to practice too many times. I played third base. I couldn’t hit worth a damn, but Jesse was a pretty good hitter, one of the better hitters on the team.” Joaquin shook his head. “We were a pair. But we weren’t bad kids. We weren’t delinquents. Merely headstrong boys in a small town that didn’t put up with such shenanigans.”

“Well,” said the widow, “Reverend Dyson says that left-handed people are condemned until they make amends.” She squinted. “The devil’s left-handed. You do know that, don’t you? Not everyone does.”

Joaquin smiled. “I didn’t know that. And who is Reverend Dyson?” This woman’s wacky, he thought. And predatory. I’ve seen those eyes on a caged lioness in the zoo in San Antonio. A hungry beast. I just hope I’m not this afternoon’s snack. I’ve got more Chaucer in an hour.

“He’s the pastor at The House of the Redeemed. You passed right by it if you drove into town from the east. It’s out on I-10 before you reach Horizon City. You couldn’t miss it. It’s a large building with a thirty-foot cross.” She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, as if in a trance or in meditation. “There are more than eight thousand members…and it’s still growing. Every Sunday more people show up. Reverend Dyson and his wife came here from Chicago. And aren’t we thankful that they did.”

“I did come into town that way,” said Joaquin. “But I didn’t see that church. What I did see was a lot of strip clubs and a few adult theaters.” He let this sink in. “Did Jesse go to church with you?”

She shook her head. Joaquin realized that his friend’s nutty wife was no longer blond. She was now a brunette. It suited her well. He’d had his suspicions about her hair at the wedding, but it was no business of his.

“Jesse was a fallen man,” she said. “Almost depraved. I didn’t realize it until Reverend Dyson helped me to see it. Like I said, Jesse had his women, and he had his despicable habits.” She paused. “How was I to know about any of it when we married? I was so naïve.” She blinked. “How long will you be in town?”

“I leave bright and early tomorrow morning. It’s a full eight hour drive back to Ripton City.”

“That won’t do,” she said. “After the officials are done with Jesse, I’m going to have him cremated.” She stopped, glared at Joaquin then continued. “I was hoping that you might take his ashes back to that town he grew up in. What was it? Dos Pesos? He talked about it all of the time. He bored me to tears with his tales of that town. I spoke on the phone with his mother and explained that Reverend Dyson refused to perform a service for someone who was too stubborn  to repent.” She grinned. Her eyes narrowed “She didn’t seem to take that well, but what can I do? I have to rely on someone for guidance. Who better than Jeremiah Dyson? Who else do I have? Certainly not that bunch Jesse palled around with at that country club, a bunch of no-goods if there ever was one. Jeremiah Dyson’s been a godsend these past few days. I wouldn’t have gotten through them without him…and his wife Jael.”

“I can’t stay in town any longer,” said Joaquin. “I have eager minds waiting for me to enlighten them.”

The widow sat silent then she said, “Jesse never went to college. Did you know that?”

“He went to the community college in Odessa.”

“Only for two semesters. He used to tell me that he didn’t want to get stuck in some nothing job like yours. He was always afraid that he’d wind up like you or his father.”

As Joaquin wrestled his Toyota down the side of the mountain to get to his afternoon Chaucer sessions, he thought, this isn’t Jesse, not the Jesse I used to chum around with. At the wedding he bragged about me to everyone. And the last thing I want to do is to deliver his ashes to his parents, although I do drive right through Dos Pesos. I look for his parents’ house every time. The house has been painted, a peculiar shade of beige. My folks have moved on to San Angelo. A wise decision. Pop was getting nowhere in that little town. Our old house is occupied but in disrepair.

When Joaquin drove onto campus, he parked in the lot of the Student Union Building. He sat in his car for a moment to gather his thoughts. The more I think about it, just who was Geoffrey Chaucer? The father of English literature? Perhaps? He married. I could marry. I guess. There are a few women on faculty who might be prospects. Jesse married. I could go back by his office and question the young women as to just what went on in that office. But what’s the point? Jesse is gone. Am I really just a nothing in a piss poor university? Jesse had articles in magazines written about him. I’ve got nothing. I push for a comma every once in a while and pray for a semicolon. And what was that nonsense about left-handed people? A lot of great people have been left handed. Maybe Chaucer was left-handed. Who know? And who the hell is this Jeremiah Dyson? All I know about that other Jeremiah is that he was a prophet…and a bullfrog. And this Jeremiah sounds like he’s more bullfrog than prophet.