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“She couldn’t kiss you like that if she wasn’t six feet tall, Jak.”
At that moment I realized to my mother, not unlike me, Karter was as big as life itself. I turned my head and smiled over my left shoulder, “You’re right, mom. There’s something wrong with that thing.”
I turned to face Karter and puckered my lips. As I slowly moved my mouth to hers, I winked my left eye, “Always has been.”
JAK. “Well, if a man looks in the scripture, there’s no reference to it. They took the time to make a statement about all other things a man can imagine. Stand to reason Jak, if there was somethin’ wrong with it in the Lord’s eyes, he’d a made sure and got it writ down in there somewhere. As a matter of fact,” Oscar paused and rubbed his goatee.
He nodded his head and smiled, “Sarah was ten years younger’n Abraham.”
“I’m talking a few more years than that,” I sighed.
“Don’t think it matters, Jak. You tryin’ to talk yourself out of it?” he asked as he pulled a cigar from his pocket.
“No sir. Just two men talking, that’s all. There are only three people I trust right now, Oscar - you, her, and my mother. And neither of them have any concern about age differences. I’m just asking you man to man, that’s all.”
“Well I’ll give you my opinion about it, ‘cause I know that’s what you come for. You see, life is about quality, not quantity. You know that, right?” he asked as he raised the cigar to his lips.
I nodded my head, not quite sure what he meant; but confident he’d expand upon the point he was trying to make sooner or later.
He pulled the cigar from his mouth and pointed the tip of it toward me, “Let’s see. Say a man is married for fifty years. Say he met his wife in high school. Maybe they was sweethearts. Got married at say, oh hell, eighteen years of age. Now they’s sixty-eight, Jak. And they lived a life of drunkenness by him; and let’s say he’s mean as a damned snake when he drinks. And he’s a cheatin’ on her and comin’ home drunk and slappin’ her around for fifty solid years. That ain’t a very good fifty years of marriage, now is it?”
“No sir,” I responded.
“And if someone like you meets someone like Karter, and they have the same age difference, but let’s say they ain’t you - for sayin’s sake. If they’s as happy as you two seem to be, and let’s say they live twenty years together. And every day, Jak,” he paused and shook his cigar.
“Every damned one was as good as the last. And they’s a runnin’ and a playin’ and having fun, and livin’ life to the fullest. Hell, they can’t imagine livin’ without each other. These two ain’t a fightin’ or a fussin’. Not even once. They’s meant to be in the eyes of all who see ‘em, and in God’s eyes too. So, God bless her soul, the lady gets cancer and she dies, Jak. After twenty years. Now would that twenty-year relationship be better’n that fifty year one where the man was a drunken snake?” he raised his cigar to his lips and bit on the plastic tip.
“I suppose it would, yes,” I smiled and nodded.
“Quality, Jak. Not quantity. That’s gonna be today’s lesson. I like that,” he said through his teeth.
“I like it too, thanks Oscar.”
“I ain’t done yet,” he growled lightly.
I shrugged, “What else you got, old man?”
He shook his head and pulled the cigar from his mouth, “Love Jak. A man once told me love was blind. You know what? He was damned sure right. Love don’t see a damned thing. Not real love. It don’t see color, or religion, neighborhoods, poverty or wealth. Hell, it don’t even see age differences for that matter. Real love just snaps into place. You ever had that black old heart of yours broke, Jak?”
I considered his question. I had, but felt no need to discuss details. A simple yes should suffice.
“Yes sir,” I responded.
He turned to the workbench and picked up his coffee cup. As he turned around, he smiled. Slowly, he walked in front of me with the cup held at his side. When he was about ten feet in front of me, he stopped and lifted the cup to his chest. As he raised one eyebrow and opened his eyes in a comical fashion, he dropped it on the concrete floor. The porcelain cup shattered in countless pieces on the floor. Shocked, I looked up. Oscar smiled.
“Now if I give you that pile of busted shit off the floor and a tube of glue out of my cabinet, you thinkin’ you can fix it where I’d never know it was broke?”
I shook my head and laughed, “No sir.”
“You consider yourself pretty able, don’t ya?” he asked as he began to scoop the pieces into a pile with his boot.
I smiled and nodded my head, “Yes sir.”
“Well, as able as you are, you couldn’t fix this sum bitch no how. You might get it put back together best you could, and it’d look like a cup; but there’s gonna be some pieces you can’t find, and there’s gonna be some others just don’t make good sense. You know the ones you look at in about eleventeen different directions and they just look like they belong to a different cup,” he looked up from the floor and raised the cigar to his lips.
“You see my point?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” I smiled.
