The Beautiful Life

by G.L. Kopp

Random raindrops created pulsating circles across the surface of the swimming pool as if fish were feeding there while Porter Pumphrey sat watching in his motorized wheelchair. Cool air brushed over him to provide momentary relief from Florida’s sweltering summer heat. Everyone else had fled the veranda as clouds gathered and rain began to trickle.

Thunder rumbled in the distance and brilliant crooked streaks began to reveal themselves. If it turned into an electrical storm, as was not uncommon at the start of summer, it could be dangerous, or at least profoundly intimidating, the air torn apart and ears assaulted by explosive discharges too near for comfort.

All at once, the entire surface of the pool boiled with impacts and the wind rose to pelt and batter the lone resident in a squall of raindrops. The spot he had chosen, just out of the direct sun and covered by a roof intended to shade and shelter, was not equal to the task. He was being drenched, but even though his fingers were upon the toggle that would send his transport into quick retreat, he made no move to do so. He sat eyes-closed just within the storm’s reach.

“Mr. Pumphrey!” declared a voice from a glass door flying open. It loosed Jackie onto the poolside residents’ patio. “You’ll catch your death!” she shouted, wrestling open an umbrella as she approached then shielded him under it. “What are you doing out here?” She wheeled him under the awning, out of reach of the deluge. “Is your chair malfunctioning?”

“No,” Pumphrey answered simply.

“You’re soaked,” she said, as if he were not self-aware.

“Yes.”

She knew he had a reputation for being eccentric but had never known him to act irrationally and could not help wondering if something rather than his chair might be malfunctioning.

“You’re all right?”

“Wet,” he replied.

“No dizziness or headache or…”

“I’m not having another stroke, thanks.”

“Of course not. But you’re okay?”

“Fine,” he assured her. “But wet.”

“Omygosh,” she said and grabbed a pool towel to

begin patting him down.

“I miss ‘The Pump,’” Frank Olivetti announced at pinochle, just as he had done the first weeks after Pumphrey’s stroke when he had been in the park only a year. He brought it up again now that everyone had heard about “the rain incident.”

“No one ever calls him that but you, Frank,” Miller commented.

“Can’t believe what happened,” Lucille added.

“Jackie in the office says he just sat there smiling with a rainstorm smashing him in the face!” the fourth player said while laying a jack on the cards played and reaching to rake in the trick.

“Wrong game again, Madge,” Miller stopped her.

“Oh fiddlesticks! I could have played an ace!”

The truly odd thing about Porter Pumphrey was that no one knew anything about his existence prior to Paradise Park Acres, which was unheard of in a mobile home retirement community in which the first questions asked were always about where one came from and what he or she did there.

“All over” and “This and that” were really not answers, but they were all that Pumphrey ever offered up.

Speculation had it that he was CIA or in witness protection or a hit man. Some imagined he sold ladies lingerie to department stores and was embarrassed to talk about it or drove an 18-wheeler and had tattoos removed where his bare skin showed uneven texture when he swam in the pool. Or he had been a soldier-of-fortune. Or a pimp. Speculation and rumor were primary leisure pursuits among residents in retirement communities.

There were those who swore they had seen his face somewhere before or at least that he looked familiar. But if you lived long enough, everyone did. It added to the mystique.

“He’s weird,” Miller commented, not for the first time.

Frank had to laugh. “Remember that time we were playing euchre and he blurted out “Animals don’t know they’re dying”? It was like he’d been thinking about it all day and suddenly decided we needed to think about that instead of what was trump.”

“What istrump?” Madge asked.

“He was just saying that only humans know what dying is,” Miller recalled. “Animals instinctively try to escape but they don’t think ‘I’m going to die!’ like I did when angina crushed my heart in its vice. I thought I was checking out for sure.”

“Yeah, but ‘the exquisite pleasure of knowing we’re dying or about to.’?”

“Okay, that part was weird.”
Lucille agreed and rearranged the cards in her hand. “Spades is trump?”

“Is it spades isor spades are trump?” Frank grinned. “Hearts are trump but clubs is? Are diamonds plural?”

“Now I have no idea what’s trump,” she said.

“Dueces are wild,” Miller teased.

“Can’t we just play?” she sighed, impatiently.

“Spades, Lucille.”

Madge smiled, then chortled: “Remember when someone asked Porter if he’d ever remarry and he said “As soon as I find a virtuous woman named Ruby’?”

Miller said, “He had to explain that one three times.”

“Then got set for two points,” Miller claimed.

Madge shook her head. “How could you possibly remember that?”

If asked, most residents would still remember the night of the community’s talent show the previous year when Porter Pumphrey, who was not on the program, wheeled up to an empty microphone during the break and treated the audience to an impromptu poetry reading.

“’Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,’” his amplified voice caught their attention. “’And remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant.’” He pretended to jab a finger at random members of the audience and got a laugh before proceeding to recite the rest of Desiderata to conclusion: “’Keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.’”

Several residents applauded. Some claimed to “remember that song.” Others were upset that he inserted himself. Pumphrey wept, mic open, a full ten seconds afterward before rubbing his eyes and wheeling himself away, which stole the rest of the evening from the would-be talent.

Now he had been weird again, sitting in a downpour by choice. For someone no one knew anything about, everyone knew what there was to know about him, at least since he first came to Paradise Park Acres four years before.

He was a widower. That much he gave up to the inquisitive. And her name. Aribella. It meant “beautiful dreamer,” he claimed.

“A lovely name,” most would reply.

“Abby,” he would say response, then redirect the conversation. He could do that. He had a way with words, even though he spoke so few.

Lucille played an ace.

“I sure wouldn’t stand out in the rain. What do you suppose was going through his head?”

“He wasn’t standing,” Miller said pedantically and received a scornful look for it.

“Death wish,” Frank opined.

“Whyever would you say such a thing?” Madge said, following suit.

“Lost his wife, lost his limbs…what else has he got to lose?”

“Maybe he just fell asleep,” Miller suggested.

Madge informed that Jackie did not think so.

“Death wish,” Frank repeated.

The number of people who attend another’s funeral is defined by circumstances. Size of family, number of friends, working or retired and how many he or she has out-survived play a part. The last person in the pool enters alone. In Porter Pumphrey’s case, curiosity drove many to attend the memorial the park held for him. Memorials were a tradition and expectation, the final draw against years of association dues.

Complications of pneumonia was the cause listed on his death certificate, which gave Jackie the first-right claim to being right. At the service, she asked resident Frank Olivetti if family would be attending, but he advised that “The Pump” had no family he knew about, as if he or anyone would. But Pumphrey had the next-best-thing, if he were alive to say so.

“Welcome, everyone” said the unrecognized outsider standing in the front of the room next to the framed picture of the deceased. “My name is Al Seer, and it’s good to see that Porter had so many friends here.” Except for cleared throats, uneasy coughs and strained looks, silence met his comment. “I’ve heard from him not nearly enough in recent years, but it was his wish that I helm his memorial. I owe him that, though I expected it would be on a much larger stage.” Seer looked about as if having an internal monologue about that. “At any rate, I’m here to tell you that your lives are richer for knowing him, and the Paradise Park Acres’ community library is obviously richer with its autographed copies.”

Residents traded uncomprehending looks that suggested nothing was obvious to them, not the speaker nor what he was talking about. His appearance was as mysterious and unknown as Pumphrey’s pre-Acres life. Who the hell was Al Seer anyhow?

We’re in Phuket, Al! The beaches are as amazing as the post cards. The countryside, the night life, the people, Abby, everything amazing! I’ve never felt so alive. … Ten more days. … It’s our honeymoon, Al; the book can wait. Just wanted to call and make you envious, buddy. I’m the luckiest guy on the planet!

The New York Times hadHowever Humble at number six just three weeks after its release. “Looks like Grayson Griggs is chalking up another best-seller,” the reviewer noted, “following on the success of The Noise and the Haste and The Greater and the Lesser. Three hits and you’re in!”

“All told,” Seer was saying to his confused audience, “Porter wrote ten books.” (“He wrote books?” someone whispered.) “Well, nine under the name the world knew him by. His final workwas under his own. The Beautiful World was a memoir concealed in fiction and dedicated to the woman he loved more than life. His wife and muse, Aribella, had passed away, leaving him pain and inescapable sorrow. The writer in him died with her. Unfortunately, the book was not a best-seller. As his agent and good friend, I wanted to let it leak that he was Grayson Griggs, but he refused.”

Residents who were members of the Paradise Park Acres book club sat at risk of slipping off the front of their folding chairs. Porter Pumphrey was Grayson Griggs? How was that possible?

“I knew that,” Frank Olivetti lied to Miller sitting on his left, his grin magnificent.

“Then you know who this guy is, right?”

“Um, no. I’m not sure exactly.”

“You’re so full of shit, Frank.”

In his mind, Porter and Abby sat facing each other on their exotic beach, oblivious to the graying sky and the noise and haste of those about them. Her eyes still engaged his soul, clear and full of life, passion and promise. It almost embarrassed him to not be able to look away.

A few scattered raindrops tried to get their attention, but it took an impact on his brow to make Porter turn his eyes to the sea and the billowing dark clouds above it. Their beach blanket became a poor umbrella, but they laughed at the tropical storm that drenched them. They closed their eyes and smiled as they let warm baptizing rain roll over their faces. Then a thunderclap or Jackie’s voice sounded inside his head:

“Mr. Pumphrey! You’ll catch your death!”

“Exquisite,” she did not hear him reply as she rolled him from the rain.

Also by Grayson Griggs

The Noise and the Haste

The Greater and the Lesser

However Humble

Blind to Virtue

The Face of Aridity

Perennial as Grass

Child of the Universe

The Trees and the Stars

At Peace with God