The Counter of Many Blessings

Roland Wallet lived a good life--never perfect, but good enough for him. Whatever life handed him, it was alright, he was happy with it. When he was ten and his family lost their house in a freak flood, Roland was the first one to say, "Well, at least we still have each other."

In high school, when Roland went out for the football team and only made third string, he would say to himself, "Well, at least I'm on the team." And he was happy with that, and his lettermen jacket. In college when the girl he wanted would leave the bar alone, or with someone else, he'd say to himself, "Well, at least I got her number," or, "At least I got to talk her."

There was nothing wrong with him, not really. He was a nice guy, just kind of bland. Everybody liked him, in a general sense--at least they didn't really mind him, but he wasn't the sort that ever got invited to the parties, though he was welcome enough if he showed up. It wasn't malicious, you just didn't remember him unless someone else mentioned his name, and then it would hit like a bolt, "Oh yeah, Roland. How's that guy doing?"

When he was thirty-eight, and the girlfriend he had been with for three years had left him, and the auto-plant he worked at was having lay-offs and he was about to be looking at a pink slip--he would sigh to himself and say, "Well, at least I still have my car."

It was a nice car. A baby-blue firebird with the original leather interior that his dad had rebuilt while Roland was in high school. He had left it to Roland in his will, and every Sunday Roland would take it to the Red Arrow car wash for buff and a wax. After the accident, when the car was just a crumpled piece of scrap on the highway and the ambulance was carrying him away he thought to himself, "Well, at least I'm alright."

In the hospital, as Roland learned to steer his new wheelchair, he would roll it around to tour the other parts of the hospital. Once he found it, the terminal ward became his favorite place. He would go there and try to raise everyone's spirits, saying things like; "Sure, you're sick, but you might get better. You never know, miracles happen." and "At least you still have today, tomorrow." or "It could be worse.

The nurses would smile whenever he came; they thought he was sweet. A few of the patients--mainly gray old women with curly wigs and wrinkled, paper-thin skin that showed their veins--loved him, and he would sit by their beds and hold their hands as they talked and smiled together.

The other patients came to dread the squeak of his wheelchair coming down the corridor or, even worse, rolling up to their beds. They despised him, because they knew; there was no getting better, there would never be any miracle, and that they sure as hell didn't have any tomorrows--and they might as well not have any todays, stuck in their damn hospital beds. They knew it didn't get worse, just shorter, and less gentle.

One patient in paticular--an old man with grey peppered hair, a thick Mark Twain moustache and deep-set glassy eyes--hated Roland with a passion. Whenever the old man would hear Roland coming he would grab some piece of fruit from one of the giant baskets the family and friends that never visited him would send, and he would pelt Roland with it if he even tried to get close. The old man preferred to use kiwis and apples, he liked how the kiwis would splatter and how the apples had a nice solid feel in his fist.

But eventually the fruit baskets stopped coming, and the old man grew too weak to throw anything and was helpless as one day Roland rolled up beside his bedside with a smile, and started talking. Roland talked about how tomorrow was another day, and how the future was unwritten. Roland told the old man about his own life and his own struggles, how he carried on no matter what. He told the old man everything, even about how he lost his legs, but that he still had faith.

As the old man started to cry, Roland thought he must have really made an impression. Until he realize that the labored wheezing and coughing was the old man laughing. "Oh, you poor dumb boy," the old man said and wiped the tears off his cheeks.

"You don't even see it. If there is a God, he must be taking a dump on you." The old man wheezed with laughter again seeing the stupefied look on Roland's face. "And you're judt too dumb to even get properly angry. Ha...ha...ha." The old man struggled to catch his breath.

Roland didn't say anything, he just backed the wheelchair up and started rolling away. By the time he hit the hallway he was rolling so fast he could have broken a special Olympics record. The old man's laughter seemed to follow him just as fast though.

For days he didn't go back to the terminal ward, but when he did he tried to creep past the old man's room as quietly as he could. Invariably there would come the call, "Chew-Toy!" and the the sound of the old man's wheezy laughing. Everytime he heard it Roland shuddered and shrank inside himself, till finally he was a tightly quivering little ball, telling himself over and over again, "He's wrong. He's Wrong."

Finally one day as Roland went to visit Mrs. Mayfield, a ninty-six year-old with five kids and nearly twenty grandkids, he saw a gurney with a body under a white sheet being taken from the old man's room. As he rolled past the body and its still chest he began to smile for the first time in weeks.

He felt enormous, free, like a weight was off him and he could do anything. Any half-formed self doubt was quickly dismissed. The next day as Roland was released, he felt like he was rolling into the future as he was pushed by an orderly outside the hospital door. He had faith everything was going to be fine, he didn't even think about the old man--he could barely even remember him.

A few years later, after the insurance company had refused to pay--Roland had never been able to explain the accident, how he had lost control and drifted beneath the wheels of the Semi--and he was forced to live on the streets and beg for spare change, he still had faith. He wasn't bitter; things could be worse.

He had a regular bed at one of the shelters and could get a free meal at one of the soup kitchens--since he was in a wheelchair they didn't even make him wait in line. The other bums hated him, not because he cut in line or had a bed set aside for him in the shelter. No, not for that, but because he was the type of guy who'd roll up to the fire you had going in a trash can on the coldest night of the year and go, "Ah, this is life isn't it?" And when you just stared at him, too stunned to say anything, he would tell you to buck up. "At least we've got the fire," he would say.

Even the bums took to avoiding him, crossing to the other side of the street when he came to panhandle, like he was diseased. Only the deranged and the oblivious would sit at his table in the soup kitchen. Roland had never had many friends, but this was a new low even for him. Roland consoled himself by saying, "Well, at least I still have my health."

After his kidneys started to fail, Roland was taken back to the hospital that had released him so many years ago. He was put in the terminal ward, in a room that might have been the old man's. Sometimes Roland thought heard the echo of that wheezing laughter and the call of "Chew-Toy!" coming from somewhere in the air vents as he slept.

Roland tried to keep his spirits up by telling himself at least tomorrow was another day, at least he was still alive. As the days passed the laughter got louder though, till Roland could barely sleep at night and he started to sweat feverishly. On the last night, as his kidneys failed and he could feel his heart beat slow, he tried to comfort himself, "Well, Roland, at least there'll be peace. At least there'll be heaven."

In between his heart beats Roland could hear the old man laughing, gleefully, and calling out to him, "Ever the Optimist!" Roland shuddered and began to tremble. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat and speak one last time, "At least--" But the laughter drowned the words out.