MYSTERY MEN

For two days, I had seen the Unabomber look-alike in a baggy orange sweatshirt restlessly wandering around through the halls of the hospice center where we each had a friend who lay dying. 

    When we passed each other each time, I tried to read the words printed on his sweatshirt below an image of planet Earth, but couldn’t quite make them out. He wore his red hat over his wild, shaggy hair—reminding me of those clown hats with a wig attached. Around his neck, was a heavy silver chain with a figure dangling from it.

    On the third day, at the coffee cart, still unable to make out the words on his shirt, I asked him, “So, who’s the little shiny fella there?” pointing to the dangling figure on the silver chain.

   “The patron saint of lost causes” he answered. That says it all, I thought, but still haven’t figured out what the “all” is. Did he believe that America needed to be “great again,” but didn’t have much hope that it would happen, or was the lost cause his friend who, like mine, had no options left, except to wait for the grim reaper to swing his scythe?

  I misunderstood and asked, “But Judas isn’t a saint?” that much I knew, but I had the wrong saint, or in this case, sinner.

“No, no, no. It’s St. Jude,” he said sarcastically, suggesting I should have “not Judas Iscariot, the apostle who betrayed Christ.

    “Oh, sorry, that's who I was thinking of, silly me—for thirty pieces of silver, right?”     

    “Exactly!"

     Exactly thirty pieces? I wondered. 

Just before I bit into my multi-grain muffin, I blurted out, "Well, they say no good deed goes unpunished.”

    “What do you mean, good deed? His was the greatest betrayal in the history of all the world.”

     "You mean the greatest catch 22.” I corrected him this time, explaining, “if Judas hadn't turned Christ over to the Romans, he wouldn’t have been able to have "died for our sins," which was the reason he came to earth. So, they both died, Judas' hanging from a tree and his friend and teacher on a wooden cross, sometimes referred to as tree, right?”

    “Well, never thought of it that way", scrathing his head, “but Christ in died in victory and Judas in defeat.”

     Then, I decided to put the mystery of it all and the three mystery men, Christ, Judas and the Unibomber out of my mind for now. It was starting to sound like a sporting event.

    I poured the third mystery man a coffee, and passed him the cup. We stood eating our muffins in silence. Then, nodding to each other, we moved on into our respective friend’s rooms—to watch and wait at the foot of their beds.

My friend died after a long evening, and I wept.

On my way out in early morning, I passed mystery man #3 coming down the hall. Our eyes met for a moment in a kind of farewell. As I looked again at his orange sweatshirt, this time I was able to see the words below the image of our lonely, blue marble planet with the words: 

“YOU ARE HERE.”

                                  (2018)