The Last Man’s Club
My grandfather was always sad. Sadly, as a boy, he paddled
his canoe along the beautiful Hudson River, which was only then beginning to
die. During the first war he was very sad in France because he knew he was
having the time of his life. When it was over everyone in America felt like a
hero — imagine.
Once a year on Armistice Day, he met with all his friends
from the war. They got drunk and recounted the stories of the time when they
had thought they were men and the world had seemed entirely possible. They
placed empty chairs for certain of the dead, and in the center of the table, a
bottle of cognac from France, for the last man of them to drink alone, in honor
of the others.
Year after year they gathered to watch each other and
themselves disappear, turn into empty chairs. Sooner or later they were all
sad. Some of them must have realized they didn’t need to join a club for this.
Finally it came down to my grandfather and a man named Oscar
Cooper. Neither of them wanted to outlive anyone. They couldn’t remember what
honor was. When they drank the cognac it didn’t taste like anything. They threw
the bottle in the river as if they thought it meant that neither of them was
alive anymore.
When Cooper died the following year, my grandfather took his
rifle out into the yard and fired three shots at the sky. Then he went down to
the river and drank himself to sleep. After that he was never sad, not even
when the river died.
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