Old Man Big Bird (...and His Apartment) A Short Story of Aging

Old Man Big Bird
(…and his apartment)



The old man (Stan), they called him Big Bird, he stood six foot six, in apartment three, second floor, side apartment, sat in his room each night, after returning from the bar, trying to read the paper, television loud, a bottle of whisky to his side on an end-table, a pack of cigarettes, by the bottle of whiskey where the ashtray was, he had quite drinking for a spell, but started back up, it was his 76-year on this earth.
Each day he’d go to the bar at noon, eat his lunch, go for a walk—up and down Rice Street (St. Paul, Minnesota), and then go to his apartment, across from the alley, and take a nap, then get back up about five p.m., and start drinking, return to his apartment between 9:00 p.m., and 11:00 p.m., and turn on the television—loud, and start that routine I just mentioned. He had lived in the apartment for fifteen-years. Big Bird, shrieked to anyone who tried to stop his routine, didn’t care for his family all that much, his kids seemed to get on his nerves when they came to visit him, and when his daughter cleaned his apartment up, he’d leave, lest he get in a confrontation with her.
Some times he’d be gone for a few days, and Mr. Murphy, who owned the three-plex apartment house, he had purchased it five-years prior, and would simple say if one of his kids appeared and ask where he was,
“We’d not seen him in days I’ll let him know you asked,” and that was usually that, because Mr. Murphy knew his tenant didn’t want to be bothered with his kids trivialities, or anybody’s for that matter, and for the most part, he didn’t blame Big Bird, they only came around with claws to get something, and the old man was wiser than they thought.
It would have appeared, or it did at least to Mr. Murphy that, Big Bird didn’t want any calamity in his old age, the common heart of humanity to appease them, had strayed away from him long ago, as does a little child, to his parents, once they grow up. He didn’t care to give offence to his children or to anyone in particular, but he was old, and growing feeble, and his ways were strange, if not steep, and he liked them that way.


But getting back to that loud television at night, and his drinking, and smoking, he became pie-eyed nightly, that dirty-faced little devil, and he’d scream loud as it seemed he’d be fighting with his demon. Mr. Murphy, lived in apartment two, across from his apartment, and heard this nightly, and Big Bird would leave the window open, allowing a storm, its rain, and wind—in the winter, snow, to circulate his apartment; sometimes Mr. Murphy would have to go in and close it, Big Bird never locked his place, he had a hard time finding his keys. Thus he made a deal with Big Bird, if he smoked, he couldn’t drink in his room, and if he chose to drink, he couldn’t smoke in his room. Well he chose to drink, and so the smoking stopped for a while, then gradually he started back up again. He wasn’t trouble-making: he just wanted to do what he wanted to do, a bit of a man mislaid perhaps, or perchance, he felt, ‘Why not now, in my old age, it’s bad enough— just being old.’

Disregarding all this, what bothered Mr. Murphy the most, was the television and lights being on all night long, and him being passed out in that sofa chair of his. I mean, Mr. Murphy paid the electric bill, not his tenants.
“Sir,” said Mr. Murphy, to Big Bird leaving his apartment one forenoon, to have lunch, he was at this time the most sober of the day, and he said bluntly, but awkwardly also, looking up into Big Bird’s eyes, for he was eight-inches taller than Mr. Murphy,
“It’s a waste of my money, and silly to leave your television on all night long and be passed out in the chair, I’ve got to pay the bill.”
Then Mr. Murphy was going to say, ‘Forget it,’ because the old man simply looked dumbfounded at the questioning, as if Mr. Murphy was crowding him. Long he stood there thinking, inconsequent surmises, trying to figure out, what Mr. Murphy was after or up to, then said Big Bird with a particular apprehensive grin,
“Here, will this cover the extra electric bill each month?”
He had handed Mr. Murphy a $20-dollar bill, Mr. Murphy had figured it out to be at least seven to fourteen dollars a month more—depending, thus, twenty-dollars was more than sufficient.
“Oh yes,” he said in a softer voice, “that’ll do just fine.”
And that was that. He died of cancer six months later (in 2002), and he paid his last months rent, even though he never got to live in his apartment for those last days, it was all he had left to his life, and if he grieved at all for anything, it was for that apartment and his right to live there as he pleased.

1-4-2009 (Written in Lima, Peru)