He'd moved into the complex recently, and I had to do a work order in his apartment. I'm not a perfect painter, and sometimes a water stain will bleed back through, or I missed something, etc. This work order stated that there was some sort of discoloration on his living room wall.
I was warned about him. "He's very picky." In maintenance terms, "very picky" means "huge pain in the ass."
He was waiting for me when I got there. Eighty or so years old, but not frail, not at all, with his thick ruddy face, bulbous nose, ham-sized hands, and a thick wavy head of white hair. I introduced myself, and I am sure that right off the bat he didn't think much of me, with my unshaven face and scraggly chin whiskers, hair that I'd decided wasn't worth the effort of cutting, and a general blank attitude towards everything. I was moving towards the crest of that two-year void. He was clean-shaven and neat, and I was a stringy mess of apathy. He was raised in a generation that never even considered giving up, and that was my specialty at the moment. If they gave out awards for not giving a sh!t, I would've had a nice showcase filled with little faux chrome men perched on trophies, captured in various poses of shrugging, or rolling their eyes, or sleeping on tiny faux chrome couches like little chrome weirdos.
He showed me the wall, and there was no stain. It was just a trick of the light spilling through his window blinds and the angle it was reflecting off the wall. I told him so. He insisted that he saw SOMETHING on the wall. Again, I stressed that what he was seeing was sunlight, and nothing more. He was getting frustrated, and asked if there was anything at all I could do about it. The implication in the tone of his voice was that I was a pretty sorry excuse for a painter.
"Yeah," I said, "I can paint over your windows."
I don't know why. Sometimes this stuff comes out of me so fast that it doesn't even register in my own mind until I've already said it. It's more instinct than anything else, I suppose, trying to disarm someone or defuse a rising situation.
Cosmo didn't think it was very funny.
Just humor this crotchety old dude, I thought, so you can get back to whatever you were doing before and not have to talk to anyone. I hate work orders. I never make much money on these little things, they're usually just a waste of my time, and I have to deal with people hovering over me and either telling me how to do my job or just breathing down my neck out of curiosity over the magical world of patching a hole in a bathroom ceiling. Half the time they seem to be vaguely irritated at my presence, even though they were the ones who asked for the repair/touch-up work. I want this repaired and/or painted, but I'd prefer it if you sent the fixit elves while I am sleeping, and tell them to keep it quiet.
I sprayed some Kilz (or, as that dude who runs this joint calls it, "Kilts") in the general area he was complaining about, and then topcoated it a few minutes later. He did not seem satisfied with the results, said the spot was still there, and of course it was still there, because I can't do anything about the f*cking sun, old man.
I heard about it a few days later. He'd complained to Gene, the assistant maintenance supervisor. "Some painter," summed up his opinion of my handling of the Sunshine Situation. Gene thought it was all very funny, especially the "paint your windows" line, because the old man had already had him inside that apartment a dozen times for various nonreasons. He told me Cosmo had been in WWII, at Iwo Jima. Said he'd seen the flag raising.
I didn't really believe it. I wondered aloud how many guys in their late seventies or early eighties claimed to have been at Pearl Harbor, or Normandy, or Iwo Jima. I was sure there's a decent percentage, like the old people who used to claim they were in the original Little Rascals back in the 1970s and 1980s (it's true - one guy was even interviewed in several national magazines before he was found out).
I forgot about Cosmo for a while, and went back to drifting. A few months later I had to return to his apartment, to patch a hole the plumbers had cut into the wall behind the bathroom sink/vanity. They'd already replaced the vanity, so I had to work around it. Cosmo tried to make a little small talk, and at first I didn't really respond, because of the whole Sunshine Situation incident. I noticed he was watching Turner Classic Movies, and that's only the best channel ever on cable, so I warmed a little and started BSing with him about old movies. I also noticed something on his wall, something having to do with his serving as a New York fireman.
OK, he's not so bad, maybe. He likes old movies and knows all the actors by name, so that's a point for him. He was a fireman, and that's pretty cool, so another point. I still didn't believe he'd been at Iwo Jima, though.
After that we'd say hello every now and again. When I was painting the apartment across the hall from him, a really nasty piece of work I had to roll out with Final Sealer, he poked his head through the door and tried to grill me about who was moving in, complaining about the noise in his building. I guess the older you get the quieter you want it, until you finally reach that point where there's never any sound again.
I never asked him about the war during any of these times we spoke. I didn't want to catch him in a lie, see. Most vets don't like to speak of it in anything other than the vaguest of terms, anyway.Earlier this year, around April, Cosmo was moving out. Gene had volunteered himself, and Steve, and me, to move him. On the Thursday before we were going to move Cosmo, Gene had gone to the doctor. He'd been short of breath for a while, tired all the time, generally weak feeling. The doctor had told him that he had a heart defect, a weak valve, no joking matter, he better take it easy and not lift anything or exert himself too much until he could get to a specialist because there was the distinct possibility he might just fall over dead like athletes sometimes do. This has since been proven to be a misdiagnosis (he has a thickened heart, still very serious, but not immediately life-threatening). We didn't know that at the time, though. All we knew is that there was no way in hell we were letting him lift anything and fall over dead on us. He could drive the moving truck, and that was it, that was all we would let him do no matter how much he wanted to puff out his chest about it. If he insisted on being there because he promised the old guy, and doing something, then he could sit in the f*cking truck and listen to the radio while we handled everything else.
Gene pulled the truck alongside the building. We thought if we pulled around the back of the building we'd save ourselves some walking. It had rained the night before, the ground was soaked, and we kept close to the building where the ground was more solid but of course the truck got stuck, back wheels spinning in place, wedging deeper into muddy grooves. Steve and I tried boards and roofing tiles for traction, but all that ended up doing was spitting pieces of roofing tile directly at my head at great velocities. After half an hour we were both filthy messes, and we hadn't even lifted the first box.
Cosmo toddled around the corner (he had a bum leg, and crabwalked everywhere he went) demanding Gene give him the truck keys. Gene shrugged and handed them over. Next thing I knew, Cosmo was stomping the gas pedal to the floorboard. Mud slung everywhere, the wheels caught hold, and the moving truck shot forward, veering dangerously close to the side of the building. Cosmo jerked the steering wheel to the right, and kept the pedal down. He dug two black trenches from one end of the building to the other, trenches over half a foot deep, mud flying a good ten feet into the air. People on that side of the building were staring out of their apartment windows, pointing as the old man clenched his jaw and stood on the gas and almost took out the lower half of their home.
I literally fell down to my knees, I was laughing so hard. I decided Cosmo was a pretty smooth cat, after all.
Anyway, we packed up Cosmo's life for him after that without much incident, and as we were putting boxes in the truck he gave me the laminated card pictured above. I didn't have a lot of time to actually read it then, but I believed the Iwo Jima story then. He also gave me a little cross on a chain, a cheap thing but ornate for being cheap, and that's hanging off the stopper on my linen closet door as I type this. I don't know about God, really, and whether either one of us really believes in the other, but Cosmo believed, and he gave me the cross, so there it hangs.
We took Cosmo's life over to his new place, which I also found humorous because it was about a block away from the college, and if he thought the noise was unbearable at the complex then he hadn't experienced a block party at two in the morning just off a college campus.
As we were unpacking and filing away things where Cosmo directed (Gene kept trying to pick up and move boxes and I kept telling him to SIT THE F*CK DOWN because, again, fall over dead), Steve wheeled in a bunch of boxes on a hand truck. He bumped into the door jamb and the boxes spilled all over Cosmo's new living room floor.
Cosmo's eyes popped big and he pointed at one particular box, saying "Be careful with that, that's my wife!"
Everyone stopped. After a deathly moment of awkward silence, I picked up the box and asked Cosmo where he wanted to put her. We then continued shuffling boxes around, unpacking certain things for him. I helped set up his computer.
Cosmo took us all out to eat afterward, anywhere we wanted, he said, and we were so tired and hungry we just settled on a nearby Ruby Tuesday. Over the meal I asked Cosmo a little about the war, and he mentioned Okinawa. I asked if he'd seen any of the cliff suicides. He said he had, and I decided not to press any further. There was a lot I wanted to ask, but I didn't want to bring any painful memories out. He talked a little about being a fireman instead.
As we were leaving, Cosmo noticed his fly had been open the entire time, and asked, loudly "Why didn't you guys tell me?!?!" which of course made everyone around us look over just in time to see the old guy zip up his hole, which they never would have noticed otherwise.
We dropped him off at his new pad, saying our goodbyes. He rolled up his pants leg to show us the knotted mass of surgery scars from his bum leg, and I probably could have gone the next thirty or forty years without seeing that.
I saw Cosmo a few weeks ago, at the Wall-Mark across the street. He was riding in one of those motorized shopping carts, and I felt a little sad seeing that, since he had gotten around pretty well when he lived here. I should have walked over and said hello, but I was late for something I can't even remember now, so I didn't. I'll try to stop by his place for a visit after this two-week rush of work I have. He probably doesn't get a lot of visitors. Maybe I'll ask him some more about the war, if he's willing to talk.
I'll break down what's on the card for you:
Cosmo Maffetore was a crew member of the LST 808, a tank landing ship which hit the beaches of Iwo Jima during the initial assault, under mortar fire and attacks by enemy aircraft. They suffered no casualties or damage at Iwo. From there, they moved on to Okinawa, where they were subject to Kamikaze attacks. As they mother shipped Boat Pool Able around the waters of le Shima (off the coast of Okinawa), they were struck by an aerial torpedo which nearly tore the ship in half. The ship was pushed aground to avoid being completely sunk, but was struck by a Kamikaze two days later. There were 11 killed in the torpedo attack, and numerous injured. The remainder of the crew were stranded on le Shima for six weeks, until rescued. Cosmo was there through all of it.
Yeah, Cosmo's all right, I guess.
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Did you miss me? Yeah, I missed me, too. I am in the midst of Painter's Hell for the next two weeks, something like 18 apartments due, so lots of long days and weekend work for me for a while. I have the story of my Roller Derby trip, and some more Shark Week DVD reviews, and a Popeye DVD review/discussion, and my absolute domination of our little bowling circuit, and some more BS all lined up, but I can't guarantee when it will all get posted. All I can say is check back every day, and I'll try to have a little something, but I can't make any promises right now. Next up will definitely be the Roller Derby story, though. Tomorrow, I need to catch up on some blog reading. There's been lots of good stuff posted lately, which you can check out by going through the links in my "Other Blogs Full of Win" section on the sidebar.
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