Reality Check 2

“I am never coming back!” yelled an old man. “I can’t, I won’t and you can’t make me. I am retired.”   

“That is fine,” replied a tourist walking by. He had no idea who the man was, why he was yelling, or what he meant. He looked more closely at the old man and realized he was probably just one of the locals, as many of the old men in this village fished for a living.

“Just relax. You do not have to go anywhere.” 

He quickly left to avoid any further encounters.

The old man’s tattered hat hid the salt rings in his glazed, red eyes. His face was wrinkled and sunburned after spending long hours on the water every day, for many years. He was weary and felt rough as it had been a trying day for him, one in which he had not been able to catch any fish.

“No fish for supper tonight,” he said to himself sadly, as he hobbled towards a wooden pier. “Or for anyone else either. I must be losing it.”

He walked down the pier towards an old boat he called home. In his mind, he had become homeless, or thought he was. He understood his survival as having to toss a baited fish line into the water every day to catch a fish or two. He would clean the fish, fry one to eat and then sell the rest to whoever would buy them. A few of the smaller ones, he would save for bait.    

“Home sweet home,” he said, as he entered his old boat and sat down in the cabin. “Tomorrow will be a better day, Colonel, I promise.”

He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his battered, wooden box tucked under the table. “I will get you yet, Murphy!” he hollered again. He pulled a medal out of his pocket. 

“I’ll take one more swig for you, Colonel.”

He did not realize that two young boys had been watching him. One lived in the village and the other was just visiting. 

“I can hear that old man talking to himself,” a young boy whispered to his friend. “We were just in there and there is no one there.”

“You are right,” replied the other boy. “There is no one in there. Franklin fishes all day, every day and then  sits in the cabin for a while and has a drink of whiskey. Colonel is one of his old army buddies. Murphy is a huge fish Franklin has been trying to catch for years. It may be real, but maybe not. No one knows for sure. I come down here to check on him every evening around this time."

“Oh, so that is what is going on here.”

“We had better take him back to his retirement home before it gets dark, or he gets too drunk. We will have to holler his name as loud as we can, because he can hardly hear in one ear and cannot hear anything at all with the other.”

“Franklin,” hollered the boys together, as loud as they could. “Franklin!”

The old man quickly stashed his bottle, got up and went up on deck to see who was calling him.

“Sorry boys, I don’t have any fresh fish for you today.”

“That’s all right, Franklin. We are taking you out for supper tonight.”

The old man smiled and could not resist the temptation to go with them.

“Boys, that sounds wonderful! By the way, I told Murphy that I am never coming back. When I do that, he always comes looking for me. I will catch him tomorrow.”

The boys smiled, as they walked him back towards his retirement home.

“Hello Franklin,” the security guard at the gate said to the old man pleasantly. “How was the fishing today?”

The boys shook their heads and the security guard realized that it had not been a good day for Franklin.  

“No matter, I hear there are fish on the menu tonight, Franklin, come along with me and I will take you to the dining room. The girls will take good care of you there. Have you been drinking whiskey again? You need to go easy on that stuff, as too much of it will do you in.”

The boys smiled, waved goodbye and Franklin waved back.

“I appreciate you taking me for supper, boys! Thank you.”

“I know that fishing has always been your world,” the security guard said to him, as they walked along. “Do you have any idea how wealthy you really are?”

“I always lived on my boat, fished every day and getting wealthy was always my pipe dream,” said Franklin.

Inwardly, the security guard was frustrated, as he knew that the open gate policy for the retirement home had some distinct disadvantages.

“One of these days, the boys may not be able to find him,” he thought to himself. “He obviously has no idea that he is rich, but it never hurts to do a reality check now and then.”