Ernie

The economy class of the domestic flight from New York was stifling, cramped and nauseating. Luckily I was in the aisle seat. On boarding I made myself as comfortable as I could and had resumed reading the mystery that Adelia was trying to solve. Adelia happened to be a ‘doctor of the dead’ (likely a pathologist) in twelfth century Cambridge, hot in pursuit of a psychopath killing children in that rustic part of England. The gruesome manner in which the kids were being massacred is a story for another day.

“Aha!” that was Adelia about to make a crucial discovery.

 “Arrrghhh”…hmmm, that sounded a bit off. That was not in the book.

I looked up and saw an elderly white man approaching my seat. “Arrrghhh”, that was him clearing his throat. “Great!” I thought to myself, quite unkindly, “I’ll have to share the space next to me with this sick man”. I didn’t want to catch the flu, swine or otherwise, on a domestic flight. Not that catching it on an international flight would have been any better.

I gave him space to shuffle past and get to his seat. Part of me was already cringing that not only was I going to catch an illness; I had a premonition that the old man was going to talk. It’s not that I have problems talking to strangers. In fact, that happens to be my job requirement. But doing so on flights, domestic or international, merely to converse goes against the ‘no small talk brigade’ that I belong to.

Ignoring the inevitable, I went back to my book. As Adelia vowed to protect kids in Cambridge from homicidal maniacs I felt the bony fingers of a shriveled hand tap me on the arm. The content of the book aside, that bony interaction spooked me. “Arrrghhh…” that might have been a vocal tic, “…son, what are you reading?”

And that was the end to Adelia’s mystery for the time being. 

“That’s just plain rotten, I tell y’all!” said the hundred-year-old-in-appearance man with the vocal tic; once I told him about the book I was reading. Let’s call him Ernie.  The Texan nasal twang was unmistakable, although the cowboy boots and the hat were missing.

“Kids are precious and they need to be protected”. Ernie might have been preaching to the choir - I happen to be a pediatrician. I didn’t tell him since he was on a roll, and I felt that he really needed to unload.

“Did you know that I have two sons, one daughter and ten grandchildren.” said Ernie.

“No I didn’t know”, I said to myself.

“I have it all in there”, he whispered confidingly. ‘There’ happened to be a plastic bag that he was pointing at. He opened it and took out a sheaf of papers. There was some printed material with tabulated dates and names of places and individuals, a lot of handwritten material and photographs. “My memoir!” he smiled beatifically as if looking at grandchild number eleven.

He had been visiting his daughter and her kids in New York. “I don’t get to see her much, and she happens to be my favorite child”, he said pensively. “Sons never have time for their parents!” That sounded like a universal theme.   

Arlington, Texas, is where Ernie was bound. To be honored at an official awards ceremony for his services to the armed forces. His failing memory probably needed the assistance of the memoirs which placed events chronologically. 

With a lot of fondness he recalled death defying in-the-air maneuvers while he was enlisted: the most daring incident was when he made a successful landing on a mountain top. His funniest moment, although the glider crashed in a field full of cattle, was when, just before crashing, his co-pilot screamed, “Ernie! Look at the balls on that bull. They are huge!” Both pilots survived, unscathed, as did the bull with the generous testicles.          

At that point we laughed uncontrollably, till our sides hurt. His memories of the bull brought tears to his eyes, and I choked up a tad bit.

Ernie then moved on to more serious topics, like his world view. Maybe at that time it occurred to him to notice my brown skin and my accent. “So where are you from, son?” “Houston, Texas”, prompted one voice in my head. “Karachi, Pakistan”, is what I heard myself say. In reality, those are the only two cities I have considered ‘home’. Either he didn’t hear me or he didn’t understand what I said, because he went on to spout his theories about domestic and foreign policies, and how things could always be improved. “The world’s too violent and unpredictable”, he said. “We need to spread the message of tolerance and love for humanity”. I nodded in agreement. Maybe he had heard me after all.

 “What do you do, son?” was the inevitable next question. “I’m a physician”, I said, “I treat kids in an ER”. “That must be hard getting used to. Dealing with kids in pain, and such.” I had not given so much thought to that. I guess one’s work becomes second nature and one accepts the pain that has to be inflicted and experienced as part and parcel of being an ER physician. “I admire you and the work that you do for us”, said Ernie. “My wife of sixty years has been losing her battle against Alzheimer’s”. He went on to tell me how heart breaking it was for him to place her in hospice. “She vaguely remembers me”, he said with a bitter sweet grin. “That is good because I have not been the best husband. She deserved better”.   

I felt otherwise. And I told him so. Nothing about him, and his conversation, said anything but about his love of life and his people, his family, friends, and country. Why did she deserve better? 

The two hours of the flight were spent getting to know Ernie: the man, the war veteran, the pilot, the husband, the father, the grandfather, the friend, and above all a fellow-traveler. He was a great story teller, and I became a better listener. My life was all the more enriched because of putting him ahead of me, and by giving him the attention that his persona not only demanded but deserved.

Two hours are not enough to cover a colorful and eventful life span of seventy years.

Yet Ernie did justice to his memoir.

[from An Itinerant Observer]

Acknowledgment: A version of this story was first published by the Houston Inner Looper Newspaper [December 2012]; it also appeared under the title 'Ernie' in the book An Itinerant Observer.

Photo credit: Nausheen Khan is an illustrator and photographer based in Houston.