Chapter 11 – the Bean

By Marlin Eller

It has been so long since I've tickled the keys of the old typewriter that I doubt that I'll be able to do anything with them. Not to mention the fact that from doing math for a year, my mind has the consistency of dry peanut butter rather than that of clear artesian water and the thoughts do no flow at all smoothly. Also while I'm on the topic of typing, Fuck this machine for the lack of a return key. Damn Sears and Roebuck for selling this primitive machine thus forcing me to make that barbaric left-handed flog of the hammer at the end of every line. It makes me feel like some Pleistocene Hominid, sitting in the cave and bashing the carriage on line's end. I wonder if it is an indication that the written word will never last? Perhaps I should take up painting. Now there's an art form with some promise. I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye, a big semi-impressionistic job of me and the boys out thrashing a woolly mammoth on the wall there next to where I hang my club. Ah well, one must make due with what one has got.

At some point in time when Joe and I were talking about our previous existences I made the comment that sometime I'd like to get my act together.

"It's funny you should mention that," he says.

"Well," I said, "it's not that unusual an idea. I just thought that it would be nice if sometime before I died I get organized. It doesn't have to last for more than a few moments but just long enough that I can honestly say that I did at one time have my act together."

"That's almost exactly the way it was with the Bean. In fact, he used those same words, that ‘get-my-act-together’."

Joe caught the look in my eye and went on, "Didn't I ever tell you about the Bean?"

"I don't recall that one."

"The Bean was Tom Sheden, the guy I was rooming with when I was living up on the hill before Sharon moved in."

"Oh yes, I think I did meet him once. He's the tall skinny one with the really short hair, isn't he?"

"Yeah, that's the guy, a really uptight dude. He was all right as a roommate for a while, until he started fussing with everything. He was a compulsive cleaner. I mean he would actually get out the dust cloth and try to dust that place. Now you know that I am not Mr. Clean, not that I mind clean things if someone else wants to clean them, I just never really considered it worth my time. Now the really strange thing is that while he liked to clean things up he didn't like to organize them. He would see a bunch of papers and instead of sorting them and throwing our the trash he would straighten them up nice and neat and put them on a little pile on some shelf or something, and the result was that he could never find anything.

Anyway, I came home one day to find the house in shambles. I mean, there were papers everywhere, and books and records and just everything. And there he is on the couch with a wad of paper in each hand and this spaced look in his eye. I was about to turn and run, 'cause you know, I had figured that the poor guy had gone over the edge and had a bad case of the violent crazies. But then he sighs and I realize that his mood is more suicidal than violent so I ask what's wrong.

You wouldn't believe the hard luck story that I got. As near as I can piece together from what he told me is that he had lost his job, his girl friend, and some stupid sweepstakes or something all on the same day. The girl friend had been kind of shaky and I think that she used the excuse of his losing his job as a reason to dump him. He had been looking for something, some kind of ticket or.... I don't know what. Whatever it was it figured into the whole thing somehow like if he could find this thing he could get his job back or win a trip to Europe. Of course, there was no way that he could find anything in that mess.

By this time he's pretty well settled down and he starts apologizing for the mess and starts to pick things up to put them away. The whole thing was just pitiful. The poor guy was on the verge of tears and he was just pushing things together and stacking them anywhere. He'd put books and papers together and set them over on the desk and then pick up a few records and go put them on the desk and see the books so he'd put the records down and pick up the books again and he wasn't going to make it through the night. He was just about to lose it again so I walked over and grabbed the books from him and said, 'Look, Bean. Quit this flapping around. You've got to get your shit together, man. You've got to maintain.'

And he says to me, ' That's what I'm trying to do. But I just can't seem to find a place for the... for the...' and he starts to lose it again. This time I'm afraid he's going to get hysterical so I shake him and yell, 'Stop!'

I walk him over to the couch and sit him down and say, 'Listen to me. You have to get your shit together. Don't get up! SIT there! Leave the books alone. Leave the papers on the floor. Forget about the goddamn papers. You have got to get it together. I don't mean the mess out here on the floor, I meant the mess up here. You've always been neat but you've never been organized. You've never had a system. Things aren't out of place if there is no place for them to be. You have to decide where you want to put things before you can put them there. You think your life is falling apart because you lose your woman and your job and you want to pick up the pieces before you have a place to put them. Well, forget about that. You pick thing up after you get organized, after you have the system. Now I want you to sit there and I don't want you to do a damn thing, I don't want you to touch a thing until you have decided where every single thing is going to go. I want you to be able to visualize everything in its place before you touch a thing.'

I figured that this would be a nice taxing mental job that would keep him from flipping out again. Well, he didn't say anything to that. He just sat there and wrinkled his brow as if he as taking to heart what I had said, so I added, " That's it, just sit there and get organized. I'll go make us some dinner."

When I came back he was still sitting in the same place, and the cogs were spinning. I put the food down in front of him and he barely noticed. I told him, " you can take time out to eat if you like."

He looked a little startled and then said, "You're right. I've got to get my act together," and he started eating.

Three weeks later, there he was, still sitting on the couch. Had not moved except to fix lunches and to visit the can. I do believe he slept down there. I know for a fact that he didn't change his clothes or shave or shower or anything. That's when I started spending all my time over at Sharon's. I couldn't very well see bringing her over to a place when it looked like that and had a roommate going slightly rancid on the couch.

Anyway, three weeks later when I was back at the place to pick up a change of clothes I tripped over some of the stuff on the floor so I asked, "Do you mind if I push some of this junk to one side or the other?" Actually I was a little tired of the whole thing by then. He looks up and says, "Huh? What stuff? Oh, that. Oh, Um, No. Go ahead. I don't mind, I took care of that stuff two weeks ago." So I put down my clothes and push all that crap that's been littering the floor for nearly a month into this huge pile, and what does he do? He gets up, walks over to the pile and says, "Well, if you want to do it right," and he pulls one sheet of paper out of the middle and puts it into a book leaned up against one side of the pile and then goes back to the couch.

On my way out the door he says, "I should be finished sometime tomorrow or the next day." He didn't know how right he was.

I drop in the next day to tell him that I would like him to move out but before I can say anything he jumps up and yells, "I did it! I got my act together! It works, Joe, it works! And not just for me but for everybody. I've got to show it to you, Joe! You were the one that made it all possible!" and he runs over and hugs me. "But first I have to go get something and he dashes over to the pile, which hasn't been touched since the day before, plunges his hand into the middle and withdraws a checkbook from the mess! Then he runs out of the house, sees the bus across the street, runs out into the street after it, and gets hit by a truck."

"Oh no!"

"Well, he wasn't actually hit by the truck but he sort of tripped getting out of the way of the damn thing and hit his head on the curb. I took him into the emergency hospital and he kept saying that he was all right, just a little shook up. Turned out to be a concussion, nothing broken but the train of thought. He didn't remember what he was going to do. He remembered that he wanted to buy something but he didn't know what it was.

I didn't have the heart to kick him out after that so we went back to the house and he went over to the pile of stuff and stuck the checkbook deep into the middle of it. I offered to help him straighten up the pile and he said, "No, I don't need any of that stuff. I learned that much in the last couple weeks. You can throw it all out." Then he turned and looked at me and said, " I hope it won't inconvenience you terribly if I move out. Maybe you could talk Sharon into moving in with you."

"Well, yeah. I suppose I could," I said.

"Good, It's part of the plan, I think. Another part is that I have to join the Peace Corp. I decided that a week and a half ago. It will take me a little time to go through the formalities but they should have no problem accepting me."

Sure enough, a month and a half later he moved out and Sharon moved in."

"Where is he now?" I asked.

"Oh, he's still there. He went to the Dominican Republic. His job is killing rats. Extermination."

"Do you really think he did it?" I asked.

"What? join the Peace Corp? Sure. I get letters form him every now and then."

"No, I mean get his act together. Do you think that he really had something?"

"Oh, I don't know. The things that he could do with that pile for the last month and a half were very impressive, but as to whether he had something big, I don't know. Maybe he did. I like to think so."

"So what is the moral, O great master? Mere men should not attempt to scale the heights of perfection, should not try to build the tower of Babel and be as tall as the Gods? One should not strive for perfect organization?"

"No, I don't think it is that. I don't know, but I'd say the moral is that you should look both ways before crossing the street."