Hagiography

Stephen Tuttle

1. Of course he was praised for his efforts. After all, here was the man who had once rescued each of the animals in their shelter in the predawn hours when shoddy wiring set fire to one of their oldest buildings. Here was the man who had beaten gravity, pulling a school bus filled with children back from the impossible edge of a canyon road. They could forgive small missteps from the man for whom they had named the plaza of their city hall. They could look elsewhere, diverting their gaze so as not to see the tarnish accumulating on the man to whom they owed so much. They ignored what they had to, overlooking what they hoped were only temporary lapses. It was easy enough for them to laugh when he drove his car, paint fading the way an aluminum can will, four blocks down a one-way street in the wrong direction. They were not bothered by his seemingly endless capacity for forgetfulness; how, for example, he never had enough change to finish a load of wash. How could they complain when asked to make a nominal loan to their most famous citizen? So what if his eyesight was failing and he seemed incapable of getting himself anywhere without bumping into and knocking over any number of newspaper stands or pedestrians? So what if he was not what he had once been? Wasn’t his legacy worth holding on to? Wasn’t it more important to them to allow the present some small indiscretions, some failures, in order to maintain a link to their past and the man to whom they owed so much? Where would they be without him? How could they enforce late fees on this man? How could they insist that he lower his voice inside their libraries? How could they think of embarrassing him by whispering loudly into his freckled and hairy ear that his fly, once again, was down?

2. They had tried to rename him. They had offered suggestions that seemed appropriate to his various abilities. They had considered words that spoke to his knack for flying, for lifting enormously heavy objects, for always arriving in time to save the day. He had refused each of these, saying that he was undeserving of such praise, or that he was ill-prepared to live up to what such names suggested. He said that once they gave him some label he would feel an unnecessary weight, that he would feel an obligation to do more than he could and that this obligation could lead only to guilt. They had assumed his refusal was an act of politeness, but that he had meant to suggest their titles were insufficient. What they had come to so far, they assumed, was not to his liking. They swore to find better, stronger, more suitable names. They considered titles that emphasized his most impressive talents. They offered names that made their adoration of him unmistakable. These efforts failed as earlier efforts had. He remained adamant that no name would make him work harder, or make him feel more dedicated to the people of his city. He was from here, he had said, he would remain here. He felt a sense of place and community here that obligated him in constructive ways to give and give without expecting so much as a thank you. He was grateful, he said, when they erected statues of him, when their children gave him oversized thank-you cards on which each of them had crayoned their names, when they invited him to special dinners and holiday parties. But these were enough. These gestures were all the thanks he needed. Anything more was kind of them, but no, he did not need another name. The name he had always had, that he had worn comfortably these many years, that he felt was a necessary part of him, would stay. His name was his name, he said, and he saw no good reason to replace it. He asked that they stop addressing him as mister, that they think of him as a friend, that they call him Walter.

3. The photograph of Walter, buried now in historical archives or under boxes filled with old magazines and prom dresses and gifts that could not be returned, reveals only a man—thin enough, a little wiry, not very tall or very short—and a smoldering high-rise behind him to the left. He had been the only eyewitness to the scene who was not treated by paramedics after inhaling so much smoke, or suffering trauma. He is quoted in that day’s newspaper saying he didn’t see much, just smoke and an occasional flame sneaking its way out of some sixth- or seventh-story window. He said the fire department deserved a pat on the back for their timeliness and their impressive skills. The next day’s paper ran the photo on the front page to accompany a long story detailing the many accounts of those who saw a skinny man come in their window, telling them to get the children and hurry toward the fire escapes. Fire fighters couldn’t understand how a building of this size could be so empty just when it needed to be. And others claimed to have seen a man carrying dozens of cats to safety. The front-page story asks a number of questions about Walter and does not shy from suggesting that his presence at the scene makes him a person of interest in the investigation under way. Arson gets mentioned near enough to Walter’s name. But so too do the words Citizen Hero. In the months that followed, images of Walter appeared more and more frequently in their newspapers. Stories began to run together and apologies filled the editorial pages when citizens and journalists alike found that their early doubts had been presumptuous and rash. The articles and reports were filled now with praise for this man, and reminders that they owed him much.

4. He had had no enemies but misfortune, no evil foes but petty theft. He had thwarted his share of crimes, but there were none who had sworn to avenge themselves against him. No one had ever said: I’ll get you for this, Walter. No one had ever laughed maniacally and warned him to watch his back. There had been no twisted madmen in this city, no geniuses hell-bent on mass destruction, no horrific plans to rule the world. What Walter fought throughout his storied career were natural disasters, common stupidity, and the tendency toward chaos that even he would call inevitable. But he could find only simple clichés to describe his escalating concerns about his inability to meet the demands that had been piled upon him. He was likely to say that self-sufficiency was wanting in this city, that life was hard and filled with challenges, that people need trouble.

5. The mayor said, We appreciate what you have done for us, even if you can’t do everything you once did. We recognize that age is a factor and that our demands have been, perhaps, too great a strain. We apologize for not seeing earlier what a weight we were heaping on you. But this is not what Walter had meant. He had not wanted to apologize for his decreasing skills or his failing capacity for day-saving and last-second swooping in. What had been swirling around in his mind was not an apology for his failures, but a fear of his own history. These things that I have stopped, he had wanted to say, these disasters I have diverted, these tragedies I have saved you from will occur again a thousand times and then a thousand more. They will come and come and they will take our children from us, and they will separate us from our families, and they will fill our newspapers and our memories. We have avoided things we should never have avoided. We have attempted to dodge things that were meant for us. We have used up our luck and our good fortune. We owe a cosmic debt and we can avoid no longer the burden of the inevitable. He had meant to say all of this, and he had meant to say more. He had meant to gain an audience with the mayor, to warn him of the impending disasters that were even now upon them, of the clouds that were coming this way, of the preparations that would be of no use in the face of such balancing forces. What he said was this: I am no longer able to save you. And the mayor had cut him off, saying, We know, we know, we know. The mayor accepted Walter’s truncated speech as an apology and as a plea for discharge, for retirement, for a chance to find a pasture in which to waste away. The mayor accepted what Walter had not given, and Walter knew, could see more clearly than he had ever seen, that this too was part of what was to come, that his attempts to warn were still attempts to save these people, that he was trying to do what he had always done.

6. They could come to no agreement when they tried to pinpoint the date Walter left them. They could not remember when they saw him last, or when he was last said to have saved a life. His absence came to them slowly. Many claimed to have seen him, claimed to have heard about him, and claimed explanations for his delays in helping them. They apologized for his diminished role in their lives, saying that they had lived more fully when he was more visible among them. They could not deny the decline they saw all around them. Crime was on the rise and so were accidental deaths. But could they really blame his absence for the increase in teen pregnancies, or the extra weight their children were carrying, or the rust they had begun to discover in their tap water? Could they say that their drought would have ended any more quickly had he been around? Could they imagine that Walter would have had any power to restore the crumbling foundations of their oldest buildings or the potholes in their streets? They knew, of course, that for all Walter had done, he had never been capable of fixing all of their problems. But still, his absence weighed heavily, and if attendance at their churches was up, so too were concerns about the structural integrity of the dam they had built in the mountains above them, and the rumors that the dead volcano only miles from their city was not, perhaps, entirely dead. They admitted that things had been better when Walter lived among them, but they knew that he would not return. So they did what was left for them to do. They mapped the faultline running beneath their homes, made emergency phone lists, replaced batteries in their smoke alarms, and bought cases of canned foods. They did everything they could think to do, they made every preparation they could imagine necessary, they fixed what they could and replaced what they could not. They catalogued the shifts in their weather, noting when the temperature changed and where the winds came from, recording the length and severity of heat waves or blizzards. And then, after all they could do, they waited, and they listened to the almost imperceptible hum their city made.