THE WAY WE ARE

A gentle friend has a small farm he loves, and one of his prime pleasures is talking about how he’s improving it, and the affection he has for the rescue donkey he homed. He gets upset when veggie eaters say killing his stock to feed his family is cruel, how can he hand-rear livestock and then butcher them? ‘I respect the creatures I care for; I treat them well and I kill them swiftly, we can’t all be vegetarians.’

It brought back Theories of Retribution, a story I wrote published by Armida Publications. A group of elderly men meet for coffee. A younger man joins them one day overhearing a Jewish man wondering if there was retribution for murderous Nazis who escaped punishment.

The newcomer believes in the natural balance of things. He wanted to be an actor but was forced into his father’s law firm, which he hated until it dawned on him he had the best of both worlds. Every time he stood up in court, he said, he had a role to play and an audience, plus he was successful and wealthy.

The next person to join the conversation is an eccentric old woman they all think is cuckoo. She said what happens when bad people die is that they reincarnate as vegetables. Why vegetables? She replies, could they think of a worse death than those suffered by vegetables? They are pulled off life support, stuck in a fridge, washed in cold water then chopped in bits, skinned or boiled, and some have lemon or vinegar poured over their cuts.

The narrator who has a talking cat, asks Mac, his uppity feline, what if you are biting into a bad person every time you eat a piece of chicken or fish? The cat, cares less about retribution, he is happy to bite anything tasty, or anybody that annoys him, he believes in instant judgment, instant action.

The old lady hangs up whole cucumbers for a tatty bird she has in a large cage and the narrator now knows why she rejected his suggestion to cut them in half, easier for the bird. She explained, with a sly grin, it takes them all day to die. The sanity of the narrator or old woman is for the reader to decide.

The lawyer ‘…as tall sideways as he is vertically,’ is known to flap his arms and talk to himself as he walks, rehearsing his courtroom speeches, some consider him odd, but his notion of natural balance makes sense, for some. 

Certain people seem to walk through life without encountering too many serious problems. These occur in everybody’s life but that essential balance comes from a redeeming factor or two, aiding resilience.

Money is certainly a balance equaliser, so are love and health. Cash allows one to deal with problems easily, something breaks, fix it. Need new things, buy them. Want a holiday, a night out, do it. Love can ease financial troubles when support is there, someone to talk to, lean on, hug.

Health without money can be extremely difficult or death-dealing in societies that have no health services catering for the poor or vulnerable. An illness for which there is no cure can be made gentler when friends and family rally and care is willingly given. And, bad as things are for you, there’s always someone worse off.

Another constantly troubled friend spoke of her daughter’s lovely wedding, but the newlywed returned from her honeymoon, immediately admitted to hospital with a mysterious illness. Her son came back from vacation and broke his leg, her elderly husband is lapsing into dementia and wanders. ‘We’re never out of it.’

Listening to a person’s anxieties helps, even when you can’t do anything practical to assist. I’ll copy the story for my friend the farmer, and when vegans or vegetarians chide, he can ask them – what if veggies could scream? Do you know someone you’d like to see return as a vegetable? I think we all do.