Benny

I recall the man in the tvättstuga called Benny, scouring his pants with a brillo attached to a prong. He’s stretching and reaching ever so high up. He needs the baking soda perched on the industrial washer when he goes: 

“Jock, Jock– could you…?” 

Tall that I am, I pass him the stuff. 

Tells me last week he found an old fisherman keeled over completely dead on the pier. Says he must have been there hours. He said it was curious that none of the early morning dog walkers from the lakeside villas hadn’t went to help. Thought them the type to just walk on by. 

“I mean, there’s dozens of them down there,” says Benny. 

“What. Dog walkers?” 

“No-no-no-no, fishermen!”

“Lot of fish to catch, I guess,” I say. 

“I guess.” 

I say, “why do you guess nobody from the villas stopped to help before you?”

He goes, “sad, isn’t it. Real tragedy.” 

When he wasn’t sitting in the attic at nights fussing his decades-old boxed accounting files into order or cycling the urban forest with a green parakeet perched on his shoulder, Benny could be found pacing his balcony with nunchucks for a right good session. At least, that’s how someone described it. 

He continues, “I went long and hard on that fisherman. Not even a thanks, nuthin’.”

“But he was dead, right?” 

“Right dead,” he says, still scrubbing hard on the pants. 

“Dead as can be. Old, too. Guess how old I am?”

“80…?” 

“Nah, close enough though… 74! And can still get it up,” he exclaimed, slapping his bicep with the arm of honor. 

But the brillo flew off the prong and landed pathetically on the ground. I thought to ask him what the hell he was doing with it when he looked up and went: 

“Dead man pants.” 

“Dead pants…?” 

“O, nuthin’, never mind,” he said whilst chucking the brillo into the filthiest of looking bags. 

He goes: “You know I saw this great documentary about Scotland the other night.”

“What was it called?”

“I don’t recall.” 

“Who made it?” 

He went: “Not sure, but it was about the old times.” 

There was a bunch of fishing gear behind where he’d been scrubbing. He came over all flushed when he noticed I had noticed. Like a couple of rods, a net ‘n’ whatnot. He cursed something about the dead fisherman then prepared to leave. 

“So I said to myself, I said, the Queen of Scotland. She was Queen of Fiji, and combined that makes her Queen of England and those other places,” he said, packing the last bits of tackle up. 

He’s going for the door but stops in his tracks; looks skywards in awe; arches his neck all serious like. He has something real deep to say: 

“She was a great reformist, the Queen of England.” 

“I think you mean Thatcher,” I said.

He turns to me and goes, “Thatchers?” 

“The documentary you saw. It was probably about Thatcher.” 

“Right, yeah, Thatcher,” he said, dropping his shit to the ground then saluting me with his other arm bent intently behind his back. 

“Queen of Jocks and the iTaukei.”