God Bless the Freaks!

Francis walked towards me as I sat at a table outside my favourite cafe. I was reading the newspaper when I looked up and saw him approaching. He walked like he was always on the cusp of falling forwards. I put the paper down as he drew near. He was weird but I enjoyed his wit and the exchange of banter.

“Hi Francis. Out for a Sunday morning stroll?”

“I’m going to the Presbyterian church to worship. Same thing you’re doing.”

“Huh?” I grinned. “I’m reading the paper and sipping a latte.”

He stopped in front of me. “They’re things you consider worthy, so you commit time to them. Same as me, just different objects of desire.”

As he spoke, Francis swayed like he was hearing music too soft and consoling for the normal ear.

I gestured towards the newspaper and the coffee cup. “It’s a sensible way to spend a Sunday morning. Lots of normal people do it.”

“But God blesses the freaks,” Francis said, and his chuckle descended into a coughing fit. He waved at me in apology and farewell and walked, still coughing, down the street as if every step he took was spoiled by a tripwire. His Akubra somehow stayed on his head, and as he walked he stroked his long beard, collected below his chin by a rubber band into a ponytail.

Next Sunday, I was again sitting at the cafe table and saw Francis approaching, this time from the opposite direction.

“Hey Francis. Wanna join me for a coffee?”

“Thank you, but no. I’m going to meet with the freaks at the Catholic church.”

“I’m sure they’d like to hear that!”

“Honouring the clowns of God is a Catholic tradition.” He stopped to talk and moved from one foot to the other in a gentle lilting motion. He smiled. “And I see you’re catching up with all the news of the day but none of the wisdom of the ages.”

I gave him a defiant look. “And loving my freedom,” I said.

It was a warm morning but Francis wore long trousers, a flannelette shirt and a cardigan that had traces of his breakfast or yesterday’s dinner dribbled down the front. He smelled of unwashed clothes and unshowered flesh. There were bits of what looked like egg yolk in his moustache.

Francis wrapped his arms around his chest, hugging himself, and he looked upwards to the sun for a moment with his eyes closed. Then he looked down at me and said, “Be careful you’re not enslaved by the merely contemporary. And with that, I wish you good day.”

“Seeya, Francis.”

He made a peace sign like the old hippie he seemed to be and hurried away in his stumbling-forwards gait.

Francis was perhaps fifteen or twenty years older than me, which placed him in his mid-seventies. I’d noticed that old people often dressed like the temperature was ten degrees colder than it was, and in clothes that looked two sizes too big. I was sweating despite being dressed in shorts and a polo shirt and sitting in the shade of the cafe’s awning. I pitied the person Francis sat next to in church.

I watched him, thin and dishevelled, amble down the street. You’re a bit freaky, I thought. And you don’t seem too blessed.

Next Sunday morning, there was a similar exchange. Francis came walking along the footpath and I put my newspaper down on the table.

“Hey Francis. Which freaks are you meeting with today?”

“The invisible freaks. In Roman days, a spot beside the river was the place of prayer for the dispersed Jews. So I’m going to the park near the bridge to sit on the grass and look at the water. I like to imagine there’re angels sitting in the trees who might enjoy some quiet human company.”

“Right,” I said. “Angels in the trees, perched on the branches like cockatoos.”

“You’re welcome to join me.”

“Nah. I’ve just ordered another coffee and I’m halfway through the paper. I’ll stick with that.” I patted the open pages.

Francis leaned forward and perused the headlines. He nodded. “You prefer the practical politicians and the broad-minded economists?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. I could see his point.

“Don’t forget,” he began, but I guessed what he was going to say and finished the sentence with him so we spoke in unison, “God blesses the freaks.”

“Got it. I haven’t forgotten. I’m not sure I agree with it, but I remembered.”

I next saw Francis at a funeral. A work colleague from my teaching days at the local high school had died and although he was an acquaintance rather than a close friend, I felt it was proper to go to the service. I sat in Saint Lawrence’s Church and noticed Francis sitting across from me. Without his Akubra he looked much older and his habit of tying his grey beard and silver hair in ponytails made him look eccentric. His balding scalp was marked with large yellow-red lesions, like severe patches of sunburn. I watched him throughout the service and noticed that nobody engaged him in conversation. Afterwards, outside the church, I went across to where he stood by himself.

“Hey Francis. I didn’t know you knew Steve.”

“Who?”

“Steven Davies.”

“Steven Davies?” he said, genuinely puzzled. “No, I don’t know him.”

“Mate, we’re at his funeral.”

“Oh, I didn’t know him. But I like to go to funerals to hear what’s said. In the eulogies you discover what people think is important in life.”

“That’s an odd habit,” I said.

“Maybe, but for some people death is the culmination of their lives. They prepare for it with great care.”

“Like who?” I hoped he didn’t mean mongrels like suicide bombers.

“The saints, for example.”

“Hmm, well, you won’t see me at more funerals than I feel obliged to attend.”

He stepped closer. His breath made me want to take a step back but I resisted that impulse. He lowered his voice and smiled in anticipation of what he was about to say. “There are people here who go to funerals just for the excuse to dress up and watch people cry, like it’s free theatre. It’s a small town thing to do. I don’t do that.”

“Your purpose is more instructive.”

“I hope. I’m sure it’s worthwhile spending time at the pub or at the greyhounds …”

“Or at the cafe,” I suggested.

“Yes. But there’s more to learn among the mournful.”

It didn’t seem to me that God, assuming he existed, blessed the mournful any more than the non-mournful.

I thought Francis’s habit of attending funerals was macabre. I asked around and discovered that Francis, in the years when teachers’ colleges were located in big country towns, had been a lecturer at Armidale Teachers’ College. For decades he had been a teacher of teachers, but he retired early to return to town to care for his ailing, widowed mother. When she died, the story goes, he suffered some kind of breakdown and became a bit unhinged: he neglected to eat regularly, to pay bills, to change his clothes or wash and he’d stay up all night, ranting. He never worked again, and lived alone in his mother’s house. A daughter came from Sydney to visit him every few months, but I never saw her with him.

A fortnight after the funeral, I went to Ballina where my retired mates and I rented an apartment for four weeks. All of us were single through divorce or bereavement and we met each year to fish, to cook the fish we caught, or to eat at restaurants and pubs if the weather was too bad to launch the boat. We compared our bad investments, our cholesterol levels, our medications and their nasty side-effects, our bulging bellies, and the anxieties and depressions that plagued us. We told tales about the crazy things our adult children did and wheezed with laughter at their follies. None of us knew what the hell life was supposed to be about and we freely admitted it to each other. It was consoling that my mates were as confused as me.

One windy day when the chop on the water made us turn our backs on the sea, we drove to Nimbin to check out the place. The main street was lined with run-down shops that looked like no money had been spent on painting or maintenance since the seventies. We wandered along the street, ate at the Rainbow Cafe, muttered wisecracks in the Aquarius Museum, and nudged each other when we saw a good-looking backpacker or hippie chick. I went into a New Age shop, bought nothing because nothing seemed to have any quality or be to my taste, and was on my way out when I noticed a small table with funny, insulting or smutty stickers and badges. One bumper sticker caught my eye. I chuckled and bought two: one for me and one for Francis. The sticker said, in a wonky informal script, “God bless the freaks!” I guessed Francis had seen the sticker on the bumper of someone’s car, probably a beat-up Kombi or some tree-hugger’s rust-bucket, and made it his motto.

When I returned home from Ballina, I resumed my Sunday morning cafe routine. After several Sundays had passed, I mentioned to the young waitress that I hadn’t seen Francis lately.

“He died about a month ago, had a stroke or heart attack or something.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” I digested the news. Even in a small town, a person could disappear and their absence would barely register.

She placed my latte on the table.

I said, “You’ve got a new tattoo.” A black vine design laced up the inside of her forearm. She also had a new piercing through her bottom lip and her hair was now purple.

“Got it done Satdee week ago,” she said. She paused, and twisted her mouth. “I think that bloke died closer to two months ago.”

I drank my coffee with no further conversation. News of Francis’s death reminded me of the stickers I’d bought at Nimbin. Later, at home, I took them from my travel bag. I thought I’d put a sticker on a small piece of wood and place it beside his grave. I cut some pine to size, sanded it smooth, put the sticker on and coated it with varnish to protect it against the weather. The next day I drove out to the cemetery, a clearing in the bush on the edge of town. I found Francis’s plot, but my small gift was eclipsed by what was engraved on the metal plate on his modest headstone. Below his name, the dates of his birth and death, and his age, was written: “You never laughed in all your life like I shall laugh in death.”

It wasn’t a proposition I could understand. I read it once more, aloud. It was unreasonable, an absurdity. There was too much hope, too much expectation, and too much confidence, all in the face of the unknown. It went beyond any decent measure. I was inclined to walk away but I looked again at the sticker I’d fixed to the pine and I placed it against the headstone, underneath the metal plate. It somehow complemented the strange line about laughing in death that puzzled and offended me.