Rufus
by Conrad Phillips
In an apartment complex, whose name not even the residents can remember, there lived the sort of man who was always rattling off the strange customs of foreign lands. He loved telling coworkers and family members random facts he had found in books, blogs, and the backs of restaurant menus. “If you ever have a conversation with a European, he will always stand too close to you,” he explained. “It’s so cramped there. They’re used to it.” When he was done explaining, the coworker or family member would ask him if he’d ever been to Europe, and the man would say bluntly that in fact he had not and that he really wasn’t the traveling type. He would then go on to explain that the Chicago-style hot dog had been the amalgamation of the culinary habits of early 20th century immigrants.
The man’s name was Rufus. He was in his early fifties, had been divorced once, was appreciated at his workplace, and was relatively happy. On weekdays, he tended to eat one to two meals a day. He could never tolerate breakfast, but was a tremendous fan of soup. At lunchtime, he frequented the sandwich shops and delis around his workplace, and in the evening, if he felt so inclined, he would open up one of the cans he had bought from the local supermarket. His favorites were minestrone, goulash, chili, chicken noodle, and vegetable, so long as it wasn’t too creamy, but above all things he loved potato soup served with an unreasonable amount of bread. On the weekends, it was hard to predict when exactly he would begin to eat, because he never followed much of a pattern and often found himself in taverns. If you have ever seen a man sitting by himself at the end of the bar, quietly sipping a beer or mixed drink and staring intently at local sports on a nearby television set, you might have been watching Rufus and you should’ve said hello. You will not see him there anymore.
Sometimes, on the weekends, he ate dinner with his ex-wife Melinda, her son Thomas, and her second husband William, but when Thomas left for college, Rufus stopped inviting himself over. When he wanted a special treat, Rufus looked through newspapers, picked out a good restaurant review, and invited himself there instead, feeling somewhat excited by the long waits and the bustle of a popular venue. He felt warm inside after eating different food in a different place, but for the most part his body had gotten used to the same meals five times a week. His metabolism knew exactly how to process it. Combined with the mild exercise regimen he had managed to keep up for a number of decades, his diet had made Rufus a thin man, wiry and almost muscular. Rufus had much to be proud of. He had his health, he had his job, he had people who could say they cared about him. He had something resembling a life, and he was happy.
Which made it all the more disconcerting when Rufus began stopping in front of local churches and gazing at the crucifixes perched on top. Whenever he read the newspaper, he found himself poring over the various murder stories which made up the bulk of local events. At work, where he operated as an efficient and respected project manager, he consistently resisted the urge to call his colleagues cocksuckers and to steal their pencils for no apparent reason. Worst of all, from the very beginning Rufus knew he was having a problem and he thought about it. He stayed up late at night and watched commercials for trade schools, all of them telling him to do something with his life. He bought self-help books whenever a title caught his attention, and although he never read the books all the way through, he knew what they were telling him to do. He had to follow his inclinations, to take his strongest attributes until what he wanted to do and what he could do were one and the same. He needed to bring into action the soul of himself.
He thought about his family members, who tolerated him. He thought about Melinda, who humored him. He thought about William, who humored his Melinda, and he thought about Thomas, whom Rufus wanted to think of as a son but couldn’t. Wasn’t Rufus a man, and weren’t men meant to look up at the sky and wonder? Shouldn’t he set out in search of his deep, world-encompassing desires? There were only so many times he could tell himself that at least he had his job, and life was not meant to be spent stealing other people’s pencils. Even with all the years he had spent keeping himself in shape, all he had now in his body was an ultimately unwise investment. He should stop worrying and start living. He should start listening to the deepest, most inward parts of himself. He should follow his soul, which, so far as he knew, could never lead him wrong.
So he went to the supermarket one day in January and bought a bottle of liquor for himself, something Rufus hadn’t done in decades. He got himself roaring drunk, showed up late to work, and quit his job as gallantly as he knew how, by explaining to his immediate supervisor that he respected his employer and his colleagues, but that he needed to find something important right now. A job couldn’t hold him back right now. Rufus went home, continued to drink, and lay on the floor in a daze. There were so many people to call and so many places to go, so many things to collect and so much pent-up energy to use. Rufus had spent most of his life waiting for something to happen to him, but now he decided that he would be the thing he was waiting for. Nothing could stop a man resolutely venturing into the world on behalf of his deepest self.
There were so many things to do.
“I’m . . . I changed, Melinda. I can’t say it just right, but it happened. I didn’t have any say in it.” Melinda didn’t know what to say. Rufus had been talking to her for the past half hour. Nothing that he said was very clear. His voice was slurred and he couldn’t put together a complete thought, but Melinda knew him and knew that somewhere in there Rufus had something to say. She sat in her living room, put the phone to her ear, and tried to get her ex-husband to come to the point. Now and then, William walked in, looked at Melinda, looked at the phone, and walked out. The third time William walked in, Melinda made a gesture at him to let him know she’d hang up soon, the kind of gesture no one but William or maybe Rufus would understand, and when she came back to Rufus, she found that he’d completely changed the subject.
“How’s Tom?” he asked. “I haven’t talked to him for awhile.”
“He’s doing okay . . . He’s excited about graduating.”
“It’s his last year?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he settle on?”
“Accounting . . . Or some sort of accounting and technology thing. Financing Internet startups? Designing accounting software. Running accounting software for big businesses. I'm not sure. A friend of his told him there was money in it.”
“Sounds like a good field. He’s a smart kid. He’ll do good. I know he will. Is he still at the same place? That apartment?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been meaning to call him. Same cell number?”
“Yeah.”
“I haven’t talked to him in awhile.” William stepped into the room one more time. Melinda put her hand over the receiver as she explained that Rufus sounded like he was wrapping up. As she started listening to the phone again, Rufus explained for the third time that he had been meaning to talk to Tom for awhile now. Then, for no reason Melinda could figure out, Rufus apologized for taking up so much of her time and hung up without saying much of a goodbye.
“What was that about?” William asked.
“I think he quit his job,” Melinda said. “Or was fired.”
They wondered what Rufus was going to do and how long his money would last him. Five days later, Melinda received a call from Thomas.
“Mom?” Thomas said.
“Son?”
“Rufus stopped by.” There was a sound of fear and worry to his voice.
“That’s a four-hour drive.”
“He seemed kinda drunk. Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know. The last time he called here he was asking about you.”
“He wouldn’t stop talking about his soul.”
Melinda couldn’t decide yet if her ex-husband was the sort of person who could be a problem. But if he was a problem, William would probably be able to handle it. “What did he want?”
“I think he wanted to go on a road trip with me.”
“. . . What did you say?”
“I have school. I’m almost done. I can’t afford this kind of . . . stuff. What’s going on with him right now? Some kind of crisis or something?”
“I don’t know. He might’ve lost his job.”
“He told me he quit his job.”
“Yeah, Tom, but . . .” Melinda didn’t really know if there was a difference between Rufus quitting his job and Rufus getting fired. “He’s going through some things.” She paused. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but there are things. Did you agree to go with him?”
“What?”
“On the road trip.”
“No . . . God no . . . I told him I have school to take care of. I’m graduating. I might have a job lined up. Do you know how hard it is to get a job? If I took off now just because he’s going through things . . .”
“No, I know, I know, you did the right thing . . . Could you promise me something, Tom?”
“What?”
“I know you’re busy, and I know you wouldn’t want to be hanging out with him, but I am a little worried about Rufus.”
“I’m not --”
“I’m not asking you to go out of your way, and it's probably the kind of thing that's gonna blow over in a couple of weeks, but . . . do you have any plans for spring break?”
“Maybe . . . Some of the guys were thinking of going to Mexico.”
“Oh, that sounds nice . . . Where?”
“Don’t know yet.”
“Oh . . . well I don’t want to get in your way, but if you’re available, and if Rufus is still . . . and even if he isn’t, it might be nice if you just, paid him a visit on your break. Checked in on him. He likes you, Tom.”
“I know.”
“Would you think about it?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you. It means a lot to me, Tom.”
“. . . I know.”
It was late at night by now and cold. Rufus drove back to the city down a two-lane stretch of highway surrounded by little more than flat, white snow. He thought he liked these long, open roads, but now it was just depressing. A water-bottle half-filled with vodka rattled in his cup holder. Two more filled bottles rolled around in the trunk, and an empty one was probably still lying somewhere on the university campus. He didn’t know why he had filled up so many, and maybe he was too drunk to drive. It wasn’t all that hard to drive straight, so long as Rufus focused on the dotted yellow line, but if Rufus suddenly came across a situation where he had to make a decision, where he had to brake or turn suddenly, he didn’t know what he was capable of. A nausea had been swelling up within him for the last hour, a result of the fact that he hadn’t had anything to eat since talking to Tom. He wasn’t far enough along to want to vomit, but the feeling in his stomach was just good enough to make him feel sorry for himself.
All at once a self-loathing panic settled in. It hit him in the middle of his chest, so that the only way Rufus could breathe was by wheezing in and out. It was finally all too much and he had to pull over, but he had to be careful about it because with all the snow it was hard to tell where the side of the road fell into a ditch. To be safe, Rufus didn’t pull all the way over. The tires on the driver’s side were still on the road, but at this time of night it probably didn’t matter. Rufus tried to regain his composure, and when he couldn’t do that behind the wheel, he stepped out of the car and paced back and forth.
It was cold and windless. Rufus’s mouth, like a sputtering exhaust pipe, shot out bursts of frozen air violently and irregularly. Rufus waited for the cold to slow him down. Above him, patches of stars hung between the clouds, but he didn’t bother to look. After a few minutes and a brief period of coughing, his body decided it couldn’t afford to panic in this weather. His breathing settled while his shoulders and arms curled around his torso for warmth. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his ears began to hurt. For about a minute or so, Rufus was knocked back into a foggy sobriety. He started thinking again with his common sense, that is to say, he thought with his fear.
He had known up to this point, in a technical sense, that he had quit his job, and he had also known exactly how long his savings would last him if he kept on acting like this, which wasn’t quite long enough, but it hadn’t dawned on him until now that he valued his job not only for the money, but also for the sense of security it gave him, and it hadn’t dawned on him until now that he might want to live a little longer than his current savings would allow him. He didn’t know why he wanted to live so long, but all that mattered was that he wanted to. Maybe he’d thought that having someone like Tom at his side would give him back that sense of security, and Tom was a smart kid and maybe if they were together the money would’ve taken care of itself. It couldn’t happen now. Tom was a smart kid and had done the right thing. Maybe Rufus should follow his example. He stood in the middle of the road and bent down to get a good look at the reflectors on either side of the yellow lines. He’d never taken a good look at them before. It was quiet out here and dark.
Then, for a few seconds, everything was bright lights and noise. A car had been approaching Rufus at sixty miles an hour for the last minute or so. The driver had seen the car that was almost parked on the side of the road and had moved into the middle of the road to be on the safe side, riding directly on top of the yellow line. It hadn’t occurred to the driver that someone would be crouching in the middle of the highway, so he didn’t see Rufus until the last possible moment, braking and swerving to the right into the narrow gap between Rufus and his car. Rufus leaped randomly, not knowing what was happening and narrowly missing the driver’s side mirror as it rushed past. The two cars scraped together briefly before the driver regained control and found himself back in the proper lane. The driver slowed his car down to a crawl, knowing that he had made some kind of contact with the lunatic’s vehicle and that they probably had to exchange insurance information. But it was late at night and there was no telling what kind of trouble he could get into, so the car sped off into the night.
“Fuck you!” Rufus shouted for no particular reason. The car had already disappeared. “I have my rights! Fuck you!” He didn’t feel the cold anymore. His adrenaline took over and he didn’t even have to think anymore. It was time to go home, and because Rufus knew that this temporary rush wouldn’t last very long, he took advantage of it, got back in his car, and drove. There were still a least a couple of hours to go.
The guy had banged up Rufus’s car somehow. It wasn’t handling the same, and all the way home, Rufus’s left headlight blinked erratically. Rufus never stopped, but only stared ahead at the road in a state of mild hypnosis. He was convinced after the first hour that the headlight was sending him a message in a code he didn’t understand. After the second hour, as he pulled up to his apartment, he was pretty sure he had figured out what the message was, even if he couldn’t quite say it aloud.