How We Are Hungry

NOTES FOR A STORY OF A MAN WHO WILL NOT DIE ALONE

AROUND 8,000 words.

Quick-moving. Simple language. No descriptions of rooms or furnishings.

The man is in his seventies. He’s spry, lucid.

Possible names: Anson. Or Basil. Greg.

He doesn’t want to die alone.

More than that, he wants to die surrounded by as many people as possible. The story is about if and how he might achieve this.

Why does he want to be surrounded by so many people? Many reasons, fear of course being high among them. He likes people. He likes to meet people. On a day when he meets fifty people, as at a church mixer or when getting signatures on a petition, he’s much happier than on days when he meets no one. He leaves the TV on when he goes to sleep. This is one image/motif that recurs throughout. Many of us leave the TV on when we go to sleep. Some of us do it only when in hotels. But why do we do it, why did we do it as kids? Why, when young, did we take the greatest comfort in falling asleep under the dinner table with guests all around? Or on the coarse couch while our family watched a movie? Because we don’t want to be alone when we leave the waking world?

Story takes place in Memphis. Should incorporate that huge glass pyramid, the one by the river, under the bridge.

Basil.

Basil has a terminal illness. Bone cancer. But this story shouldn’t be about a suicide. There must be a way that he knows that he’ll die, and that he can arrange or try to arrange a death surrounded by thousands, without actually taking his own life.

It starts with his having the idea one day. Maybe he’s had shadows of the notion for many years, but it crystallizes now, and he goes to tell his children and brother. He has one brother, a bit older than himself, and three kids: two girls, who are now in their fifties, whom he raised with his longtime wife, who died twenty years ago now. She was taller than him. She smelled of lilacs. She had vitiligo. He also has a son, much younger, about twenty-three, whose mother was much younger than Basil. It was an affair. She is now remarried and lives in Tokyo.

The two daughters are horrified by the idea. Ashamed. They have no idea what’s wrong with their father. The sisters want their father to pass away at home. Maybe, periodically, he embarrassed them as they were growing up. He was a straightforward enough man — he was an OB-GYN, let’s say — but he was eccentric. His clothes were messy, always stained somewhere. They and their mother were neater. He occasionally drank to excess, worked obsessively on a Model T he’d bought in high school, and was the one who would get up in a restaurant and sing “Happy Birthday” to one of them, booming. He drove an old Trans Am until he was sixty, when he switched to a more fuel-efficient Hyundai. For years, he has collected cacti.

His son, a year out of college and a forest ranger/firefighter, understands what his father is talking about. He was always very afraid of the dark, for example. On the other hand, he’s a more solitary person than his father. He loves his patrols on Mount St. Helens — that’s where he works — and while he’s friendly and sociable, he needs much more time alone than does Basil. Does he have a beard? He does.

His name is Dennis. Or Daniel or Derek. He is enlisted to help his father with the project.

But what exactly is the project? They’re not sure where to start.

Basil calls an old friend, Helen, who he dated in his twenties. For decades she’s been a well-known organizer of events — galas, premieres, political rallies, debutante parties. She knows how to book a space and bring in a crowd. In appearance and attitude, she’s a bit like Ann Richards. Basil and Helen haven’t spoken in about twenty years, but they’re still friends, lazy friends.

They get back in touch. He arrives one day at her office, knowing he should call first. But he loves surprising people— another thing that annoys his daughters. He is ushered into Helen’s office and they look at each other and see something very similar there. It’s said that people who look alike are sometimes attracted to each other, and this happens here. They look alike in some fundamental way not affected by their being both older — maybe they both have close-set eyes and freckles. They embrace and she sits on a chair next to him and they hold hands — she holds his fingers. She is luminous, he thinks. He is crazy, she thinks. She agrees to help.

Derek comes back to Tennessee to help his father. He will stay until the end. He and his father and Helen gather one afternoon in Basil’s backyard. Basil has three dogs who fight constantly. They come into the house with new wounds every other day. Still, they all sleep in his bedroom, together and peacefully.

Helen knows this business, the business of events, so she floats some ideas. During halftime at a football game? The University of Tennessee? A Memphis State basketball game? A minor-league baseball game? The problem would be that the people attending wouldn’t all want to witness such a thing, and that would be unfair. Basil decides this, that he doesn’t want to foist his death upon anyone. Attendance must be voluntary.

But there’s something appealing about the distance, Derek says. Watching from the fifty-yard line of a football field, if Basil were in the center of that field, would be much more palatable than being in very close quarters. Derek has watched a firefighter friend of his stop breathing, in a pickup truck, after withstanding burns over most of his body. He was overwhelmed by how hard it was to watch the breaths stop, each one quieter, by half, than the last. It would be better, he insists, if there can be a comfortable remove.

They clarify what Basil wants: He wants hundreds if not thousands of people. He wants there to be distance if desired. He wants to be able to meet people. There should be an optional receiving line, where people can come to him and wish him well, touch his hand or shoulder. Much like at a wake, though this would be for a still-living person, which makes more sense, of course. A conversation between Derek and Basil:

DEREK: Do you want to limit the receiving line to people you know?

BASIL: No, no. Anyone.

DEREK: So complete strangers should be able to come up and say hello, goodbye?

BASIL: Yes.

DEREK: But people are strange. Many people are strange. Aren’t you afraid there’d be some strange person out there?

BASIL: At a thing like this? It’ll be self-selecting, don’t you think? People are strange, but more than that, they’re good. They’re good first, then strange.

DEREK: I guess. But there’ll be Goth types, I bet. And evangelicals.

Should there be any kind of entertainment? Helen wants to know this. An orchestra? The event could be a concert. The whole departure set to music. This idea is accepted by all as a good one. Maybe the music follows a certain cycle, birth to death, music nodding to all the stages between.

Basil now is attached to the idea of music. Nothing too loud, though. No crashing cymbals.

They briefly consider simply having an event where they open a stadium and invite the public to come and say goodbye to a man named Basil.

The story could be called “All Say Goodbye to a Man Named Basil.”

Maybe they do a test run, at a smaller venue. They place an ad in the paper, with words like those above, and that’s all. They wait and wait and only seven people show up, and all of them quickly leave when they see only Basil, Helen and Derek.

They are getting closer to a solution. They know that the event should be large, and there should be music and perhaps some dancing, if relatively slow. No crazy dancing, Basil says. But slow dancing, waltzing, that kind of thing would be nice.

Basil himself is not so good at articulating why he wants this to be so, but his son and his friend Helen, in convincing others to help or attend, become the explainers. One sample conversation, between Derek and the Russian-born conductor of the Memphis Symphony, which Derek is attempting to get to play the event:

DEREK: I think he just really likes to be around people. Lots of people.

NIKITA: So why doesn’t he just shoot himself in the middle of a hockey game or something? Sorry, that’s not funny, I guess.

DEREK: He doesn’t want to foist himself upon people. He wants their attendance to be voluntary. We were thinking it would be a concert, and you could conduct.

NIKITA: It is almost Russian in its gruesomeness.

DEREK: We hope it will be beautiful.

NIKITA: There has not been a beautiful death in the history of mankind.

There is some talk about what kind of precedent all this sets. A conversation between Helen and her assistant:

ASST: I think it’s great, but what if everyone wanted to do this? The country would be sending off everyone with parades and parties and concerts.

HELEN: There’s nothing wrong with that. We already have Lifetime Achievement Awards — everyone gets one of those now. And besides, there aren’t that many Basils out there. I think this is seen as very strange behavior, and there are few people my age who go in for this sort of thing. For most, just the family around is fine, if that.

ASST: Aren’t there elephants who go away from everyone to die? They go find a quiet place?

HELEN: I think most elephants do that. Lots of animals do, I think. Cats. Rhinos.

ASST: But are there animals that do this, animals that want to pass away in the company of thousands? I don’t think so.

There is some discussion about whether or not there should be food, and Basil decides that food is fine. Wine would be good, though he’s against beer or liquor, which might make the crowd too boisterous. But wine would be mellowing, he decides. Red wine, a cash bar.

There was that story of the Roman, Petronius, who was Nero’s party planner. He had to come up with a better event every night, had to make each one more elaborate, bizarre, unforgettable. The story goes that one night he placed a tub in the middle of the festivities, and put himself in the tub. He then slit his wrists, letting the blood drain slowly into the tub. Periodically he would wrap his wrists, temporarily stanching the bleeding, to talk to a guest or two. But slowly he did die at that party, for those people.

Basil knows this story, and wants to make sure his is not like that. Helen agrees, and brings up an interesting point: for this to work, to have any dignity — to allow dignity to Basil and those watching — it has to be about Basil, not the audience. There can’t be any motives in watching outside of Basil’s asking them to be there, and their wanting to be present for an important moment in a stranger’s life. Much like people cheer for those passing in a parade, though they don’t know them.

Basil can’t decide if this should be a daytime or nighttime event. During the day, it would seem more open and festive and light, and he would be able to see people’s faces, if he chose. But at night, it could certainly be more beautiful, with everyone holding candles and the stars above. Ultimately he decides to compromise: it will be dusk.

There is a rich and melancholy undercurrent between Basil and Helen. They haven’t been in contact for many decades, but now find themselves having great fun together, making each other laugh — Helen laughs with her stomach, her shoulders, and her face runs crimson quickly — and marveling at the other’s strength and will. It’s unfortunate that they came together again while she was essentially helping him to die. There is some hint that they might have a brief fling, but they decide not to bother. Basil’s bones feel hollow, seashells stitched together with wire. Instead they can only shake their heads about the fact that they might have had many years of happiness together, alas. She also collects cacti.

Basil’s older brother is either very sharp and feisty, or has lost his lucidity and lives in a constant-care facility. Probably the latter.

Someone, one of the daughters, proposes that the death could be on closed-circuit TV, allowing anyone to see it (though limiting the potential for public humiliation). This idea is rejected. It’s not about the number of eyes watching from afar, Basil and Derek explain, it’s about being in the company of many, feeling their heat.

Interesting sidenote: Basil only has so long to live, but his longevity depends to a certain extent on a relatively low-impact existence. But when he starts running around, planning this, making phone calls and getting into his car to scout locations and meet with people, he’s stuck in a paradox. His very planning for the event is taking days off his life, which means he needs to work even harder, because his final day keeps moving up.

At some point Basil should have some doubts about it. After the preparations have been made. Maybe in the middle of the planning. Better: he calls it off when it’s seeming too difficult. They haven’t had much success with the arrangements, and he feels awful that it’s taken Derek and Helen so much time to even get this far. He calls it off and Helen and Derek are actually somewhat relieved. They’d believed in him, and in the project, but are relatively happy to move on. A quiet death is a good death. It can be beautiful that way.

But about a week later, while watching the induction of a new Filipino president, he gets inspired anew. He calls them, asking to begin again. Or better than that: he starts doing it himself, not wanting to bother them. Derek finds out when Basil collapses one day from exhaustion, while looking into renting the deck of an aircraft carrier.

More people begin to help out. Friends of Derek’s and Helen’s, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, strangers. They operate out of Helen’s guest house or a barn on her land, and the whole enterprise begins to have the flavor and feel of a movement, something inspired and with its own unstoppable momentum. Of the newcomers there’s a strange mix of people — hospice workers, young idealists, grey hippies with wild brittle hair, a few people who wish they’d done more for their own family members. These people are the most fervent.

Basil becomes attached to the idea that he will walk into the stadium, if it’s indeed a stadium. For the purpose of argument, let’s say it’s a stadium, and Basil begins to feel that he shouldn’t be wheeled in or driven in on an ambulance or on a golf cart. That, instead, he should walk in, and then assume a position on a couch. Not a bed. A divan would be best, Helen says.

When they go to get permissions from owners, administrators, councilmen, vendors and the like, some people immediately understand it, and others are aghast. This part could involve the police, and an injunction, and some religious organization that doesn’t approve and tries to stop the entire thing. Then again, this shouldn’t be that kind of story. We’ll suspend our disbelief a bit, have it all go smoother than it might in real life. We only have eight thousand words.

In the end, he is in an unplanned place. There is a break in the story, and instead of the stadium we’ve pictured the entire time, it’s something different — a riverside amphitheater for example. Or in the middle of a NASCAR track. He is spirited through a crowd, who all touch him. He feels the burn of every hand. Or he’s parachuted into the venue, attached to a professional jumper. He dies on the way down. No. Back to the original idea: he walks in, in a procession, much like the Olympic athletes when they walk in during the opening ceremonies.

People applaud. The day has come. There are about four thousand there. It’s the minor-league ballpark in the middle of Memphis. Helen has arranged to have all the advertisements covered in white cloth. Actually, everything is covered in white. She’s gotten the local housepainters union to loan all of their unsplattered dropcloths. The ballpark is white like heaven. Basil is stunned.

He walks in and everyone cheers. He waves. He is with his son Derek. His daughters have come, but are in the stands, drinking heavily so the details, whatever elements might be unpleasant when recollected later, are less clear. The scene is stirring; goodwill is everywhere. Who are these people? Some have traveled from very far, out of curiosity. Most are from the area. Basil has delivered many babies in his life, thousands, and many hundreds of those babies are here now, grown up and wishing Basil well.

He sits on the divan; he is tired from the walk, the excitement. The music plays; the Russian conductor has been convinced, as has most of his orchestra, though absent are the woodwinds. They play a mixture of Brahms, Mozart, Lizst, Ellington, the Commodores, Sam Cooke. They play the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, a favorite of Basil’s. The sun is fading. It takes almost two hours before he settles down, becomes accustomed to all the people around him. He sees individual faces, eyes and heads and little arms and hands that he can take with him. There is a teenaged girl, entirely clad in denim, who is nodding intensely, twisting her hips to a rhythm of her own. She is wearing makeup everywhere, and her flesh spills from below her shirt, and her large painted eyes close for long periods of time, when she is alive to music made by troubled people, and she is here to say goodbye to Basil.

There are periods when they all sing along to a given song, like “You Send Me.” Helen, Basil’s most true love, sits beside him and watches his contented face. She worries that he will not want to leave now. What have we done? she wonders. He is staring now at a group of men and women who have brought their babies. He loves babies and he’ll want to stay forever now; this is bliss, how can he pass from this? She begins to see the point in dying alone, in cold spare rooms in hospitals in suburbs — these rooms would not be missed, making the transition so much easier…

But Helen’s fears are unfounded. As she watches Basil, and Derek watches his father, and thousands watch the man who appears to be closing his eyes with pleasure, Basil finds himself reverberating from this world to the next, passing into sleep. He hears the music the people are making, their voices everywhere, talking about nothing, laughing at nothing, and he is ready.