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By David Laing Dawson
As I walked by, Coober
Peddy raised his head from his eating in the same manner a cow raises
its head from its eating when you drive slowly by on a country road
in New South Wales. Reluctantly distracted, still chewing, with large
indifferent eyes showing only a hint of wariness in the outer
corners.
Though
it was the first time we met, I sometimes wonder if he was already
working on his masterpiece, the one-line suicide note he left behind
many years later.
It
would be a fine suicide note. Not this histrionic crap about no
longer being able to endure the emotional pain of life, or those
grossly insincere instructions to husbands, wives, friends and
lovers, to shoulder no blame themselves. No, it was succinct and
clear. It did not slyly avoid personal responsibility. Nor was it an
ego-struck appeal to the world's carelessness. It was a most
elegant and simple explanation of cause and effect, of wrong turns
taken, of remorse and guilt, of natural outcome. What he wrote was,
simply, "The chickens have come home to roost."
The
most immediate chicken one might contemplate was the fact that he
had, the morning he wrote his note, strangled his second wife. But I
don't think he was referring to that chicken. He surely felt at the
time that he was doing her a favour, saving her from herself.
Eliminating whatever evil had possessed her soul.
He
had a full rust colored beard, shaggy hair, a long nose, and he wore,
whenever possible, no shoes beneath his ragged shorts. He would dress
up to Casual for the office. I imagine, had he been allowed, he would
have worn nothing but white chalk and henna markings on his cheeks,
and chest, and upper arms. His natural habitat was crouched over a
pond beneath a Koolibah tree, reciting poetry to the Kookaburras, or
organizing a dress-up ceremony. A ceremony of rituals, incantations,
poetry readings, incense burning, and elaborate costumes. He was
convinced the infrequency of such events left modern life
impoverished.
Of
course Coober was manic-depressive. Not simply this cyclothymic
bullshit they've pinned on Boris Yeltsin. Coober would have laughed
at the British psychiatrist intoning with such seriousness a
definition of Cyclothymia on the Biography Channel: "It is a
condition wherein one experiences more than the normal highs and lows
of mood".
"Yeltsin
was just a mad drunk, you nob." He would have yelled at the screen.
Whereas
there were times Coober had the ear of God, and was pretty sure of
His divine intent.
Yeltsin,
drunk and ego threatened, had sent his generals off to kill a million
Chechens. Coober, enthralled with the life force, had merely set
himself the task of bringing a beautiful but difficult young woman to
the God Head. He did his best, in a way. He divorced his wife,
married this woman, and set about bringing her to truth and wisdom,
to the same equanimity he craved for himself. It was his obsession
and his mission. It was his mid-life prayer.
At
the time, Coober's first wife went to court with her grown
children, to ask a judge to quash the divorce. Her husband, she
claimed, was acting from his illness. He is grandiose, delusional,
his judgment is impaired. The judge may have agreed but he could not
find a legal reason to intervene.
Coober
hated phony suicides, those actions the media and mental health
workers call, quite naively he thought, "attempted suicide."
Melissa often indulged in attempted suicide, little cuts on the
wrist, a few Valium swallowed, a cry for help. Or simply threats of
walking in traffic, pitching over a falls, or more imaginative yet
impractical ideas, unless she got her way or made her point. He
considered these behaviors to be malicious, which undoubtedly they
are. I'm sure to Coober they were also aphrodisiacs. The argument,
the sudden flare of anger, the reddening of face, the increase of
pulse, the boundaries of polite behaviour challenged, passion
ignited, the slammed bathroom door, the pleas to open, poundings,
shouts and promises, the bottle of pills knocked from the hand, the
tears, the embrace, the sweaty, relieved and angry rutting to follow.
But passion always exacts
a price.
Here
is what I think happened: Coober prayed for her. He prayed with her.
He prayed over her. He undressed her. He made love and caressed her.
All to no avail. She told him he was crazy. She told him to leave.
She told him she wanted to fuck other men. But she had become his
obsession, his reason to be. What was he to do but choke the life out
of her? Which he did. And then he sat for a while, free of her
torment, his brain no longer clouded by her perfume. She was now at
peace and might or might not meet God.
It
was then the chickens came home to roost, one by one; the woman he
had left who had kept him sane for twenty years, his disappointed
friends, his lost children, his failed promises. Coober covered
Melissa with a sheet, wrote his simple message, drove to his office,
tied a careful noose, stretched it wide to accommodate his beard,
closed his eyes, and hung himself.
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