i posted this about clyde on the 19th of february.  he was not even sick.  i mean, nothing to speak of.  i sent him half a dozen valentines cards - i called it spamming with snail mail.  and i talked to him a couple weeks ago, and things were fine.  so here is my unknowing eulogy to old man clyde.  his birthday was january 9, the day after my boy's.

                                                    Clyde Lewis Duke

                                                                  RIP

i first met Clyde in july 1997.  g and i had gone to chapel hill for a few days to find a place to live.  we pulled up outside of town, to a row of efficiency apartments under a defunct diner.  the ex went in and soon came back out.  i know you will want to meet this guy, he said.  i went in to a tiny one room apartment, and there was Clyde in his laz-y-boy.  he didn't get up, because it would have been too much trouble, with the crutches and all.  he was dressed in a neat button down shirt and had a firm handshake.  coke bottle glasses and a patch on one eye.  there were about 20 pictures of John Wayne on the walls.  i had to ask why.  "well, when I was a little boy and I missed a lot of school from the polio, i would write John Wayne letters, and he would write me back."  being a new yorker, i immediately wondered if it was a secretary writing John Wayne's letters.

so we got the duplex, off 15-501 on South Park Drive, and i came to spend a lot of time with Clyde.  ex was gone on business trips a lot, and i didn't like driving, which kept me close to home.  but mainly i just loved Clyde.   if i could transcribe Clyde's stories to me, i could become a best selling author.  i will share just a few here (to the best of my ability).

my favorite, i think, was him telling me about meeting the mother of one of my neighbor's.  "She was all dressed up and had her jewels on.  She was standing right under that light sparkling like a Christmas tree."  he said this with his slight southern drawl.  i was in love with listening to him talk. 

i would help Clyde write letters, and this is how I learned a lot of his stories.  turns out, it was Clyde's mom wrote his letters to John Wayne for him.  because Clyde did not learn to read or write till he was 61 years old.  and learned how to balance his checkbook then, too.   but it was still hard for him, so i would write his letters, on mimeographed paper that someone had hand-drawn thick black lines on (so he could see. he was blind in one eye and couldn't see outta the other, remember?).  He started them all the same:  I hope this letter finds you doing well.  i love that.  one person he dictated letters to regularly was Pilar Wayne, the Duke's widow.  he even got to go visit her in California.  not too shabby for an illiterate gimp living in an efficiency apartment.

one of the first stories Clyde told me was of his eye.  turns out he had been a dispatcher for the Chapel Hill Police Department.  he had gotten surgery on the eye (cataract?  i do not remember.).  and one night soon after, his eye started to hurt a lot at work.  he called everyone to please come cover his shift.  he even called The Chief, Hisself, as he put it.  they all said no.  next morning when his shift was done, he went to the emergency room and turned out his eye had been bleeding internally and he lost his sight in it.  it always leaked after that, hence the patch.  i would often help him put fresh gauze patches on.  was not a great job, but i loved him so it didnt matter.

told me about his ex-wife, who, in a fit of rage, kindly destroyed all his letters from John Wayne.  told me about working on a construction site, where a ceiling fan fell and cut him in his privates, so he can't make babies.  told me these stories, sitting on his laz-y boy, watching the price is right.  with enough gumption left to flirt with the cute girl half his age sitting there with him.  i met Clyde when he was 64.  imagine having been through half that, and still being made of such stuff that at age 61 you got a tutor and learned to read?  i think i admire him more than anyone i know.

i would do Clyde's shopping for him.  the list always included, in his struggling giant handwriting, Potted Meat and Vienna Sausages (which he pronounced VIE-enna sausages).  Town House crackers.  some smokes.

for a little while, he let a man named jimmy squat in a storage room under the diner.  jimmy was very funny and a very sad character.  often Clyde would provide the fixins, jimmy would cook, and they had each other for company.  for a while, we had beavers in the pond between Clyde's house and mine.  the speed with which they deforested that bank area was amazing.  and sometimes we would get to see them swimming!  oh that was a big good time.  once, i asked jimmy if you could tell the difference between a boy and a girl beaver.  he said it was pretty easy, actually - the girls were the ones with the little bows in their hair.  jimmy had a dog that ran around our area.  he did nobody any harm.  but our neighbors, who i swear are not bad people, in a really misguided move, called the dog catcher and the dog was taken away.  been about 14 years since we have heard from Jimmy.

last time i saw clyde was just under a year ago.  he told me a story that was a marvel.  it was a joyous, detailed accounting of going to a baseball game with his cousin.  i know i cant do it justice, but i will try to approximate it:

when i was about 11, my cousin tommy come to visit.  he asked if we could go to the baseball game and my momma said ok and his momma said ok.  so he got on his bike, and i got on the handlebars, and i had my crutches across my legs, and he took off, ziggin and zaggin down the hill by our house.  hill seemed a mile long when i was 11.  and we got to the game and we both had a nickel, and i would get a co-cola and tommy would get m&ms, and we would watch the game and holler a lot.  and then we'd come back home the same way, but that hill was a whole lot harder comin up it.  and i would hold on to my crutches, tryin not to fall off, and finally we'd get home, and tommy would wait for me to get down, and then he'd lean the bike up against the house and go on in.  and i'd hear my mom say where's Clyde, as i was making my way up the stairs.

is that not beautiful?  beautiful as Clyde himself.