< Situations And Revelations Of Passing Notice In Guyana >
Locket # 25:
When I took this job as the Building Super Mr. Cato was the sole occupant of
Apt. #5E. From Guyana. I had no trouble with him. He was a man of strange
habits, but a straight arrow. Ironed the shirts he wore. Spoke his educated
English, even though his education apparently didn’t get past High school.
He gave me a heads-up about when he would die. September was not a good
month for him. If something happens, it will happen in September/October.
The turn of the weather was what troubled him. He found it hard adapting to
changes, hot for a few days, cold the next day. Nothing in his life went right
at that time, he said. He liked it when the season firmed up and stayed on
course.
And would you believe, he died first week in October.
One morning I didn’t see him. I was up and about at the front of the building.
Usually round about 9.00 a.m. he’d emerge through the basement entrance,
cross the road to the Deli; get his Daily News, play his lottery numbers.
Sometimes he stopped to chat.
When I didn’t see him I refused to think grave thoughts. It was only after a
package for him remained uncollected in the lobby. He was prompt picking
them up. Along with the mail. That got my attention.
I went up to his floor, pressed the doorbell. No response. Something was not
right. And that’s how we found him the next day; slumped over his numbers
at the dining table; gone.
*
After they took his body away ‒ natural causes, no sign of foul play ‒ my
concern was getting the apartment fixed and ready for new occupancy.
His daughter arrived. His neighbor in 5#D ‒ an elderly lady from his country
who’d been asked to keep an eye on him ‒ contacted her. She lived in Florida,
his only child. She claimed she visited him at least twice every year, but I
never saw her around.
I caught her lugging big black plastic bags through the hallway out to the
sidewalk.
Looks like he left a lot of stuff for you, I said. “You can’t imagine. Books,
old records? You know anyone interested in old LPs? And lottery tickets.
Piles and piles of old tickets.” I know he played his numbers at the Deli.
“This was beyond playing.”
Mr. Cato had kept all his losing tickets. Small piles of them in rubber bands.
Something to do filing with the IRS to recover his losses.
He kept records of the winning Lottery numbers. Not in a ledger. Multiple
school composition books, with years and years of numbers. With circles
and linking lines.
Did he win anything big? “If he did, he didn’t tell me.” He told me September
/October was an unlucky time for him. “That’s another thing,” his daughter
said.
He had composition books filled with what looked like health charts; with
numbers for every week, every month of the year; indicating good days and
bad days, good weeks, months, years. This closed-in guy keeping strict
medical records was his own physician.
Not that he had nothing else to do with his life.
He liked baseball. Followed Yankee baseball on his radio. I know because we
talked about a Yankee/Mets subway series. And how ever since Mr. October
(the Yankee baseball great) retired, they hadn’t been able to find another
like him. That was the closest he came to arguing about something.
On national holidays he went down to Chinatown. That was his gig, eating
Chinese food on July 4th, Labor Day. Weird. Unusual, to say the least. I can
only tell you what I saw and what I was told.
*
Mr. Cato’s daughter wanted help disposing of the furniture. I told her I
couldn’t “give her something” for tables, chairs, stuff with little resale
value. I wanted the apartment cleared.
Short of leaving everything on the sidewalk as garbage, she didn’t have
many options. People this side of Brooklyn might be struggling, but salvaging
stuff on the sidewalk (usually a sign someone had passed) wasn’t likely to
happen.
Did he really work on Wall Street? I asked. “That’s what he said, that’s what
he did.” Struck me as kind of weird.
He didn’t fit my picture of the Wall Street type. Except for the London style
trench coat, with the lapels and the belt? Long after they went out of fashion
he wore his trench coat.
“Did he ever tell you his Wall Street job story?” I had no idea there was a
Wall Street story. “About how he got hired, all because his boss considered
him a math wizard. He could do math calculations in his head. Fast and
accurate. Just give him the numbers.”
You mean, like one of those freaky people on TV? doing amazing tricks with
numbers? “He wasn’t freaky. Maybe he didn’t go to college, but you saw all
the books in his apartment? He knew everything about Accounting.”
As the story goes, Mr. Cato made an instant first impression on his boss.
Came off the subway one day, wondering why the Wall Street stop looked
cleaner, more prosperous than the rest. Came up to the streets. The
financial district.
It was lunchtime. The man who would later become his boss was at a hotdog
stand. He never got over that, his boss buying hotdogs for lunch, then sitting
on a bench nearby munching and chatting.
He sidles up to him. Tells him he has this talent with numbers. The boss is
curious; takes a bite of his hotdog; decides to test him. Gets blown away by
Mr. Cato’s performance. It was like a job interview in the streets.
And that's how he got hired. On the spot. Got his cubicle with a glass partition,
his name on the payroll. And since he seemed not too ambitious, not anxious
for promotion, his boss kept him, under his wing, all those years. Gave him
a bunch of printouts with numbers in the morning, which Mr. Cato checked
for accuracy, and returned “in a jiffy”, Verified/Okay.
Sometimes he completed his day’s task during his lunch hour; went out for
his hotdog break. Some days he left the office early, he said, to avoid the
rush hour.
It sounded like the kind of story that comes up in conversation at Thanksgiving.
Hard to believe; raising smiles and eyebrows. But how to explain leaving the
apartment every working day, the London trench coat, his just-in-case
umbrella. The man had to be baking and making somewhere.
After he retired his daughter said she worried he would fall and break a bone,
jostling through the crowds on the subway platform at his age. He was subject
to aches and pains and dissatisfactions like everybody, but I never heard him
complain. Hardly noticed the energy that kept his legs moving ‒ past sixty,
seventy, eighty years old.
His death was sudden, as if he just stopped in mid-stride and kind of slumped
over, eyes half-open.
*
After Mr. Cato’s departed Apt. # 5E had two sets of occupants. The first guy
(and his girlfriend) attracted the interest of the police precinct. One day they
took him away for questioning. The girlfriend eventually moved out.
Now a family from Nigeria occupies the apartment. The man is bulky and
serious; leaves the building at four in the morning. I think he drives Airport
Taxi. The mother is at home raising the kids. Three so far. They stay close to
her when she emerges in her robes on her way to the supermarket.
There have been rent problems, heating complaints. I am expected to fix
everything rightaway. Mr. Cato’s neighbor complained about the children
playing ball outside her door.
What was wrong with the new tenants? She missed Mr. Cato’s quiet manner,
his day to day self-certainty.
The man came to this city with his schoolboy talent for numbers. Must have
seen what was going on around him, the coarseness and hustle. Must have
heard the sirens responding to the worst levels of depravity in the streets.
Somehow he found an overpass, tightened his trench coat belt, went his
own way.
I don't think he had a plan. Most of us have dreams, or some tired excuse for
a life; he had his Wall Street gig to get to every morning. We all got to live,
in and outside the shadows. The grass is for grazing too.
Mr. Cato’s daughter left his body with a Brooklyn funeral home. For the fee
they promised to dispose of his ashes.
He loved Brooklyn. He didn’t talk much to me about Guyana, or about
returning there. People back home were sloppy and slippery with numbers.
Six for nines run rings around suspicious minds, I think those were his
words. Like something he might have said at the Thanksgiving table, along
with the Wall Street job story. Company probably started him up until he got
boring.
Only thing he missed from home was riding a bike.
You have to know the man well enough to trust the story. I can’t say I knew
Mr. Cato that well. I came to respect the man, though; out there on his own,
cooling his brain cells with a numbers game.
Calvin Lookman,
Brooklyn, USA
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 