Bad news Ben ( a memoir)

 

This is a true story

 

I met Bad News Ben on a summer day, my father was watching over the electricity work in an under-construction building.  Bad News Ben was as young as me, that is to say, he must have been in his mid-twenties. Bad News Ben's work was to haul bricks from one level of the building to another.

We hit it off immediately; Bad news Ben was full of dirty jokes, but the real attraction was how he told the jokes: he acted them out. He would bend over first acting as one gender, then he would stand acting as the opposite gender then he would say the character's lines by mimicking accent and voice.

It was much later when I stopped seeing him. I realized he acted those jokes out solely for me. He knew I couldn't hear.

 

You must be wondering why I call him Bad news Ben but before I tell you that, I must tell you something else.  Bad News Ben lived in my neighborhood and we occasionally ran into each other, on these occasions sometimes we would talk for a long time, but on other occasions, he acted like he didn't know me. This went on for months. 

I found this behavior curious but didn't think much about it. Until one day, I heard a knock on the door. I went out to see who it was. It was Bad news Ben. His weather-beaten face, his hollow cheeks, and sweat-stained clothes had become a sight too familiar. I wonder what he wanted. But instead of saying anything he just stepped aside and behind him, I saw another Bad news Ben, an exact copy of him.

They burst out laughing. I stood there, mouth hanging open too surprised to act. It was the shock of my life. He had a twin brother. This explained the hot and cold behavior; I had simply mistaken him for his brother.            

 

The reason I call him Bad news Ben is because he had a habit of telling bad news, literally every time we met something bad had happened to him. I remember he told me that his wife was expecting a child, (he already had two) but he had no money.

 

Sometimes when I saw him, I felt like he was eroding, disappearing slowly but surely and one day he would disappear in the middle of a sentence.

 

We moved and I lost track of Bad News Ben. I met him months later he had his arm in plaster. I asked him what happened. He did a slow run and puffed up his cheeks and enlarged his eye balls, he was acting like a fast car, then he turned in circles and pretended to fall. This meant that he had been hit by a car.

I thought this was sad. I asked him if he had any work, and he said that he didn't and don't think he would get any until his arm gets better. I thought this was sadder. His cheeks were sunken than ever before and this image entered my imagination of his hungry wife and children but I pushed it away.

 

Bad news Ben disappeared again. I didn't see him for months, but I met him today in the street, he had removed the plaster, and the scars had healed.

"I just suffered a loss of forty-five thousand rupees" I didn't want to ask him how, so he just told me himself, he was working inside a building and when he got off, his motorcycle was gone.

 

I asked him to show me his arm, he said that it was fine, I asked him to bear his healthy arm too. I compared the two limbs and realized the rod was still inside his arm. I asked him why he hadn't gone back for surgery. He said that the doctor had asked him for thirty thousand rupees, but since his arm didn't hurt him anymore, he is just going to let the rod be.

 

He had a way of breaking bad news, he would grin, and he would laugh like it was the funniest thing in the world. Now that I recall it, I never took him seriously, not even once. Not when his children were hungry, not when he got hit by a motorist, and not when his motorcycle was stolen.

 

(I had to stop writing here… too much stuff was coming up, besides this is about Bad news Ben, not me. I will tell you this that he is fine (if you could call it that) and hopefully when I shall see him next time, I will do more than just listen.  )