Documentary

By Paul Nicholas Jones

One day, an old man in a shabby overcoat walked up to the circulation desk at the library and pulled out an ancient revolver. He told the woman behind the counter to hand over the money. The woman, who had worked for the city for years, pushed her glasses up her nose, and pointed to the east, as if directing him toward the reference stacks. You want the bank, she drawled, right next door. The man stared at her with suspicion, then looked around. Realizing his mistake, he bowed his apology, actually bowed, and then walked out, shoving the gun into his pocket.

   This is the story I’d just told my son, who has been searching for a plot for a student film.  

   Then what? My son asked.

   We called the police, I continued. They got the guy while he was standing in line, waiting for a teller.

   Did they shoot him? he asked.

   No, they didn’t shoot him. They just led him out. He’d forgotten to take his medication, something like that.

   As these words left my mouth, a sense of disappointment roiled into the room, as if summoned, as if I’d purposely invoked it. My son breathed in this fog and then in one clean move, as if performing some kind of martial art, he pushed himself off the couch and leapt towards the stairs, which he took quickly, three at a time.

   I used to be an actor. My son had never seen me act, but I’m sure he expected that I’d be able to come up with a plot of some sort, something solid, or at least involving a gun. But I’d lost interest in displays of drama, even dramatic things. Each day presented a protracted arc of innumerable duties, and I barely managed to stumble to the climax each night. I had slipped into that lukewarm bath of desperation,  that is lukewarm by virtue of the fact that it is both numbing and scalding at the same instant. It is that quiet desperation mentioned by Thoreau, who if I remember correctly, never undertook the task of becoming a father. Apparently, however, he had glanced at the men who had. Actually, my desperation gets loud sometimes, but even then, it is never dramatic, not unless you consider the imperceptible motion of a glacier calmly pulverizing stone to be dramatic. Oh, it may have dramatic results, but that’s not the same thing. It is not a dramatic action, and that’s the thing that compels the attention of audiences and spectators alike.

   In other words, the story of the shabby guy with the gun is more than enough for me.