Until at last, like small children peering in mirrors to catch the strangeness and mystery of weeping, they ducked under to look at each other’s sobs.
They saw each other’s eyeglasses spattered with wet salt stars from the tips of their eyelashes.
“Oh, hah!”
And the whole damned popcorn machine exploded into wild laughter.
“Oh, heee!”
They turned in circles with the bends. They stomped their feet to get the barks and hoots of hilarity out. They became weak as children at four o’clock tea, that silly hour when anything said is the funniest crack in all the world and the bones collapse and you wander in dazed circles to fall and writhe in ecstasies of mirth on the floor.
Which is what now happened. The ladies let gravity yank them down to flag their hair on the parquetry, their last tears flung like bright comets from their eyes as they rolled and gasped, stranded on a morning beach.
“Gods! Oh! Ah!” The old man could not stand it. Their earthquake shook and broke him. He saw, in this final moment, that his pal, his dear and precious Junior, had at last in all the shouts and snorts and happy cries melted away like a snow memory and was now a ghost.
And Albert Beam grabbed his knees, sneezed out a great laugh of recognition at the general shape, size and ridiculousness of birthday-suit humans on an indecipherable earth, and fell.
He squirmed amidst the ladies, chuckling, flailing for air. They dared not look at each other for fear of merciless heart attacks from the seal barks and elephant trumpetings that echoed from their lips.
Waiting for their mirth to let go, they at last sat up to rearrange their hair, their smiles, their breathing and their glances.
“Dear me, oh, dear, dear,” moaned the old man, with a last gasp of relief. “Wasn’t that the best ever, the finest, the loveliest time we have ever had anytime, anywhere, in all the great years?”
All nodded “yes.”
“But,” said practical Emily, straightening her face, “drama’s done. Tea’s cold. Time to go.”
And they gathered to lift the old tentbones of the ancient warrior, and he stood among his dear ones in a glorious warm silence as they clothed him in his robe and guided him to the front door.
“Why?” wondered the old man. “Why? Why did Junior return on this day?”
“Silly!” cried Emily. “It’s your birthday!”
“Well, happy me! Yes, yes.” He mused. “Well, do you imagine, maybe, next year, and the next, will I be gifted the same?”
“Well,” said Cora.
“We—”
“Not in this lifetime,” said Emily, tenderly.
“Good-bye, dear Albert, fine Junior,” said each.
“Thanks for all of my life,” said the old man.
He waved and they were gone, down the drive and off into the fine fair morning.
He waited for a long while and then addressed himself to his old pal, his good friend, his now sleeping forever companion.
“Come on, Fido, here, boy, time for our pre-lunch nap. And, who knows, with luck we may dream wild dreams until tea!”
And, my God, he thought he heard the small voice cry, then won’t we be famished!?
“We will!”
And the old man, half-asleep on his feet, and Junior already dreaming, fell flat forward into a bed with three warm and laughing ghosts. . . .
And so slept.
The End
