Debts
I have two creditors who visit me each day. Together, I owe them so much you could call it a life sentence. But they couldn’t be more different in how they extract from me their due.
The first is so eager and punctual I use him as my alarm: he beats on my door like a donkey, well before the rooster wakes, when he knows I'm at home. I don't like owing this guy. He's a yeller. A threatener. A short guy in hungry clothes that hasn't yet "integrated", as a shrink would say. Fond of the colors red and white. He says he's got guys around the corner that are missing some morals. They stopped on my block once, just when the girls and I had sat down for dinner; tattoos, facial hair, metal in various deadly configurations. They had it. I owe him a good bit, too—made a bad deal at an age I shouldn't have been allowed. Seems like every time I pay, my balance goes up. I can tell by how the little man frames his visits that he's a guy that never thinks past tomorrow: always telling me he needs to eat, too, that the baby needs diapers, or the missus needs cash for a hair appointment. Always stuff that needs to be settled today if not the hour. And I've no doubt he'd pack me up for these things. People tell me so: he gives you time to pay, because he needs it just as bad as you, but let him turn out your pockets one too many times and—you're fertilizer. However, it wasn’t his antics that put me on high blood pressure meds.
It's the second guy, the one that comes at odd times, the one that never beats on my door but just nods from a distance when I happen to notice him, that kicks my mind off its tracks. And here's the thing: I can't even remember how much I owe the guy. Neither do I remember when I'd agreed to come due. I don't think he knows either, or even cares. He walks too slowly, dresses too well, and smokes too many fragrant cigars for my paltry debt to put his pockets at risk. That's why he doesn't yell. Or threaten. Or press me at all. He just wants me to pay what I think I should before I die. It's an honor thing. In fact, I don't even think he'd be mad if I defaulted; he'd just be disappointed, because he's a man, and he expects all the people he does business with to be men. And men pay debts. Not for their creditor, but for themselves. I'm not worried he'll wack me in the alley after a dinner date with my wife. I'm worried he'll flick his cigar butt at me, wait for it to hiss dead in the puddle, then scoff: "knew it." Somehow I owe this man more than money. Somehow, paying him is really just paying myself.
My creditors have me bound: one threatens me with consequence, the other, with principles; one lashes my flesh, the other, my soul; how do I satisfy the practical, while also making good on the ideal? Forever they pull me in opposite directions. And here's the thing: it's hardest to do the things that no one comes knocking for. That's why the little man gets paid. He's a lifetime of inconvenience that I swat away with zeal; mosquitos are small, but they get your attention. With the second guy, I just keep telling myself I have the rest of my life to make good as a man, as the sun loops and loops around us, like a tire spinning in place, getting nowhere, burning rubber.