Nophone Notebook

Well, what on Earth could happen next, you think. Shakiya just gave everyone the dirty details of her most recent moron, nobody that ‘counted’ went to Mom’s Potluck, and every time you sit down to write the phone goes off as the group texts have it out. So. No phone! Notebook!

You write “nophone notebook’ and smile. Silly. The coffee in this place is fantastic and fits the feel of the hidden-gem-basement-coffee-shop where you can see ankles through the tiny high windows as the people walk about their chaos. The overhead lights look like wood and plastic honeycombs, spilling honey-colored light over dark brown wooden bench backs and tables. In contrast, the ancient Art Deco tiling testifies to the changes this place has gone through as each new owner renovated this or that bit.

You cross out a few lines describing the coffee shop. They don’t do it justice, and your coffee needs your attention. You close your notebook and look up idly to see an old man looking at you quizzically. Eye contact established, he smiles and makes his way to you.

“I noticed you writing, it’s not something I see too often. Not in a book, anyway.” He meaningfully glances around at all the heads and faces bowed in technological prayer. “Seems you may appreciate the true value of a notebook, and I have a story to share that you might like. May I sit?”

You hesitate for a second. People don’t do that, usually. Maybe in his day they did? Probably. What the hell, he said he had a story, and maybe you can get something out of it. You indicate the chair across the table, and the man takes a few seconds to settle into it. He also has fabulous coffee. Without preamble or introduction he begins to speak.

“In 1968 I was eighteen years old and I found a little black book, just lying on a street in a neighborhood you can’t find anymore, it’s an overpass or something now. That was the same day I got my draft card. Vietnam, you know? Ain’t nobody wanted that. Not me, anyhow. So I found this book, this one here.” He takes out a notebook like yours, bound in black leather, with a sewn-in ribbon bookmark. The first word that comes to your mind is ‘timeless.’ The old man sets the book down on the table and pats it twice.

“I opened up this little bookmark here, and there was a page with writing on it, and a blank page. The writing was crisp, curling, done in blue ink. It talked about the sea, and how the writer had difficulty tying some type of knot or other, I forget which type. Anyway it gave me an idea, that page. You see, if you waited for the draft to call you, you got no pick. No say. Maybe your number wouldn’t come up, but it sure seems it did for most folks. But if you went in and enlisted before that call came, well, you could pick what not to do. And what not to do was go in the Army or the Marines. And I didn’t feel like dropping no bombs on folks, so I went in that day and joined the Navy. That’s how the book is. I opened it one time, read one half page, and followed the thought it gave me. Probably saved my life.”

You take note that he refers to the page in past tense, as though it is no longer in the book. Before you can inquire he plunges ahead. “Now the other thing I found in the book, was kinda stuck in the front pages, were two bills. Two ten thousand dollar bills! In 1968 they hadn’t recalled ‘em, they was still in circulation. But I knew I couldn’t use ‘em. Eighteen year old black kid with twenty-thousand in two bills? No way in hell I could take that to a bank without a bunch of questions already assuming the wrong answer. So in a split second, I had two important, new things. That book gave me a life in the Navy, and a savings I couldn’t use. And it got stranger. I wanted to show my folks the bills and ask what to do with ‘em. Pages stuck together, so I couldn’t show ‘em. So then I wanted to show what gave me the idea to join the Navy, since I had the book all pulled out, right? I opened up the bookmark. Writing on the left, blank page on the right. But the passage I had read was gone. There was different handwriting, bold and flowing, like a fountain pen in the hands of a dude on mushrooms. Talking about secrets keeping themselves, and true belief is knowing a thing to be true when nobody else can see it. Blew my mind. And that’s what this thing is. It’s like…like those folks that open up the Bible, put their finger down on the page, and read it for inspiration. But most times they gotta make it fit, make it work for ‘em. This book has never failed me. It never says directly what I need to do, no. But whatever I read, it brings on the right train of thought. I’ve rode that train my whole life.”

You take a sip of coffee and have no idea whether you believe this man or not. It’s a good premise for a story, though. He pauses to cough, and you are just about to get your own notebook to jot down some notes when he starts again.

“I was in the Navy for 33 years. Got married, never had no kids. Book helped me find Emmy. And when, after the war and chasing Soviet ships around the Atlantic, we couldn’t have no kids, the book helped me then, too. Biggest fight of our lives, ‘cuz we were both ashamed and figured it was something wrong with ourselves, that we couldn’t make love into a new life with each other. And I consulted the book that night. On the blank page, it wasn’t blank. It showed me the page full of reasons I loved that woman, that I’d wrote down the night before I asked her to marry. The blank pages are like that. You can write on ‘em, and for the next couple days it’ll stay. Then, when your thoughts have moved on, the page has, too. Sometimes, though, you need to see what you wrote, who you were, before. And it’ll bring it up, right when you need it.”

He coughs, long, wet, and inconclusive. It doesn’t sound healthy. You both take a drink of excellent coffee. “But on the other page, there’s some notes in pencil about radio waves and soft tissue and physiology. I was a radar technician, see? Made myself sterile, but ain’t nobody thought like that or mentioned it. We went to bed angry that night, first time in years, ‘cuz I couldn’t show her the book. It just doesn’t make sense to anyone. If they can read anything in it at all it’s usually amateur poetry or just scribbles. Anyhow, next day I called doctors and talked to the VA and spent the next year confirming that my service had indeed made me sterile. I got compensated, but it broke Emmy’s heart. We stayed married, and we were happy, but it wasn’t ever the same. I layed the book down in a drawer after that, until she died.”

You are about to mutter ‘sorry’ but the old man plunges on. “And I never could spend that money. Ten thousand notes went out of circulation, I think in ’70 or ’71, and even when the bank was taking them in, I couldn’t ever seem to get to one with the book. I’d leave it behind, or the page would be stuck, and most of that time I was on a ship anyhow. But I didn’t need it. For the first eleven years in the Navy I hardly spent anything of my pay. When I got out, I had retirement pay, and a good contracting job. And then I got VA compensation, too. Nope, I never hurt for money, not since I found them bills in the first place.”

He does that awful cough again, and you wonder if his lungs were affected by the radar as well. You ask, “What made you take it out of the drawer again?” You are instantly horrified because the answer is obvious, and for all you know his wife died last week. He smiles again, sips his coffee.

“I opened it up with the full intention of writing down everything I thought I had learned in my life to that point, to honor Emmy’s memory. I sorta believed that if I wrote it in this little black book, she could read it, or hear it. And I opened it up to two blank pages, and wrote down my life, my love, my lessons. All those words are soaked up in here and I can’t find ‘em no more. Don’t need ‘em, now. I’ve got lung cancer, terminal stages they say. Nothing to do with the service, just me bein’ a dumb jackass and smoking my whole damn life, despite what my mom, my wife, and even this book here tried to tell me. So, I ain’t got a use for it anymore. I know my fate, and don’t need any advice on facing it. I was gonna leave it in the street, let someone find it like I did, but I think it would just be thrown away. If it magically turned into a phone I guess somebody would snatch it up quick, but it’s a book, and few care about a book. So, it’s yours. I don’t know if there is a proper way to hand it off or not. I’ll just leave it on the table, and thank you for your time.”

Before it fully registers, the old man has gotten out of the chair and is most of the way to the entrance. He doesn’t look back and you try to say thanks, but he’s gone. You eye the book on the table, tentatively pick it up and turn it over. It’s just a little black book, although it looks neither worn nor new. You open up the front cover and folded inside are two bills, each with the numeral ‘10,000’ in their corners. They look crisp and new. You open the page marked by the ribbon. The left side is written on, in black ink. It is narrow and thin, deliberate and delicate. And left-handed, you’re pretty sure. It reads:

But the phrase ‘one must have money to make money’ makes no sense to an artist, or at least not to me. If that is true, how crass! Only money makes money? What, then, is labor for? It begs the question what money even be, in that it can seemingly reproduce regardless of one’s fortunes. Vulgar. I would write, and while equally vulgar, I would be paid for that effort. Shall I write on money, then, so that the process of making money can begin for me? My dearest wish is this: that the medium of the writer contain within it monies already, which cannot be spent but endure, and so thus mockingly make money from money, so that the writer can concentrate on the task at hand. Yes, I wish this, and so doing, shall undertake to put two ten dollar notes in this, my own book, and see what may come of it, though the money be dearly missed for now. 8 June, 1868

Stunned, you look on the opposite page. It is blank but for two words: ‘nophone notebook.’