Tommy and Johnny – Bumble Bartleby Burroughs

By Roger Arsht

November 25, 2020

              Johnny Perkins leaned across the ancient checkerboard and whispered to Tommy ‘Big Nose’ McQueen. “Something doesn’t smell right. There’s a man mumbling to himself in the corner. Who’s that?”

              “I don’t know. He comes in once or twice a month.” 

              Jane Peterson, the Manager of Peterson’s Barbershop, happened to be walking by when the two men were talking about the stranger. “That’s Bumble Bartleby Burroughs. Technically, he owns this barbershop.”

              “Him? I thought you did,” said Johnny, a retired postman and a permanent fixture on one side of the checkerboard.

              “A few years ago, I got in financial trouble. Bumble bailed me out. He holds first position on all the assets. That makes him the owner,” Jane said quietly. “He doesn’t like people to know. He likes to be treated like other customers. He even pays for his haircuts and shaves,” Jane continued. “I pay him a little every month. I couldn’t ask for a better partner.”

              “He looks a little nervous,” Johnny said.

              “Nervous?” Tommy said. “The guy’s twitchy and he keeps mumbling something to himself. It sounds like man-da-city.”

              “He was a teacher for many years until he got brittle around the edges,” Jane shared.     

              “Brittle?” Tommy asked.

“Ask him. He’ll tell you,” Jane said and then turned towards the approaching man. “Bumble, come meet Tommy and Johnny. These two are here so much I should charge them rent for the space they take up.”

              Bumble pulled his chair closer to the two players and shook hands. “It’s nice to meet you. Can I play the winner?”

              “Sure, Bumble.” Johnny replied.

              “Call me Bumble or B-3. That’s what the students used to call me.”

              “That’s quite a name. Were you a teacher?” Tommy asked.

              “High school English.”

              “With a name like yours, you should have something to do with literature. It sounds like a combination of Mr. Bumble from Oliver Twist, Bartleby the Scrivener, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.”

              “You know your literature. You’re dead on. My parents loved books. They got a little carried away.”

“Not teaching anymore?” Johnny asked.

              “Retired. Couldn’t do it anymore.”

              “The kids burn you out?” Johnny asked with a laugh.

              “Not exactly. The system doesn’t want me anymore. I try to tell the truth. No one wants the truth. I guess they call it being cancelled nowadays.”

              “That’s kind of a heavy statement. You say that you tell the truth. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say you tell the truth as you see it? Also, what was that thing you were saying over there? It sounded like man-da-city or men-duh-titties,” Tommy asked with a wily smile.

              “Boys!” Jane yelled across the shop. “Let’s keep it clean.”

              “Sorry,” Tommy and Johnny said peevishly like two boys caught looking at nude pictures in a National Geographic magazine.

“What I was saying is mendacity. Did you ever read 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' by Tennessee Williams?”

“Isn’t that the play about Brick, who’s a drunk, and his wife Maggie? She’s the Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Tommy responded, now curious.

Paul Newman played Brick and Elizabeth Taylor played Maggie. Great movie. Wasn’t Burl Ives Brick’s father?” Johnny piped in again.

“Yup. He was a rich man. His children and their spouses were fighting for his favor so they could inherit the larger portion of his fortune. Big Daddy was his name, and he thinks he’s beaten cancer because he lies to himself and everyone around him lies to him about his condition – including his doctor.”

“What does this have to do with teaching?” Johnny asked.

“Big Daddy gets tired of everyone lying to him. When it becomes apparent that his death is coming, he said to Brick, ‘Do you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room? There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death.’”

“I sort of get what he’s saying, but I don’t think I fully understand the meaning of mendacity,” Johnny said with a perplexed look on his face. 

“It means lying liars.”

“Powerful phrase,” Tommy said pensively. “Why do you mumble to yourself? If you don’t mind me asking. You were a teacher. I can only assume that you know how to speak to large groups.”

“I’m afraid to express an opinion. Every time I open my mouth someone cancels me or tells me that I’m wrong. It happens all the time. It’s like I haven’t lived for the last sixty years. It’s like I’ve never seen, read, or experienced anything.”

“Bumble, give me an example.” Johnny earnestly asked.
             “Okay. When the President tells you that the coronavirus is going to peter out once the weather turns cold, that’s mendacity.”

“So, the Republicans engage in mendacity?” Johnny asked.

“Of course, so do the Democrats. When the President tells you that everyone will be able to keep their doctor and their health plan. That’s mendacity.” Bumble said with disdain. “Or if a President-elect tells you that his son never financially benefitted from his father’s connections.”

“It just sounds like they’re lying. What makes them lying liars?” Tommy asked.

“A liar might or might not know the truth. A lying liar is in complete possession of the truth which they are hiding.”

“Like a government official telling the country that an attack on a consulate was because of a videotape critical of Islam rather than calling it a terrorist attack.” Johnny added politely.

“Exactly.”

“You knocked the shit out of the argument we had last week about the elections. You could have clarified some points for us.” Johnny paused and then said, “but you still haven’t explained the part about how that made you quit teaching.”

“About ten years ago, I started telling parents and administrators that most of the graduating seniors couldn’t write a two-page essay that was relatively free of errors even with editing software at their disposal. I also told them that if the students were required to provide substantiation for their arguments by embedding quotes in their prose and if they were required to create a Works Cited page, then the numbers were even worse.”

“Is that for real?” Johnny was a little taken aback. “I could do those things forty years ago and I wasn’t a good student.”

“Yes, and you did it on a typewriter. You didn’t have word processing software to format everything. Every kid has a computer now. The school district gives one to each student and they still can’t write as well as students wrote thirty years ago,” Bumble said bitterly.

“I can see why you weren’t popular. People in charge and parents don’t like to be told the school district their kids are attending isn’t topnotch.” Tommy added.

“At one time, I was a popular teacher. But then I lowered the students’ grades to accurately reflect the quality of their work. I thought it would motivate them. I became persona non grata with the parents, students, and administrators. I was being asked to engage in mendacious behaviors.”

“Anything else go wrong?” Tommy asked. 

“I couldn’t get the students to read. Without any experience with literature, the students decided that it wasn’t important. They used online summaries, or they lifted essays off the Internet. More than a few of the parents wrote their kid’s essays. The difference between the work a student handed in that they supposedly did on their own and the work they did when they had to write in class was startling. It’s like Maggie in the play. She decides she doesn’t want to ‘occupy the same cages’ as the other people living in Big Daddy’s house. I didn’t want to play the game anymore.”

“What do you do if you don’t want to participate in a world full of mendacity?” Johnny asked. 

Bumble hesitated for a minute. “You find the small things in life that give you a little joy. Like the smell of a barbershop, a little small talk over a checkerboard, maybe a phone conversation with a relative, or a bike ride in the park.”

“You’re getting kind of narrow. Isn’t there more? Aren’t there political, economic, or educational issues that aren’t reported or discussed in mendacious terms?” Tommy asked.

“No. I haven’t seen them, and I read voraciously. I guess the alternative is to crawl inside a liquor bottle and die. The other alternative is to play Fortnite or other video games twenty-four-seven. It’s all the high school students wanted to do.”

“Boy, you need to spend a little more time here in the barbershop with us in our cage. You shouldn’t be left alone. You’re kind of dark and angry. No wonder you mumble to yourself. Anyway, you’re up. You’re playing red. Tommy’s got the black pieces.”