Bathroom Monologue: Guerrilla Smile, OR, Possible Origins for Him. 2.

Handy eyes-free audio edition: http://atomsk.kenpachi.net/~jwiswell/JohnWiswellreadsGuerrillaSmile%20.mp3

Nobody likes a happy man when it’s somber, and to somebody it’s always a bad time. Seems there are so many bad times and things are so seldom improving that if you’ve had a good year in your life, it’s long past. That’s a stupid thought driven deep into the head of too many a man, and it spawned the Happy Man.

Every free hour he had he’d find unhappy places. If it was gloomy in a hotel lobby, he would come on in, loiter and laugh. He’d tell bad jokes at a funeral until you told him to shut up. He honored requests like that. Yet if he shut himself up, he’d grin deep enough to scare off Daniel Boone. And because there’re so many people who think times are eternally awful in their own way, he was a hated man. They sniffed at his clothes, his wife and his church. Some would even get to slapping him.

He spent too many days near a particular deli and found the worst of it when an individual took to him with a crowbar. Broke five ribs and dared him in front of all the patrons to laugh. The Happy Man couldn’t even simper and was carted to the hospital. Suggesting the mood and morals of the establishment, despite three teens working the counter, two locals gabbing and two more playing chess, no one could identify the assailant. There wasn’t even a crowbar by the time the law arrived.

The Happy Man arrived again some five days later. No one answered his knock-knocks. His diaphragm was so contused he could not take even half a breath, and so could neither tell the whole of a joke, nor laugh at it. Yet he could smile. He bought a sub and sat right in the window, in full view of any passersby, and grinned. He grinned at every patron and tipped his hat to every lady. He applauded the chess games as best as he could, but was never invited to join. The crowd did not appreciate his jests about horses galloping in L-directions.

Every day from opening to closing he sat in that window, grinning with intent. He knew who’d hit him, yet set that grin on everybody in the establishment equally. No, he didn’t want trouble or to file a suit. Weeks passed and no lawyer papers came. Only the Happy Man with a smile and an appetite for an excuse to sit in the window.

He didn’t shy from eye contact a wink until that one morning. He came in with a crowbar, and all the usuals stiffened. They knew it was a different morning because his vest was buttoned, something he couldn’t muster until then on account of his ribs. He let them all see all those done-up buttons, and when their eyes rose to his again, he tapped his lips with the crowbar. Then he coughed. Then he chuckled. Then he laughed in all their scowling faces.

Maybe they would have done something about it, but the law drove by the window. Then they could do nothing save wince and watch him slap his knees. He laughed until a girl he knew walked by. He waved to her down, got up and left his sub behind, using the crowbar like a cane.