Nonts and Souls

 

We jump a head now toward another very intense time in my life.
There is much more to this than I will tell here but will speak on at another time.
What I will speak of here is related to these puzzling creatures I call The Nonts.
I was injured on my job of fifteen years at the Federal Reserve Bank Of New York and forced to retire in 1985.
For the first five years however I had to periodically come in to let Medical know of how I was doing and on the progress of my case.
It was during these times that I would meet Ralph and have lunch with him before going home.
This one day when I went down to ask for him at the gates of the gold vault, where he worked, I was told that he had been off from work for a week.
They were as surprised that I did not know Ralph was out, as I was surprised that he had been out and not contacted me.
As I was leaving I was met by my friend Marie, Ralph's supervisor, in the hall and, was told by her that Ralph had been sent home by Medical and he had not contacted them to let them know what he was told by his own doctor.
I left there and immediately went out to New Jersey to see Ralph.
I was shocked to see the open wounds on his face.
His skin had been opened down to the lighter under skin making him look as if he had been clawed by a tiger on his left cheek.
I asked him what had happened to his face and he snapped at me "Strawberries!"
That was in reference to the week before where I and some of our friends had been invited to his home for dinner and he had made a fruit salad and me being me complained about strawberries for I had bought some large ones but they did not taste like anything and then cause me to break out in a rash.
Well, that's because you got those cardboard New York strawberries, these are Jersey fresh!" he said and then popped one in his mouth.
"Well, then you do what you want," I said "I'll just pass on the fruit salad."
As time passed the infection passed and his skin closed up but his face was left scarred by the outbreak.
But I knew in my heart of hearts it was not strawberries that had caused the outbreak but, every time I confronted Ralph about the possibilities he had AIDS he said
"I don't have no damned AIDS!"
And the topic would be dropped or skillfully manipulated by him on to other things.
One day after a terrible nightmare in which I was flying about in a rain storm from darkened window to darkened window of a Good And Plenty colored brick school, looking inside each one to see if I could find Ralph I went to New Jersey unannounced to find that he had been hospitalized because of a sever asthma attack.
I was told he was in Greenville Hospital a short distance away from where he lived.
I made my way there and was first astounded to find the very school I had seen in the fore nights stormy dream was real and stood across from the hospital which was of white, black and pink bricks.
I spent the rest of that summer going from Brooklyn to New Jersey to sit with Ralph until he was better and returned home.
Then one day I got a letter from Marie asking me to call her which I did and she told me Ralph had been acting strange he was walking off the job and going home and coming in the next day to deny he had done so, he was again sent home by Medical and told not to return until he got a full examination by his doctor.
She feared he was coming down with Alzheimer's disease which she had lost her younger brother to.
It was because her intervening on his behalf that Ralph had not been fired altogether, I thanked her and went out again to see Ralph.
When I got there Ralph had gone to bed and did not here me knocking at the door so I let myself in.
I called him but he did not answer and so I went to his bed room and stood by the door and called him.
He said I had scared the hell out of him but he was happy to see me.
We talked for a while and I went to the bathroom and returned to find he had went to bed and was again fast asleep I turned on the TV and laid down for what I knew would be a restless night.
Ralph loved plants and the living room was where he kept them, but that being so he had those little see through curtains on his window.
This during the day was fine and his home bright and cheerful almost holy, but I hated his house at night there were no doors, no draw shades on his windows, no thick curtains, the bathroom door had frosted glass on it, there was no place you could stand in there that you could not be viewed by someone or thing at one of the windows in the house.
That for me was a terror having not yet worked through my phobia of darkened windows, which the couch on which I slept sat below.
Outside the window was the roof of a private home as I sat there on that couch I was tossed back to the days of Brook Avenue were I could feel something standing on the roof out side our bed room window peering in, so I would lay down and try to crawl into the crease of the couch.
Plus that Ralph was having full Visitational Phenomena.
There were The Black Things that you would catch standing in a doorway or you would see move out the corner of your eye, and these small faintly white grayish swift wispy vapors that also came into view to vanish as you turned toward them.
But you not only saw them you heard them, their foot falls and their shuffling in the foyer and the kitchen and from Ralph's room.
Then there was something unseen that would come into the living room and I say stomp but that is not the correct word for what would happen.
All the furniture in the room would pound against the floor as if it had raised up and fallen back down at the same time, even to the couch I was laying on!
I say stomp for that would be the only way to physically duplicate this phenomena naturally.
Nothing ever broke or fell but everything in the room rattled and banged at once then it would stop.
The next morning I started to complain to Ralph about it but felt foolish in the light of day and said nothing.
The next night it was the same thing the next day I told him about it and asked him if he knew about it.
He just laughed and said yes, and both relieved and angry I asked,
" Then, how the hell can you stay here? "
"I pay the rent here," He said shortly, "And ain't nothing going to run me out of my home what will happen when it happens in the next place? "
He was right of course.
He then told me of how he had awakened to see either angels, doves, or frog like beings looking at him through his bed room window, and how something he could not see came into his room one night and stood stomping at the foot of his bed.
He said he put the blood of Jesus on it, turned over farted at it, and went to sleep and he had not had any more trouble from it since then though he has heard it in the other rooms of the house during the night.
It was now the sixth day that I had been there and had, had very little or no sleep at all, and so I told Ralph I was going home.
Ralph was laying on the couch and the rays of the sun was pouring through the bay window on him as I told him I was going home that night for I needed some sleep.
He pleaded with me to stay but I told him I could not take it any more with the things that were going on in his house at night.
Plus that I wanted to go home and check on my dogs and besides that you got those Black things running around in here every night.
" The only black things in this house are coming from between your toes. " he said.
" Well be that as it may. " I said "I am going back to Brooklyn tonight. "
The moment I said that the window above the couch went black and returned to normal, and Ralph sat up and looked at it.
"See "I said "That's how they come and go. "
" Well," he said looking at me as if I had suddenly grown two heads,
" You can take your little black demons and your black ass back to Brooklyn now. "
" I will "I said "but I will be back tomorrow and I'll stay for the weekend. "
I returned to Brooklyn and that night had one of the strangest and worst dreams of my life.
In it I was walking with Ralph and we stepped on this large white stone and began to fly I became aware it was a dream and I said to Ralph,
"This is a dream, let's fly around and see what else we can do in it. "
Ralph then zipped off around the corner and I followed him.
He then went down a long hole I followed him down and suddenly we were at the gates of the gold vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank, but the gates were black and the vault was dark.
Ralph stepped through the gate and drew it close between him and me
I said "Come on Ralph this dream is getting scary let's go "
Ralph gestured, no and pointed to his face which began to shrivel into a death mask.
I told him I could not stay and left him.
When I returned to the hole we had entered I had to climb a long black ladder to get out, when I reached the top I looked back and saw the ladder shaking and thought it was Ralph climbing up but he never came out of the hole.
I awoke terrified knowing in the dream Ralph had told me he was going to die.
The black gate he'd drawn between us was his death, and the vault was his grave, and the black ladder was a metaphor that I would have to make it without him.
I could not get back to New Jersey fast enough for I wanted to ask him if he had had the same dream.
As I got to the top of the stairs on his floor I stopped to look about for I felt eyes upon me if you know what I mean but saw nothing.
I walked to the door and started to put the key in it and Ralph said from inside,
" It's already open. "
I walked in and was locking the door and I asked,
" How did you know I was coming?"
" I saw your head coming up stairs through the wall, " he said.
" Yeah right ." I said and turned around and gasped
"What the hell happened to you? "
Ralph sat in his favorite chair.
His face had been healed, of the deep scars left by the Herpes outbreak over night.
His skin was now unblemished and like that of a baby's bottom.
Extending about three inches from his body was a cocoon of clear light.
" Jesus was here last night, " he said matter of factually.
"How are you sure it was Jesus? " I asked,
"You do know that people have reported seeing a Jesus like person in long robes on board crafts ..." I started but Ralph interrupted me.
" It was Jesus and he looked like the one in the pictures, " He said,
" and I don't want to hear any thing about him being black, he looked just like the one in Mothers Bible."
I did not argue with him, for I could not argue with him, for although I did not agree with what he was saying I could not dispute what I was seeing.
Ralph was also told things about his personal future which did manifest as they were told to him and other things that he would not tell me.
That light staid around Ralph for the rest of the day until it finally faded away later that night but that was not the last time I was to see this wondrous light.
A year later Ralph started to show signs of dementia, this is one of the symptoms that first alerted me to the fact he did indeed have AIDS.
After coming in and finding Ralph was eating putrid food he had for gotten to refrigerate I called our parents and told them they both needed to come up for Ralph was sick.
They both came from Virginia but it was my mother that staid to take care of Ralph until he had to be hospitalized and for a while she was staying in the Bronx and I was running back and forth between Brooklyn and The North Bronx to pick her up and we went to New Jersey to visit Ralph for the day then I would take her back to the Bronx and return to Brooklyn.
This became too much for both of us and she decided to stay at Ralph's apartment and I was returning to Brooklyn then finally she said she would feel better if I would stay with her which I did.
Oddly enough while we were there the Visitational Phenomena stopped, but then I may have been to tired to notice it, for we had decided when Ralph came out of the hospital he was to move back in with me, because New York had the best hospitals for people with AIDS.
So piece by piece I was bringing Ralph's things to my home while she staid at the hospital with Ralph.
While there she met Brother John a young priest that ministered to the sick in the AIDS ward but due to the deaths, the sickness, and disparity he had been thinking about leaving the church.
They became friends and talked daily about God and faith and somehow it seems that though she was Pentecostal and he Catholic she re inspired him and he decided not to leave but continue his work on the ward.
As a gift of thanks he bought Mother a small potted plant, in it was four tulips.
I never got to met him but am I grateful that this man made time for my mother who sat for days watching her beloved son slowly die.
That night as we were going back to Ralph's apartment, Mother took a nasty spill on the stairs, but thankfully she did not break anything.
She was sore the next morning so I had to leave her at home and she said she would join me later.
I can in to find Ralph sprawled across the bed mumbling incoherently.
He had purged and had reached to call for the nurse but had hit the TV button rather than the nurse switch on the controls.
I could feel the heat coming off of him as I entered the room, and ran to get some help but was basically ignored by the staff as they always did me if my mother wasn't there.
The night before they had told us that Ralph was well enough to be sent home but I knew now it was a lie Ralph was dying.
They just did not want him to die there.
I cleaned Ralph up as best I could and when the Doctor came in to have me sign Ralph out I exploded on him and said that they were liars and that Ralph was dying so I would not sign him out.
It was then my mother arrived and then suddenly we could not move for the nurses and orderlies that packed into the room.
As Mother was out talking to the doctor, Ralph suddenly asked me to help him to the bathroom I did but it was really a chore for he could not walk for he was too weak, he was dying.
I got him finally back into bed knowing the next time he left it he would be dead.
Ralph returned to the inaudible mumbling he was doing his with eyes fixed on an area above my head.
He was to remain like that for the rest of the day.
Then once again he suddenly asked to be helped to the bathroom but this time not even me and my mother could help him for he had no strength at all and could not even make the effort to move his legs, realizing this I saw Ralph make up his mind to go, he did not want to be a burden on any one of us.
He submitted to using the bed pan and we then cleaned him up again and he returned to his mumbling to the things he saw above our heads.
It was late and I told my mother I did not want to leave Ralph but she said she was hurting from the fall of the night before.
I told her I would take her back to the apartment and then come back to stay with Ralph for I did not want him to die alone, but she said
"You are not going to leave me alone in that house with those black things and those gray shadows, and that thing that stomps, or that thing that stands on the roof outside the window, that's why I wanted you to come stay with me out here in the first place!"
I had never spoke to her of these things and I know that Ralph had not.
I was thunderstruck by what she had said but that was to pail to what happened next.
She walked over to Ralph and cradled his head in her hands and said,
" Ralph I have to go now, I love you. "
And Ralph snapped out of it and as clear headed as he has ever been said,
"I know that."
Then suddenly he relaxed as if he had just passed out and a clear light emerged
from the top of his head, it ran up my mothers arms and enveloped her body.
I could see her inside of this thick light of Clearity that was quivering shimmerations that did not travel beyond its own edges but sent out jagged protrusions like those drawn in comic books and cartoons about people being electrocuted but they were gentle in their movements.
Its movement was identical with the light being I saw through the binoculars years before as I lay on my back across my bed!
I knew then I was seeing Ralph the essence, the soul, the what ever it is that makes each of us, us!
I wanted to speak, to call to it, but no words would come from my open mouth I was paralyzed by its clear purity.
Then suddenly it gently raised off of her and went down her arms and returned into the top of Ralph's head and he lifted his head from her hands and returned to mumbling to the unseen in the room.
Mother then left and went to tell the nurses that we were going and to ask one that had always been kind to us and Ralph to please watch out for him during the night.
As we were walking out of the Hospital Mother turned to me and said,
" You know Butch, when Ralph laid his head in my hands I have never felt such love like that in my life."
I looked at her and asked,
" Didn't you see it? "
" See what? " she asked.
" The light, the light that came out of Ralph's head?"
" What light?"
" Mother I thought you saw it, a light came out of Ralph's head, went up your arms, and covered you, you were inside it, it was all over you, he couldn't stand up to hug you physically so he hugged you with his soul."
This is the main reason I believe that what I was told as I was walking to the IRS is true that we are all Nonts at our core, but there is still more about this to come.
For now however, I will end here, but please note it does not end here.

Was This All About...Ralphie?

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