‘You just sit right there, Elmer, and I’ll bring you a caffeine transfusion.’ : It’s Just Over the Beer Can

I was awakened at 3 a.m. by my wife shaking me and whispering, “It’s time.”

I do not believe there are two more terrifying words in the English language, relating as they often do to the imminent birth of a human child and the necessity of the male progenitor to rush his mate to a proper place of delivery.

My wife, of course, knows that and uses it as a kind of psychological cattle prod when I am likely to be slow getting up. It worked.

“Time!” I shouted, bolting upright, tending in stress to repeat the last word of every sentence.

I swung my legs out of the blankets before she could say another word and leaped nimbly onto the floor. Well, actually, I leaped nimbly onto the dog, who sleeps by the bed.

Hoover, who is not very smart and not very brave, yowled in fear and bolted toward the door, though, sad to say, the door was closed, and Hoover bounced off.

“For God’s sake,” my wife said, “hold it, will you? Everybody stay calm. We’re just going to see Halley’s Comet!”

Oh, that.

I had forgotten the pledge, offered in a moment of foolish acquiescence, to rise early and view the comet before it went shooting off into the starry corners of space.

“Coffee,” I said weakly.

She patted my shoulder. “You just sit right there, Elmer, and I’ll bring you a caffeine transfusion.”

Elmer, as I have mentioned before, relates to a tendency to slur my name. People think I am saying Elmer Teenez. My whole family often calls me Elmer, although sometimes they call me Wally. I had to meet a man once named Wally and, since I forget names, I kept repeating it in my head. Wally, Wally, Wally . . . .

When we met, I was thinking he’s Wally and I’m Al but I panicked and said, “Hi, I’m Wally!” “Hey,” he said, “my name’s Wally too!” Small world.

“Here’s a place,” my wife said.

I pulled the car off the road. We were on Saddle Peak Drive in the Santa Monica Mountains. The view was southeast out of Tuna Canyon.

We had built a star tracer out of a wire coat hanger and plastic wrap and knew exactly where to look. Joanne spotted the comet after a few moments.

“There it is!” she said. The wonders of nature fire her imagination. Awe crept into her voice. She was out there on the star trails, lost in the cosmic silence.

The comet was a faint blur above the horizon. I studied it through binoculars until a battered old pickup parked behind us.

A hippie got out of the truck. He had neither shaved, combed his hair nor bathed for three years, eight months and 22 days. I once lived in Berkeley and am familiar with the Filthy Hippie Factor.

He also wore a dirty T-shirt, dirty jeans and dirty feet, which is to say he was shoeless. He carried a can of dirty Budweiser beer.

“You’re looking the wrong way,” he said.

“No I’m not,” Joanne said.

She is not easily intimidated. I, on the other hand, am wary of strangers who appear on a mountainside before dawn drinking beer.

I read in Reader’s Digest once that people who do not bathe are more inclined toward random violence than those who are well-scrubbed.

“Oh,” I said pleasantly to the filthy hippie, “where would you say the comet is?”

I edged slightly upwind.

“That way.” He pointed due west with his Budweiser. “You can make a fist and look just above it.”

“Sure,” Joanne said, “right over the top of your beer can.”

I am not what you would call a cowardly person, but on the other hand I am not what you would call a crazy person. The filthy hippie was probably 6-2 and not in bad shape for someone who lived on beer and garbage. Furthermore, he was armed with a can.

I, on the other hand, am small and, well, delicate. I used to hear my mother whisper to friends in a tone of dismay, “He has fragile bones and throws up easily.”

“Maybe,” I suggested cheerfully, “there are two comets!”

They both turned to look at me. My wife smiled wryly. The filthy hippie, however, was considering the possibility.

“My old man told me once there might be two,” he finally said.

I could visualize the filthy hippie and his filthy daddy, each carrying a dirty can of Bud, standing on a pre-dawn mountaintop somewhere, searching the western sky.

“Hold the bottom of your beer can on the horizon,” the filthy father is saying, “and just above it you’ll see one comet, maybe two or three. Now rustle me up another one them garbage-meat sandwiches, boy.”

My wife ignored him and watched the fading image of Halley’s Comet until the first faint light of morning trimmed the horizon in gold.

The filthy hippie continued to stare due west, weaving slightly in a tight, clockwise circle, muttering.

He was still standing there when we left, but we had to make a U-turn at the top of the road and come back in the same direction, by which time he had turned to face southeast and was holding his beer can up, peering over the top.

It was a compromise.