Grandpa Baldwin

“Grandpa Baldwin,” the young man shook the pen in his hand in front of Mr. Bald’s eyes, and after Mr. Bald noticed his movement, the young man continued, “You need to hurry up with the arrangements for this matter, start with 700,000 dollars, come and pay it all tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow the exact results come in and we’ll get you set up with the process.”

“Uh-huh.” Mr. Bald replied breathlessly.

“It’s hard for anyone to fall for something like this, all I can say is you should look on the bright side.” The young man turned and slumped over the table, writing something quickly; he was Garcia Baldwin’s primary care physician, known to everyone as Dr. King, and what his exact name was didn’t matter in this patient relationship.

“Uh-huh.”

“Has the family been notified?”

Garcia Baldwin hesitated when he heard talk of family, he looked down at the paper in his hand and shook his head.

“Grandpa Baldwin, this is something you can’t do without informing your family.” The young man sat closer toward Mr. Bald, head bowed, eyes flickering upward as he struggled to meet Mr. Bald’s eyes.

“Uh-huh.” Mr. Bald jerked his head up and stared at the ceiling.

“Well then, Grandpa Baldwin, have you got all the medicine?”

“Well, flush.”

“Then you can go home and get set up today and come in early tomorrow, okay? I ......” Before the young man could finish his sentence, Mr. Bald stood up and headed outside, knocking things along the path with a thin rattle.

“Grandpa Baldwin ......” the young man tried to shout, Mr. Bald had disappeared into the doorway.

It was raining outside when Mr. Bald walked out of the hospital.

It was a screwy November day, either windy or rainy, sandwiched between summer and winter, not warm enough to warm up a discouraged man who walked into the rain, or to freeze out the pests that multiply so savagely in the sewers, Mr. Bald reached out to try his hand, and the rice-sized rain wasn’t too cold or too dense, and he fumbled with his pants bag, figuring out if he’d get his cell phone wet walking to the subway station in the rain, when a new message came in, muted, and vibrating mode worked. The vibration mode worked well, and the box full of things Mr. Bald cared about struggling in his pants bag. Mr. Bald opened his phone, and it was a message from the Ranger captain, who first asked Mr. Bald about the results of the test, and a long string of caring and comforting words took up almost half of the screen. The Ranger captain was an optimistic and lovely person, and quoted a lot of words from Hongyi Master Li Shutong, and at the end of the message, the Ranger captain said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. At the end of the message, the Ranger captain also attached the date and the name of the message, the name of the message was his own name, Mr. Bald almost laughed out loud, Mr. Brown is still so funny.

Mr. Bald didn’t reply to the message, he tightened his shirt, sorted through the scattered checklists and stuffed them into the plastic bag containing the CT slides, the plastic bag resembled a large envelope and a filing bag symbolizing someone’s life, he shook out the bag and then clipped it to his armpit and walked down the stairs, before he could take more than a couple of steps the raindrops hammered hard against his head, which made him rethink how he could walk in order to avoid getting caught in the rain any more than he already had. Mr. Bald retreated to where he’d been a moment before, people hurrying in and out crowding around him as he swayed like a single maple leaf in the doorway of the lab building. He feels more cold rain on his calves, a fat woman flinging her umbrella, making herself sob with every effort, and on the other hand the thick sheet is already soaked. Mr. Bald heads for the foyer, intending to cross the building and go out through the small door on the other side, which is closer to the subway entrance. mr. Bald rolls up the plastic bag with the CT, slides into a tube and slips it into his pants pocket. He pulls up his windbreaker, covering the back of the plastic tube and pulls up the windbreaker. pulled up to cover the plastic tube and then walked quickly toward the connecting corridor.

On both sides of the corridor, there were many consultation rooms, the interior furnishings were simple, a small bed that could easily accommodate one person, a curtain made of yellowed white cloth, a small table, behind which sat a white coat, the white coats were like workers on an assembly line, following a standardized process of looking at a list, billing a list, looking at a list, billing a list. Outside the clinic there are benches waiting for rest, some people are lying on their sides, some are sitting, they almost all have their heads bowed, Mr. Bald doesn’t dare to look at every face, he is afraid that other people will see through his worries, Mr. Bald is almost in the middle of the corridor, a little girl with her head wrapped in white gauze attracts his attention, she is wearing a crumpled cotton jacket whose cuffs are already greasy and black, and there is an IV drip inserted in the back of her right hand. Sitting on her father’s lap, not crying or fussing, she was trying to identify the numbers she recognized on the reminder screen, and excitedly told her father that the number 1 and 5 was called 15, which was the number of the floor where their house was located. Mr. Bald couldn’t help but speed up his steps as he passed the little girl, and when he got to the end of the porch and pushed the door open, he didn’t hesitate to dive into the rain.

“What’s that?” The subway security guard pointed to Mr. Bald’s bulging pants bag, Mr. Bald hastily explained, he took it out and showed it to the security guard, the security guard raised his hand to indicate that he could enter the station, Mr. Bald took a close look at the subway line before he felt comfortable to swipe his card to enter the station.

The bus hadn’t arrived yet, the next bus would be here in 7 minutes, Mr. Bald was very sensitive to numbers, he remembered a book that said a human life was about 30,000 days, and that the heart could beat about 3 billion times, and that the most accurate number was 2, which he would have loved because he rode the subway line 2 a lot and because in 2 days he’d be able to pay off the mortgage on the house, a house with no mortgage to pay off, and he was going to leave it to Arthur Baldwin, who had saved up the last of the money to pay off the mortgage. He was going to leave it to Arthur Baldwin, who had saved up the last of the money he needed to pay off the mortgage, and yes, he would have loved the number 2 until this afternoon when the doctor told him to come back to the hospital in 2 days to get the exact results, and the hospital began to schedule him for chemotherapy, and yes, he would have loved the number 2 up until that point.

“Your phone is ringing, hello old man.” The young man next to Mr. Bald poked him and Mr. Bald snapped back to his senses, he thanked the young man and continued to wring out his clothes until the phone ringing cycle was over, and he didn’t wring out his clothes or wring them out.

The subway was about to enter the station, the body roaring toward the people on the platform, the two headlights staring resolutely ahead, the wheels scraping on the tracks as hard as they could, the train stopped like a well-behaved beast, and the crowd swarmed into the belly of the beast, trying to snatch up an empty seat. mr. Bald never took a seat on the subway, and he wasn’t all that tired, or not so tired that he had to have one to complete every trip, not to mention that he hated when people showed him deference, or showed pity, and mr. Bald didn’t feel that old. complete every trip, and what’s more, he hated the deference, or the pity, that people showed when they gave up their seats to him, Mr. Bald didn’t feel that old. He walked over to the side of the door that wasn’t open and leaned on the armrest by the door and pushed back hard, didn’t feel any pain in his lungs, wasn’t cancer supposed to hurt, or did Dr. King and the others misdiagnose it?

“Captain.” After Mr. Bald missed three missed calls, he picked up the Ranger captain’s phone.

“Soldier, how is your body? Can you still continue to fight?” The captain hurriedly swallowed the old tea that was in his mouth, probably the reason why he didn’t expect Mr. Bald to pick it up so quickly, that mouthful of old tea was like a boulder that smashed out a heavy rattle as it rolled down the captain’s throat and into his stomach.

“Thank you Captain for your concern, no problem.”

“That’s good, we’ve got a new mission, and it’s a tough one.”

“What mission?”

“Invaders, there are too many of them, the royal avenue, the official roads leading to the state and county offices have all been taken over by them, and you are not unaware that this happens on days of high winds and heavy rain.”

“Is it raining this hard to deal with it?” Mr. Bald asked.

“What else could it be? We didn’t take care of it in time before and got dinged, remember?”

“All right.” Mr. Bald remembered that a fine was something he didn’t want to see happen, and he didn’t want to delay the Diva’s repayment. “Captain, I won’t be there for another forty minutes, I’m afraid I won’t make it, where’s Mrs. Jone? Tell her to go ahead and sweep.”

“She’s not coming back home, she left last week, you remember.”

“Ohhhh, come to think of it, go on then.” Mr. Bald growled.

“Fuck you, I sweep the square and the river, you want to switch with me?” The captain yelled back.

“Ohhhh, I’ll go.”

“I’m going? What do you mean?” The captain growled.

“Ohhh, I mean, I’ll keep going to sweep the neighborhood, you sweep the plaza and the river alright.”

“Old codger, bullshit me and get your ass back here.” The Captain hung up after that, Mr. Bald flipped through his contacts, he wasn’t sure if he should speak to Arthur Baldwin about the hospital, or to his wife, he looked at his contacts for a moment before closing his phone.

Mr. Bald and the team leader are both janitors in the South Mountain Home neighborhood. Arthur Baldwin graduated from a foreign university and found a good job, so Mr. Bald closed the breakfast store, and after struggling for too long to get up in the morning and work through the night, he took a job as a janitor in the neighborhood. In the beginning, there were seven or eight people in the cleaning department, all of them were old men and women about the same age as Mr. Bald, but from time to time someone went back to his hometown, someone passed away, and the staff of the cleaning department changed a lot, and Mr. Bald just got acquainted with some of the people, and then the people who were familiar with him left, and when the new people came in, he needed to get along with the other person for a while again. Mr. Bald found it too difficult to maintain friendships in the janitorial department. He felt like he was trapped in an infinite loop of springtime hailstorms, where the corn he planted in January was hard to sprout, and then the hailstorms came in March and smashed it all to pieces, and he was back in January again. The exception was the Ranger Captain, who entered the janitorial department at about the same time as Mr. Bald, a month before he did, and even a dozen years of janitorial work hadn’t shrunk his fat, unsteady frame much.

The first time Mr. Bald became a co-worker with the Ranger captain, he was crouched behind an orange sweeper. The property manager put the signed contract away in a drawer, and then told Mr. Bald to go to the cleaning department on the first floor to get his uniform and work tools. Walking down the wet staircase, turning left and passing through a field of charging battery-operated cars, there was the cleaning department. He looked around the room, cardboard piled up in all the corners, and small discarded furniture that the cleaning crew had picked up from the dump to sell, and at the far end of the room there were two hand-push cleaning carts, and an electric one, where the Ranger leader was squatting.

“Hello, I’m here ......” Mr. Bald spoke as he leaned forward after walking near the Ranger Captain.

“Hey, there’s another dead old man.” The Ranger Captain stood up and upon seeing that it was Mr. Bald he was happy as a child, pretending not to recognize Mr. Bald, throwing away the toilet paper that was covered in something on his right hand and sizing him up as he moved closer to Mr. Bald, the Captain raised his right hand and sniffed it, followed by wiping it on the back of his ass, and upon moving closer to Mr. Bald he raised the spray can in his left hand to him and proceeded to grumble. “These idiots really, can’t they recruit a few women? It’s so convincing.”

Mr. Bald didn’t know what to say as he watched the captain turn toward the sweeper again and put the spray can on the seat.

“But I welcome you to join me as well.” As the captain walked back to Mr. Bald, he suddenly took his hand and shook it violently, then laughed heartily.

“Thanks.” Mr. Bald was a little overwhelmed.

“How’s it going, all’s well at home.” The captain let go of Mr. Bald’s hand and headed for the small table by the sweeper.

“Pretty good.”

“My family is also quite good, my daughter’s family has emigrated, in Europe, good place, nice scenery, grandchildren are about to go to college, my mouth doesn’t want to go over there, she thinks that there are no acquaintances over there, and she can’t understand the speech, I don’t think it’s a problem, but she’s too stubborn, see, she drags me down as well.” As he spoke, the Ranger Captain walked back to Mr. Bald and handed him a rice pudding, and when Mr. Bald didn’t take it, he shoved it into Mr. Bald’s hand, then patted Mr. Bald on the shoulder and added. “Eat rice pudding, my mouth makes it, it’s super tasty, no oil, low salt and low sugar.” Then walks back to where he was just squatting to continue cleaning the sweeper.

“Thanks.” Mr. Bald took a bite, and it did taste good.

“Just call me Zebulon, by the way ......” Mr. Brown continued without stopping what he was doing, looking up at Mr. Bald. “You hurry up and finish eating, and in a few minutes we’ll both go ahead and sweep that road by the river.”

“Okay. By the way, how much longer do we have to act?” Mr. Bald took another bite of his rice cake.

Mr. Brown looked up at Mr. Bald with a smile on his face and said happily, “It’s good you’re here, this is another upgrade to our friendship.”

“Don’t escalate, I’m distracted by the sight of you.”

“I know you won’t.” Mr. Brown continued to bury his head in the sand. “It’s too bad, hell, these pet owners are seeing hell these days, the river shit is getting worse.” Mr. Brown said as he wiped the plastic broom of his sweeper with toilet paper.

“I’ll help you sweep along.” Mr. Bald thought he should share some, after all, having eaten Mr. Brown’s rice pudding.

“Well, we’ll head out as soon as I’m done cleaning up the shit stuck in the broom.” Mr. Brown continued to look down and clean it up, hearing that the rice cake Mr. Bald was about to swallow nearly stuck him, he looked at the half of the rice cake still left and wondered what to do with it.

“Wingfoot Station is here, please bring your belongings.” The dry beep on the radio interrupted Mr. Bald’s thoughts as the subway came to a stop, the right door opened, and some people got off and some got on.

Mr. Bald squeezed his cell phone in his pants bag, expecting a message to come in, but not from Ranger Captain Mr. Brown, but it wouldn’t be right to think that, after all, Mr. Brown and his partner were really good, especially after learning that Mr. Bald’s partner had gone to babysit Arthur Baldwin’s kids, and that Mr. Brown’s family had nothing but good things to say about him. Mr. Brown took his cleaning job very seriously, he was the only one who could drive the sweeper, in his words, when he got on the bike and opened the door, he felt like he was riding a warhorse to clean up any garbage that invaded the South Hills home, that’s why he made himself a ranger captain from the beginning, all the people in the cleaning department were soldiers and had to follow his orders, if someone didn’t agree, he would be beaten by Mr. Brown with a rice paddy. be bribed by Mr. Brown with rice pudding until they agree.

Nanshan Homes was built against a river, the side closest to the river was a villa complex, the villa complex was surrounded by ordinary commercial houses, forty-seven commercial houses surrounded the villa complex, Mr. Brown’s house was on the other side of the villa complex, and he was particularly proud of this arrangement. In his words, the villa complex was like the Byzantine Empire’s Constantinople, the river behind it was like the Mediterranean Sea, a natural natural danger separating the enemies, and the commercial houses were like the Byzantine periphery’s subordinate confederation, protecting Constantinople, except for Italy, which was not considered a subordinate confederation of Constantinople, it was a fraternal confederation, why? Because Mr. Brown’s daughter emigrated to Italy. Mr. Brown with his own online information to the Nanshan homes divided into areas, to the different roads named, the river that the widest walkway became the Royal Road, the neighborhood across several avenues, originally Mr. Brown also named according to the Byzantine period, the results of the pronunciation does not go well, he would be according to the name of the streets of the Southern Song Dynasty renamed, collectively referred to as the official road to the county offices of the various states, each time he would be according to the name of these official roads, the name of the official road, the name of the official road. He would assign the new janitorial staff to work according to the names of these official roads, and Mr. Bald was responsible for translating the names into the road between a few blocks to a few blocks, and in this way they cooperated for more than ten years.

“Let’s go to my house for dinner, my folks cooked up a casserole, braised beef pot goes down very well, just tell me if you’re craving it.” The two finished cleaning, in the cleaning department to change clothes when Mr. Brown exuberantly said.

“I’ve been going to your house for dinner every day, and it’s making me embarrassed, so I won’t go today.” Mr. Bald sat down on the floor to put on his shoes, people have a lot of trouble when they get older, they can’t bend down to cut their toenails, and putting on socks and shoes is a problem, so he just sits down on the floor to put them on, which is slightly easier to put on.

“Even if your share is done, what’s there to be embarrassed about.”

“Not much of an appetite today.”

“Listen to the captain and eat your fill.” Mr. Brown came over and touched Mr. Bald’s foot with his.

“It’s raining today, I don’t want to eat, I’m going to go back and take a hot shower, then I’ll see if I have an appetite.”

“It’s okay to go to my house and flush.”

“Then I’ll have to bring my clothes over there, what a hassle, so I won’t go today, thanks for the captain’s kindness.”

“Old codger, don’t go for it.” Mr. Brown huffed and headed out the door, paused near the door, pulled his pants up with all his might, and turned back to Mr. Bald and blurted out, “I’ll even have your share.” And then left without looking back.

Mr. Bald did not hurry to enter the house when he reached the door, he looked it over carefully, was this all he wanted? Was it worth it when there was only one door visible from the outside and no one else inside but him? He was a little shaken now. Pulling out his key, it took several tries to open it, he didn’t like electronic locks, the beeping of the one on Mr. Brown’s house annoyed him, so he was adamant about using a mechanical lock, the trouble was, it would malfunction after a long time of use, perhaps it wasn’t that easy to survive in the face of time, whether it was man or hardened iron. Entering the door, Mr. Bald held up the shoe cabinet, in the upper left corner lay his regular slippers so that he didn’t need to bend down to look for them, he brought the shoes closer to look at them, from memory, the shoes were brown only, like the color of coffee, he liked coffee, that’s why he bought these shoes, and now, the uppers were whitish, and the soles had long since been worn down to their highs and lows.

Mr. Bald didn’t rush to take a shower, as usual, he first took a look at several rooms, Arthur and his daughter-in-law’s room is the largest, in addition to the vanity cabinet, he also added a computer desk, Arthur is working as an analyst for an investment research organization in Melbourne, and can’t stay away from computers, so he must be very happy to be able to put a computer in his bedroom for office work.Mr. Bald hadn’t met Arthur’s wife a few times, but she was a foreigner. Foreigners, where he could not remember, he remembered Arthur ’s wife like big glass mirrors, always have to compare several times when wearing clothes, Mr. Bald replaced all the front of the closet with big mirrors, thinking this should be wide enough. He went in and touched the bed, there was no dust on it, and tried the light switches, these were all in order. His granddaughter’s room he put more thought into, the walls are covered with her favorite animals, the lamps are replaced with animals, the four-piece set on the bed is also cartoon oriented, his granddaughter likes to draw, Mr. Bald bought a very large tablet, but also specially asked the clerk to buy him a software that can draw, the stylus is fully charged.

“Granddaughter is a foreigner, she has a foreign name, directly translated into Chinese on the line, you have to be stubborn, give her a Chinese name for what ah?” Thinking of the day of his granddaughter’s birth, the doctor came to register her name, he and the registration staff argued for half a day, to write the other side of the Chinese name, the labor and delivery room was so noisy that his partner pulled him out and yelled at him for a while.

“I don’t think so, I’m going to give her a Chinese name, June Baldwin, what do you know? What do you know about it? You’ve never even heard of it.” Mr. Bald muttered, and eventually Arthur made his granddaughter a card with her Chinese name on it, so Mr. Bald didn’t dwell on it. He giggled at his granddaughter’s room for a while, and finally waved at the bed in a victorious manner, turned and closed the door.

Mr. Bald walked to the bathroom door and thought hard about what the doctor had said during the day, that his lung cancer despite not smoking had something to do with his childhood experience of living near a coal mine, which, combined with the increasingly bad air, had left his lungs intent on an early end to a heavy life. “Let’s just say that there’s a chance to extend your life, by how much we can’t say, and as you can see, the left lung is already massively shadowed.” He turned on the air-heater, intending to blow it warm before coming to the shower, it wasn’t that cold, but in the back of his mind he always felt that it was pretty cold for this kind of weather. Going to the kitchen and rummaging around, there wasn’t much to eat, almost on he ate at Mr. Brown’s house, he didn’t stock up on any food for himself, he rubbed his rumbling stomach, regretting not going to Mr. Brown’s house for dinner with Mr. Brown. Mr. Bald gently closed the refrigerator door, going to the study to turn out the pictures of his parents, he remembered something, there’s a quote written by a very well known, very well known author, it probably means that parents are separated from each other, and that’s why they’re not in the kitchen anymore. Something along the lines of, our parents are the curtain that separates us from death, it’s hard for us to feel anything about death until our parents pass away, and then when they do, we become sensitive to death, yeah, he’s not just sensitive now, he’s facing it head on, five days from now, or, fifty days from now, he doesn’t know exactly what day it is. What regrets were there about not doing it? He looked at the picture of his parents, thought, and fell asleep on the couch.