Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward

Author:Robert Ward [Ward Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-3393-8
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2006-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

For all of Bob Wells’s adult life he had harbored the secret desire (and until a few years past, the secret belief) that one day all his good works would be recognized by the City of Baltimore, the State of Maryland, and then, suddenly, his fame would catch fire and would spread wildly, until he was celebrated around the world.

It would start humbly with the local media coming to his door to canonize him. They would be in awe at his purity of purpose, his total commitment to the poor, the indigent, the lame and the halt, the blind and the deaf, the suicidal and the mad.

They would come and they would bow down in obeisance. They would see that you didn’t have to go to India to find a true saint. There was a local saint right here in funky old Baltimore, a guy who rivaled them all when it came to goodness.

Having heard the news, the mayor and the city elders would decide to give him Bob Wells Day, with a parade and a float, covered with sick winos and junkies and beat-to-shit unwed mothers, exhausted homeless people hanging off the sides.

A band would play, speeches would be given down at the Inner Harbor, and from there the national media would pick up on it. Overnight Bob would be not only locally famous, but universally acclaimed, as well.

He had been so good for so long. Why, it had to happen, didn’t it?

It was only when he chugged past fifty that Bob finally realized that the answer to that question was a collective shrug of the shoulders. Not even a “no” writ in thunder. The world couldn’t even work itself up to that much passion regarding the sainthood of Robert Marshall Wells.

To put it bluntly, nobody cared.

And so Bob had seen the truth. He was like some obscure artist who works and works and struggles and really masters his craft and is never discovered, ever, his life a meaningless toil for absolutely no reward.

Instead of Bob Wells, a living example of good-eventually-rewarded, his life would be emblematic of another kind of universal truth:

Bob Wells, an example of the ultimate absurdity of human existence.

This would be his fate. Bob would be Captain Anonymous. Unheralded and unsung.

“For all your good work, Bob, today, a very special day, we give you (trumpets blare) … nothing. A sack of shit. Zero. Zip. Nada.”

Until now, that is.

Until Leslie and Ronnie told their inspiring story to none other than Dave McClane, who wrote up the piece while Bob was asleep, and printed it in the Baltimore Sun under the headline, “The ‘Saint’ Saves Two.” It was Dave at his thirties agitprop best. No cliché lay unwritten as he heaped praise on his old pal, telling of Bob’s hard early years fighting against city hall and then going on to itemize all the other wonderful things Bob Wells had done, without “asking for or even wanting any recognition.” Bob was “old school,” the kind of

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