Meeting Rufus

"I refuse to believe I am wrong simply because my opinions are not in line with the consensus. I believe I am wrong because I killed that hooker."
--Rufus Oglethorpe

When I met Rufus I was seventeen and he was nearly dead. We were in the same hospital, me for a mental correction and him for being very old. I bummed a cigarette off him in the garden outside the hospital building. I had snuck away from the mental crowd and I knew the nurse staff would get to me eventually.

"Can I get a quick smoke?" I asked him.

"Mine don't burn faster than any other," he told me.

I smoked and we talked for a few minutes, the kind of casual conversations one has when one is unsure with just whom one is talking. It was pretty forgetful.

I saw a nurse approaching our park bench and said to him, "It looks like I got to go."

"Hey kid," he said. "Just 'cause they say you're crazy, that don't make you wrong. I mean, unless you killed someone and the government didn't order it."

I laughed but I could see in his eyes that he was dead serious.

I never even thought about never even thinking I would see him again.

Naturally, or as naturally as it comes to me, I was dead wrong.