John Macoubrie Peter Mladinic

John Macoubrie

We waited for the light to turn green. Somebody walked by with a Chow, and he said as a child he was very frightened by a Chow. We were part of the summer night crowd, on one corner a drugstore, acrossthe street on another an ice cream parlor. In its big lit window patrons at a counter, sundaes and floats. He mentioned Washington state, a train, the dog. “I was very frightened.” I didn’t ask “scared shitless?” He didn’t slang or swear.

He was distinguished and looked it in his wine-red turtleneck and olive sport coat (even in summer). I recall his dark horn-rimmed glasses, comb-over, long-stemmed pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth. He took it out to recite Valery, and Homer. He was distinguished but, being a dishwasher, didn’t have the paycheck to go with distinguished. He liked meter, end-rhyme, poems by professors on sabbaticals about Greek statues. He knew his stuff, and sounded crochety, looked it too, with his sunken cheeks, thin mouth, the pipe’s bowl in hand as he recited, “It is I, O azure one!” He liked Wilbur, Hecht, the classics.

Long ago at a train station a car backfired. A dog leapt and almost bit his face. We were walking away from a bridge, someone was walking a Chow on a leash. I recall the drugstore, the ice cream parlor, John Macoubre, his comb-over and turtleneck, a slim volume of poetry in his hand. I never saw him washing dishes, but I knew that’s what he did.