It was during one of those mushy brown, western winters that I made the acquaintance of Jonathan Dug. He was a short man, of slight build, ruddy complexion, and curly brown hair he raked frequently with his fingers.

His voice was high-pitched, with a touch of shrillness, as though it had stuck on a twig of puberty and never reached the sea of manhood. That was perhaps the reason he rarely spoke.

Besides his voice, the most noticeable thing about Mr. Dug, or Jonathan, as he asked me to call him, was his multitude of friends.

I had occasion to frequent Jonathan’s home that winter since his demeanor made it easy to call him ‘friend’. Immediately inside his front door he had a telephone answering machine and invariably its red message light was blinking dozens of times, indicating that was the number of callers while he was out. To Jonathan, it represented the magnitude of his friendships. To me it represented grabs into his private life…what there was of it.

As casual as a grasp could be, Jonathan punched the playback button and listened, raking his hair and chewing his fingernails like they were his first meal in three days. "Darling, you simply must…" or, "we will not take no for an answer this Friday." It seemed everyone wanted a piece of Jonathan’s time.

I was on the observing edge of his life that season, like a frame looking inward at a picture. Since his profession was psychiatry, I noticed that most people conversed with him from some dramatic place within their secret heart. Either that or they shunned him noticeably, preferring to skulk around Jonathan’s outer territory like a circling wolf unsure of the power of its prey.

But most were brazen enough in their approach of him, hungry for free advice, hungry to undo the negative knots from their climb through life.

His silence and listening were tools as he unearthed civilizations of feeling from all who dwelled, even momentarily, nearby. The ancient memories…deeply buried pottery pieces…he discovered, dusted carefully, and examined. I never heard him answer more than a sentence for reply. It always pointed the way. Yes, Jonathan Dug was a keen anthropologist of the human essence.

I remember a party I attended with him. He was nectar for the swarm. As Mrs. Gewgaw, in her long black velvet gown, discussed her ungrateful children, Jonathan watched her, occasionally following the sparkle of her enormous diamond ring as she waved her arm like the knocking away of cobwebs, then in the final throes of her story, clasped her hand to her throat accompanied by a backward flourish of her head.

That Jonathan didn’t find it all a ridiculous show I couldn’t say. No one knew much about Jonathan. I believe, if anyone had asked, his lips were sealed regarding himself. Only his ears were open, like mitts, catching everyone’s foul balls.

But no one cared about his lips. All anyone cared about was his listening. He was the confessional…a drink to the alcoholic…and heat to frozen hearts needing thaw. Yes, Jonathan Dug had many, many friends.

There had to be a bit of Jesus in him, I decided. No regular person could put up with people’s complaints as he did. I doubt if anyone ever noticed that by the time he finished listening his fingernails looked like leftovers from a cannibal lunch, and his hair was the best-groomed lawn in town. I wanted to pull his friends’ piranha voices out by their larynxes. But I was privy to Jonathan’s world as a guest, and judging his friends would have been unforgivably rude.

In case Jonathan’s every-ready listening wasn’t enough, there was his couch, staked by his friends like a gold field. Than there were breakfasts and money loans and clothes loans and toothpaste and shampoo loans. Jonathan’s friends cut across social barriers, encompassing every aspect of humanity. I saw more goods go out the door on the backs and in the pockets of Jonathan’s friends than a team of mules could pull. In the opinion of his friends, there was never a more certain giver than Jonathan.

The 19^th of that December, Jonathan turned 50. No one paid attention to his passage into the child-of-old-age slot. Somehow it wasn’t as important as the nightmares, and the husbands’ or wifes’ infidelities, or the mortgage payments, or the woes and cries and screams of all the lives of all the friends…those givers of need…those grabbers and clawers of take…those Hydes…taking as quicksand takes…as moonlight the darkness…as lust the innocent. And Jonathan gave until his very marrow was squeezed empty and dry.

Then, one day, like a sputtering candle, his eyes stopped flickering with interest. His hearing seemed to brown and wither like an autumn leaf. He was an empty gas tank and his friends still had miles to go…thousands and thousands of miles.

His high-pitched voice was hesitant at first…exploring the wonders of speech. Vowels, consonants, syllables, words, sentences, paragraphs…all were utilized to mine the quiet tomb of his thoughts. At first his thoughts faltered, like a baby’s first steps, but they gained muscles of confidence and ran fleet as a deer toward the hearts and minds of his friends.

Initially, they thought Jonathan was going through a phase and held for a time their wagging tongues and carnivore appetites. But his speaking, like Mr.Hyde conquered Doctor Jekyll, gained ascendance over his hearing.

Those land-locked lips of Jonathan’s were open, and tugboats of thought towed ever-larger ideas out onto the sunshine waters…out onto the sea of human dialogue.

Within weeks, his friends melted away like so much ice cream under an equatorial sun.

As I observed this transition, this defoliation of friends, this no more blinking red light on his telephone answering machine, I worried Jonathan might sink into some pit of loneliness and despair. Or worse, I was afraid the loss of his friends, now complete, would leave a hole he might fill with desperate measure.

On my way to the airport last night, I stopped to say good-bye. He invited me in, his arms flapping like he was gathering water from a wide pool and splashing it onto his face. He rasped words of affection to his two tiny high-pitched loyal Chihuahuas as we all ushered into the kitchen. I noticed the phone machine was gone.

With French flourish, he continued his preparation of a dinner for one.

He told me he never invites anyone to stay overnight anymore, nor does he invite anyone for dinner, nor does he loan anything to anyone. Comfortable rules, he said, overdue and comfortable.

A new look plays over the countenance of Jonathan’s face. It throws at you and hits your awareness. It is a clear honest look. It says…I don’t want to hear about it, and you can’t have any.

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