The Man

Jul 24, 2023

It was late October in 1986, and it was already cold in Milwaukee. The man discretely watched from his seat at the bar as Mr. Donaldson walked into the neighborhood saloon. Our observer wasn’t hiding, but he didn’t want to be seen either. He was an expert at toeing the line between existing and not. He had a lifetime of practice.

The man was neither tall nor short, neither rotund nor slim. He was handsome enough to forget, but not to remember. He walked with purpose, but not quickly. If you looked at his face you would see not a single memorable trait, not a mustache, not a visible scar, not any expression. The man was what anyone would draw if the only instruction was, “ 65 year old man”.

He was dressed in a charcoal suit with a white shirt. His tie was dull blue. His shoes were shined, but not immaculate. His watch was steel, not gold. His overcoat was navy blue and smart but not garish. He was a spectacle of unimaginative standard style that bordered on boring, but not so much that anyone would notice.

He rarely spoke, but when he did it was with no discernible accent. It could have been slightly Polish, or perhaps you might notice a hint of Dutch. Definitely European… unless he was from the Midwest where a lot of Northern and Eastern Europeans settled in the century before.

He was a man with no past, no future, no culture, no country, no home. He had no family, no friends, no place of employment, no business associates. He carried an identification card or a passport issued in Holland or Nebraska or Finland or Argentina. Depending on the day, the name might have been any number of options. None his.

He had money, though he wasn’t born with it. The man obtained his means by way of an Austrian family that had been shipped east in 1942. They were jewelers. The family had a large stash of gems, gold, platinum, and silver hidden since the late 1930’s when things got bad. The man knew nobody would ever return for it.

In 1948 he unearthed the treasure. In 1950 he opened an account at a bank in Zurich, its only identifier a long memorized chain of numbers and letters. In the years since, he made some smart investments, though nothing particularly notable. If he was ever concerned about the morality of his fortune, there wasn’t any evidence for it.

For his part, Mr. Donaldson was an unhappy man. He was also in his 60’s, long divorced, and his two grown children wanted nothing to do with him. He worked as a supervisor at the Anheuser-Busch brewery where he eked out a meager living. The last he heard of his ex-wife was that she still lived in his old house with her new husband. Though he hated her, he couldn’t really blame her.

Mr. Donaldson had been a bad husband by any measure. He was short tempered and prone to mood swings. He was often melancholy and sullen, which he treated with far too much beer and liquor. As an immigrant, he never really understood American marriages or American women. His father had been stern and moody as well, something his mother always simply accepted. American women seemed to always want to talk, and Mr. Donaldson never wanted to talk, especially about the past. Especially with women.

He felt that he was a decent father. His children never went hungry and he encouraged them to avoid the military. He rarely beat them and tried to take an interest, but when their mother declared that she wanted a divorce, they took her side without hesitation. He never sent them any money and they never called or wrote. He didn’t even know where they lived or if they were married or had children of their own, not that it mattered. Sometimes it’s best to move on from the past, especially when it’s painful.

In Milwaukee, the man had observed Mr. Donaldson enter the saloon on multiple occasions. However, prior to this day, he had never entered the establishment himself. For the last two weeks, the man had been observing Mr. Donaldson from a safe distance. What he found was an extremely predictable person.

The man found that dull predictability was becoming more prevalent with those he observed. Years before, when they were young, many of his targets had been erratic. Some would make unpredictable detours to liaise with a paramour, or simply shoot billiards with a friend on a whim. Not so much anymore. As men begin to grow old, they become more predictable. Habit becomes comfortable and adventure begins to seem like a chore.

This was certainly true of Mr. Donaldson. Each morning the light in his window overlooking the street switched on at 6:00 AM. Between 23 and 26 minutes later, Mr. Donaldson would emerge from the building main entrance with a paper cup of black coffee in his right hand. He never carried a briefcase or bag, meaning he likely got lunch at the cafeteria at the brewery.

The walk to work always took between 30 and 33 minutes with him discarding his paper cup of coffee in a trash can along the route, usually the same one. He smoked two Winstons on the way and arrived at the brewery at approximately 6:55 each morning, presumably to give him time to clock in for his shift at 7:00.

Each day between 3:07 and 3:15 PM, he emerged from the brewery. He never spoke more than a few words to anyone in the group of men leaving their shift and began to make his way in the direction of a neighborhood saloon where he would drink boilermakers alone for between two and three hours.

There were minor detours, but nothing notable. On Fridays he stopped by a bank to cash his paycheck. On Wednesdays he sometimes worked an extra hour, but for the most part, this was the man. Home, work, saloon, home… repeat.

For two weeks, this pattern never varied, except for Saturday when the light in his apartment didn’t switch on until 7:00 AM. Then sometime before noon, Mr. Donaldson would leave and go to the nearest grocery store where he bought a week’s worth of groceries and a half gallon of whisky. On Sundays, he never left his apartment at all.

It was the banal pattern of a defeated man. A man with no joy, no sense of adventure, and no curiosity. It was the pattern of a man waiting to die.

The man followed Mr. Donaldson on his unhappy procession over the course of a fortnight to ensure he had a full picture of his quarry. He needed to know if he should expect a phone call at a certain time each evening, or if there was a visitor once a week who might surprise him. There was not. Mr. Donaldson was as dull and predictable as he was miserable. If the man felt sympathy for him, there was no evidence for it.

The saloon was a moderate size with tables against a wall, a bar against the other, and pool tables in the back. There was a haze of cigarette smoke in the air. The patronage seemed to be a mix between working class and office folk. It was almost exclusively men. They varied in socioeconomic status, but they were all drinking American lager and brown liquor, nodding along to themselves and the jukebox, and seemed to be avoiding the eventuality of home and whatever awaited them there.

The man sat at the bar on the far end, away from the door. There was a mirrored wall behind the bottles which gave him an unobstructed view of almost the entire establishment without having to turn his head. The bartender approached and asked the man what he was having. If he were in Lyon, he would have enjoyed a nice Bordeaux, but he was not. He was in Milwaukee, and Budweiser it was. He withdrew a local newspaper and began to read an article about the local baseball team’s prospects for the spring.

The bartender brought him his beer and the man paid cash, making sure to tip just the right amount to be completely forgotten before the head bubbles dissipated in his wretched American lager. The man never could understand the contradiction between American taste in food, which was quite good, and the Yankee penchant for terrible beer. He smiled to himself and took a long sip.

As Mr. Donaldson entered the establishment, the man observed that a cocktail waitress saw the the working stiff as he entered. She didn’t seem pleased as she made her way over to the bartender and begged to be assigned a different table. The bartender nodded and the waitress sighed with relief.

If Mr. Donaldson noticed this, he didn’t let on. As he took his seat at a table against the wall, he reached out and tried to touch the waitress’ waist as she quickly walked past him. His attempt at physical contact was repelled by a well practiced twirl and a fake smile. The man, observing in the mirror, smiled to himself out of respect for a fellow well practiced professional doing her job, and took another sip of his wretched beer.

Just then, another waitress, this one easily 100 pounds overweight and no nonsense in her eyes approached Mr. Donaldson’s table. His disappointment was palpable. She asked him, in a screechy Northern Midwest accent, “Boilermaker?”. He nodded.

The man knew Mr. Donaldson’s pattern well. He would drink boilermakers for two or three hours before undertipping and making his way home. Today would be different in only one way.

After a couple of hours and what looked like four boilermakers, Mr. Donaldson paid the fat waitress. He waited for his change, then waited for her to leave to check on another party before he placed two dimes and a nickel on the table, stood, and quickly left.

The man had suffered through two Budweisers, which cost 75 cents each and tipped a quarter for each round, making it an even buck per beer. He placed another quarter on the bar when the bartender was tending to other matters and quietly left behind the oblivious and slightly buzzed Mr. Donaldson.

In the months that followed, if anyone had ever asked, which nobody ever did, nobody would remember the man in the dull blue tie at the end of the bar on whatever day it was, quietly having two Budweisers and reading about the Brewers.

It was getting on dusk on that late October early evening. The American holiday of Halloween was coming up and many of the storefronts had pumpkins and paper cut out ghosts in the windows. The man briefly considered that perhaps he should wait and incorporate a Halloween mask into his plan, but a mask on a man with no identity seemed unnecessary and silly. It was already settled. Today was the day. It was time to speak to Mr. Donaldson.

From a half block back, the man followed Mr. Donaldson as he performed his nightly procession home. The only surprise was when his target stopped for a brief moment to observe the setting sun peeking between smokestacks in the distance. It was a strange diversion from his normal humdrum life, but it didn’t last. A few seconds later, with his head down, Mr. Donaldson continued his walk home.

As he entered the front door to his building, he was followed by a stranger he was sure he’d never seen before. Thinking nothing of it, he made his way up to the third floor as the man trailed behind him. Mr. Donaldson assumed the man must be visiting the widow who lived on the fourth floor. As was so often the case when it came to matters of import, Mr. Donaldson was wrong.

It was an Irish bludgeon, known as a “blackjack”, one of three categories of Irish clubs, the others being a “sap” and a “shillelagh”. The man preferred the blackjack because it fit in the pocket of his overcoat.

It was a strangely beautiful object, a calf skin pouch filled with lead shot and sewn shut with heavy cross-stitched thread. It was small, about half the size of a man’s fist. It was attached to a short, flexible leather handle and was comfortable in the hand, with or without gloves. The calf skin was old and soft and bore a number of scars and creases.

In the middle 1960’s the man accidentally caved in a skull with it by hitting someone too hard in the temple. Now, in his own middle sixties, he didn’t worry about such mishaps. He wasn’t as strong as he was back then, and he had much more experience with the weapon.

As Mr. Donaldson arrived on the third floor and unlocked the door to his apartment, he expected the man to pass behind him and continue up to the fourth floor. The man did not. Just as Mr. Donaldson turned the latch on his door and it began to open, he felt the presence behind him. As he turned to see what was happening, he caught only the blur of a dull blue tie before he felt a great blow directly to his left temple.

Then darkness.

“Hello Lukas”, said the man.

At first Mr. Donaldson couldn’t see anything. His head throbbed and he tried to move his arms and bring his hands to his face, but he couldn’t. He was restrained by some kind of cord.

Over the course of a minute or two the lights and shadows began to take shape. First opaque as if looking through frosted glass, then more defined. He saw that he was in his kitchen, in his apartment. He was confused and in pain. He couldn’t move. Had he come to wake up on another planet it would have been just as surprising.

What was happening? Why couldn’t he move? Why did his head hurt so badly? Wait… was that a voice? Where did it come from? Who was speaking? Did the voice say the name… “Lukas?”

All of a sudden, Mr. Donaldson was very thirsty. He didn’t know how long he had been there, but he felt like he hadn’t had water in a year. His skin was clammy and his shirt was damp, but his mouth was suddenly bone dry. Just then, an overwhelming feeling of dread draped him like a wet wool blanket. It was heavy and inescapable.

“I said, ‘Hello Lukas’. Don’t you want to talk to me?” the voice said.

Mr. Donaldson’s eyes began to focus. First he saw a folded navy blue overcoat on the kitchen counter. Then he moved his eyes to the voice. It was a man, average hight and build in a charcoal suit, a white shirt, and a dull blue tie. There was something familiar about the man, but Mr. Donaldson couldn’t place him in that moment.

Like a lot of immigrants of his generation, Mr. Donaldson had worked hard to lose his accent and fully assimilate when he arrived in America. More than that, almost nobody knew he even was an immigrant. If you met him on the streets of Milwaukee, you would assume he was just another blue collar man in his 60’s still punching a clock and waiting on a half-wage pension and some Social Security.

To everyone who knew him, he was anything but exotic, even to his ex-wife and children. They all believed he had been raised in Minnesota and had a falling out with his family when he was young. Asking about his past usually led to one of his mood swings, followed by a thumping… so his family simply never brought it up.

Mr. Donaldson and the man had this in common. Neither seemed to have a past that they shared with anyone.

Gaining more of his senses, Mr. Donaldson looked at the man and said in a Great Lakes accent, “Who da Christ is Lukas? Who da Christ are you? And what da Christ do you want?”. Even as the blasphemous words dripped out of his mouth, the weight of that name added a thousand pounds to the dread draped over him. It was so oppressive it became hard to breathe.

The man was seated in a chair across from him with his legs crossed tightly over his midsection, in the European fashion. He puffed on a cigarette and ashed it carelessly on the linoleum floor. He shifted in his chair, uncrossed his legs, and leaned forward toward Mr. Donaldson, crossing into his personal space. He exhaled a puff of smoke at the bound and bruised man who instinctively winced.

The man looked into Mr. Donaldson’s eyes, searching for some kind of recognition. “You don’t remember me?” the man interrogated.

“My name isn’t Lukas.” Mr. Donaldson quietly muttered, almost pleading at this point.

The man immediately responded: “Anymore… Your name isn’t Lukas… anymore. Right?”

Then Mr. Donaldson looked into the man’s eyes. It is said that the eyes are the window to a man’s soul. In this case his eyes were a window into a black abyss with no bottom. There was a void in the man in front of him. It hit him like another blow from the blackjack.

He knew. “Dear God. It was him.” And Lukas began to weep.

Defeated, he nodded yes, and in his eyes, the man finally saw what he came for. He saw what he traversed the globe for, and what he killed for, and what he lived for. He saw recognition. Indeed, Lukas was one of a dwindling cadre of men… who knew the man.

The body wasn’t found for over a week. If anyone from the brewery had called, there wasn’t any record of it. They simply scratched his name off the rolls after his third “no call, no show” and assigned someone else to his position. The only one from the saloon who noticed his absence was the pretty waitress, and she was only concerned insomuch that she hoped he had found another place to frequent.

It would have been longer, but the first of the month had come and rent hadn’t been paid. On the third, the superintendent manager knocked on Lukas’ door. Getting no answer, he let himself in.

He knew when he smelled it. As the manager of a low end apartment building in 1980’s Milwaukee, finding the occasional corpse was part of the job. He didn’t scream or run from the building. He simply opened a window and went over to the phone, dialed the non-emergency number for the police, and explained he had a tenant, quite dead in his apartment, and needed it removed.

There was no real police investigation. They didn’t even call a detective to the scene, just a patrol sergeant who was assigned to the district that day. The apartment manager and the cop oversaw the coroner as he went through the formality of declaring the corpse legally dead and removing it. The officer suggested a cleaning service for the smell from whom he received a small kickback, and left the manager to deal with the mess.

If there was an autopsy, it would have found that Lukas died of a heart attack. The microscopic needle mark in his upper neck just above the hairline would have been explained away as would any number of bruises and minor defects Lukas had on his body. The standard toxicity screening would have found alcohol in his system, but not that much, and no other drugs for which they standardly test.

More notable would have been the large welt on his left temple, explained by a fall… common in major cardiac events. However, in this case, no autopsy was ordered. The morgue was backed up and no one was asking, so Lukas’ corpse was signed off on as “natural” and stored in a steel horizontal refrigerator to wait for the next of kin.

For her part, the former Mrs. Donaldson acted quite admirably. When informed of his passing, and being the only one who could be bothered to claim the corpse, she did. Perhaps out of a sense of duty, or simply as an act of humanity, she had the corpse sent to a local funeral home and paid for crematory services.

There wasn’t a funeral by any modern definition. She claimed the earthly remains from the funeral home and went down to Lake Michigan early one morning before the city really woke up. She wore a nice dress and said a nice prayer and scattered his ashes onto the water. It was mid-November and she couldn’t help but notice that the remains looked a little like snow falling onto the surface as the sun rose over the lake.

In the end, she didn’t cry. She didn’t write a eulogy. She didn’t confide in a friend. She simply did her duty and moved on. It’s unknown if she even told her children that their father was dead.

The man had long left Milwaukee. If anyone had asked if they had seen anything out of the ordinary on the day that Lukas died, the last thing anyone would have thought to mention was the man. He was a needle in a stack of needles, without a single trait to tell him apart from the rest. All the while, nobody was looking for needles, or anything else.

At the moment the former Mrs. Donaldson was scattering the former Mr. Donaldson’s ashes over the water in Lake Michigan, the man was seated at a cafe on the Atlantic coast of Spain in the ancient city of Cádiz.

A kind eyed waitress brought him a small plate of Iberian olives and cheese and he ordered a tinto verano. It was siesta in Andalusia and the offices were empty and the streets and cafes were full of people taking part in the Spanish tradition of not working too hard and day drinking. The olives and cheese were gratis, but the tinto was 30 pesetas, a remarkably reasonable price. The man paid the waitress and she immediately forgot he existed. Just then, through the reflection in a store front window from across the street, the man observed Señor Alonso limp into view…

Author’s note: Sometimes I enjoy writing fiction, though I rarely publish it. The idea for this short story came to me after listening to a podcast about the months and years following World War II in places like Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Lithuania, and elsewhere on the former Eastern Front. In the chaos that followed both the Holocaust and the war in the East where tens of millions of all kinds of people were killed, there are large gaps in the historical record. There are thousand year old villages and towns that no longer exist. Dialects were wiped out as were entire subcultures. Such is the case when destruction comes on such an unimaginable scale.

In some cases, there must have been individuals left, individuals who no longer had mortal connections. In the case of some Jewish Holocaust survivors, many emigrated to Palestine. Some also came to the United States and elsewhere. In the case of the other survivors… for the most part, we simply don’t know. Behind the Iron Curtain in the Stalinist post war USSR, we just don’t know what became of them.

Some would have been resistance, some perpetrators, some collaborators, some partisans, some rescuers, some heroes, some villains. Some would have simply been people in the middle of a storm. At the end of a storm as large as the Ostfront, there must have been lone survivors.

One of those survivors might have been a man. Our man. A man with no past, no country, no family. A man with no name. All our man would have had was a list, and the rest of his life.

I hope you enjoyed the story! Let me know if you’d like more like this. I’m off politics for the moment.

—Virgil