By John Jeffire

I knew I was losing my mind so I did crosswords and other things to keep me from losing my mind. Wordle, the number thing, what’s it called, Sudoku, computer solitaire, anything.  But it wasn’t helping. I was losing it, forgetting everything, where I put the keys, did I take Scotty on his walk yet, paying the HOA fee, where I parked the car at Home Depot.  One year from retirement, the kids all grown and gone, and here I was losing my damn mind.

Maybe it was the prostate. They were going to kill it. Or part of it or something. The damn thing was twice the size it should be and I couldn’t go half the time or it took twenty damn minutes for a couple dribbles. Next Tuesday, the doctor was going to go in through my leg and run a wire or something into the prostate and plug up the vein (or was it the artery?) going into the prostate and choke it out, no blood to it, or part of it, and it would die and shrink and I would be able to piss again. Janet, my wife Janet, said not to worry about it, people had stuff done to their prostate all the time, but how did she know it wasn’t cancer or something else?

“I’m having trouble peeing,” I told Janet, my wife Janet, a couple months ago.

“So what do you want me to do about it?” she answered. 

I had a lot on my mind.

And I argued.  Mostly with Janet.  Janet knew I was losing it and she just kept pushing me.  When you’re losing it you don’t like it thrown up in your face that you’re losing it.  Like the cucumbers.  Steve the neighbor guy brought them over from his garden.  So one afternoon I cut us up a cucumber, got us some salt, a couple drinks, sat everything out on the back patio.  You know, a snack, something easy, something good for you.  Something to eat together. Something to not argue about.

“You like the cucumber?” I asked.

“What kind are they?”

“They’re from Steve’s garden.”

“That’s not what I asked.  What kind are they?”

“I don’t know, a regular cucumber. The garden kind.”

“Garden kind isn’t a kind.  There’s English, Persian, Armenian, pickling and slicing, lemon…”

She started again.  Why not just eat the damn cucumber like a normal person?  Why the arguing?  Making it a federal case?

“It’s just a cucumber from Steve’s garden.”

“I know that.  You said that.  You can’t answer a simple question anymore.”

“Well, you didn’t answer my question.  Do you like it?  Does it taste good?  You’re eating it.  It seems like you like it.”  I didn’t want to talk about types of cucumbers.  I just wanted to drink my drink and eat the cucumber slices and not think about things like the names of different cucumbers or prostates or veins or arteries.

“I’d like it better if I knew what kind it was.”  Janet had her sunglasses on so I couldn’t tell what she was looking at, but her head was turned toward the neighbor’s backyard, their patio, which had one of the electric awning things. “If you don’t know what kind then you don’t know.  I bet he told you and you just forgot.  You forget everything.  I mean, I think you’re right, I think you really are losing your mind.  Anyway, I think it’s a pickling cucumber.”

Maybe Steve told me that, the right name of the cucumber.  Maybe he didn’t.  What I didn’t forget was that I having trouble pissing and I was forgetting everything.  I knew that.  But I solved the Wordle for the day that morning. Usually I was about 50-50 with Wordle but I bet at least a million people didn’t solve the Wordle that morning and it didn’t mean they were losing their minds.

“You remember you said you’d get us an awning like that?”

She pointed at the neighbor’s patio, the electric awning thing.  I did remember saying that.  About a month ago.  That I’d like to get one of those electric awning things, just hit a button and instant shade.  Janet, my wife Janet, she was right, I did say that, and I remembered that I said it.  But I just bought a set of tires for the car and paid Scotty’s vet bill.  Money was tight.

“Yeah, I remember that.”

I took a long drink. If I drank enough, would I be able to pee? I looked at the slices of cucumber.  A cucumber is a cucumber. If you like how it tastes then who cares what the name of it is.  You didn’t have to remember a damn thing to know if you liked it or not.  Right now, right here, right at this second, if you liked it, you could call it anything.  A tire.  An awning. Steve or Scotty or Janet or prostate or whatever.  

Anything.

Yeah, I was losing it.  So what.  Throwing it in my damn face wouldn’t change that. And yes, my prostate was the size of a baseball. Me, I liked the cucumbers Steve gave us.  They didn’t need some fancy name besides cucumber.  I looked over at the awning thing.  The neighbors, two mid-sixty-somethings, the Sirolis, that was their name or something like that, Italian sounding, I know their name but just couldn’t recall it off the top of my head, they waved to us and hit the switch that unfurled their awning. 

I waved back. 

So did Janet. 

I could feel I had to pee.

I picked up the fattest slice on the plate.  The awning was now fully out and the humming of its little motor gone. The neighbors sat there smiling at us. Was Mr. Siroli’s prostate the size of a baseball? He had the fancy awning and probably more money than I had, but maybe he couldn’t piss either. I hit my cucumber slice with some salt.  I held it up, bit into it, crunched it extra hard, extra loud, loud enough for Janet, my wife Janet, and the neighbors—the Sirolis or the whatevers—judging me in the shade under their fancy awning.

*   *   *

John Jeffire was born in Detroit.  In 2005, his novel Motown Burning was named Grand Prize Winner in the Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition and in 2007 it won a Gold Medal for Regional Fiction in the Independent Publishing Awards.  Speaking of Motown Burning, former chair of the Pulitzer Jury Philip F. O’Connor said, “It works. I don’t often say that, but it has a drive and integrity that gives it credible life….I find a novel with heart.” In 2009, Andra Milacca included Motown Burning in her list of “Six Savory Novels Set in Detroit” along with works by Elmore Leonard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jeffrey Eugenides.  His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, was nominated for a Michigan Notable Book Award in 2009.  Former U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine called the book “a terrific one for our city.”  His short story “Boss” appeared in Coolest American Stories 2022, which won the International Book Awards Prize for Fiction Anthologies.  In 2022, his novel River Rouge won the American Writing Awards for Legacy Fiction, while the manuscript for his novel Detroit South won the 2025 Claymore Award for Literary Fiction.