Looking for Willie George

I took the F train over the Brooklyn Bridge, thinking of Hart Crane, Walt Whitman and mostly of an old girlfriend (of her sweet voice) who’d lived on Prospect Park West. Screw my whole quest to find Willie George! He was just an old friend, after all, and would finding him really change anything anyway? Even if the brother shocked me by producing him in Park Slope, I would still be wedded to my life in the Midwest rather than to Isabella, the woman I loved.

When I walked into the bar, a tall black man immediately approached me. “How are you Professor?” he asked extending his hand. “I am Jeremiah George, your friend Willie’s brother. How are you this evening, man?”

I gathered right away that he was not really Willie’s brother. Not only did he not look like one bit like my old friend, his accent was different as well — the short ‘a’ of man was more like an “o,’ more open and Jamaican than Willie’s. “Can I buy you a drink, Jeremiah?”

“You can indeed, sir.” Or maybe more like an African American man pretending to be Jamaican? How was I going to escape this guy? Was trying to scam me somehow?

“Where does your brother Willie live these days?”

“Well that’s what I was meaning to tell you, sir, my brother Willie has passed for three years now.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“He was living in Brazil at the time. Heart attack took him away from us. I brought a picture of him that he sent from Rio — just before he passed.” He fumbled in his jacket for a photo, and, indeed it was not my old friend!

“That’s not the man I knew.”

Jeremiah George seemed disappointed. “Are you sure?”

I nodded, suddenly aware of the vastness of the grief in his eyes. “Your brother looks just like you, Jeremiah. Very smart.”

“We were twins.” I felt guilty thinking that he’d wanted to scam me, when he was only missing his closest friend.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I said, putting my arm around him awkwardly for a second. “That’s got to be very hard.”

I spent two hours at that bar, hearing stories about these two brothers and buying Jeremiah George drinks. I also told him stories about my Willie George, at Jeremiah’s urging. We parted with a handshake and he wished me luck with my other lead.

But the next morning the woman’s husband returned my call and he was not the right Willie George either. I flew back to Wisconsin the next morning.

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