Quiet Flows the Don

I needed the services of an attorney, and lacking recommendations I searched the telephone directory and picked one whose offices were located at Consultation Lane, which turned out to be a cul de sac on the edge of the Financial District.   There, in the client waiting room,  I met Don who told me he did investigative work for the attorneys in the office.  He hailed from Canada and was a traveler and writer of articles which had been published in several magazines, including National Geographic.  My legal matter was straightforward and didn't require Don's services, but we became friends and I soon thereafter introduced him to our gang of rebels and outcasts where he fit right in.

Don drank Jim Beam, always in moderation, smoked English cigarettes, Cuban cigars, when he could get them, and a pipe that he had inherited from his grandfather (he said), all of it in moderation as well.   He told us that he took his life's motto from the Russian novel by Mikhail Sholokhov titled Quiet Flows the Don.

And he did flow quietly. But his stories didn't. Don told us stories of his travels, adventures from Alaska to Patagonia and everywhere in between.  I had a chance to read his articles and hear his tales.  While written (and told) in a journalistic style fit for mainstream newspapers and magazines,  almost all contained mysteries, mystical events, unexplained phenomena, and borderline supernatural occurrences.

I don't remember much of it, all this took place years ago, and I don't know what happened to Don.  One day he just disappeared.   The law office didn't know where he went, and people who knew him told us conflicting tales, one that he ended up in an insane asylum in Chicago, another that he settled on a ranch somewhere in Canada.

Shortly before he left, he visited my pad bringing a fifth of bourbon, and we drank and smoked weed, listened to music, when I asked him about his stories.  I had always wondered how so many incidents, so many strange things, could have all happened to one man.   He told me. Pointing to his head, he said: "Made it up, brother."