It’d been weeks since the last time old man Ulysses left his house. The last time he was seen, he pushed along a ridiculous line of shopping carts stuffed with half-open bags. Every few steps an item would drop, clank, and roll along the sidewalk. They were swiftly picked up and carried by Jack, a cheerful mongrel that wagged his tail alongside his master as he went on and on about stocking up supplies before his next trip; about feeding what was left of his crew for the remainder of his journey back home.
No one was quite sure what old man Ulysses did. It was thought that he was a businessman, back when businessmen were the only people who could afford to travel the world, but the inconsistency and absurdity of his recollections ultimately put an end to that rumor. The consensus was that he was just an old man. His identity was a mystery too, but he went by Ulysses for as long as the town can remember. The consensus was that the old man settled on his name because Ahab, Illyich, Candide, and all other literary heroes were already taken.
It’d been months since the last incident. The last major one at least. Every few months he would be seen scuttling across town, sneaking behind trees and light posts to hide from some mystical creature only he could see. The first time —when he cursed Neptune as he was dragged by a storm and drowned in the middle of the sidewalk— caused some fuss because parents didn’t want their kids speaking of nymphs and goddesses that they could not pronounce. Sometimes, their children would play along, sliding under the supposed tentacles and jumping away from the waves that crashed against the imaginary ship. But eventually, they grew up and got new toys before the old man ever reached Ithaca. And even the sympathy of the gentle, educated people who pointed him towards upstate New York was quickly exhausted as the old man went back to his old ways day after day.
Over time, the incidents became a sort of holiday: an event the neighborhood eagerly expected every few months until they faded into one more block in their schedule that was adequately ignored. The next generations were taught by their parents to upkeep the habit of living their own lives and no other kid was ever seen ducking and dodging invisible monsters.
Once, Ulysses spent an entire week sleeping under a bridge. When the sun or the ongoing traffic above his head woke him up, the old man teared up and etched two more tally marks on the concrete wall, lamenting that two more of his sailors had been eaten. When the man got tired of counting the days and the deaths, he painstakingly wrote every letter of the sentence “done by Nobody” into one of the columns, before stabbing a tall column dead center with his walking cane, right in the eye of the cyclops that kept him and his companions trapped. Ulysses limped away from the scene victoriously a few minutes before rush hour and shared a victory breakfast with Jack who had been patiently wagging his tail by his master’s front door. The wind and the Tuesday morning garbage truck made short of work of his bundle of sticks and scratch marks.
It’d been years since Ulysses’s brain stopped being what he claimed it used to be. In his few moments of lucidity, he blamed and cursed whoever he was still able to name. And surely one of them is to blame. Every neighbor had spent at least one futile night attempting to put Ulysses to bed, before their patience ran out and they finally set him free to continue his own journey back home. His former friends said he would always reminisce his glory days, before Troy. Now, only Jack would listen to him, over the few minutes he was fed by the old man’s stoop. But he went on and on about his glory days when his intellect was greater than any other mortal, back when he talked to the gods. Now, his memory was in shambles and the only thread stringing his thoughts together was a strong desire to return. He did not know exactly where or when he wanted to be, but he knew that it was not there nor then.
Now, it was the sixth night since old man Ulysses last got up from his deathbed —that is, the same bed he had slept in for his entire life. And like in the good old days, the latest of his antics caused some minor inconvenience to his next-door neighbor. He was awakened by a starving Jack scratching pacing up and down the curb as his makeshift master hadn’t fed him in days. The gods must have warned the old man that his adventures were coming to an end, as he stocked up his ship for himself and what small crew he had left. During his last days, Ulysses was visited by his dead mother, whom he had not seen in years. Soon after, his comrades, far past their fighting years came by the old man’s house to strengthen his soul. He was as delusional and determined to finally prove that he was, in fact, the divine Ulysses as he’d ever been.
As the old man grew sicker the visits shapeshifted into mermaids. Their voices called him and Ulysses was struck by great temptation. He considered jumping into the sea, but his desire to reach Ithaca bound him to his shaky ship. That is, he tied himself to his bed to hear the song of his own thoughts. Ulysses spent his last days reliving his first. The old man dreamed of steering his ship once more, of commanding his men into the battlefield. He remembered the park where his childhood friends would duck and dodge arrows, swords, and spears. He remembered the war, Troy, Achilles, and Hector, and the times when the gods talked to him. He remembered running back exhausted to his mother. He remembered home.
Ulysses thought that the increasingly loud knocks he heard coming from his door were his last storm. The sight of Ithaca brought a smile to his face, but his mission was not yet completed. The doctor, nurses, and curious neighbors eventually broke in, followed shyly by Jack. The man untied himself and jumped out of bed in joy —he finally reached the shore. In a final act of defiance, the man held his cane by one end and stepped on it halfway down its length as though he was stringing a bow. The man reached for an arrow from his imaginary quiver and shot it at the wall directly in front of him. He saw the arrow burrow itself between the bricks.
“See? I am, in fact, the divine Ulysses!”
The old man fell flat on his back; eyes closed and a childlike grin on his face. The doctors and nurses wrote “Divine Ulysses” alongside a few other notes, checked the time, and struggled to find the old man’s heartbeat. The neighbors moved on with their days. Jack snuck himself next to Ulysses and carefully placed his head on his master’s chest with his tail snuggled around himself, and the two peacefully rested.