Butch exited the elevator to the CCU and walked briskly down the hall; his eyes open wide with anxious concern. He got the call from Danny just as he was leaving the office and reassured his friend that he wouldn’t be alone during this time. As he turned the corner near the nurse’s station, he looked down the long hall and saw Monica, Holly, and Terri standing next to the vending machines, and Danny, still in his work clothes, was further down the hall, talking with Sarah’s doctor.
Butch paced from one side to the other as Sarah’s physician, Dr. Schropture, consoled Danny with a pat on his shoulder and shook his hand before entering another room.
He turned to face Butch, his face clad in loving sympathy and walked wearily toward him. The two men grasped each other in a strong embrace. “How’s she doin’?” Butch whispered in his ear. They broke their hug as Danny choked on his words.
“She has breast cancer. Both breasts.” He felt his head go light and his knees trembled as the words left his mouth. “It’s spread to her liver, lungs, and lymph nodes. She’s in a coma…” Danny’s body suddenly convulsed as he covered his face, bent over, and wept.
Butch softly rubbed his friend’s back, his own mind and heart set awhirl as he related Danny’s pain to his upon the passing of Chester.
Danny quickly straightened up to finish the explanation of the diagnosis. “Dr. Schropture thinks there’s a possibility for her to wake up, but after that, she maybe has only two to three weeks.”
“I’m sorry!” Butch offered. “If you want anything, anything, you let me know. You say it and it’s done. Okay?”
“Thanks,” Danny squeaked, wiping his nose on his arm and hands.
“You gonna stay the night? Want me to stay?” Butch looked behind him and motioned for Sarah’s friends to come see their ailing friend. “I can ask Terri or Monica to stay. I can go ’n get—”
“Nah!” Danny interrupted graciously. “I’m gonna stay. I’ll sleep in the chair or sump’n. Thanks, though.”
“Well, you at least gotta get cleaned up,” Butch stated with a smirk and nudge as he insulted Danny. “You stink! You want me to go back ’n git ya some clean clothes?”
“No,” Danny answered, reaching back to grab his wallet. “Jus’ go to, uh, the uh…what’s around here?” he inquired, still sniffing, grabbing a handful of cash.
“I don’t want your money!” Butch jokingly exclaimed, pushing Danny’s money-filled hand away from him. “I’ll find you something.”
“What ya got there?” Danny asked as he reluctantly tucked away his wallet in his back pocket.
“What? This?” Butch answered sarcastically, reaching under his arm to expose Danny’s childhood book. “Oh, this belongs to a very dear friend of mine. He gave it to me to hold for a while.”
Danny, slightly amused, smiled as more tears filled his eyes at the thought of his father and his voice.
“His daddy…” Butch continued explaining, thumbing through the pages, “…used to read it to him when he was a boy an’ he gave it to me to read to my daddy.” He closed the book and extended his arm. “And I was thinkin’ that maybe you could use it right now.”
Danny was so overcome with regret and pain that he lunged into Butch, clutching him tightly.
“Is this the end?” Butch softly in Danny’s ear. “Do you know this?”
Danny clenched his eyes shut, but offered no answer.
Trying to be strong and not to show his pain, Butch broke away to wipe his eyes and nose. Danny looked down the hall and noticed that Joey had now joined Sarah’s three waiting friends. Butch grabbed his friend by the back of the neck and offered him a tight-lipped smile and small nod before departing into the stairwell.
With the exception of using the restroom or the walk-in shower, Danny remained at his mother’s side for the next five days, constantly talking and reading to her. Monica and Holly went by the Albright house, as well as their own homes, and brought picture albums for Danny to describe to her. Each night the CCU head nurse made sure that he had fresh sheets and a pillow for the extra bed in the room.
All day long and late into the evening he read to her, her eyes remaining closed and lying perfectly still as he spoke. The only interruption to Danny’s narrations was the hourly check of Sarah’s vitals by the CCU staff, quickly recording their findings and departing as quietly as possible. As he read the stories of his beloved Texas Rangers, the soft beep of Sarah’s heart monitor continually reminded him of his mother’s imminent demise.
On the sixth day, Danny finished the last story. He sat in the armchair next to the semi-upright hospital bed, closed the book, and looked at his mother. He then stood and took a few steps to the window and pulled the chord to spread the vertical blinds wide open. The room was immediately awash with the fuchsia and burnt orange rays of the setting sun. “Momma?” he called out, still watching the sky. “I wanted to tell you a few things.”
Standing in front of the window, he turned to his dying mother and began his farewell. “I want you to know that you and I are okay with each other, and I’m sorry I left you.” The heat monitor continued with its beeping. “I left because I felt like you didn’t have any faith in me. And that’s okay. I know it was hard. It was hard for both of us. But if you can hear me, I’m sorry.” As he confessed his apology, pictures of his father lying in his casket flashed through his mind, making it all the more difficult for him to speak. “And I hope that you can forgive me,” he squeaked, trying to retain some composure. “And that I love you!” Sarah’s right index finger twitched slightly as he continued. “I have been so happy with you. Can you hear me?”
Danny lowered the bed rail and pulled his chair up close to hold Sarah’s hand. “You ’n Daddy were such a tremendous blessing in my life…and I know your heart’s been hurtin’ since he’s been gone.” Wiping away his tears, he choked as he stated, “I know you’re hurtin’ inside, and you’re sick of being sick. So…” he covered his mouth and tried to suppress his whimpering, breathing through his nose, “…I want you to know that if you’re ready to go, it’s okay. I’m all right and everything between you and me is all right.” He held her hand to his cheek. “You don’t need to be afraid or afraid for me, or be in pain anymore. You ’n Daddy are gonna be with each other. So if you want to, you can let go now.”
He gazed lovingly upon his mother. Sarah’s heart monitor almost immediately showed a strong surge in her beats per minute. The needles recording her brain activity began to flail from side to side and her fingers tenderly flexed and brushed his cheek. She slightly bent her knee as the beeping of the heart monitor increased. Her eyes suddenly fluttered open and her lips parted. She wearily turned her head toward Danny, blinked slowly, and softly whispered, “Hey, Superman!”
“Hey, Momma!” he said, trying to smile through his pain.
Sarah’s smile broadened as she once again closed her eyes. The beeps of her heart monitor then started to slow themselves down as the wide strikes of the colored wands on the brain monitor diminished. All but in vain, Danny tried to hold back a torrent of emotions and began to wail loudly, clutching his mother’s hand. The beeps of the heart monitor, like that of the tolling of the bells, grew further and further apart until finally, only one long hum resonated.
He buried his head into the mattress next to his mother’s side and screamed with grief. As he mourned, Dr. Schropture and the nurses rushed in to assist with the resuscitation. With his head still down, Danny raised his arm and held out his hand, motioning for them to stop. Respectfully, Dr. Schropture stepped quietly to the heart monitor, turned both it and the brain scanner off, and then marked the official time of Sarah’s passing at eleven minutes after 7 p.m. He and the nurses exited the room and left Danny alone with his mother. The sun disappeared below the horizon.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
B utch found he was growing ever more concerned with Danny’s behavior, or lack thereof, and overall well-being. Danny had yet to return any of his calls since Sarah’s serv
ices four weeks earlier and, upon each unannounced visit to the Albright farm, the house would always be dark with the doors and windows locked.
Butch pulled up to the Albright home to find his luck had finally turned around as Danny was sitting on the porch in his jeans but wearing no shirt. He appeared dirty, as if he’d been working outside. Shiner beer bottles were strewn across the length of the porch fence rail. “‘Scuse me? I’m in need of some help,” Butch stated as he exited the car.
Danny remained silent with a bottle in his hand and his feet propped up on a cooler.
“Could you direct me to the residence of one Danny Lee Albright?” he asked sarcastically and pulled a tiny spiral notepad out of his pocket as if ascertaining valuable information from a witness.
Danny didn’t see the humor and offered no response.
“He supposedly lives around here,” Butch commented as he moseyed up the porch steps and reached for a beer, forcing Danny’s legs off the cooler. “You know him?” He raised his left thigh to rest on the rail. “Sometimes refers to himself as uh…” he stammered, looking back at his notes, “…’Superman’?”
Danny surrendered a slight smirk and a slow nod of his head.
“Well, I’ll be, but if you don’t look like ’is spittin’ image!” Butch admitted strongly. “Been calling,” he stated quasi-gruffly, taking a swallow of beer. “Why ain’t ya returning my calls?”
“Busy,” Danny replied flatly.
“Ah, busy. So are they gone yet?”
“Who?”
“Your memories,” Butch answered almost jovially. “Fears, anger, sadness, regrets. They all gone?”
“Not hardly.”
“I’m sorry.” Butch nodded. “Sorry my daddy’s gone, sorry your daddy’s gone, your girlfriend’s gone… I’m sorry your mother’s gone. I know she was good to ya. But none of this is your fault and you can’t bring her back.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Keep living,” Butch said. “I remember a time when you acted this very same way. I told you then and I’ll tell you now: ‘Whatever you got, you got it.’ It doesn’t appear to be leaving and you can’t keep running away.” Again, he was answered with silence. In a display of support and encouragement, he stood up, clenched his fists, and loudly said, “Get up off your butt and go do something about it! Come on now! I’m still here to help.”
“Okay, Mr. Psychoanalyst,” Danny retorted. “How do you propose to help?”
“Well.” he leaned back on the rail. “First and foremost, I think it’d be good for the both of us if you came to live with me in town for a while.”
Danny smiled in silent disbelief at the idea. “You want me to be your roommate?”
“Yeah!” Butch stepped over the cooler to take the chair next to Danny. “I mean, you and me been through quite a bit this past year, right?”
Danny nodded in agreement, sipping slowly from his beer as Butch continued with his proposal.
“We both lost one of our parents, I’d like the company, you’re all alone, you don’t go and visit anyone. I ain’ never had a son, you ain’t had a daddy for a long time, and…you’re my friend!”
Danny’s smile broadened as he toasted his friend.
“Top notch, huh?” Butch exclaimed proudly of his spiel, taking a deep swallow of his beer.
“So…when did you want to have this slumber party?”
It was the same apartment he’d lived in since his placement with the Texas DPS in 1978. Danny followed Butch through the loud oral impromptu tour from room to room. “All right, all right, all right!” he announced, much like a circus ringleader. “Your new home!” He clasped his hands together loudly and briskly rubbed his palms together. “We got your satellite TV! Anything you need is right around these few blocks.” He pointed out the windows. “We got groceries, theater, auto parts…”
As he listened, and with his belongings in one duffle bag still slung on his shoulder, Danny walked about the den area, looking at Butch’s life history in photos, newspaper articles, diplomas, awards, and certificates.
“The mall is about seven blocks down,” Butch continued. “The post office is on the street behind me.” He stopped abruptly and darted into the kitchen. He quickly returned with two opened Shiner Bocks and handed one to Danny, exclaiming, “Here we go! Here we go!” They were standing in the middle of the den when Butch offered up a toast. “To our new lives!”
“New lives!” Danny repeated with a clink of the bottle necks.
Butch acted like a teenage schoolgirl, all giddy with anticipation. “Ya hungry? I feel like celebrating!” Then he turned to go back to the kitchen.
“I can eat!” Danny hollered. His eyes were drawn to Butch’s desk and the opened files and pictures strewn about.
“There’s a place down the street that’s got great wings and onion rings,” Butch shouted with his head still inside the fridge.
“Sure. Always got room for wings. Can’t go wrong with wings!” Danny volleyed. He looked over the stack of black-and-white photos while Butch continued describing the restaurant’s amenities.
“They got shuffle board, too… Ziegenbock on tap.”
Danny pulled one thick file from the stack with several different colors of highlight tape sticking out of it. He tilted the file tab sideways and hollered back over his shoulder, “Hey, this, uh, ‘foursome’ file… What’s this?”
Butch began answering as he approached Danny and the desk. “That’s the hitchhiker. You know, the gunshot wound to the head?”
“Oh, yeah!” Danny remembered. “Okay…okay.”
“Is this all you got?” Butch asked, slightly tugging on the duffle bag shoulder strap. “No furniture, clothes, kitchen stuff?”
“This is just what I brought back with me. The rest of my junk is back at the apartment. I was gonna get it later but never got around to it.” He opened the file to look at the pictures. “Besides, I didn’t know if I was gon’ stay or not, so Gary and Charlotte said I could keep it there, seein’ as how they still haven’t sold the house.”
“Well, I’m off the day after tomorrow. We can go and get it,” Butch suggested, watching Danny as he concentrated on each individual picture.
“Yeah, sure,” he distantly confirmed, “day after tomorrow.”
“Can you see anything when they’re dead? Like touch ’em or see a picture? You know, some psychics—”
“I’m not a psychic. I don’t know the winning lottery numbers. There are no aliens coming and I don’t know where Elvis is,” Danny replied sarcastically, tilting his head back. “And, no, I can’t see anything from a picture or someone who’s already dead.”
“So it’s just when someone’s alive, right?”
“Yup! Let’s celebrate. I’m hungry!” Danny stated flatly, closing the file. A small black-and-white photo accidentally dropped out of the “foursome” file as he tossed it on the desk. While bending down to pick it up, he glanced at the girl in the picture and inquired, “Hey! Who’s this?”
“That’s one of the girls that was murdered,” Butch answered, taking the photo from Danny.
“Really?” Danny asked, yanking it out of his Butch’s hand and closely examined examining her face.
“I’m in the process of finishing some reports right now so I can finally close the case.”
“Man! She’s cute!” Danny admitted then handed the picture back to Butch. “She almost looks like Brooke!”
“Uh-huh,” Butch agreed unsteadily, still looking at the photo. He started sorting through the hundreds of pictures stored in his mind until he finally arrived at the memory of Brooke’s decapitated body in the back seat of a car. “Hey, before we go, I wanna pick sump’n up at the station to look at later tonight. Ya mind?”
BEHIND THE EIGHT BALL
B utch unlocked and pulled open the heavy steel sliding door of the evidence archives at the DPS station. Row after row of metal shelves were stacked with file and evidence boxes, marked alphanumeric
ally by year, dating as far back as the 1930s. Danny struggled to follow Butch with an awkwardly rolling metal staircase. He moved about the warehouse quickly, pulling out boxes and briskly thumbing through the files.
Not ten minutes into the scavenger hunt, Butch said, “You can leave the stairs here.”
“That’s it?” Danny asked, panting from his workout.
“That’s it,” he confirmed as he took the stack of files from Danny.
The two men exited the evidence room with a deep, hollow slam of the metal door.
Twenty minutes later, the duo were playing pool and, as usual, drinking cold Shiner Bock. Danny put almost ten dollars in the CD juke box, playing almost every song in the Doors and Jimi Hendrix library. The waitress soon delivered a platter of sixty hot, crispy chicken wings with all the trimmings. In no time at all, the table transformed into a literal pigsty of napkins, ranch dressing cups, and chicken bones. An hour later, more than ten empty bottles were lined up where the table meets the partition wall.
As Butch prepared to sink his fifteen ball, Jim Morrison crooned “Riders on the Storm,” while Danny thumbed through the remaining “foursome” files.
“So did that guy murder all these girls?” he asked amazedly.
With a grunt of disgust, Butch watched as his fifteen ball bounced off the corner of the side pocket bumper. “Agh! Yer up. Solids,” he stated, then took a sip of his beer. “Great life, huh? Just go ’round shootin’ people whenever you want?”
Danny walked to the other end of the table and squatted down to look over the balls on the table. “Shot ’em all?” he asked, knocking down the three ball.
“Yep, one shot to the left side of the chest.”
Danny paused, lowered his cue, then leaned over the table and drew a bead on the four ball. “Not to change the subject, but…” he said as he deftly cut the four ball to the corner pocket, “…did ya’ll ever find that guy, oh, what was his name…the guy who ran into my daddy’s car?”
The Folds Page 24