Just Shelby

by Brooklyn James

  “My father’s mother. She’s with my mom right now. Nursing her back to I don’t know what.”

  “The Hatfields and McCoys started feuding over a hog,” Pop wheezes. “You’re telling me the Lynn-Walker feud ends over a chicken?” He laughs, sarcastically. Another coughing fit ensues.

  Shut the hell up, Pop! I stick my hand in my jacket pocket, fingers grazing over the secret note square from the Bootleg guitar: ’Til it swallows me whole, pulls me under. They did pull Mason’s body from the river.

  Maybe Mason figured it out. That he didn’t have it all. That Shelby was biologically Johnny’s. But he wrote the note long before he died, before he sold the guitar, years ago. Right? I mean, there is no way he knew how he would die. Unless…

  I sit in the waiting room, chewing my fingernails and pretending to read a magazine.

  I don’t have much experience with hospitals. My impression of this hospital is that it has much in common with the library. It meets the needs of the community. It has its own unique smell. People huddle, conversing in hushed voices. Reading material abound. There is even an information desk.

  But as I watch the hustle and bustle—doctors, nurses, equipment rolling, concerned family members ushered here and there—it’s mostly like life. Everything happens around me.

  I hear Ace’s voice before I see him. His mom briskly escorting him down the long corridor and into the waiting room. Apparently he didn’t get the “hush” memo.

  “Why does everything have to be so damn difficult with him?” Ace thumps a stack of magazines on an end table, sending them flying into the corner.

  “This isn’t some backwoods barn, son,” his mom references the unsavory location of the hollow fights. Fights that he hasn’t participated in in a month. Fights that I hoped he was done with, until I see him in moments like these. “Get it together or get out.” She wields her arm—pointed index finger and all—toward the door.

  He paces, blinking heavily like a frog swallowing prey, until anger is devoured whole. Picking up the magazines, he stacks them perfectly on the end table, flawless in delivering some form of control.

  “He just needs some time,” his mom soothes.

  “He needs a blood transfusion.”

  “And he’ll get one. As soon as he calms down and warms up to the idea.”

  “You heard him, Mom. He’s not gonna let them put some ‘stranger’s blood’ in his body.” Ace rubs his thumb over the Band-Aid on his middle finger where they pricked it to test for compatibility.

  “He has no choice, bub. You nor I can do it.” She tosses her head to the side, tossing out of her left eye thick waves and curls from a tapered pixie cut. “I could’ve saved you the poke. I know what type of blood you have. A-positive, the same as mine.”

  “We’re family…‘blood,’ for Christ’s sake. How can mine not be right for Pop. Technically, I’m half him, right?” Ace’s frustration comes not from doubt but from shame that he cannot be the one to give his father what he needs.

  “Well, not exactly,” his mom starts before quickly clarifying, “I mean, yes, you are his! But blood is a little more complicated than that. There are antigens and alleles. There are genotypes—alleles that you inherit. And then there are phenotypes—what you, as an individual, actually express. There are antibodies present in blood which make some types incompatible. There is the Rh factor.”

  Ace whirls his hands in front of his chest, signaling the short of the long, not the full hematology lecture.

  “Okay, okay. Your father’s blood is type O-negative. You and I are type A-positive. His blood would produce antibodies to our blood due to the varying Rh factors. Basically, his blood would view our blood as an invader and attack it. That’s an unwanted reaction. It can be severe and even life-threatening. Now, you or I could receive blood from him no problem because type A-positive blood does not produce antibodies to O-negative blood,” the nurse in her cannot help from elaborating.

  “Well, that’s fucked up,” Ace says.

  His cheeks do not blush, but mine do for him. He talks like that in front of his mother?

  She laughs at his honesty and agrees, “Yes, bub, it is.”

  “So what type is compatible with his?”

  “O-negative,” I say, before realizing I actually said it out loud.

  Their heads turn in my direction, as if they just remembered I was here. Ace’s eyes say I should have known you would know that. His mother’s say how do you know that?

  “I donated last year at the school blood drive.” It was Miss Patterson’s idea. And during my twenty minutes of donating and twenty minutes of rest thereafter, I read every piece of literature the Red Cross has on blood typing. “I have O-negative blood.” I shrug. “It wouldn’t be a total stranger’s. He can have it if he wants it.”

  “No, he can’t” and “You would do that?” Ace and his mom say simultaneously.

  “Why not.” I answer them both.

  “It’s not your problem. You’re a runner. You need your blood. I mean, what about your meets?” Like the figure eights his pacing legs trace on the tile floor, Ace circles back to his instinct. “No. You’re not gonna do that.”

  “It’s not that big a deal. Really, it didn’t even affect me last year.” Other than the needle in my arm, it was painless.

  “She’s right, bub. Blood volume—plasma—is replaced twenty-four to forty-eight hours after donating. However…” her short, upturned nose scrunches beneath wincing eyes “…it can take up to three weeks for the red blood cells to fully recover. Hemoglobin in the RBCs transfers oxygen from your lungs to your muscles, a pivotal mechanism for any runner. That could affect your performance, Shelby.”

  “Three weeks. Just in time for regionals,” I calculate. “The state meet is another week out. I’m good with that.” If it does bring my times down a little initially, it might be exciting to watch them trend up. An interesting experiment in curbing the dreaded runner’s plateau, maybe I’ll peak at state. So long as I peak…

  “No. Ain’t happenin’.” Ace shakes his head, steely eyes filled with conviction.

  “Okay. Let’s just talk this through.” His mom presses the fingertips of one hand into the fingertips of the other hand, making a steeple.

  I read in a magazine in the library at school that politicians use the “hand steeple” to emanate confidence and control, to convince an audience, basically.

  “There is no rush here. Your father’s anemia is one of chronic disease—black lung. He’s likely had it for a while now. It’s not acute, not a life or death situation. We have time. What if we just present the offer to him. Give him time to think about it. Giving Shelby time to think about it too. Then we go from there.”

  That sounds reasonable to me, but Ace smacks the stack of magazines against the wall again as he walks out.

  I have half a mind to call Johnny and tell him to get his ass home for a paternity test. If he is Shelby’s biological father, maybe he could talk her out of it.

  Then again, she is eighteen.

  “Can I help you with something?” a young ER nurse asks suspiciously, as I stand in the hallway outside the drawn curtain of Pop’s room.

  “No, ma’am.” I turn on the manners. “Just checking on my father.”

  “For safety reasons, we like to keep the hall clear. Maybe you could wait in the waiting room.”

  “And miss this?” I fall back on charm, forcing my expression from circumspect to admiring son and gesturing at the tiny slit in the curtain. Mom stands at the side of Pop’s bed. “This never happens. They’re divorced.”

  “Ohhh,” she whispers. Giving my shoulder a condolence pat, she looks up and over hers at me with big doe eyes. “Maybe you could join them…in the room.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same.” I sniff and wipe at tears that aren’t there, shamelessly playing my last card—the sympathy card. “If I was in there, they’d focus on me and not each other. This is the closest I’ll get to seeing them together.”


  “My parents are divorced too.” She sniffs back real tears. “If anybody gives you any grief, you tell them to find me.” She gives my shoulder one more pat before carrying on with her duties.

  If she were as tall as I am, she would’ve seen Shelby sitting in a chair between Mom and Pop.

  Blue and green make turquoise, don’t they?

  If you morphed their features—specifically Mom’s pale blue eyes and Pop’s green eyes—Shelby with her turquoise blingers could pass more easily as their child than I do.

  “She’s a runner, Boo.” I strain to hear Mom’s voice. Boy, she knows how to lay it on. Calling him “Boo”—short for Boone—like old times. “Just imagine, her blood might make you feel like you’re running track again.” She gives him her best lilting laugh.

  He chuckles, flattered, until he remembers that they aren’t in high school and her laugh hasn’t solved anything in ten years. “I wouldn’t give her my blood. Why’s she offering hers to me?” Pop talks to Mom as if Shelby isn’t sitting right beside him. Prick. Like Shelby has some ulterior motive.

  “That’s certainly not the angle to come from, Boone,” Mom enunciates the “ne.” Now that’s more like it. More like the spiteful days of old—the last few years before their divorce—first names spewed as weapons, as if they never held for each other anything more than contempt.

  “And just what do you expect, Wren,” Pop slings the “n” back at her. “Should I get out of this damn bed and grovel at her feet. Would that make you happy.” Amid his ire there is sincerity: What could he have done to make her happy?

  “It’s called gratitude. It’s a much better look than insolence.” Mom flings that curl out of her eye again.

  “Why?” Pop asks, finally addressing Shelby who has done the best she can at being a fly on the wall, pretending their unresolved feelings aren’t playing out in front of her.

  It’s a trap. Don’t answer that. Why not. The same answer you gave Mom and me.

  “I’m not doing it for you.” Shelby looks him dead in the eye, expressing her own contempt.

  “I knew it!” Pop slaps his thigh. Prick. He just had to make her say it. “You hear that, Wren-n-n. I won’t be a part of it, a pawn in her plan to entrap my boy.”

  “Oh, God, Boone.” Minus the emphasis this time, his muttered name insinuates that he is the most exasperating man. “He’s already snared.” And there’s the verbal venom. Not only is he exasperating, he’s a jackass too. “And it didn’t require any blood, any sacrifice to the king.” Mom bows at the waist, her arms and hands wave-bowing above her head. “If your eyes did anything more than judge, you would plainly see by the way our boy looks at her.” She turns to Shelby, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I thought this could be productive or civil.”

  “Maybe it can be if I leave.” Shelby stands from her chair. It was Mom’s bright idea to include her in the discussion. “I’ll be in the donor room. If he doesn’t want it, someone else can have it.” She gives Pop a dose of his own medicine, talking indirectly around him.

  I duck and hug my back tight to the wall of the neighboring empty room until Shelby is out of sight.

  “And there she goes…running out!” I hear Pop’s raucous tone. Shut the fuck up, already! “That’s what she’ll do to him, you know.” He doesn’t finish his thought, but he wants to—the same as you did to me.

  “I work in this hospital. Keep your voice down,” Mom hushes, pulling closed the gap in the curtain.

  I stay put in the room next door. Lord knows I can hear him.

  “Bottom line, Boone, do you hate the Lynns or love your son more?”

  “You have no right to ask me that. I’ve been with that boy, day in and day out, for the past ten years. That’s more than you can say. And you know my feelings about Mason Lynn.”

  “Feelings that have no justification.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like you didn’t pal around with him even after you left. Concerts, playing middleman for his city dope shop. Didn’t think I knew about that, did ya.”

  “Apothecary shop,” she corrects. “And that’s what friends do.”

  “Friends, my ass. He was after what was mine.”

  “Funny you should say that. ‘Projection.’ Isn’t that what it’s called when people blame others for things they themselves are guilty of?” She hovers on the question. “I would think you would be over the moon to accept Maisy’s daughter’s blood. You had it bad for her in high school. But then, who didn’t have a thing for Maisy,” Mom says, the first I can recall hearing envy in her tone.

  Maisy? I question, before remembering the Bootleg album insert. That Maisy.

  “That was twenty years ago, Wren. And look at her now.”

  “You even took up guitar because she was into musicians.”

  “That was long before you.”

  “Not too long. Why do you think it took me forever to go out with you. I was sure you were still hung up on her.”

  “Well, now, you got the last laugh in that scenario, didn’t you. I loved you, Wren,” Pop’s voice breaks, her name finally spoken with familiar affection, a young life shared. “Still do.”

  “And a part of me will always love you, Boone.” Mom treats his name with the same regard. “We share a beautiful, strong, bright, bullheaded boy.”

  They both actually laugh together. The sound so genuine that I sniff and wipe at tears as real as that young nurse’s.

  “Your condition is mild…right now. You’re still young and capable of managing it, doing something to keep it from getting worse. If it’s not in you to do it for yourself, do it for him. Accept the transfusion, quit smoking, keep running, eat right, cut down on the drinking, go out, socialize, and wear one of the ten damn dust masks I sent you.”

  “Alright, fine. I’ll take some blood. Just don’t tell me whose it is. Surprise me,” he deadpans.

  My phone vibrates in my pocket, next to the secret note square, a text from Johnny:

  Hey kid you got my guitar. Musta got em mixed up jammin. Hold on to it till I make good on that promise. Don’t touch the fucking strings! They’re golden. Keep playin bro you got skills. Peace.

  Reclining in the chair after giving blood, I am wrapped in a blanket—they’re all white and thermal—keeping me warm. Along with one being a carbon copy of another, hospitals are cold.

  The only donor in the room at this hour, I have no blood with which to compare mine. But from my recollection when I donated last year, my blood looked just like everybody else’s.

  What is Mr. Cooper’s problem?

  Wren whirls into the room, carryout containers of food in one hand and lipstick in another. “You like it?” she says, puckering her rouge lips in my direction. “I’m trying out a new shade—black rose. Keep it or chuck it? Ace said chuck it. If I cared what Boone thought, he’d say chuck it too.”

  It must be exasperating, being outnumbered by men’s opinions in her family.

  My first thought is that if she had fangs, she could pass for a vampire. The shade resembles the blood I just donated. But with a face like hers, she could pull off any color. Besides, disagreeing with Ace is one of my favorite things.

  “Keep it,” I say.

  She pockets the lipstick, content with the two against two tally. Then she arranges the carryout containers on a tray table, which she wheels over the arm of my chair.

  “Chicken salad, taco salad, and tofu salad. I hope one is to your liking,” she says, pulling up a seat beside me.

  My stomach growls a “thank you.” I never did make it back for Enisi’s homegrown, home-slaughtered herb roasted chicken.

  “Enisi!” I jolt upright. She probably thinks I’ve run off. Or that I’m dead in the woods from late-onset asthma.

  “I’ve already talked to her.” Wren jolts too, her hand reaching for and soothing mine. “The least I could do was call your home. Talk to your mother. Get her feelings about your donating blood for Boone. I got your grandmother, instead. She’s not crazy a
bout hospitals. She’s even less crazy about Boone.” Her blood rose lips stretch into an uh-oh line across her face. “But she’s proud of you and glad to know the mullein worked. Be prepared for a proper ‘smudging’ and ‘feather ceremony’ when you return. I’m awfully curious about that.” Wren titters, coaxing the plastic fork into my hand and encouraging me to eat.

  I’m curious, too. “You have our number?” It’s a landline, and an old one. I talk between bites, taming my hunger and working from the outside of the container in, keeping in mind a piece on dining etiquette I once read.

  “I still know it by heart.” She smiles. “I should, considering the number of times I called it when you and Ace were first born.”

  “That’s right, you were friends with my father?” Maybe that’s Mr. Cooper’s problem.

  “Yes, I was,” she says proudly.

  And my heart feels like a confused balloon. Part helium—light and soaring—that she is proud of what was their friendship. Part water—heavy and plunging—that I wasn’t always so proud to call him my friend, my father.

  “I still miss him. Bet you do, too,” she adds.

  “More so these days.” Now that the blanks are gradually filling in. I shove the chicken around on top of the lettuce. “I missed him for so long after…well, you know. Then people started talking, and I wondered if I even knew him.”

  “One of the perks of city life, you get away from all the small-town gossip.” She tosses her head, curls and waves shuffling to the left. “How do you remember him? Before all the scuttlebutt.”

  “Devoted, genuine, restless, a charismatic oddball.” It all comes back to me in one breath.

  “That is exactly who he was, Shelby.”

  “Then why was he so misunderstood?” If she can answer that, maybe it will explain the painful disconnection I feel around most people who have known me, but don’t get me, all my life.

  “It’s easier for people to reject those who live, think, and behave differently than it is to try and understand, question the assumptions on which they have built their own lives. It doesn’t help that the definition of ‘different’ varies by location and culture and community. I felt like an outcast there, but not here. You’ll be fine here,” she says like she knows I am betting my legs on it.