by Ron McLarty
Around the fourth inning, with Cleveland up at bat, I heard something in the driveway, or thought I did. I got up and peered through the venetian blinds, but I couldn’t see what it was, so I went out to the back porch. Some light was coming off the porch, and right before the light went black, on the edge of the asphalt drive, sat Norma in her chair. She looked up at me with such pain and loss I can’t even see it in my mind’s eye, because it was so terrible. For a few seconds I just stared as if I were captured by her agony. She reached for her back wheels and pulled out of the throw of light. I could only see her feet and the sparkle of chair.
“Hi, Norma,” I said, as if I didn’t have years to be ashamed of. As if I hadn’t seen her face. Seen her eyes.
She said nothing at first. Silence that starts awkward, then moves to self-conscious, and finally lays out like another defeat.
“They didn’t kill you,” she said, when I couldn’t stand our pause a second longer.
“I’m fine.”
“I’m a dog,” she said. “I’m a dog and a cat and a rat. I’m nothing.”
There is courage a man—well, anybody—should show. A resolve. A goodness. A heroism that puts away all the things you’re unsure about and sends you off the porch, arms out, heart open, holding, embracing. I remember 1972 as the year of my cowardice. I said nothing. I let her sorrow float through me.
“I’m . . . I’m nothing, Smithy,” she said again.
I knew she was crying because of her breathing and sniffling. Quietly, absolutely, and alone.
“Nothing,” she cried again, even softer.
Bethany nearly pushed me down, shoving past me to the screen door. She rushed down the steps and flung her arms around Norma. Mom was behind her, and the two held her completely, as if holding a child against a storm.
“What is it?” Pop said, coming out onto the porch.
“It’s Norma,” I said quietly.
“It’s Norma? It’s my Norma?” And Pop was there, with them, an almost total hold of Ide. Even Jeff Greene oddly walked down the steps to be with them and away from the Sox.
I stood in the porch door. For the first time, I felt air escaping through my wounds. I felt altered. I felt changed. I was something else, and I remained it a long time, and I saw it reflected in Norma’s stainless chair as surely as in her eyes, just out of the light.
49
Red Check was named Roger, and he was Kenny’s father. The bullet had grazed my neck, turned me around, and sent me into the snow-filled Upper Rio Grande. It was rivers again. Rivers and bullets and the crazy people that we’ve all become. Not me. I really and truly thought, as I bobbed up from the icy trout pool, that no matter what, I would never, ever live a suspicious life. A silly life, sure. Ridiculous, maybe, but not looking for lousy things everywhere. I mean it.
The river was high and rising quickly with the fast-melting snow. I swirled dazed in a crystal whirlpool, then was wedged hard under the overhanging bank. I remember seeing Roger then, only we were out of the water and lying in the snow and shouting and engines and then Bethany. Our backyard. She might have been twelve or thirteen, and she had had her hair cut boy-short for the summer. She was walking on her hands, and her legs were straight up and down. Norma and I sat at a picnic bench, although I don’t remember a picnic bench in any of our yards.
My pop had on his baseball uniform, and Mom had made the big tuna-salad sandwiches that were, of course, much, much better than my pop would make, because he never had the patience to break up the clumps of tuna and cut the onion into small pieces or mix the mayo smoothly into one nice spread. Norma had her arms around me and was dressed like a six-year-old, except with way-too-big bib overalls, but I didn’t push her away or anything. I have always felt bad about the ten-year-old me. I was pretty mean to Norma. I guess, when I think about it, there wasn’t much niceness to go around after Bethany had taken it all.
They put me in an ambulance that drove behind a county snowplow. They took me to a small medical center in Creede. The wound, it turned out, was just a nick, but I had a little shock from the force of it whizzing so close. They gave me a couple of Tylenols and cleaned and dressed the wound.
Kenny’s father and the lady policeman stayed while the doctor worked on me. I was embarrassed. Kenny’s dad, Roger, was embarrassed for all his crying over Kenny. The lady was embarrassed because her partner had shot me. We were all just embarrassed. Here I was, back in the hospital, in a paper dress, with my ass all hanging out.
“Your blood pressure is great for a big guy,” the doctor said.
In East Providence at last year’s Goddard blood-pressure screening test, where you got an extra hour’s pay if you participated, my blood pressure was 170 over 115.
The doctor removed the blood pressure strap from my biceps.
“It’s a hundred over sixty-five.”
“If it’s good, it’s lots of bananas,” I said, going stupid again.
We walked out of the hospital, the four of us, and rode to Roger and Kenny’s house.
“What about my stuff?”
“Brian—that’s the officer who . . . Brian is getting all of that. The snowmobiles, too,” the policewoman said.
“But my bike . . .”
“We’ll get your bike, don’t worry,” Roger said.
We came to a low gray house with a blue-shingled roof, set on a rise over an old silver mine. It was easy to see that whoever had built this place originally had something to do with the mine. A zigzag set of wooden stairs made its way to the opening of the shaft.
“Want me to come in?” the policewoman asked.
“You don’t have to, Marjorie. Thanks. Sorry about . . .”
“Hey, it’s your kid, you got a right.”
A tall, round-faced, very pretty woman came running from the house and scooped up Kenny in strong arms. Her long, curly hair fell onto her shoulders in brown and gray. She had on khaki slacks and a blue-jean shirt. She wore beads that looked like Kenny had made them for her in school. Roger had called from the hospital to say we’d found the boy. From what I’d heard in the ambulance, she had gone with another search party in another direction. Her relief was sweet to see. She squeezed Kenny and cried. Crying is good. The idea of a little boy in that snow by that river is, I guess, unbearable. She put him down, walked over to me, took my hand, and led me into the kitchen. She sat me at the table, a long oak table, old, with lots of wonderful meals in its past, and ladled squash barley soup into my bowl.
“I’m Kate,” she said.
“Hi,” I said, slurping my soup. Eating with other people will always trouble me. I am not a comfortable man. Even in the army, when my body said I never ate enough, I always felt I was being watched and that I was eating too much or not eating right. Later on, when I actually didn’t eat right and food and I collided, it became impossible to eat with people. I felt comfortable at Kate’s table. And I felt good. I sipped in some barley, some tender yellow squash.
“Mmm.”
“We’re vegetarians,” Kate said.
“Although sometimes I’ll eat some meat,” Roger said.
“Roger doesn’t eat much meat. We like Kenny to see we eat healthy. See that we can grow strong on legumes and veggies and really good breads.”
“I like bread!” yelled Kenny.
We went quiet for a minute. They watched me dip my bread into Kate’s amazing vegetable soup, and I didn’t care. But I wanted them to be comfortable, and I knew they were not, and I knew why.
“This is the best soup I have ever eaten.”
Kate looked embarrassed.
I looked up at Roger and smiled. He smiled back.
“Kenny’s a really brave kid. He did everything right. Remember, Kenny?”
Kenny smiled and started to yell. “My name is KENNY! MY NAME IS KENNY!”
“He kept saying that in the snowstorm until I got to him.”
“We can’t thank you en—”
“You don’t have to thank me,” I said
, interrupting Kate. “It’s good for me. It’s a good feeling. Look . . . uhh . . . look, at the hospital I guess you saw me with my shirt off, and I was in the field with a bike, and maybe you think I’m a bum or something or—”
“We don’t.”
“No . . .”
“But it’s okay if you thought that. I might think that, but I’m . . . I’m not homeless or a bum or anything. I want you to know all the holes I got were from the war—”
“Vietnam?” asked Kate.
“Yeah. No big deal, but I’m not . . . you know . . . like, look, I know what we could do. I would be so thankful if you’d do this. Would you call Norma? She’s my friend.”
“She’s your friend?”
“It would be nice to call Norma. She’d love to talk to somebody. She’d tell you about me, and I guess I want you to know. I don’t know why, but I want you to know.”
Kate brought the phone to me, and I dialed Norma’s number.
I stopped before I finished the whole number and looked at Kate. “Don’t tell Norma he shot me.”
“That idiot!” Roger said, clenching his fist.
“Okay? Don’t tell her?”
I finished Norma’s number and handed the phone to Kate, who took the receiver into a corner of the kitchen.
I couldn’t hear the conversation, but every now and then Kate would look over to me and then turn back into the corner. I went with Roger, and he showed me the rest of his home and told me about his family. Roger and Kate had been married for twenty-five years—and for fifteen of those years, while his business in Oklahoma City was growing, his family was not. They couldn’t have a baby. They tried everything and finally adopted Kenny. That’s why they moved to this little town in the mountains. To give Kenny every chance to be closer to real life. That’s what Roger said, how he put it. Real life.
I loved that some people could talk to other people like that. I was bursting that Roger would include me in the telling of his story.
They didn’t know what they would do or how they would make a living, but they knew they had to come here. Now Roger is a roofer and jack-of-all-trades, and Kate has gone back to her weaving. Kate made rugs.
“And we’re gonna have another kid,” Roger said in the living room.
“That’s great,” I said.
“A Hispanic kid or something. We told them we don’t care.”
Kate’s rugs were everywhere, and a closed-in porch held a pile of material and a large loom.
“Kate’s really an artist,” Roger said.
“Her rugs are beautiful.”
“They are.”
Roger had done over the house himself. One room at a time. It was originally built for the wife of prospector George Ryan of Denver, who discovered silver in this slope. He married a Denver teacher in 1881 and moved her here. She became a famous hostess, and he became more and more of a nutty millionaire miner, who liked to sleep in the tunnels. Sometimes he’d stay in the tunnels for days at a time. Once he was gone for a month, and when he came up to ground level, his skin was white as a sheet, but he had mined a thousand pounds of silver. Sometime in the night, he murdered his wife, put the silver back in the mine, and disappeared. Now Roger and Kate live here, and Kenny, and pretty soon their new child, whatever kind doesn’t matter.
“I’m still looking for his silver,” Roger said seriously.
When we had circled back to the kitchen, Kate’s conversation with Norma had turned tearful. But they were the good kind of tears, at which I was becoming an expert, and I knew that Norma had them, too.
“. . . but he reached out and caught him. He caught him as if he were falling off a cliff. He put him in the tent, and now we’ve got him back. . . . Uh-huh . . . oh, he is. . . . Yes, I know you do. . . . I’m going to put him on, because I’m going to start all blubbering again. . . . Remember, it’s definite . . . as soon as you can. . . . Bye, honey. . . .”
Kate held the receiver out to me, then put her arms around Roger. “Poor Bethany,” she said.
“Who?”
I felt Norma in my hand. Is that possible? “Hello, Norma?”
“Smithy. Oh, Smithy. I want to hold you. I want to be there with Kate and you and everybody. You saved that little boy.”
“It really wasn’t—”
“I . . . told Kate all about Bethany. Are you mad?”
“I wanted you to, Norma, that’s why I asked her to call. I kinda look like a bum, and I—”
“You don’t! You couldn’t! You’re beautiful.”
“I’m not beautiful, but I’m not a bum or anything. See, I’ve got a beard, and my hair is kind of long where I have hair, and I’m on a bike and things.”
“I told Kate you were beautiful. I told her I’m in a chair and what I do, and I told her about Bethany and Mom and Pop and why you’re riding your bike, and she told me things.”
“Why am I on the bike, Norma?”
I felt her silence. I imagined her giving me the quiet, and knowing the quiet also. Through the kitchen window, snow gleamed, and I had to stop myself from worrying about my bike. I suppose what Mom always said was true. Everything is relative. She said it, and now I got it. Other people worry about big things, I worry about my bike. Or something.
“I think you’re on a quest.”
There were still gold leaves on the aspen. Up on a ridge, I saw some horsemen in a line.
“You think I’m on a quest?”
“I know it sounds silly, but every now and then great men have gone on quests to find answers to the big questions. There have been books written about men who search the whole world for answers.”
“But what if I don’t know the question?”
“You know the question.”
The horsemen drifted over a ridge and out of sight. Bethany leaped from the top of the aspens. She turned once on the tallest tree and followed the horsemen.
“I love you, Smithy.”
“I’m tired all of a sudden.”
“I want to come out. I want to take care of you.”
“I’m so tired. Jeez. I’d better . . . I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“I’ll dream about you, Smithy.”
“Bye, Norma.”
Tired. Oh, God, tired. “Sleep,” said my mom. “Sleep,” said my nana.
“Bye, Smithy. My Smithy Ide.”
50
Aunt Paula gave the wedding shower for Bethany. It was at her house in East Greenwich, and Uncle Count had the homestead standing tall. He had the neighborhood kids working on the yard and bushes ten full hours on Saturday, while he rubbed down the brass fixtures inside. Uncle Count loved brass. He had a brass wedding ring. Honest to God. Uncle Count had worked out all the arrangements with Aunt Paula. Because he wasn’t invited to the shower, because he was a man, he would confine himself to the general areas of the house and yard. That way the Count would be able to carry out his unofficial duties as family host, while still allowing a thin separation of men and women.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he would say in his inimitable style to every female who rang the front doorbell, whether he knew her or not.
“You look yummy. You look good enough to eat. Listen, there were these two homos in Belgium. . . .”
About twenty-five women, ranging in age from twenty (our neighbor Adella, who was retarded) to eighty-two (Ethel Sunman from church), were greeted in like fashion.
“Baby, you’re the greatest.”
“Va-va-voom.”
“Tell me it’s a mirage.” and
“Couple of queens go to a bar. . . .”
“Five queer guys are shooting baskets. . . .”
“I got nothing against homos, but eighty-five of them are on a bus. . . .”
When they all were finally gathered around my sister in the living room, Count did a silent head count.
“Twenty-five, counting you, Paula.”
“That’s everybody. Thanks, Count.”
“There was a football stadium filled with fags.
Iowa. Cornfields and everything, but this one big stadium, and this guy who was not a fag wanders into the place. He buys a hot dog. . . .” The girls all smiled politely as the master of ceremonies presented his exit routine; then they turned back into the room and my beautiful, beautiful sister. It was late May and unseasonably warm, and the girls all sported casual spring ensembles. They all looked lovely, especially Bethany, who, as Mom said, had a radiance about her. She wore a peasant’s dress of light blue and a kind of Indian band around her head. The band was red and beaded and went with her eyes. I could see that Jeff Greene must have thought he’d struck gold. She was such an honest-to-God nice human being, 99 percent of the time.
Paula and Count’s beagle, Wiggy, jumped around in the pile of gift wrap and gave little-guy barks every time one of the girls crinkled up the paper. He would jump from lap to lap and end up on Bethany’s, who sat on the floor surrounded by her stuff. She put a big blue ribbon around his neck, and everybody called him “Blue-Ribbon-Winner Wiggy.”
My sister got sweaters and soap and lingerie. Rhode Island didn’t have the dirty lingerie, the naughty kind, where you could see nipples and things, but they had these short little satiny, shiny nighties that were very sexy, and this is what Bethany got. I prefer the dirty kind, but I never knew anybody who would go with it, except maybe Dr. Georgina Glass, and by then I never wanted to see her again, dressed or partly clothed in one of those blackish net things that let almost everything out with her large breasts squeezed against the little silky squares of net all sweaty and sexy and everything. I mean. You know. Maybe. I don’t know.
Aunt Paula was a fantastic cook who loved to experiment with food. In Uncle Count she had the most appreciative and encouraging partner a great cook could have. She would sit in the TV room while he watched a show, and she would read her cookbooks. Every now and then, she’d say, “I’m thinking of trying something new. How does a sirloin steak, lightly seasoned with pepper and garlic, braised only slightly, then simmered for a few minutes in a mild chili sauce, which is then served over the accompanying rice, sound?” Count would turn to her, make a bold gesture of turning off the TV, stand, and say, “You make me happy, baby. Va-va-voom.” It was common ground. It was a meeting of the minds. As long as Aunt Paula used her kitchen utensils like magic wands, she would never, ever be taken for granted.