When no one moved—to come or go—and the sighing breath went on at the same rate, still Wade’s hope survived. Wyatt Bondurant was here again, wherever he’d been these last hard months; no one else knew. He’ll see me out of here before day anyhow. Now we can go. At last Wade allowed himself what felt like a final smile, and in another minute he slept again.
BOAT’S exhausted trance, not six feet from Wade’s skull, never wavered but kept him locked in a dream of swimming and walking deep beneath the surface of a broad stretch of water—a warm lake, clear as any glass, that was secret to all but Boat and his brother who’d died years back: a funny boy named Bloodstone Boat, named after the stone in their mother’s ring, a ring that had come her way through the family from a great-grandfather who’d been born a slave in the flooded rice fields of coastal Georgia—fields that were as lost as he today, choked with marsh grass, cottonmouth snakes and the houses of idling doctors and lawyers.
In the dream Bloodstone would swim beside Boatie, then dart ahead out of sight for a while till he’d suddenly come back smiling through the murk and always holding out, as a gift, some precious thing he’d found alone. In the course of the night, Blood offered Boatie numerous seashells made out of silver, broad purple flowers that grew underwater and a palm-sized carving in pure white rock of a child that had to be Wade Mayfield in the days before he’d bowed to his death and all but pared his body to bone.
43
AT ten that morning, after Hutch drove into town for supplies, Boat sat down alone by Wade and began to read him one more chapter in a book he’d asked to hear for some reason, Sir Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian. As always the act of reading soon lulled Boat toward the edge of dozing.
Wade could hear Boat’s oncoming torpor, so every few minutes Wade would lift his right arm and say “Please wait.”
Boat would wait and, after three waits when Wade asked for nothing, Boat finally said “You need the bedpan, baby?”
Wade’s head shook hard and his face went dark as if a great vein had burst in the midst of his stark-white forehead. Then both his eyes focused square on Boat and seemed as clear as they’d ever seemed (Boat would have sworn Wade could see him plainly). At last Wade said “You want to try to persuade me I’ll meet Wyatt Bondurant again?”
“No, baby, no. I’m no big preacher.”
That helped clear Wade’s mind for a moment; he gave a wide smile. “You told me you were a shouting Methodist—passport to Heaven.”
“Recall I told you that years ago. What I’ve seen these past years, baby, I’m flying blind as you, every day.”
“Then you’re not much of a navigator—” The sentence dissolved in a deeper grin that cut across Wade’s face like a slash.
“Never said I was nobody’s navigator; won’t claim to be neither. I’m just an old boy that empties the slop jars and cheers up his friends.”
Wade darkened then. “Christ, man, I’m aiming to get out of here. Lend a hand or leave.”
Boat sat till he had the start of what might constitute real help. “Baby, I haven’t had your education—I quit the eighth grade—so I’ve missed a lot of the world from not knowing what to look at or what I was seeing if I did look at it. And I didn’t know you all that long before you and Wyatt hit onto each other and left me swinging at the north end of Harlem like a cat on a string; but what I’ve seen you turn into through the past mean years is a lot better man than most I’ve known, maybe any other man since my brother died when him and me were kids. Bloodstone Boat, his true exact name, was some kind of magic. I miss him every day, sweetest man God made—beside you, like I said. I mean, just the way you set up Ivory and her little child was a lot damned further than my dad went for any of us. Ivory knows it too—I made sure of that, told her nobody I’ve known has had better luck.”
Wade held up his arm again; and when Boat stopped, Wade said “You seen him lately?”
“My dad? No, baby, my dad’s long gone to Hell. Thank you, Jesus, for that.”
Wade said “—Ivory’s child.” Then he found the name. “Raven.”
“Haven’t laid an eye on Miss Ivory’s child since she moved him on out to her mother’s on the Island. When was it?—five or six years ago.”
Any power to gauge the passage of time had left Wade by now. The things he recalled stood separate in his mind, untouching inside the bounds of a narrow hoop in his shot memory, all paler than they’d ever looked in life but stiller as well. Wade tried for a moment to answer Boat—had the boy Raven lived in Manhattan ever? Didn’t he go straight to his grandmother once Ivory left the clinic? Or was it months later? But the idea slid like water through Wade’s hands and soon was gone. He faced the general direction of Boat and gave a short lift of his naked chin to whatever Boat had just asked or said.
Boat gathered courage from the sign and eventually felt he had the right to say “Is there anything on this Earth you want me to know while I’m here with you?”
Wade stayed blank.
“Any business you want me to do for you, down here or up yonder, whatever comes next? Any message you got for God or man—I’m a first-rate messenger boy, remember?”
Wade nodded again, then thought through his needs. At last he said “I want you just to remember how Wyatt looked in his prime.”
It was not the errand Boat had hoped for. Still he said “That won’t be no big problem. I see Wyatt this minute, fine as wine.” And he did—young Wyatt, the finest-looking black man he’d ever known, though black was not the name for the color of Wyatt’s skin: more like some kind of expensive beige cloth with good blood streaming behind it in sunlight, giving the surface a high fast life, like nobody else ever seen on land.
After that Boat gave up asking for more about Ivory’s child. And in a while he was more than glad that Wade had stopped him there, for whatever cause. Those questions anyhow were things that Boat would never have asked a stronger Wade—young Wade before this terrible hand struck him broadside in every cell and left him nothing but coated bones with a smoky candle lit in his skull in a wind as hard as any tornado. So in the next minutes, as Wade went quiet, Boat also drifted peacefully off in his straight-backed chair.
At one o’clock when Hutch returned and looked in before sorting groceries in the kitchen, he saw Boat asleep upright in his chair, though Wade was watching him steadily with eyes that still were clear but useless.
44
THAT evening at half past eight, Hutch and Boat were back in the kitchen, cleaning up after their light supper when the sound of a nearing car broke through their mild but pointless talk. Entirely separate, the two men thought it was Ann Mayfield. Hutch felt annoyed—he was nearly exhausted from the long day and couldn’t imagine another round of tilt and shove. Boat felt the slight dread he’d come to expect at the prospect of meeting any white mother of one of his boys—he’d seen so many monsters, nearly ten in ten years.
But when the car showed, out back in the dusk, at first it was strange to Hutch, a deep green color he hadn’t seen on a new car in years. This was surely not Ann, but a single woman turned the wheel and stopped. She’d opened the door and taken a step before Hutch remembered the car and the standing woman’s outline.
It was Margaret Ives, Wade’s chief physician. A tall thin woman—maybe forty-two, black hair to her shoulders—came briskly forward in a lapis blue dress and managed to touch the back door knocker before Hutch opened on her. A wide and all but heart-easing smile broke out as she saw him; it nearly concealed her own bone-tiredness. She hadn’t slept in nineteen hours.
Hutch said “Oh welcome. You need a good chair.” He hadn’t seen her since Wade’s pneumonia, though they’d talked on the phone every three or four days. As ever, he scented a whiff of hope in the fact of her nearness—young enough to be his own daughter, still she seemed so patently dauntless. So worthy you’d seek her out in any disaster scene, knowing she’d last and lead you onward.
Her smile endured. “Welcome? Truly? Sure I’m
not interrupting?”
Hutch said “Never. We were just drying dishes.”
“This is flat rude, I know. I should at least have called you; but I had to drop off a friend’s cat farther down the road—I’ve been cat-sitting the past two weeks, an antique Persian demanding as an empress—so I thought I’d see how you and Wade are faring.”
Hutch stood aside and waved her in; then looked for Boat, to introduce him. He’d vanished or fled. So Hutch lowered his voice. “A good friend of Wade’s from New York is here; he was Wade’s best help in the hard last days—not quite a practical nurse, I guess, but still a godsend. He’s in with him now.”
Though the smile she’d launched at the door had faded, Margaret’s face still literally beamed; some innate unquenchable power worked in her steadily.
Hutch had never quite registered her beauty and its elegance, its veiled but potent strength—even this far from Duke Hospital, she seemed to have damped her fineness quite consciously. Does she think it’s irrelevant or an actual hindrance? He gestured to a chair at the kitchen table. “We’ve got some fairly sinful homemade ice cream a neighbor hand cranked—fresh Sand Hill peaches, make your last artery clamp down and die for joy. Let me fix you a dish.”
“I just ate, thanks.”
“At the hospital?—ugh.”
“You’re looking at a hardened soul, Mr. Mayfield.”
“It’s not your soul I’m hoping to feed. And call me Hutch. A drink, some wine?”
Margaret shook her head No. “I need to get back to a patient by dark; but if you think this is not too sudden—too sudden and bald—and if Wade is strong enough, maybe we could ask him a question or two about his own wishes.”
With a silent thud like a great fist descending, Hutch understood; but still he said “Wishes?”
Her wide eyes shut for a long two seconds. “For treatment. Last wishes. We both may need to know Wade’s intent, when he can’t really tell us.”
Hutch said “This soon?”
“It’s not really soon, if you think about it. I don’t know how he’s living this minute; he’s long past exhausted in every cell. But not if you think it’s premature tonight, no. I’ve just admired Wade’s spirit right along; he asked me to see him through to the end with the absolute barest minimum of brakes.”
“Did he say ‘the end’? Did he truly say ‘brakes’?”
Margaret gave it a careful moment’s thought. “Those two words, yes.”
Hutch said “Then that’s all I need to know.” He signed for her to proceed him toward Wade.
As they moved up the dark hall, well apart, a whippoorwill in the thicket to the east was turning out its manic cry like a stuck organ grinder.
* * *
IT had taken Hutch a slow ten minutes to introduce Boat, who was deeply abashed near an actual doctor; then to wake Wade carefully and help him know who was here beside him—his father, his New York guest, his doctor.
Wade held his left hand out in the air toward Margaret Ives. “You do me great honor, ma’m.”
Margaret took the hand and stroked his forearm. “Your trust honors me, Wade, kind sir.” When he stared on at her, with no further words, she said “Please say my name, if you would.”
Only silence.
“Wade, I need you to say who I am—”
Hutch longed to coach him but knew that Margaret was working to establish his sanity for the last decisions.
Wade’s eyes searched her face as if they were floodlights hunting a killer. Then his lips jerked up in a wild grin. “You’re the Queen of Doctors, from the flatlands of Utah.”
Margaret stroked his arm again. “Right, the Utah part anyway. Recall my name?”
It turned out he did. “Mag, Meg, Maggie, Margaret. Margaret Ives.”
She said “At your service, sir. You’ve had a fair day?”
In a stage whisper Wade said “Wait right there.” Then he waved his right hand out toward Boat; it could barely stir air.
Boat came up and took it.
Wade shut his eyes and held a long moment. “Hutch, aren’t you down there near my feet?”
“I am, exactly.”
“Then lay your hand on my feet. Please, Father.”
Hutch lifted the sheet and obeyed.
Wade held again, with his eyes still shut, till all the others thought he was sleeping. Only when Boat squeezed the right hand a little did Wade look up—at the ceiling, no face—and in one sentence, dispel the weight of dread above them. “The instant I can’t draw my own breath, the instant you can’t recognize Wade in who I am, then cut me loose—wave me on off.”
No hand released him, none of them pressed, and no one answered.
So Wade said “Swear—”
In Hutch’s head, he could hear the ghost of Hamlet’s father compelling Hamlet’s balky vengeance. “Swear, oh swear.” But Hutch couldn’t speak, though Boat’s eyes waited.
At last Margaret Ives bent and kissed Wade’s arm at the elbow hinge. Her voice said “Swear. Every one of us swears. You sleep on that.”
Boat said “Amen.”
Still amazed that a live American doctor had earned the grace to greet a dying man so closely, Hutch could only go on looking, silent. He knew his own eves had little time to see even this last shadow of his son.
45
THAT was the Tuesday after the Fourth. Boat had said he could stay till the Thursday night bus, then would need to head north and resume his duties before another weekend. So with that slight reprieve, Hutch took the chance to leave the house for the long afternoon and do neglected chores in town. He told Boat he’d phone every hour or so; Boat said not to worry—things would likely be fine. To his own surprise by then, Hutch agreed (he hadn’t expected ease again till Wade was gone). So he left Ann’s office number on the table beside Wade’s bed.
And Boat spent the second half of Tuesday cleaning Wade’s room and the nearest bath. He’d hoped he could wash all the clothes and maybe cook a few things that Wade could eat. Boat had long since learned how to cook soft foods that some of his sick men, men who’d barely chewed in years, could swallow at least—mostly childhood food: warm, bland, mouth-crowding. But when Boat found that Wade’s mother washed the clothes, and Hutch was firmly in place in the kitchen, he chose to fill the only other need he saw.
Wade’s room was reasonably clean and neat; but with Hutch’s permission, Boat moved the small furniture into the hall, swept the floor quietly, then mixed oil soap with scalding water, got down on his hands and knees and scrubbed the oak boards to an unaccustomed shine. Asking Wade no questions at all, Boat sorted clothes in the jam-packed closet, culling out stacks of moth-eaten sweaters saved over from grade school and trousers and coats from Wade’s college days. With every piece he touched, Boat thought something like This jacket would look good on poor Sam Butler or A sin in this world to leave stuff here while so many creatures are wrapping their sores in stinking rags and walking barefoot.
As each of his New York boys died off, Boat took every chance to ask the heirs for any old clothes to pass along—the homeless gave him genuine nightmares, the thought that a country rich as America still was throwing people away like old rags and paper. But he knew not to mention such thoughts here. Never strip the dead; you’ll die cold yourself—he’d heard his grandmother say that when they found an old man cut down by the train one Sunday dawn.
Though Boat had got short glimpses of hope, throughout this plague, that some kind of miracle might intervene—some one boy anyhow might rise up from his bed, healed and whole, to prove some human at least could outlive it; some few might silently die in their sleep, not looking like husks of ancient monkeys—he’d learned to spot the angled glance, the flaky dryness in the hands, the lank brittle hair that meant a boy was ready to die. Wade’s ready. Good Jesus, let him go while I’m here. With some of his boys, Boat had actually bent to their ear when he saw those signs and whispered permission to let go and leave. He thought he’d wait till late tonight a
nd then give Wade that last encouragement.
But when Boat had finished the floor and closet, when he’d sorted every drawer and shelf and dusted each souvenir of Wade’s past, he saw he’d come to the end of his chore and that Wade, who’d slept through most of the day, was awake again.
Wade’s eyelids were shut but his breathing was smooth; and once Boat noticed him, Wade put up a hushing finger and beckoned him closer. When Boat had bent almost to his lips, Wade whispered “Much obliged.”
Boat whispered “What for? I’m just your old pal.”
“For getting me ready.”
Boat couldn’t deny that. “Baby, I’m not doing nothing for you. I wish I could. But you know that.”
Wade’s hand found Boat’s mouth and muffled it. “One more thing—”
“Name it, anything the Boat can do.”
“Bring Mother in here.”
Boat had never seen or met Ann Mayfield. All he knew was that Hutch had told him Wade’s mother dropped by every day or so with laundry and food, so Boat surmised a local minefield that Ann took only one pathway through. Through all his nursing, he’d run up against a hundred kinds of family trouble—parents who flatly refused to bring a sick son home, some who even refused phone contact; others who’d send no more than checks and only appear after their son died, just in time to confiscate his property, denying his loyal mate so much as recognition. Boat was hardly likely to plow in here and raise the dust. He said to Wade “Your dad’ll be here shortly, baby. You tell him you need her.”
“I never said that.”
“You just want her, don’t you?”
The Promise of Rest Page 29