So we waited and waited. It wasn’t about ten minutes later that this old rickety van showed up popping and cracking and popping into the Pit Row parking lot. Then the door opened. BAM. Then this big man in a cowboy hat stepped out and an old woman. She looked just like somebody’s aunt. Lee watched them. I watched them too. They got out of the vehicle all fast and nervous and walked into the gas station. We watched Aunt Shirley walk around inside and Uncle Junior stood at the door smoking a cigarette. It looked like Aunt Shirley was talking to the guy at the counter. And then she walked out and looked at the pay phone on the outside. Shirley and Junior walked around the corner. Then Uncle Junior said something to her. Then Uncle Junior threw up his hands like whatever. “Where the fuck is he? That boy is nothing but trouble.”
It was like she was begging him to do something. “I think they’re leaving. I think they’re leaving,” I said.
And so they did.
Aunt Shirley didn’t want to, but they did. Lee said: “We should wait awhile until they get back home and call again.” And by this time Bill was starting to feel even worse about what we were doing. Bill wanted to speak up again and say they shouldn’t be doing this, but by this time he was arranging his NFL collectible troll doll collection.
So Lee waited a half an hour and called her again. He handed the phone to Bill. Bill didn’t do anything for a long time but then finally he said: “Aunt Shirley?” And Aunt Shirley sounded all out of breath and even more concerned, “Hey, where were you, honey?” We could hear Uncle Junior shouting in the background, telling her to put the phone down. He was telling her we were just punks messing with her—that’s all. This wasn’t her real nephew calling her out of the blue. Bill whispered to us: “What should I say?” And then he came up with something.
“Oh Aunt Shirley, I’m sorry. I had to go poop. I couldn’t hold it anymore. I drank so much firewater and then the pooping started. It was horrible, Aunt Shirley.” And then he said: “Aunt Shirley, will you come down here and get me again? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll be here this time.” I couldn’t believe it. I could hear Uncle Junior shouting on the other line.
And then Aunt Shirley whispered she was sorry about what Bill had to go through. She was sorry that his parents got divorced. She knew the divorce was hard on him and his brother. She knew it was bad, but she wanted him to know that his parents loved him. She knew the divorce had a lot to do with his problems. She knew the kids teased him. She was sorry Bill’s mom was never around.
It was as if she wasn’t speaking about her Bill anymore, but our Bill.
And so Aunt Shirley showed up at Pit Row fifteen minutes later and parked the car. I watched her. Of course, Bill wasn’t even looking out the window now. He was just sitting on the bed like he was stunned. He was sitting on the bed like he was scared. So Aunt Shirley got out of the car and walked inside just like she did last time. I watched her walk around the aisles and then I watched her asking the person behind the counter a question. She walked outside to the pay phone. She walked around the Pit Row gas station—once, twice, and then three times before walking back to the pay phone. She sat down on a sidewalk and waited. She waited and watched the cars passing by on the street. Then she waited some more—a half hour, an hour, two hours, three hours. It was dark. She put her hands over her eyes and buried her face in her fingers. She was crying. Bill said: “Someone should go out there and tell her we were just joking. Someone should tell her that she doesn’t know me. She has me confused with another person.”
But no one did. I just sat up in the window and watched her waiting. And she was still waiting there that night when we opened 40 ounces and drank them. She was still waiting there the next morning when we awoke. We started playing video games, and we didn’t say anything to one another. Bill didn’t say anything either. He acted like he didn’t want to leave the apartment ever again—like he knew something no one else knew.
He knew there were two lives apportioned for each of us and there were families who we’ve never known who are out looking for us tonight. Even tonight they are out there searching for us. They are wishing to tell us who our true mother was. They are wanting to tell us who our true father was.
Listen: They are coming for us.
They are wanting to tell us our true names.
SO I WENT TO SEE RUBY AGAIN
I took her to the Methodist church she used to always go to. Usually she only went once a year. She went on Mother’s Day because they gave a fruit basket to the woman who had the most children. Since Ruby had 13 children, she always won the fruit basket. Of course, she could care less about the yearly sermon, but she always liked the free apples and oranges. So I was surprised when she called and asked me to take her that Sunday. It wasn’t Mother’s Day and they weren’t offering any prizes. I borrowed Bill’s car and I drove her to the church.
I sat with her and listened to a sermon that went like this.
One time a man left home. He had argued with his mother and father the day before he left. They spoke horrible words to one another and he left without saying goodbye. He had been gone many years and even spent time in jail. Years later, he finally got out of jail and he wondered if his mother and father were even alive, and if they were ashamed of what had been said and of where he had wound up. He wrote to them and told them he would be coming home on a specific day the following week. If they wanted to see him and were not ashamed they should put a blanket on the clothesline, and he would know to come inside. If the blanket was missing, then he would know that he was not welcomed. He would know to turn back. He told them he hoped they were in good health.
The man arrived by rail the next week. He was nervous when he stepped off the train. There was no one there to meet him. He walked up the worn path towards the home place and thought about the past. He thought about his time in jail. He thought about how ashamed his parents must have been. He thought about the horrible words they spoke. He was just about to turn around and go back to where he came when he saw a blanket in a tree. He kept walking and he saw another blanket. He kept walking and he saw another blanket. Then he turned towards home and the house was covered in blankets, the yard was covered in blankets, the clothesline was covered in blankets, the path to the door was covered in blankets. His parents were standing there and they were welcoming him inside.
I took Ruby home and she talked about Nathan. She talked about how she missed him. I didn’t know this would be the last time I spent with her like this. I didn’t know this last week would be the last week of her life.
RUBY’S END
A few days later, my Uncle Stanley called. He said they had to take Ruby to the hospital. He said that she was sick. So later that evening I went to see her. She acted like she didn’t recognize me, but then she told me that the angel of death had come to see her that morning. She said the angel of death sat at the foot of her bed. She told me she heard Nathan’s groans in her dreams. I heard Nathan’s groans too. She told me the angel of death didn’t say anything, but just sat looking at her. She told me that it wasn’t a man or a woman, but it was the angel of death all right. She said that the angel was smiling at her. The angel had black teeth and I believed her. She wasn’t faking her death. She was eighty years old and this was the end.
And so I stopped by my Aunt Mary’s and told her that Ruby was real confused and she wasn’t doing any good at all. I told her this was the end. I sat down on the bed and watched the cold rain beat against the windows. Then my Aunt Mary sat down beside me and said she didn’t know whether to believe her or not. She didn’t know whether she was sick or not because she was so good at manipulating you.
I looked at Aunt Mary and said, “I don’t think she’s playing this time. I don’t think she’s ever going over to the hospital again.”
Then I felt myself repeating: “I think this is the end. I don’t think there is ever going to be another trip to the hospital for her.”
That night I stayed with my aunt and uncle.
My Uncle Stanley came home the next morning at dawn and said they were sending Ruby home. He said the doctor came in and he just stood in front of her bed.
Ruby said, “Well it doesn’t look good, does it, Doc?”
The doctoring man said, “No Ruby, it doesn’t look good. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do for you.”
Ruby said, “Well that’s fine. I want to go home then. I want to go back to my real home then.” The doctor signed the order and sent her home. He didn’t send her back to Stanley and Mary’s. He sent her back to the old house. The house where my father was born. There were cobwebs, but it was her home.
I went over there in the afternoon and she seemed so happy. She just sat up in the bed and smiled when I came in.
She said, “Well Nathan is gone, but he left me a good bed to die in. I keep thinking about the little feller.”
I stood at the foot of the bed and I told her about all of my memories. I told her about how I remembered when I was a little boy and had the croup and she put the Vicks salve on my chest. I told her about how I remembered staying the night and how I stayed up looking at the baby dolls in the baby doll catalog with her. Then she smiled and said that she remembered it all. She had something to give me but she wasn’t ready to give it to me yet. Then she smiled. She never got around to giving it to me. And now, years later, I just wonder what it was, what it was she wanted to give me…
WHO KNOWS?
I went back a couple of days later and she was dying. She was shaking and groaning and shaking.
For some reason I said, “Well you look good, Grandma,” even though she looked like shit.
She wasn’t eating. They had wheeled her around the house that morning so she could see her house and her things one last time. My uncle crushed her up a slice of orange and sat down beside her bed. Then he fed it to her. My grandma sat and looked like she was a little baby bird. That’s what I thought she looked like. I watched my uncle feed his dying mother just like she used to feed him when he was a little boy.
I thought my grandma’s face looked so much like Nathan’s right then.
There was something about my Uncle Stanley’s face too that looked just like my grandma’s face from long ago. I wondered if my face would look like my Uncle Stanley’s when I died. This was the story of faces. There was one face that looked like another face before it and then another face that looked like the face before it. This went all the way back until the beginning of time. Who knew what this face would look like a thousand years from now. Me?
There was a part of me that wanted it to be over. My Uncle Terry came in from California and sat beside her bed and said, “You gonna go see Nathan soon?”
Ruby whispered, “Yeah.”
I shook my head and wanted it all to be over because I knew deep down inside that the dying and the dead were selfish.
I knew it that evening when my aunt said—“I know it’s the wrong thing to say but I just wish it would all be over. I’ve got so much to do at work. I know that sounds terrible.”
But I knew what she meant. Bill and Lee were going to drink beer on Friday and I wanted to drink too. I didn’t want to disappoint them, and there was a part of me wishing she would just die. I knew that the dying were selfish, and the living were too.
I would have been all right if I would have just left it like that—if I didn’t go back. But for some reason I did, and it was all a big mistake. I went back that Wednesday and the death rattle had started. She just looked gone, groaning full of death. And so I left that day thinking she wouldn’t make it through the day. But she did. She made it through the day and then she made it through the next day. She kept fighting and fighting some more. I stayed at my uncle’s the whole week. Then one morning I was sleeping when I heard the phone ring. It rang and it rang and I was awake all of the sudden. I heard my uncle’s voice in the other room half asleep.
“Okay.
“She did.
“Okay.”
And then he hung up.
My aunt went “Stanley” in this scared voice, but he didn’t say anything back to her. He just went into the other room where my Uncle Terry was sleeping and he opened the door and told him.
My Uncle Terry said real quick like he was awake, like he was embarrassed to be sleeping, “Oh I thought she would. I thought she would.”
Then he stood up and put his pants on.
They both got dressed and went into the kitchen. I got up and went into the kitchen and they were standing at the door. My uncle was the 7th son of a 7th son and my Uncle Terry was the baby of the family—a baby born blue who would have died if he hadn’t been the first of her babies born in a hospital. I stood in my underwear and they stood in their coats and it was the strangest thing. Both of them just reached out and shook my hand. They shook my hand like they didn’t know what to do. Their mother had just died and they were different now. They were free?
It wasn’t until later that evening, when they were planning the funeral, that I heard how she died. My Aunt Bernice said that it was at 4 o’clock in the morning and she was in the back room folding clothes (Leslie and Bernice were staying at the house that night and taking turns taking care of her). She was folding clothes and then all of the sudden she heard a noise in Grandma’s bedroom.
She listened and then Grandma said, “Good morning!”
So Bernice walked into my grandma’s bedroom not believing what she heard. Grandma hadn’t talked since Wednesday. After hearing Ruby say good morning, Bernice looked closer and Ruby was dead.
So after I heard about this, I just sat around and thought about what it meant. I didn’t get drunk with Bill or listen to him talk about the Greenbrier Ghost or hang out with the crazy fuckers or make prank phone calls. I thought about how strange it was that somebody would say “good morning” and then die. I thought to myself that maybe this explained something about death. I thought maybe she was saying good morning to the angel of death who was coming back to get her now. I thought maybe it was the spirit of Nathan she was saying good morning to and he was taking her away. But then I thought that maybe it didn’t mean anything. Maybe it was just the last little bit of oxygen escaping from the brain and it meant nothing. Maybe my Aunt Bernice didn’t even hear her right. Maybe my Aunt Bernice made it up. Maybe it was just a groan of death that sounded like “good morning.” And yet there was still something about all of this that said everything to me.
At the funeral the next day we all gathered around the grave beside Nathan’s grave and Elgie’s grave. My cousin’s wife sang a song about how Jesus loves us, complete with backing vocals on a cassette tape. She keyed the tape to start, let her head drop down dramatically, and then she started singing. Then her daughter stood beside her and did the sign language for the song. She moved her hands together like it was a bird flying into the sky. She moved her arms to portray the waves. It was sign language. And there was something kind of funny about it because there wasn’t one person who knew sign language there, but we all understood the signs. We were all deaf for a moment.
…So the preacher preached a eulogy about how Ruby waited to die. She took care of Nathan his whole life. And she never left him—even when people told her she should put him away in a home. She didn’t leave him because he was her baby. At the end of it all, she waited until he died. She waited all those years until he died so she could die too. Then he said that blessed are the peacemakers, but even more blessed are the caretakers.
So just like at Nathan’s funeral the Wallace and Wallace guy brought out a box of doves to fly away home and the preacher said, “We’ll now release a dove which is a symbolic representation of Ruby’s soul flying home to heaven.”
And so they opened up the bird box and nothing happened.
We waited.
And then this sleepy-looking dove just crawled out, except it didn’t even look like a dove really but just a fat pigeon that somebody had painted white.
It had a look on its face like, What the
fuck? Seriously, people. What the fuck? It’s way too cold to be doing this today.
So the Wallace and Wallace guy tried to shoo it but it wouldn’t shoo.
So the preacher repeated: “We’ll now release the dove.”
The Wallace and Wallace guy shooed it again. Finally the dove shot high up into the air and out and over our heads, but instead of flying away it just landed on top of this chain-linked fence. And so the Wallace and Wallace guy tried shooing it again and everyone giggled and gathered around in a circle throwing up their arms and shouting “shoo-shoo” at the bird high above. I shouted, “Shoo.” We were all shooing.
But it wouldn’t shoo.
And so it was.
I went back to Bill’s mom’s apartment. I had already missed too much school that week and I needed to go the next day. Bill told me he was going to skip again. I told him he was never going to graduate.
That night I dreamed that she didn’t die. I dreamed she secretly escaped from the casket. I dreamed that she was back in Danese, WV, and she had kidnapped the devil. She was poking him in the ass with a pitchfork. She was stabbing him in the chest with the pitchfork, but there wasn’t any blood and there wasn’t any pain screams. There wasn’t any agony. He was just whispering…
Crapalachia: A Biography of Place Page 9