"I'm sure they have plenty of help," she says. "Besides you have to work on Tuesday. And how would you get there?" She has a point. Just now I'm without a car; we always use hers. She touches my hand across the table. She says, "You okay?" And here it comes: the little problem.
"Did you take your pill today?"
I lie: nod yes. It's been days now, weeks.
"Don't look at me, please," I say, standing up.
The cold water feels good, the familiar smell of the bathroom reassures me, but my face in the mirror repulses me. The red watery eyes, the ugly wrinkles, the quivering chin. This is no way for a man to act. Certainly not in the presence of a woman who already has her doubts. I want to break something, anything. I look around for something to break, see nothing worth it and return to my face in the mirror. Which is even uglier now, now that I want to break something.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Sarah is leaning over me, her face wrenched with concern. I'm on the floor. Shards of glass are everywhere. The memory of a sound like crashing dishes thrums in my ears and a pain pulses through my hand, up my arm. "You're bleeding," she says, but her voice seems far away and receding. She wraps my hand in a towel, says something about the hospital, says to lie still.
"No hospital," I say.
Sarah is a blurry image hovering above me. Then her image blurs completely and I'm someplace far away in my mind, a place I've been before. I can see it as clearly as ever, clearly as if I were back in the war and it was fifteen years ago and that dead Charlie in his black pajamas was lying on the ground at my feet again with that look still on his grimy face like he understands something I don't know about. It's a look of great relief, as if he's just broken wind or received his discharge papers. Even though he's dead! I mean, the man is dead but I have questions. There's something I've been wanting to know for a long time . . . what are you smiling about? This time he lifts his head so he can see me. His expression goes serious. And then, in perfect English, he says, I'm not smiling. Simple as that.
So I push on. I say, Well why were you so happy when we met on the trail? When we killed you, I mean. Can you tell me? He raises his head again. He says, Happy? The thought of it makes him almost smile again as if he is happily surprised that I asked. He says only, You'll see. Then he lays his head down, lets out a sigh and slips into a peaceful sleep. I push on. What did you mean by that, that I'll see? When will I see? He says nothing. His face is blank now. "Tell me," I yell and I reach out to shake him. Instead of that man though it's Sarah I'm shaking.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
The phone is ringing again, wavering up the hall and right into bed with us. "Don't answer it," I say. Four rings, maybe five, then the house is quiet, empty, calm once more. We lie together in silence for a long time until I'm lucid again. I recall the scene in the bathroom, Sarah helping me to bed. "In the morning we better find a doctor for that hand."
"It's only a cut," I say.
"At the hospital," she says. "Just to be safe."
"Sure," I say but then it comes to me what she's up to. It makes me smile, what she's up to. While my hand is being doctored she'll sneak away and find the resident psychiatrist. She'll explain my recent behavior and ask him to talk to me. He'll come into the room, very cheerful, ask questions (how am I feeling? am I taking my medication? anything I want to talk about?) and I'll say no because to talk in that way would just bring on the little problem, and I'm sick of the little problem. I want it to go away along with this rough period and I don't want to need the pills anymore. I can live without them. A success.
The thought of success gets my mind to going full-speed. I start to see things. A life for myself. It would be a simple life. What I want is simple. I want peace and to work steadily, and I want a yard of my own to tend, and I want to know that every morning when I get up Sarah will be there with a greeting and all we'll ever talk about is the future, of the planting of shrubs and flowers, of the dogs we want to raise, of payroll deductions and savings accounts and retirement plans. There's a job at a landscaping nursery I've been thinking about; it would be good work, outside in the good fresh air.
Sarah is talking about how I need to watch my drinking and my smoking, start getting some exercise, but I interrupt her. "Marry me, Sarah," I say toward the ceiling.
She lets a sigh escape into the room. She shifts her body under the covers. She says, again, "We'll see," and I know what it means. We lie still, breathing quietly now. I reach out and she takes my hand and I feel myself drifting, slipping away, not into sleep but into something that is not like sleep at all.
3
We have a big hole at this point. In the story, I mean. I'll have to reconstruct it. So call this a reconstruction project.
First let me set the scene. Everything is mustard yellow. The room is perhaps 20×20. There's a window with mini-blinds. There's a door, wide, institutional, with no handle. Outside the door is a gathering of people dressed in robes, old clothes, a nightgown. They shuffle by, heads bent, smoking, pondering. Wily laughter can be heard and the acrimonious voices of two men arguing. They're all fruitcakes on the ward.
It's Tuesday evening. Apparently I missed Memorial Day altogether. I'm in the hospital, and I'm trying to understand what has happened to me. Apparently, Sarah says, I waited until she was asleep again, and then sometime after midnight I drew myself up and got out of bed. I propped open the front door and quietly took all the dining room chairs outside, put them in a circle on the lawn. "Like for a conference, or something," she said, adding that on the ground in the center of the circle I carefully stacked a dozen large stones from the driveway. "Like a monument, or something." Next, apparently, I started walking. Old Jocko followed. Four miles I walked, barefoot, unmolested and molesting no one, along streets with broken glass, through fields with ragged brambles, under street lights and over bridges until I walked right into an all-night Big Boy restaurant on the interstate. Jocko, apparently, stayed with me all the way.
"You were wrapped in your flag," Sarah said. "As if it were a cape or an Indian blanket. And you were carrying the pole like a walking stick. At first they thought you'd been to a costume party. But it didn't take them long to see. You were shivering. Your feet were bleeding. And you refused to let them take the dog outside. He snapped at someone who tried to touch you. You kept mumbling, 'You'll see, you'll see,' and saluting everyone."
Apparently the people in the restaurant were kind to me. They put a coat over my shoulders and gave me lemon pie to eat and some coffee to drink and they called the police, who also were kind to me. This time at least, she said, I was wearing underwear. "Were they clean?" I asked. Sarah smiled, patted my arm on the hospital cot. "See," she said. "You'll be fine."
She told me this during visiting hours. Her hair was done, she was wearing a business suit: she'd come by after work. The doctors, she said, want me for one more day before they'll release me to Sarah's care . . . if I'll take my medicine.
Through the window I can see the lights of Flagstaff. The lights are all moving in rhythm, sliding around and leaving behind little tails of light. The shakes is the worst part. For weeks I'll be thirsty and walk like a cripple and sleep a lot.
Here's Sarah coming into the room. She has a tote bag and a cheerful face for the sick one, a handful of wildflowers.
"You bring me some smokes?" I ask.
"Yes," she says indulgently. "I brought cigarettes."
"You bring me some lovin'?" I ask and she just smiles.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
On Thursday I'm up and waiting for Sarah by seven o'clock. There's a creepy domesticity about the room: my personal belongings all about shaving kit, picture of Jocko, box of Kleenex Sarah's flowers on the table and a bunch from my boss Johnny. I shuffle around in my paper slippers, finishing up, checking myself in the window's reflection. I'm excited. It's a thrill, going on a journey, leaving someplace, starting out early.
Sarah shows about eight along with an orderly an
d a wheelchair. Fruitcakes clap and cheer as the orderly rolls me out. The day is fresh and clean. On the road I watch the traffic: pickups speeding by and cars carrying white-shirted men to their offices. I should be at work. Sarah says, "I talked to Johnny and he said for you to just come on in again whenever you're feeling better."
At home Sarah leads me by the hand as we put away my things, settle me in again. She talks about taking everything one step at a time. She has prepared a bed on the couch so I can watch TV while I rest. I sit on the couch, my hands tremble, I smoke.
"Well," she says. "I need to get on to work. You okay?"
"Finer than frog hair," I say, gazing up at her, and it's then I notice she's wearing her new necklace, our necklace.
When she leaves I get up and shuffle through the house. With Jocko at my heels I straighten pictures, fluff the bed, and there on the dresser is the flag waiting for me, folded, silent. From its closet I take the ladder and set it up under the hole in the ceiling. I'm hoping for a minor triumph, to negotiate the ladder by myself and put away the flag and renegotiate the ladder to safety. The ascent is no problem though I'm a little woozy once I push open the plywood cover and stand up. I poke through the MISC box, handle the diplomas, replace the flag.
Suddenly I'm very tired. I lie down on the floorboards and stretch out, my slippers dangling above the hole in the ceiling.
Soon I start to doze, and at first I'm not sure I hear the phone ringing down below. I don't move, don't even open my eyes. Three rings is all I get. Maybe next time I'll answer. It comes to me then; I can see it. I'd hurry into the office, sit at the desk, light a smoke, pick up the receiver, hold it to my ear.
I'd say, Hello, Fred. And he'd say, Is this Billy Boy Bosworth of Company B? Then he'd laugh. And I'd say, Sure, Fred, it's me. And he'd say, Gosh, buddy, where the hell've you been?
When It's a House
My daddy at forty I still call him Daddy, we all do, even my brother, the executive, who is forty-six Daddy is once again marking off the spot I've chosen for my house. My "cabin," he calls it.
I sit on the tailgate of my pickup in the shade of a live oak tree and watch him as he paces the back wall, one foot at a time, one boot placed carefully in front of the other. At thirty feet he stops, looks up thinking about something, mutters a mental note to himself, then he turns and moves along the side wall where my little kitchen and the bathroom will be. When he gets to twenty-four he stops again, thinks again, and then starts along the front wall where I'm planning a picture window and a big porch to catch the view. Through it all he's calculating.
Something about this is so familiar to me that it's like watching a home movie from my childhood. It's like we're at home, the whole family, over in Houston, some special occasion, and when the one with the camera says, "Okay, do something entertaining," Daddy, out of the habits of his working life, gets a distracted look in his eyes and then paces off the dimensions of a building, any building, right there on the front yard. It's about the only kind of entertainment he has ever known. He was a builder of houses, and he did all right by himself. Now he is retired.
He is sixty-nine years old. He is bright, he is strong. He is willful and vain. He is frightened of dying. Since he quit smoking, after four stays at the hospital in two years, he has put on weight, forty pounds worth, and you'd think he'd been caught mooning the governor. He says, patting his belly, "Isn't this awful." He says, "You seen the basketball lately?" He is hard on himself. He says, "The baby's due any day now, and I like cigars." I just smile over it and mention how healthy he looks.
It's true. There's a lot of new life in his eyes, his ruddy skin, his smile with the stained teeth. He still has all his hair but it's a mass of white now, like his beard. When he retired, early, he went western on us. Bought some land up north of Houston, bought some cows, bought a few horses, bought an old guy's Stetson and some Tony Lamas. For a few years it was grand. We'd all show up at Christmas or the Fourth of July my brother with his clan, my sister with hers and we'd ride, we'd poke the cows, we'd talk about developing the land, more clearing and fencing, that sort of thing. We had picnics and played horseshoes.
Then he got sick and the scare set in, and he decided to consolidate his holdings. He sold everything but the house and one old horse, the family favorite, who now lives on a friend's ranch. About then came the awful change: something clicked or fizzled; something frazzled or dazzled. Now it's like having a Gabby Hayes with brains hanging around, an amusing character, a bumpkin sidekick. His hair is bushy and his beard is scraggly and for about a year he's been wearing a UT gimme cap with scrambled eggs on the bill like a trailer-park general's. He wears denim overalls that haven't faded out right yet. He wears wire-rimmed bifocals, crooked on his nose.
He chews Skoal and sucks on lollipops. He says "ya-hoo" too often and things like "hell to breakfast" and "month of Sundays," and he laughs with an oddwad yucking tic in his voice at inconvenient times. A sad transformation.
Daddy has finished pacing off the house. He scratches something on his notepad and then sits beside me on the tailgate. For a good long moment there's nothing but silence, a kind of peace, a calm as generous as the country we're looking at, all cedar and scrub oak and startling limestone jags against the distant ridges. Close your eyes and open them quick: it's like mountains. Like being right up in the gentle peaks with nothing around you but the wind. And the sky . . . so huge, so blue.
My daddy looks at his notepad. He looks at me. He says, "Don't you think this cabin ought to be a little bigger?"
"No sir I don't." I light up a cigarette.
He frowns. "And you're sure this is where you want it?"
"Positive."
"It's more level down there," he says, pointing.
"But the view's up here I keep telling you."
He grunts a deep one and then smiles with indulgence. He tugs on my ponytail. He sniffs the cloud of smoke I make. He says, "Okay, Padna, you're the boss." Then, for no apparent reason, he lets out with one of his new tics: "Yip yip yip aw-haaa," sort of a variation on a Bob Wills' yodel. His face shows a curious kind of delight. We sit on the tailgate, swinging our boots, gazing over the hills at the ten-mile view, broad and rambling and without conflict in the early morning haze.
But I hear what he's thinking: Why me? Why, of all the sons on earth, did I get this one? I have no ambition, he thinks, and he is not far from right. If he's in a charitable mood his line goes: He's a smart kid but he doesn't use good sense . . . must have been the war and all those drugs. An old excuse.
I'm a veteran from way back, one of the last draftees. After that I traveled and moved around the country for years before settling in Texas again. With my benefits I went to college and then to work as the manager of a bookstore in Austin, but when the city hit half a million I got free of it. With my benefits I bought this piece of land, twelve acres, way out in the Hill Country. I have taken a job at the feed store in a small town nearby. I work four tens. Fridays I read in my garage apartment at the widow Graber's. Saturdays I clear cedar here on the land and then make the long drive into Austin. Saturday nights and Sundays are for my girlfriend, Alicia. With my father's help I am going to build a house, and my hope is that Alicia will then leave Austin and live here with me. My plan is to fence the land, make pastures, build pens and a barn, raise animals. My family doesn't understand this. They wonder why I live so far away; they wonder why I'm wasting my education; they wonder why I'm not married.
I can never answer.
Daddy wonders too but he is "honored" that I asked him to help, "tickled" to have something to do, "proud" to be a builder of houses once more, and he's afraid I'll send him away if he starts in on me. For the next two months, as we have planned it, he'll drive over from Houston on Thursday, room with me at the widow Graber's, work hard for three days, then drive home again on Monday. To him, I think, it's like a great adventure.
"Listen," I say. "Are you sure you're up to all this?"
"You bet
ya, Boss. When do we start?"
"How's about right now?"
His eyes flare. "Yip yip yip aw-haaa," he yodels and then he starts groping in the bed of the truck for his hammer.
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
First we build a form for the foundation. This takes two weekends, six days. We dig up the earth with the rented backhoe, we make batter boards, we lay water lines, septic lines, we wait for a load of river sand; we lay rebar and iron mesh for support, and my site is on a dangerous incline.
"Boy I'll tell ya," he says about a dozen times. "Down there we'd have this finished and the concrete poured already."
"But this is where I want it. Will you quit with that?"
His look is fat with wisdom and doubt but all he says is, "Okay, Padna," in a small exhausted voice.
By Monday morning when he is ready to leave for Houston we are both tired out and bone sore and have little to say over breakfast at the Tally-Ho Cafe. During the week I rest and read a lot, talk to Alicia on the phone at night. When he returns on Thursday, in time for supper at Big John's, which he pays for, our spirits have lifted again. He's done some new calculating. We're ready for the concrete which comes early Friday morning.
"That's quite a climb," says the truck driver when he gets out. His name is Manuel. We exchange howdies and what have you and then Manuel says, "Wouldn't it be more level down there?"
"Well, yeah, it would," Daddy says. "But we want it here."
Manuel shrugs. He is middle-aged, short and stout and neatly dressed in his workingman's blue uniform. His job is to deliver and pour concrete, but getting the foundation level is important to a house, and it's very hard work for just two men. And when the touchy part comes, Manuel takes Daddy's place, helping with the shovel, the striking board, the bull float, working up a bad sweat. Daddy gives him a twenty-dollar tip for his trouble.
Memorial Day Page 2