They Come in All Colors

by Malcolm Hansen

  Mister Swanson dropped us off at the top of our drive and sped off. A gush of fatigue hit me like a tidal wave. I headed straight for my room and dove into bed. Didn’t even take off my suit.

  I don’t know how long it was before Mom or Dad came into my room, but I remember a lot of wet washcloths and Mom pleading with Dad to call Mister Hofstetter. She couldn’t bring herself to call him “Dr.” on account of some comment he’d made to her when she was a young girl. Things came back to me in dribs and drabs, like the feverish dreams that replayed the image of Toby in that open casket. I had visions in my sleep of having been held hostage in that church, with a crowd gathered outside trying to rescue me. Flares zipped across the night sky. Rappel lines hung from swirling helicopters. Hand grenades and tear-gas canisters were tossed through the window.

  My bed was soaked. I was burning up. I think my temperature spiked to 200 degrees with the realization that the crowd wasn’t there to rescue me but to hang me alive. There was a bounty on my head, and every single white person in Early County, with the single exception of Dad, wanted to string me up out front. It was set up in my dream just like those public hangings you see in cowboy movies, where the actual hanging is nowhere near as bad as all the hate-filled invective that precedes it.

  I also had a foggy recollection of the racket Dr. Hofstetter made tripping up our front steps and the loud thumping sound his shoes made across our creaky pine floor before my bedroom door swung open and he sat down beside me with that stale cigar in his mouth and fumbled through his medicine bag.

  Hold still, son. This is gonna hurt.

  That’s my good arm!

  I yelped, then fell back in bed. Dr. Hofstetter gave me a congratulatory pat on the shoulder and said that the needle was supposed to go in my good arm. He took one look at Dad and told him to take me straight to Putney.

  Dad was in a pickle because the truck was still sitting in town, vandalized. He had no choice but to take the tractor. All these years of me wanting to ride on the back of that thing, and here my overprotective dad was tossing me on the back of it, limp as a sack of peanuts and with a fever of sky high. I was in and out of consciousness the whole way. But what I remember of it was good. It was so thrilling, I almost didn’t mind nearly falling off at every bend.

  Dad carried me through the front door, where a nurse took one look at my arm and asked how long it’d been like that. I’d broken out in a cold sweat, and my breaths were short. Next thing I knew, they put me on one of the unused gurneys lining the wall and rolled me off to some ICU room and pumped me full of penicillin to fight some sort of blood poisoning. How I got that, I have no idea. The doctor pulled out a jigsaw and said he was going to have to remove my cast to see what was going on. I thought he was about to take my arm off and screamed in panic. Two nurses held me down, and the doctor said something about the rubber bands that I couldn’t hear before he cracked my cast open with his bare hands. Several of my stitches had opened up and seemed to have festered. A thick white mucousy goo was seeping out and smelled so bad that the nurses made faces.

  The doctor said that the infection had spread from the wound to my blood and that Dad had gotten me there in the nick of time. He asked me if I’d experienced joint stiffness and then nodded when I said yes, like he wasn’t one bit surprised. Said I was lucky not to have any neurological complications, whatever that meant. Dad asked if I’d have to get my stomach pumped. The doctor said no, he’d just put me on a heavy regimen of antibiotics—at which point my mouth went dry. The doctor took Dad by the arm and led him into the adjoining room. Said that he wanted to have a look at the gash on his face.

  It wasn’t until my third day there that they got the infection under control and someone realized that the bone wasn’t healing right. This doctor was apparently some sort of bone specialist. The young Dr. Beck (or Smeck or Heck—something like that) speculated that I’d experienced some sort of highly unusual form of blunt trauma early on to the proximal region of my arm. He turned to me and asked if perhaps I’d fallen off a bicycle—said it was okay for me to admit to having ridden a bicycle with a broken arm. I wouldn’t be the first to have done so. He glanced at Dad and said that I wouldn’t get in trouble, right? I shook my head, no. I didn’t have a bicycle.

  He cleared his throat and held the radiograph up to the light, then explained how it showed that there was a highly irregular rotation of the flexor digitorum sublimis so that the bone’s normal orientation was skewed. Called it a displacement fracture, or re-rupture—said it was the result of my arm having been twisted radially with the cast on. He demonstrated on Dad the vector, angle, and force necessary to cause such an abnormality. I didn’t understand any of it, of course. All I knew was that my arm hardly felt connected to my shoulder.

  When Dad responded with a blank stare, Dr. Beck said that my ulna was healing out of whack and wasn’t properly aligned with the radius. The upshot was that disfigurement was inevitable unless something drastic was done.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down, Doc. You just took a hard left on me. Did you just say “disfigurement”?

  Dr. Beck took off his glasses. He looked Dad straight in the eye and said that the only thing he could do to make my arm heal straight would be to break it again. In response to which Dad walked a small circle while pinching the topmost part of his nasal bone.

  I know I’m just a peanut farmer, Doc, but wouldn’t that be the third time? And on the same arm?

  Dr. Beck took a good hard look at Dad. I’m not here to sugarcoat things for you, Mister Fairchild.

  Dr. Beck explained that our only hope was that maybe it would heal straighter the third time around. To do that, he’d have to effectively start from scratch. I suddenly felt light-headed, like I probably shouldn’t be hearing this. I closed my eyes and imagined my arm in a vise, with some doctor in a lab coat taking a baseball bat to it. I heard Dad whisper, Isn’t there some sort of limit to how many times you can do that, Doc?

  Dr. Beck called Dad aside. They moved farther down the wide, shiny tiled hall, out of earshot. After a lengthy conference in the midst of nurses busily entering and exiting the rooms on either side of them, they were both towering in front of me, agreeing that a third break wouldn’t be necessary. Which, in a sense, was good news. Or was it? All that medicine must have been making me stupid. I didn’t even know the difference between good news and bad news anymore. I mean, sure I didn’t want to have it broke again, but neither did I want to be—well. You know. The d word.

  What about, you know—the deformity?

  Dr. Beck said that it would be merely an aesthetic concern. The functional impact to my elbow, wrist, and fingers would be negligible. Dad seemed to think it’d be okay. So I did, too. The doctor had me stay one more night, to be on the safe side. The next day, they ran some more tests, after which they plastered me back up and sent me on my way.

  • • •

  DAD DIDN’T SAY a word on the drive home. We sat at the railroad crossing, watching a wall of ochre-colored boxcars and rust-colored boxcars and navy-colored boxcars rumble past, one after the next. It felt weird being stuck in that truck with him, in silence, after three whole days of having a chatty hospital staff wanting to know every last thing about me. Part of me wished my fingers would swell up again if it’d get him to say something.

  So you fixed the truck?

  Hm.

  New tires?

  Hm.

  All of ’em, or just the ones that got slashed?

  Dad looked over, distracted. Huh? Oh. Not the windows, though. They’re still busted. I just keep them rolled down. Until we get some more money coming in.

  At least the truck was still good for getting a few words out of him. The caboose whooshed past, and the clang clang clanging railroad crossing gate lifted. We crept over the double bump of the railroad tracks. Dad looked over and said how happy Mom would be to have me home. After that, he scratched at the thick scab set across the bridge of his nose and went quiet again.

>   Dad tapped the horn as we pulled into our drive. Mom appeared in the doorway before the engine stopped knocking. I jumped into her arms. She held me tight and said she was sorry she hadn’t been able to come to the hospital. It was only because she didn’t want trouble. It’d been three days but it felt like two months.

  Dad and Mom looked at each other and hugged. Then they kissed, and we all embraced. It was the first time I’d seen them do that in a long time. We all just missed each other. We headed inside, and Dad pleaded for Mom to please go easy on me. He understood the temptation but thought that kind of gushing love was only good when applied sparingly. Thought I might still be adjusting and didn’t want to see me in shock or something.

  Mom told Dad to hush and tucked me into bed and brought me a tray with chocolate milk and oatmeal cookies and a tiny little vase with some of her petunias from out back. She placed it on my nightstand and told me to get some rest. She kissed me on the cheek and stroked my hair and told me again how great it was to have me back. Said it was the longest three days of her life. I dozed off before she finished drawing the curtain.

  I slept like a rock that night. I remember waking up groggy from all the medicine and being half asleep and slapping around on my end table in the dark for some water and overhearing Mom and Pop talking tenderly and sharing in laughter in the kitchen. Whatever problems we’d had seemed to be all fixed. Somehow the events at Toby’s service, along with my subsequent hospital stint and maybe even Dad’s fistfight with Mister Buford, had brought us all together. I was happy to have my family back.

  I felt like a new person the next day. I sat up in bed with my comic books and let Mom and Dad wait on me hand and foot. All I had to do was to cough, and one of them would poke their head in the room and ask if I needed anything. Seemed that every few hours, one of them would stick their head in the doorway and remind me to take my medicine.

  The new cast the doctor had put on me was somehow getting the respect the first one never got. No more scrubbing dishes—I didn’t even have to carry my dirty plate to the sink. No one bothered me about the mess in my room. Mom even offered to help me brush my teeth that first night. I finally had the time I needed to finish the puzzle I’d started at the beginning of summer. Dad didn’t leave the house, which was unusual. He usually went out at least once a day to do something important in town. But he just said that he was working on something out in the shed and that he wanted to stay close to me.

  Then, after dinner, Dad told me that I could stay up and watch a ball game with him if I wanted. “If I wanted?” He never let me stay up late. I sat down on the sofa and kissed my new cast. It seemed to have the power to work miracles. Mom was in the kitchen, doing Miss Della’s hair. They’d been in there for a good hour or so together. Miss Della was going on about all the people she’d known who had left and were now living these interesting lives up North. Dad turned up the volume of the game. He wasn’t interested in hearing Mom gabbing on to Miss Della about how she had no delusions about his family. I popped into the kitchen to scrounge myself up a cookie. I froze at the mention of Connie. Mom never talked about Connie.

  Mom had a comb in her teeth and was combing out Miss Della’s hair in her fingers, saying how she did what she always did in the face of slander—especially when it came from one whose primary grievance was a pitted heart. Miss Della said, Oh child. Mom said she simply swallowed her pride and took what little comfort she could from the fact that the man sitting in the other room hadn’t left her when she was carrying. Miss Della said, Hm. Mom said men were a dime a dozen, but those men weren’t. Miss Della said, Hm. Because he could have, Mom said. Miss Della said, Hm.

  Carrying what?

  They both looked up. They hadn’t realized I was there.

  Boy, you go back into that room and watch yourself some TV. Go on, get. Don’t make me get out of this chair, young man.

  I held up my new cast and didn’t move. They sighed and turned back to each other. Mom said “that” seemed to her to be proof enough that he was a decent man. A man not so much of distinction or refinement as of a prominent family and who had always treated her decently. She claimed that must count for something. Miss Della said, Hm.

  Miss Della pursed her lips and let Mom talk. Mom acknowledged that it was a modest victory but merely claimed that it was a victory nonetheless and that while these weren’t exactly the happiest of times, she was clutching onto it for dear life. Miss Della said, Hm, hm. Mom put clips in Miss Della’s hair and said, Just wait. You’ll see.

  Mom reached to the counter for more clips and assured Miss Della that her man was better than most. Miss Della said, Hm. His brave actions at the church proved that—again and again, he’d proven it. And when would people just let up and accept that he wasn’t the lecherous wretch they were making him out to be? Because it was no different than her not being the lecherous person Connie was always making her out to be. Dad had proven beyond any doubt that she could count on him in a pinch. Not to cut and run, like so many others did these days. Miss Della said, Hm. Hm. Hm.

  Mom paused.

  What is wrong with people? They’ve got it all backward. Him being moody doesn’t mean he’s in cahoots with this group or that group. He’s no renegade. That’s part of his charm. That his love for me is not political is a good thing. Doesn’t that make his love better? More pure? Damn it, he’s not political, he’s pigheaded. Love isn’t black or white for him. A little blinding, perhaps. But isn’t that just the way it’s supposed to be?

  Hm. Hm. Hm. Hm. Hm. Della sat there quietly appraising Mom. Her gaze was steady, if doubtful. Child, you light-skinned niggers are all the same. You think that just because you’ve weathered a few storms, you’re going to be okay in a hurricane. Now, put on more of that grease and let me out of this chair. It’s almost eight, and I gotta get back to the Orbachs’ to wash up from their supper.

  The TV roared. I returned to the den and checked on the ball game. The last time Dad had let me stay up this late, he’d gotten me out of bed to watch Roger Maris jogging around the bases to thunderous applause. Dad had told me to pay attention. Said that I must never forget that moment, because someday I’d have kids of my own and he wanted me to be able to share with them how I was standing there beside him, my own pop, staring into the glare of the TV on the evening when baseball’s longest-standing record was broken. He didn’t call it baseball history—he called it human history, the history of men. He put a hand on my shoulder and said that he wanted to share it with me.

  Remember Maris’s home run last year?

  Dad nodded. Over the right-field wall. Three hundred and forty-eight feet. Home run number sixty-one for the year.

  Mom hollered out from the kitchen, wondering if World War III had broken out and nobody was bothering to tell her. Miss Della was gathering up her things. She joked that if Castro managed to get his hands on a missile, at least she’d go down with pretty hair. When Dad told them that Bob Burda had hit an eleventh-inning walk-off home run for the Crackers, they responded with a communal shrug.

  I put my arms around Dad’s waist and held him tight. The warmth between us filled me with joy. Dad shook his head and turned off the TV. Said it was time for bed—I had a big workday tomorrow. The screen went blank and Dad went into the kitchen. I stood there staring at the dark screen and thought about the time Toby and I had used a broken stack pole to tee off on the rotting peaches lying along the side of the road.

  • • •

  EARLY THE NEXT morning, Dad told me to sort through some stack poles. Said we were behind on a bunch of stuff and he needed me to pick out a hundred good ones by the end of the day. Once I was done, it’d be the end of sorting poles for the season. He apologized, because he knew I still wasn’t one hundred percent, but asked me to just suck it up and to finish strong. Then he disappeared into the bathroom with a newspaper in hand. I didn’t say anything, but I think he could tell by the look on my face that I wasn’t happy about it.

  The though
t of picking up just one more cockamamie stack pole made me tired. A hundred? It would require going through a thousand to pick out that many good ones. I dragged my feet out onto the back stoop and stared out at that pile of stack poles that, no matter how many I’d sorted through and no matter how many we’d repaired, never got smaller. I resented them. They were ruining my life, and I just wanted them to go away. Why couldn’t Dad just have been a stupid housekeeper or hairdresser or bookkeeper, like Mom?

  Finishing strong was overrated. I’d been in the hospital, was still having medicine shoved in my face four times a day, and, frankly, was still recovering. Sure, I felt a lot better, but that was all the more reason to continue taking it easy. Apparently, it was working—I hadn’t been in a hospital for three whole days just so he could dump more work on me.

  I popped into the shed and riffled through the gloves and drill bits and screwdrivers covering Dad’s workbench. I snatched a jar of paint thinner and a box of matches, paused in the doorway, and glanced back inside. There was a stack of boards leaning against the wall that I hadn’t seen before. A big box of nails and a hammer was sitting on a chair beside it. I had no idea what he was making. All I knew was that he should have been helping me sort through stack poles instead of parking himself on the john for hours at a time while I was left to do the heavy lifting.

  The pile of stack poles loomed like a mountain beside our house. It reached well above the eaves. I climbed up it with paint thinner and matches in hand, careful not to slip, all the way to the creaky top. I was momentarily distracted by the view. It was magnificent. Everything seemed familiar and new at the same time. The sun was just now emerging over the tree line. Shards of sunlight burst through the trees. The rolling hills and wide-open landscape was shrouded in an early-morning mist that had not yet burnt off. I could smell it in everything around me: the trees, the shrubs, and the dirt road, even the stack poles. I could even make out the top of a building downtown. Of all things, it was a damned church spire. It looked so small and insignificant surrounded by all this natural beauty, swaddled as it was in a sprawling countryside, connected to everything around it by threads of road.