I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

by Steve Earle

  “…witnesses at the scene report that multiple shots rang out as the presidential motorcade approached Dealey Plaza…”

  “…the president and Texas governor John Connally, who was also wounded, have been rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where at this hour both are undergoing emergency surgery…”

  “…the First Lady, who was not, I repeat, not injured, is at her husband’s side…”

  When the bad news finally came, it was delivered in halting phrases by an obviously stunned Walter Cronkite, who removed his reading glasses to note the time on the studio clock.

  “It’s official, then. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is dead, at just after one o’clock East Coast time…”

  There were only a handful of women in the room, but each and every one spontaneously burst into tears. Some cried out loud, even sobbed, hysterically. Others only managed whimpers. Teresa covered her mouth with both of her hands in an attempt to stem the flood, but it was no use. Her grief spilled out in a sustained, piteous wail, interspersed with barely intelligible curses and prayers. Some of the men cried too. Manny certainly did. Great big tears rolled down his great big cheeks; his lower lip trembled like a frightened child’s. But most only stared silently at the television screen and shook their heads in disbelief.

  “Damn shame,” said Doc, sinking back into his chair. The half a bag of dope wasn’t holding up like it had been a few minutes ago. He was a hairsbreadth from buttonholing Manny when he suddenly remembered that there was no television in his room at the boarding house.

  “Graciela!”

  Doc jumped up, nearly upending the table and sending dominoes clattering to the floor as he headed for the door at a dead run. Then he stopped suddenly and turned on his heel, sending Manny, who’d followed a little too closely behind, tumbling ass over teakettle and sprawling.

  “Sorry about that, amigo,” Doc apologized, “but it just occurred to me that, well, no offense intended, that you might not be the ideal interpreter in a delicate situation such as this.”

  Manny’s eyes widened. “No offense taken, Doc. Let’s get Teresa.”

  But Teresa continued to wail inconsolably behind the bar, slapping away the well-intentioned touches and embraces of her regular clientele and stamping her feet like a spoiled toddler in the throes of a tantrum.

  “Well, first things first.” Doc sighed.

  He strode across the room and dashed around behind the bar, sidestepping a wild uppercut as he wrapped the surprisingly strong little woman in a powerful bear hug, burying her face in his chest and muffling her screams. He held her there until she stopped struggling and then freed one arm to smooth her hair and wipe her face with his handkerchief.

  “There, there, now. I know, I know. The world is an awful place sometimes. But you’ve got to pull yourself together, girl. I need your help down at the boarding house.”

  When Teresa stifled a sob, snatched the handkerchief, and wiped away the last traces of mascara herself, Doc knew that she understood.

  “Graciela?” she inquired.

  “She doesn’t know,” Doc confirmed.

  Teresa opened the cash register, scooped up the big bills, and tucked them deep into her brassiere. “¡Vamos!” she hollered in her best last-call-for-alcohol contralto. “Go on! You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here! This shit hole is closed in memory of the president and in honor of Yah-kee!”

  They found Graciela in the hallway, a basket of wet laundry balanced on her shoulder as she pushed the back door open with her free hand, her right. Doc immediately focused on the bandage on her wrist and reached for the basket.

  “Here, child, let me give you a hand with that.”

  Graciela resisted playfully for an instant before suddenly releasing the basket, catching Doc off-guard and sending him stumbling backward beneath the burden she had borne so effortlessly. She laughed out loud, a child’s laugh, spontaneous and musical with no guile in it, but no one else was laughing and the final notes rang sour and died. She looked from one somber face to another and found foreboding but no answers. Manny couldn’t even look her in the eye. So Graciela turned to Teresa.

  “¿Qué pasa?”

  Teresa took Graciela’s hands in hers, kissed the bandaged wrist, crossed herself, and began speaking to her in low, reassuring Spanish the way her mother always had when the news wasn’t good. Placing one arm around her waist from behind and pulling her close to her, like a bird taking a fledgling under its wing, she gently but firmly guided Graciela down the hallway and up the stairs. Manny grabbed the laundry basket, and he and Doc followed behind. They couldn’t hear what was being said but when Graciela’s knees buckled slightly about halfway up they knew that the message had been delivered, and they were both thankful that Teresa had drawn the short straw. Teresa only wrapped her other arm around Graciela and locked her wrists together for support and continued to shepherd her to the top of the stairs and into Doc’s room.

  Marge and Dallas had been watching the coverage on the TV in the parlor. “Oh, you’ve heard,” Marge surmised, and Dallas hurried up the stairs behind Manny and Doc.

  Graciela sat on the edge of Doc’s bed with her head on Teresa’s shoulder and cried hard for an hour and a half. There was nothing that anyone could do or say to console her, so they simply waited until she was spent and then Teresa helped her to lay her head down on the pillow and covered her with a corner of the quilt and soon she was asleep.

  ***

  There was nothing more Teresa could do, so Doc sent her home.

  “You better go on too, Manny,” he said. “Better go get your re-up before those dope fiends burn this whole goddamn place down. We’ll be all right.”

  Marge kept a pot of coffee going, and now and then Doc popped down for a fresh cup and the latest news.

  “They got him,” Marge reported some time in the late afternoon. “Some ugly little motherfucker name of Oswald they found hidin’ in the picture show. Said he killed a cop too.”

  “Did he confess?” Doc wondered.

  “No, but they say he’s a Communist and he used to live in Russia. Even got him a Russian wife.”

  “Russian, huh? How’s that son of a bitch Connally?”

  “They say he’s restin’ comfortably.”

  Doc shook his head. “That figures. And now Lyndon Johnson’s the president of the United States.”

  When he returned Graciela was awake.

  “Well, hello there!”

  Graciela didn’t respond, so he tried Spanish.

  “¡Hola! ¿Qué tal?”

  She just lay there on her side, her black eyes staring at nothing. Doc reached for his bag and went through the motions of a cursory physical examination. He checked her pulse, listened to her heart and lungs through his stethoscope, made sure that her pupils were responding to light the way that they should. All that looked fine and Doc wasn’t surprised. He reckoned they’d just have to wait this one out, so he pulled his chair up alongside the bed, just like he had when she had first come to him. How long ago now? He remembered that it had been hotter than hell, so it must have been September. It couldn’t have been August, could it? Well, I’ll be damned, he thought. Over three months. A season, they call it. Long enough to bring about a change. He shook his head.

  He’d always helped people who had nowhere else to turn, but he did it for money and dope and to secure himself a place in the scheme of things. Practicing medicine in the straight world was no different. That sheepskin not only assured him of a handsome income but also got him into the country club, where he could rub elbows with lawyers, judges, oilmen, and real estate tycoons, the kind of friends that are handy to have on your way up. On the way down there had been the Bossier crew, the bartenders and the working girls, and the Hayride yahoos like Hank. Truth was, Doc didn’t make a habit of doing anything for anybody who couldn’t do something for him.

  It was hard to see Graciela like this.

 
She lay there motionless and silent for another four hours, and then just after midnight she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep. Doc wasn’t far behind. He put up a halfhearted fight, shaking his head and shifting his weight around in the chair, but finally his chin dropped down on his chest.

  VIII

  Doc’s around somewhere, but Hank can’t tune him in like he usually can. It’s heartbreak that Hank homes in on, the singular frequency of hopelessness emitted by denizens of the half-light like Doc. But tonight there’s some kind of static in the air, millions of voices out there, and they’re all hopeless, all hurting, and Hank can’t tell one from the other. They’ve found one another somehow, and now they cry out together, tortured souls in concert, united in their fear and their anguish.

  And Doc’s nothing but another needle in the heartbroken haystack.

  IX

  Graciela finally opened her eyes and spoke just as a sunbeam knifed through the grime on the boarding-house windows.

  “Quisiera ir a la iglesia a rezar,” she said.

  She would like to go to church to pray.

  The little church had been a Spanish mission once, a place where the local Indians could barter their souls to the Franciscan friars for enough corn to feed their families and a modicum of protection from their more aggressive and still unconquered neighbors. Doc dutifully followed Graciela down the aisle. His footsteps fell like thunderclaps, ricocheting from floor to vault, and in the hushed intervals he could swear that he heard the whisper of moccasins and sandals.

  He was surrounded by objects of devotion, the Stations of the Cross, the shrines, the ancient oak crucifix that had no doubt been lovingly carved by a newly baptized Indian artisan. Row after row of tiny candles struggled for oxygen in blackened glass votives casting Halloween-colored shadows that danced on the edge of the darkness. Each was a personal beacon kindled by the hand of an individual believer in hopes of opening a private channel for communication with his or her God. They came and lit their candles and then they sank to their knees and silently waited. Not for a sign or a miracle, for these were not Sunday Christians offering up foxhole prayers. Most had prayed every day of their lives, and they knew no such vulgar display was forthcoming. They expected no remedy. No answers. They prayed only for affirmation, the peace that comes from unconditional and unwavering faith. It was enough to believe that God indeed heard them cry out in their hour of darkness.

  Graciela took her place at the kneeler. Doc stood awkwardly for a moment and then followed suit. Not sure what to do with his hands, he glanced sideways at Graciela.

  It was as if he were seeing her for the very first time. A white mantilla covered her head and cascaded over her shoulders and arms, leaving only her folded hands exposed; a simple wooden rosary was woven in and out of her fingers. When she prayed, her hands covered her nose and mouth so that only her upturned eyes were visible. He recalled a picture he’d seen somewhere of some saint or another, or maybe it was the Lady of Guadalupe that he was reminded of, the vision of the Blessed Virgin who had appeared to an Indian in central Mexico four hundred years before and who was now the patron of all Mexican Catholics. Graciela said her Our Fathers and Hail Marys in Spanish, and Doc tried to follow along, translating in his head, but at some point he lost the thread and then drifted for a while, his mind wandering aimlessly the way it used to in church or school when he was a kid. He’d just check out. As he got older and learned what the world was really like, it got harder and harder to find that place.

  Whiskey helped. It gave him the courage to talk to girls, even the really pretty ones, though he never cared for the taste of it. As he got older, friends and family alike chided him for adulterating good sour mash with Coca-Cola.

  Then in the first year of his residency he befriended a crazy old pathologist who worked the midnight shift in the county morgue, and it was he who introduced Doc to the miracle of morphine. From that very first shot it was as if he’d discovered the one vital ingredient that God had left out when He’d sent Doc kicking and screaming into the cold, cruel world.

  So here he was in church, and damn near sober. How long had it been?

  A lifetime, and a long, hard one at that. He was suddenly certain that on this day he was the only agnostic in the house, God’s house. Wait a minute. Did he believe in God or not?

  Sure, why not?

  He believed in ghosts. And he damn sure believed in the devil. He had seen sufficient evidence that something evil was, indeed, abroad in the world, men murdering one another over money or dope or simply because they felt like killing. But he had never encountered anything that felt remotely like God in any of the churches he’d ever attended.

  Back in Louisiana, he’d been to Catholic weddings and funerals held in big, fancy cathedrals, and as far as he could tell those affairs were no more spiritual than their Protestant counterparts. They were pageants. Fashion shows held in sanctified country clubs. Just another place to see and be seen by all the right people; they said the words and sang the songs, but they were too busy trying to cultivate the appearance of piety to actually pray.

  But everybody in this little church was praying. It was eight o’clock on a Saturday morning and there’d been no call to worship and no priest was presiding, but they came of their own free will and they got down on their knees and they prayed. They closed their eyes and they opened their hearts and they praised their God unconditionally, asking only for His will for them. Simple people though they were, they knew that attempting to make sense of the events of the previous twenty-four hours was futile.

  For over an hour, Graciela prayed, and Doc watched in awe of her faith and in envy of her tenacity.

  But whom was she praying to? This Catholic God, Whose functionaries on earth would excommunicate her and see her cast into hellfire if they knew what she had done?

  And whom was she praying for? Jackie? Caroline? John-John? That would be just like Graciela. The Kennedys had one another and the sympathy of an entire nation, and Graciela had nothing. No family, no friends except for a raggedy band of half-assed outlaws with no hope and no future.

  Doc wanted to pray too, but he didn’t know how. The only prayer that he knew was the Child’s Prayer that his mother made him say before he went to bed every night.

  Now I lay me down to sleep

  I pray to God my soul to keep

  If I should die before I wake…

  What the fuck was that all about, anyway. He clearly remembered lying awake for hours terrified that if he closed his eyes, even for an instant, he might never open them again.

  And what should Doc pray for?

  That God might forgive Graciela? Wash away even her great sin and restore her to the fold? Then she could go home to her mother … or maybe one of the good people of this congregation would take her in and rescue her from the guilt and the shame and carry her far away from the South Presa Strip.

  Doc could never pray for that. He was nowhere near that selfless.

  Well, he was here, so he might as well give it a shot, he reckoned. He closed his eyes and he bowed his head … and at first he just listened.

  The air was filled with prayer, soft sibilant whisperings and low murmuring echoes all around him. He could make out a word of Spanish here and there and he tried to divine their secret meaning but he found, to his frustration, that he was ultimately fixated on the steady thud of his own heartbeat. Maybe he should just start out by introducing himself.

  “Lord, You don’t know me—” The deep voice rumbled in the limestone chamber, and the entire congregation turned and stared as if some fugitive beast of the field had suddenly desecrated the sanctuary, bellowing at the top of its lungs. Every one of those black eyes, reflecting the light of a thousand candles, was brought to bear, rousing Doc from his fitful meditation, and it was only then that he realized that the offending voice was his own. Graciela stared like everyone else, but there was no judgment in her eyes, and, Doc thought, the faintest hint of a smile at the corner
s of her mouth, even the telltale twitch of suppressed laughter. She reached across to offer a reassuring pat on the back of Doc’s hand and then she and the rest of the faithful returned to their prayers as if nothing had happened.

  Doc sheepishly bowed his head and tried again, taking care to keep his feeble efforts to himself.

  Like I was saying, Lord, You don’t know me…

  A quick look around to ascertain that he was indeed praying silently this time.

  …I mean, I don’t get to church much and, well, I’m … well, I don’t have to tell You that I’m a sinner. I’m certain that You can see that for Yourself. I’ve probably committed every sin that there is at one time or another, and if there’s a hell then there’s no doubt in my mind that I am going there, and when my time comes I’ll go quietly. I think. It’s just that, I’m only here today because of this little girl, see, and she could use a little help right now. She’s taking this whole thing pretty hard and she’s had a pretty rough go of it here lately, I mean, she was in trouble, Lord, and she didn’t know who to turn to and, well, look at her! She’s not much more than a child herself. Now, Lord, I know You don’t approve of me and what I do to get by in this world and I can’t say that I blame You because I struggle with the moral ramifications myself from time to time, but please, please, don’t punish the girl, Lord. She hasn’t got a mean bone in her body and her only sin as far as I know is being young and foolish and scared and putting her trust in an old quack like me. So if there is to be a reckoning, Lord, here I am. Take me, for it was my hands that offended You, Lord, not hers … but of course You already know that because You know everything, I reckon, but I’m just saying. Well, uh, I didn’t mean to go on so, Lord, I guess I’m starting to sound like some kinda preacher or something; well, You know, not a preacher but … well, hell … thanks for listening … Amen.