by Jack Riggs
“It's the beginning of our life together,” he says quietly. I can feel his finger trace my spine, the way he lets his hand settle on my hip. He smells of heat and tobacco.
“I know,” I say. “It's taken a lot out of me to get here. I hope you don't mind—”
“Shhhh,” he says, his mouth close to my ear as he pushes up next to me. His arm drapes over my side, holds me close. I stare at a dark wall, relieved he will let me be, pray he won't sense my sudden disappointment in all of this, or that I am thinking I should be sleeping with Kelly rather than in here next to him.
Peck
IT'S SATURDAY, traveling day at the beach, when one set of tourists moves out and another set moves in. The roads are packed with cars and motorcycles, the worst time in the world for an emergency to happen. J.D. is laying on the siren, but the cars sitting in front of us are doing nothing to get out of the way. He looks at me, can see I'm pissed off at the world. “What do you want me to do?” he asks.
“Hell, I don't know,” I say. “Bump him.”
“What?” J.D. asks, his voice rising with surprise.
“Bump him,” I tell him again. “If he won't move over, hell, let's move him ourselves.”
“Okay Chief.” A smile creeps across J.D.'s face as he lets off the air brake and inches forward.
When he taps the car, I can see a man's head jerk forward. His body jumps in the seat like we just woke him up. “There, that ought to do it,” I say. But it takes another bump and a blast from our air horn for the man to figure it out and get his car to the shoulder of the road. When we move up beside him, I can tell he's pissed off, but I don't say anything. I just look out the window and eyeball him real good to let him know it's the law, move over for emergency vehicles, just get the hell out of the way.
It's like dominoes after that, each car seeing the one behind it slide to the side, and we are able to move to the front of the line where we find the car fire. I spot a Ford station wagon, its engine compartment billowing black smoke and flame. The father's trying to unload the back end, save some of the family's luggage, while his wife and three kids watch from the embankment.
“He shouldn't be doing that,” J.D. says.
“Nope, he needs to get on back,” I say, but before I can yell that, the whole inside of the car ignites, and in one sweet Poof! flames shoot out the back just as this poor fellow is reaching in to pull out a suitcase.
The explosion—flame and smoke, an unbelievably powerful fist of exploding pressure—hits his face. The impact knocks him down and sends his whole family into a fit. Rule one: Never stand near a burning car, not with all the fuel around, inflated tires, plastic upholstery that can explode without warning. It's just best to get the hell away and wait until a fire unit arrives on scene.
We pull the Pirsch pumper on the grass between the car and the family. J.D. looks after the father while Partee pulls and primes the line. He fogs the nozzle while I engage the pumper to send a white wall of water into the car. The temperature inside is probably two thousand degrees or more by the time we hit it, so when our spray touches flame, it turns to steam, white clouds filling the inside to suffocate the fire.
Toxic clouds roll out the windows and mushroom upward. A highway patrol car pulls alongside, sits on the shoulder as traffic builds. He puts on his lights, doesn't even get out. Acts like it's too dangerous for him to do anything else but sit there.
The station wagon is a smoldering wreck by the time J.D. finishes bandaging up the father's hands and face—minor burns that will heal fast, a lucky man. He comes over, and we coordinate how to open the hood so we can get to the engine. We keep our masks on, tighten helmet straps, button collars tight. We make sure there's no crease or a loose buckle that might leak flame onto exposed skin if the fire decides to start up again when the top comes off.
J.D. goes down on his knees to crawl up to the front of the car, gets right up next to the grille, puts his hand on the hood so it won't pop up on its own when he releases the latch. “On three,” he says, and we count together. When he pulls the release, Partee shoves the hose right up under the hood and we shoot that sucker back against the front windshield, drown an already dead engine with what's left of the five hundred gallons of water that we've brought with us.
By the time we're finished, the tank on the pumper is empty. We put out too much water, sort of overkill, but when you drive up to a car fire and the first thing you see is a man being hit by an explosion, it gets your heart pumping. You just want to knock the shit out of it with everything you got.
We get the highway patrolman to help out with finding accommodations for the family. Partee goes through the car with J.D. They look for anything that might be salvageable that they can take with them, clothes or toys, souvenirs from a trip no one's going to forget for a long time. Nothing's left except the burned-out frame of a Ford Country Squire station wagon and a metal bucket full of blackened shells. J.D. walks over shaking his head. “What?” I ask.
“My old man used to say, ‘Can't buy a car, buy a Ford.’ Guess I know why now.”
I look over at Partee. He's trimming the hose, getting it back up on the truck. He's heard what J.D. said. “Better go tell Partee about your daddy's idea there.”
“Why's that?” J.D. asks.
“He's got a Mustang over in Aynor he's been sinking money into for over a year. I think his kids have gone hungry while he stashed away enough cash to hop up that thing. He'd probably like to know that Fords ain't worth a shit before he picks it up next week.”
Now, Partee is big. J.D. is too, but not a size that could compete. We've all watched Partee lift weights back at the station. He puts anything and everything he can find on that bar and still can hold it above his head all day. He's lifted the back end of cars when we've been out on calls, kicked down doors faster than we could go through them with an ax. He tore a phone book in two a few months back, swear to God.
Partee was looking at a Mr. America magazine that day. The picture on the front showed a man built of pure muscle, his hair curly and long, pumping his arms on a beach with women hanging all over him. Partee said, “I'd like to do some of that down on our beach.”
Clay Taylor just happened to be working, or hanging around looking like he was working. He grabbed the magazine and said, “Shit, Partee, that's Frank Zane, Mr. Universe. You ain't Mr. Universe.”
“My wife thinks I am,” Partee said, and we all got a good laugh out of that. But what Clay said got to Partee, I could tell. He didn't say anything else, just got up after a little while and went into the office and asked Lori for the phone book, not Garden City Beach, but the one from Myrtle because it was big and fat, had all the Grand Strand numbers listed in it. He brought the book out and said, “I'm going to tear this thing in half because you said that.”
Clay looked up from the table where he was sitting and said, “Shit you say, Partee.”
“Shit I do,” Partee said back at him and then ripped that son-of- a- bitch right down the middle all the way to its spine, let the two sides dangle there like tassels on a shoe.
I made Clay hoof it back up to Myrtle Beach and get us another phone book that afternoon, told him it was his fault, not Par-tee's, that the book was destroyed. “You don't tell Partee his wife ain't right,” I said. We all got another good laugh out of that, everybody but Clay Taylor. Served him right, if you asked me.
I don't have to remind J.D. about that phone book. I just take my hands and tear the air in two, tell J.D., “Go on, you go tell Partee what your daddy said.” But he'll have none of it.
“Naw, that's all right,” he says. “Wouldn't want him to think his kids went hungry for nothing.” Partee looks at us then, smiles that big old gap- tooth grin, shoots us the bird and says he could use some help with the hose. I just look at J.D., don't have to say another word.
Back at the station, Phil Roddy, the volunteer replacing Clay, walks in. I thank him for coming to relieve me, then take off, head out after thirty- si
x hours that saw us answer six calls, a new record for this station, one I'm sure we'll break before the season's out.
I'm driving in the same thick traffic that we endured going out on the call. I can still taste the smell of burning car in my mouth, and I'm anxious to get home, the traffic making the wait all the worse. I can't bump them like we did this morning, or use my emergency lights to move the traffic, so I sit letting my anxiety build until it feels like my head might blow off my shoulders like that car did today, one sweet god almighty Poof!
I inch along until I can finally turn left across traffic, accelerate down a road that is more like a sandy path for the last mile. Speed is more dangerous out here, the truck fishtailing in the curves, but I need to get home. After a tight turn to the left, the road runs out in my yard. I kill the engine, look around. No Bel Air is waiting. I'm alone.
The quiet that falls around me is as dead as driftwood. Usually Kelly's playing the stereo too loud, Cassie yelling at her to turn the damn thing down. In the past when Cassie's taken Kelly to Meemaw's, there have been things left undone, clothes drying on the line, trash cans waiting for me to take out to the main road. But the emptiness feels deeper this time. It looks like a house that has been abandoned, empty, hot, and dark, shades drawn on all the windows. Inside I can see Cassie's packed things she wouldn't normally take on a vacation. Her jewelry box is gone, and pictures of her and Kelly. The missing frames have left dusty silhouettes where they used to sit on shelves and tables, more ghosts on the ground, I think. The pictures with me in them are still here.
In our bedroom, Cassie's cleaned out the cedar closet. She's taken all her bras and panties, her skirts that she never wears down here, and a whole pile of sweaters she never takes off in the winter because she complains the house is too damp and cold. Her shoes are cleared out, not just her flip- flops and the pair of hiking boots that she usually takes. Every pair she owns is gone. When I look in Cassie's drawer in the bathroom, her diaphragm is gone. She never took that before because she never needed it until now.
I find a sealed envelope on the kitchen counter with my name written across the front in Cassie's chicken scratch. Inside is a piece of paper that reads, I'll call you later. That's it, nothing more.
I walk back through the house feeling damned depressed. I know in my gut that Clay Taylor's with Cassie, even though no one's told me this. It's no coincidence they left the same day headed pretty much in the same direction. Strachen called earlier to tell me Clay was gone, that I didn't have to worry about him anymore. I wish that were the truth, but I know it's not. Right now, all I want to do is get some sleep and then maybe when I wake up everyone will be back where they belong.
In the living room, I plop down on the couch and watch the television for distraction. It gets three channels, but nothing good. The only one with any reception is Channel 5, NBC, and they're playing golf. I can't watch that, so I turn the set off, lay my head on a pillow, stretch out on the couch to rest my eyes for a minute before figuring out what to do next. When I drop off to sleep, it is deep and silent, dead like this house.
It isn't until I am on the other side of the weekend, Sunday afternoon, that my eyes open again. My body creaks like an old hinged door. It's late afternoon, and I'm hungry and groggy, sore. I need to take a bath, need to regain some bearings, catch up with the world that's already deposited another batch of sunbathers and partyers on the Grand Strand—the exchange completed while I was asleep.
I search the refrigerator for food and find fresh clams from the creeks, saltine crackers in the cupboard. There are pickles and a bowl of leftover mac and cheese that Kelly never finished. It will do for dinner. I don't feel like trying to go somewhere to buy something more. I take my makeshift meal and walk to the dock, a cold beer to wash the whole mess down. I have lost a whole night and the better part of the next day to sleep, but somehow it feels like more. It feels like a life.
When the sun leaves the marsh, the light flattens and dies. It reveals the fractured salt creeks and mudflats in a way that makes it all feel too vulnerable with the heat and drought hurting everything. I cannot imagine something like this great body of water, the marsh and all the life that exists in it, burning up, being lost forever. Or for that matter, that I would voluntarily leave this place, whether Cassie returns or not.
I was born in the low country and this is home, no place better in the whole world, though at times it's hard to make it work the way it should. When Mom died, I wasn't sure Pops would make it on his own. He became frail, seemed lost without her there to do things for him. When I moved him into the rest home, I told him I was sorry, that I didn't know what else to do, that I hated taking him away from his home, away from everything he had known up until that day. Pops just smiled and touched his chest. He said, “A man builds his home in his heart, son. That way it's always safe. You can't take it away. You'll be a rich man for the rest of your days if you come to understand that, a guaranteed deposit in any bank in the world.”
I understand this as truth right now more than ever, standing here eating a crappy dinner, my family gone for good, my heart bankrupt, about to break wide open while I wait for the telephone to ring, for my wife to call.
THE BEER AND MAC and cheese aren't enough to make the hurt go away, and I find myself back on the road heading into Conway to see Pops. I look at my watch. Eight- thirty and I know he will be staring at the TV. He always has it on, likes watching Let's Make a Deal during the week. Pops loves it when the contestant picks the wrong box or curtain and gets a broken- down car or coop full of chickens as a prize. “Serves them right,” he says, chuckling like he's talking to a friend who's always there. On Sundays he won't miss watching Ted Mack's Amateur Hour and Bonanza. I know he's lonely and I don't get over to see him as often as I should. It's just hard to do right now with the season in full swing. It's going to get even harder.
I pull up in the parking lot off Fourth Avenue and Kingston, park near a small building that looks like it's as old as Conway. Kingston Convalescent Home sits on the river, a white brick and clapboard house that has been added on to, a rambling old structure that looks like it's tired of all the extra weight. There are cypress and oak trees shading the place, Spanish moss floating through the limbs like torn gray sailcloth. At night it's all black except where the bug lights feather out into the dark, painting the limbs and overhanging moss a sick yellow. Fireflies blink high up in the trees, but won't come down in this heat. Along the river, it's eerily quiet like winter, hardly any sounds coming from the water. The building's paint is peeling, the white bricks mottled and cracked along the foundation. When I walk up onto the porch, there's a feeling like the whole place is sagging under my weight.
There are only a few residents left in the home, five or six old men including Pops. Every year the people who run the place write me a letter saying they might close the doors, but they never do. The men inside did a lot for Conway in their day so they keep it going out of respect if for no other reason.
After World War II, Pops came here to work in the turpentine industry. He was taught how to tap a tree to harvest the sap and later worked in the mill cooking it down. In the twenty- five years Pops has lived in Conway, he's made turpentine, cut timber, and moved it down the Waccamaw. He went to work at Georgetown Steel because he could make better money than the sawmill offered. He did that until he was injured in an accident. Both his legs were crushed by falling steel, and one never healed right. He could only do odd jobs around Conway after that because of the struggle to get around on a bum leg.
He's been here in the Kingston since Mom died eight years ago. He just couldn't do for himself anymore, and a couple of his buddies were already here. Back when he moved in, the place was better than it is today. The old nurses still take care of him, but his friends are gone. He's got the best room in the house, the only one that has a good view of the river.
When I knock on his door, I don't get a response. Inside, I find him sitting in near- dark, the l
ight from his television keeping him from disappearing. He's asleep in his chair, his head lowered to his chest, arms gathered in his lap. He's covered at his shoulders by a frayed afghan Mom knitted for him years ago. The room smells like camphor, a cold, half- eaten dinner on a tray near his bed. I put my hand on his shoulder and call out his name. “Pops, hey Pops,” I say. “Wake up. You got a visitor.”
I'm not sure he knows who I am, even after I turn on a lamp beside his bed so he can see me. The space is a small square box just big enough for a bed and a bureau with a mirror attached to the wall. There's a worn La- Z- Boy against one side that he's sitting in. The RCA black- and- white is on a rolling rack pushed against the opposite wall. When I open a window to let clean air into the room, he looks up at me through rheumy and unfocused eyes like he's been drinking. He's done his fair share of that, but I don't think he's thought about the bottle for years. He's sick. That's what's doing it to Pops now. His eyes are telling me that he's sick.
“You okay Pops?”
It takes him a minute to figure things out, but then he smiles. “I found a penny,” he says like it's fresh news. He lifts his arm to point toward the small bedside cabinet. On it is his watch, a glass of water, Kleenex, a jar of Vaseline, a tin of Vick's VapoRub. Momma's picture is in a small wooden frame and beside that lies a dull copper penny.
“When did you get that?” I ask.
“Yesterday,” he says. “That might be the one.”
“Might just be,” I say, reaching over to touch his hand. “Can't stay long,” I tell him, “but I was thinking about you and thought I'd come by, maybe watch Bonanza for a while.”