Desert Blues

by Bill Albert

  “I never thought,” said Abe, staring down at his feet, shaking his head slowly from side to side. “You don’t think about that, do you? They shouldn’t die before you do, your children. No, they shouldn’t And, the worst is that she died thinking bad thoughts about me. Bad thoughts. I never had the chance, you see. To explain that is. I could have. Sure, I could. Lots of things to tell her. To explain about what happened. Never in time. That’s the story of my life, never in time. You hear what I’m saying, Harold? Old Abe Cohen, never in damn time.”

  He looked outside, staring dead-eyed at a many-armed Joshua tree outlined in the moonlit garden.

  “Don’t like the desert much,” he muttered to himself. “Hot in the day, spooky at night. Full of snakes and lizards. Too much dust. Dust, all over dust. No place for a normal person.”

  He rubbed his eyes, put the mug to his lips.

  “You don’t have anything a little stronger? A drop of whiskey or maybe some brandy? I’ve had quite a shock, you know. Quite a shock for an old man”

  Harold walked over to the cocktail trolley in the living room and picked-up a half-empty bottle of J&B.

  “That’s alright,” said Abe, when he saw Harold with a glass. “The cup is OK.”

  The old man watched with a measuring eye as Harold poured the whiskey.

  He put his hand on the boy’s arm.

  “That’s OK, Harold,” he said with a smile and a wink, “why don’t you just leave the bottle?”

  Abe took a long drink. It caught halfway down and he started to cough. Again and again his body shuddered as if he were being punched. A thin stream of saliva escaped from the corner of his mouth. After a minute or so the attack passed and he flopped back in the chair exhausted, his eyes red and watery. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and took another drink from the cup. This time it went down without incident.

  The whiskey diluted his grief, put a spark back in his eyes.

  “Sorry, Harold, sorry. Can’t seem to shake this damn cough. Maybe the dry air would be good for it. Desert got to be good for something. Right? How old are you, boy?”

  “Almost sixteen.”

  “Almost sixteen,” repeated Abe. “Have a drink with me?”

  “No. No thanks.”

  “OK, don’t mind if I have another, do you?”

  “No.”

  Abe filled the coffee mug with whiskey. There was hardly any left in the bottle. He patted the pockets of his jacket.

  “You don’t have a cigarette, do you? I seem to be fresh out.”

  “No, sorry. Don’t smoke.”

  “Sure, kid, and a good thing too. Terrible habit, terrible. You just listen to these old lungs of mine.”

  Harold listened to the splutter and sucking rasp as his grandfather demonstrated the evils of tobacco by trying to breathe in.

  “Uh . . . maybe there’s a long butt in that ashtray over there? Wadda you think?”

  He pointed to the coffee table by the couch. Harold got the ashtray and brought it over to his grandfather. Delicately the old man chose a cigarette which had been stubbed out. He smiled with satisfaction as he smoothed it between his fingers. He noticed Harold watching him and shrugged.

  “Just to see me right. It’s an emergency. You understand about that, don’t you Harold?”

  He pulled a book of matches from one of the side pockets of his jacket.

  “Now matches are another story. Always have ‘em. Lots of matches. Never can have too many. Man gets cold, wants to see in the dark, light a cigarette, what does he need? Right, matches. Fire, Harold, fire. It’s what sets us apart from all the other animals. Of course, then again you could say it was pants.”

  “Pants?” squeaked Harold, suddenly outflanked.

  The old man leaned forward so his face was a few inches from Harold’s. His voice took on a soft, confiding tone. The whiskey fumes from his breath brought tears to Harold’s eyes.

  “Sure, pants . . . or hats or rubber gloves, any of that stuff. You know what I’m saying? You ever seen a raccoon wearing pants, a hat, and rubber gloves? No, you have not and you never will either, not this side of the grave anyway.”

  Noticing the bewilderment on Harold’s face, the old man slapped the table and began to laugh. He was soon doubled up, coughing once again. But, during the entire bout, as his body twisted and shook, flailed and rattled, the cigarette never left the corner of his mouth. When he finally recovered he lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  Harold braced himself for another coughing attack, but nothing happened.

  “Ah, that’s more like it,” said Abe. “You don’t have much to say for yourself, do you Harold?”

  He paused and took another sip from the mug.

  “Don’t look like your dear mother, do you? Your father maybe?”

  “No, not really,” Harold replied.

  “Red hair? Rachel’s mother had gray hair, never knew her father. Maybe she had red hair before the gray hair. Probably explains it. From Poland she was. Emma Wilna, a regular terror. Didn’t like me at all. No one was good enough for her precious Rachel, no one. Damn old cow. She was such a misery she up and died the week after we got married. Can you imagine that? Dead as a Polish herring. Nothing was ever really the same between me and Rachel after that. Never could figure out what it all meant.”

  He tipped back the mug and then looked closely at Harold.

  “Yeah, red hair from Poland.”

  He patted Harold’s thick shoulder.

  “A grandson. How about that? Old Abe Cohen has got himself a grandson. We’re going to be good friends, right Harold? Good, good friends.”

  “Sure,” said Harold, moving his chair closer to the open patio door. “Sure we are.”

  As soon as she pulled into the driveway she knew something was wrong. It was after twelve o’clock and Harold was outside waiting for her. Caught in the headlights he shifted impatiently from one foot to the other. She opened the car door and got out hurriedly.

  “Harold darling, whatever’s the matter?”

  “I . . .um, there’s someone come. I don’t know . . .”

  “Who? Who’s come?”

  It couldn’t be Archie, she thought. He’d only called a couple of days before and he said a week or so. What if he came early as a surprise? Oh, God no!

  Harold swallowed hard and looked at his aunt’s feet.

  “He says he’s sorta your father or something.”

  Enid stepped back as if she had been slapped. Her legs buckled and she had to lean against the car to keep from falling over.

  “Are you sure? Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  “Positive. Abe Cohen he said his name was.”

  Abe Cohen. God, thought Enid, a ghost, a real live ghost. How many years had it been? Twenty-five. Twenty-five years. Why now after all that time? Her father. Although she had been bitter about what he had done, she had never shared Sylvia’s intense feeling against him. It seemed that her sister’s hate was more than enough for both of them. Anyway, she had been only ten years old, her father’s favorite, and was hurt rather than angry when he went away. She would lie in bed at night and think how he would make his fortune and return to them with lots of presents, take them off in an automobile to a big house in the country. By the time she was fifteen and he had been gone for over five years, she would conjure up that particular fantasy less and less. Soon it faded completely. Now finally he had returned.

  “Where is he?” she asked Harold.

  “Inside,” he said, turning away and moving slowly toward the house.

  She sensed the Harold was keeping something from her, but realized that it was not worth trying to pry it out of him. She followed him into the house.

  She heard him and smelled him before she saw him. He had fallen asleep in a chair by the dining room table, head thr
own back, arms dangling at his side, mouth wide open showing off his yellowed, broken teeth. With each in-breath he wheezed deep in his chest. On the out-breath he snored. The noise and the smell seemed to fill up the room.

  “He’s been like that for the last couple of hours,” explained Harold, with a nervous laugh. “I’ve been sitting outside by the pool.”

  Ignoring Harold, Enid walked slowly across the room. She inclined her head to one side then another as she approached the figure slumped in the chair, trying from different angles and distances to recognize her father. She couldn’t, even up close. It was a stranger, a total stranger. A shabbily dressed, unshaven, filthy old man, a bum, one of those guys they shoveled off New York’s Canal Street every morning. It was not the person for whom she had waited all those years before. Not someone who would bring her presents or take her away. She hurried past him out onto the darkened patio.

  “It’s not him,” she said quietly, shaking her head back and forth, “It’s not him. Not my father. No. A mistake, it’s some kind of mistake.”

  She took a deep breath. It caught as a sob high up in her throat. Standing by the pool, her arms tightly crossed, holding herself, she wept silently.

  Harold watched her from the doorway. He had expected her to take charge when she returned, to explain everything to him, to sort things out. He had been depending on her. Now she stood with her back to him, shoulders trembling. Although she didn’t make a sound, Harold knew she was crying and it frightened him.

  “Aunt Enid?” he called softly.

  She didn’t answer. He took a couple of steps and called again. Behind him in the house Abe Cohen wheezed and snored.

  “It’s OK, Harold darling. I’ll be alright in a minute,” she said after a few moments. “I’ve just had a shock. Close the door, will you dear?”

  She sat down by the edge of the pool and stared into the dark water. It didn’t help her get a clearer picture of what she was feeling. She took off her shoes, put her feet into the cool water, leaned back on her elbows and looked up. The sky was moonlight bright. The night was clear and hot, the air completely still, and out by the pool the crickets were busy rustling and buzzing.

  “Harold, what do you say we have a midnight swim? Just the two of us. How about it?”

  “Uh, no thanks. Aunt Enid. I don’t have any trunks or anything.”

  “Come on, it’s dark. You won’t get a sunburn and you can swim in your underwear. That’s what I’m going to do. I promise, dear, I won’t look. Come on, Harold, it will cool us off and do us both some good.”

  He didn’t want to go swimming, especially not alone with Aunt Enid. By the light coming from the house behind him he could see that she was already taking off her clothes. Although he couldn’t see her very clearly, his penis began to harden with the memory of the time he had spied her swimming naked.

  “No! Please, not now,” he muttered to himself, desperately trying to conjure up non-erotic, deflating images.

  But, the more he tried, the more erotic the images became and the less his control over his growing erection.

  “What did you say, Harold?”

  “Nothing. Just, uh . . . nothing.”

  “Get us a couple of towels, will you dear?”

  Harold went inside and got the towels from the closet in the hall, and then like someone terrified of heights but feeling himself drawn inexorably toward the edge of the cliff he went out to the pool. There was a pile of clothes on a chair. He could just make out Aunt Enid’s head moving slowly through the water. Her body was submerged in the darkness.

  “Thanks, darling. Come on in, it’s lovely, really it is.”

  Harold looked back toward the house but there was no help there, only a snoring, passed-out grandfather, his gape-mouthed face and one trailing arm just visible through the open door.

  “No,” said Harold. “I gotta go back . . .”

  “OK, OK, I’m not going to force you, but at least sit down and talk to me for a few minutes, Harold. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Harold hesitated. He couldn’t very well refuse to talk to his aunt. Moving her clothes carefully onto the ground he sat down in the chair. Aunt Enid swam over to the side of the pool nearest to him. She laid her folded arms on the edge, the rest of her body remained hidden by the water.

  “So, tell me what he said, Harold. Everything he said.”

  Harold told her as much as he could remember. After he finished Enid ducked her head into the water, brought it up and shook it. Harold caught a glimpse of her breasts moving through the water. He quickly turned away and crossed his legs.

  “Did he say why he’s here? What he wants?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “What do you mean ‘not really’?” she snapped impatiently.

  “I mean no he didn’t,” Harold replied stolidly, suddenly recognizing his mother in Aunt Enid’s voice.

  “Or how he found us?”

  “No.”

  “Well he can’t stay here, can he?” she exclaimed angrily. “I’m not running a goddamned hotel! I’ve got no more room and that’s that.”

  As soon as she’d said it, Enid realized she shouldn’t have. She felt Harold stiffen. Slowly and delicately, so as not to disturb anything, he got up from his chair. He didn’t look at her.

  “I, um . . . gotta go to sleep now,” he said distantly, walking back toward the house.

  “Harold darling,” she called after him. “You know I didn’t mean . . .”

  He wasn’t listening. Head down he made for the open door. Stepping inside, he quietly pulled it shut behind him.

  Enid got out of the pool and wrapped a towel around herself. She thought of going after Harold, but decided not to. She couldn’t face trying to talk to him. To make contact with her oversized nephew was a major effort and she didn’t feel up to a major effort just then. And, anyway, why did she have to explain herself to him? She had taken him in, was looking after him, trying to love him. What could she explain?

  Slowly she walked back toward the house. She stopped at the door and looked inside. Her father was in the exact position he had been in when she first came home, only with the door shut she couldn’t hear him or smell him. Could she just leave him there and go to bed? She slid the door open and went inside.

  Refreshed from her swim and no longer unprepared, she sat down across the table and studied the old man more carefully, more dispassionately. The skin on his face was grayish-yellow and hung in little sacks from his cheeks. On the tip of his bashed-in nose a few dark hairs bristled. His breathing was uneven and very labored. Then she noticed his hands. The skin was flaky white, almost translucent. A thread of saliva hung from the side of his mouth. As she watched, it detached itself and plopped onto his shirt, adding to the damp stain already there.

  God! thought Enid shuddering, he’s a total mess. He must have got his clothes from the Salvation Army. He looks eighty, but can’t be more than sixty-five at the most. What’s happened to him in the last twenty-five years? Where’s he been? What’s he been doing? And what the hell has brought him here to me? Why now?

  Whatever the reason, she knew she would have to get rid of him and quickly. She had an obligation to Harold, there was no getting around that, but not to this man. She felt absolutely no duty to this stranger who had abandoned her all those years ago and had never come back.

  Archie was going to arrive soon. He might just understand about Harold, but not about Abe Cohen. Why should he? She didn’t understand about Abe Cohen.

  Harold stepped carefully by his sleeping grandfather and went to his room. He closed the door behind him and sat down heavily on the bed. He stared at the roses on the wall without seeing them.

  “I’m not running a goddamned hotel! I’ve got no more room and that’s that.”

  It was the first time Aunt Enid had shown any anger toward his be
ing there. He hadn’t thought about what she might feel when he moved in with her. She was his aunt and a grown-up. That was all. He had assumed that she sort of had to take care of him, and anyway she seemed so concerned with pleasing him that it never occurred to Harold that she might be resentful. And that wasn’t fair. He couldn’t help being there, could he? Tears of injustice and self-pity blurred the roses He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Absentmindedly he picked a record out of one of the cardboard boxes on the floor He turned it over and over in his hands. He didn’t look at the label. After a couple of minutes he put it back in the box, not bothering to get it in the right order, Watson, Johnny Guitar next to Mayfield, Percy.

  The old man. His grandfather. How could there be any connection between them? He wasn’t even a regular grandfather Not kindly, white-haired, wise, or any of those things, like in the stones about grandfathers. And, he clearly meant to stay. Where? There were only two bedrooms. Harold knew the old man was going to make life more difficult for him. Aunt Enid was already on the warpath against intruders. The old man and him.

  He bent over and untied his shoes, kicked them off, and lay down on the bed, his arms behind his head.

  The skeletal-thin ocotillo outside his window looked sinister in the moonlight. If he turned away or closed his eyes he knew it would rip through the screen, snake into the room and wrap its white thorny arms around his neck. Strangle him, suck him dry. In the morning Aunt Enid would find a husk-dry shell on the bed. It would fall into dust at her touch, just like in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  Palm Springs. It wasn’t working out very well at all for him. Aunt Enid’s constant fussing and pawing, sunstroke, caught up with thugs at the drive-in, and now this smelly old man. He felt more trapped than ever. Everywhere he turned something unexpected found him. He longed for the expected.

  Risking the ocotillo’s attack, he closed his eyes.

  In LA he used to go with his friends to the La Brea tar pits. Later he found out that la brea meant tar in Spanish. The Tar Pits tar pits. Really stupid. Once his friend Ruben found a skinny stray cat. The opportunity was too good to pass up. They stuffed it in a gunny sack and threw the sack over the chain-link fence into the middle of one of the tar pits. Immediately the sack began to sink. The brown fabric shook and billowed violently in all directions as hissing and yowling the cat tried to escape. The harder it fought the more the sack stuck fast and the deeper it sank into the tar. Harold and the other boys watched the struggle in awed silence, frightened and ashamed of what they had done, yet thrilled at the same time.