by Homer Hickam
“What are you talking about?” Homer demanded.
Elsie didn’t answer. She just snatched up the handle to Albert’s tub wagon and started pulling it. Homer followed, then helped load Albert and the tub into the Buick. “When are you going to tell me what this is about?” he demanded again.
“I didn’t lie about the money. Mr. Feldman really gave it to me, a fact Young Mrs. Feldman didn’t like one bit. I think she’s up to something.”
To Elsie, Homer’s response was so very much Homer. “He shouldn’t have given you that much money,” he said. It was an admonishment.
“Oh, here we go,” she declared. “Your grand pride. Well, it isn’t your money. It’s mine. Now, shut up, and drive.”
Homer shut up and drove. He didn’t get far. At the city limits, he had to stop at a roadblock set up by the sheriff, a man named Posner. Elsie had met him at the games.
“What’s this about, Sheriff?” Homer asked.
“Hang on a second,” the sheriff said. He went to his car and returned, carrying the rooster, and tossed him into the back seat with Albert. “Thought you might want this thing.”
Confused, Homer asked, “Why do you have our rooster?”
“Because you’re not going back to town and I thought you’d want him. You see, this roadblock is just for you. Turn around and get going. Don’t come back.”
“But I have business in town,” Elsie said. “Important business. Law business with Mr. Carter the attorney.”
The sheriff scratched up under his cap. “Sorry, Mizz Elsie. Story I got was Mr. Carter just went on vacation. Yep, pretty sure that’s right. I was told to patrol around his house, keep watch till he got back.”
“The sheriff is lying,” Elsie said to Homer. “Mr. Carter would never go anywhere until I got my money.”
Elsie got out of the car, hooked the sheriff’s elbow, and marched him off into the grass alongside the road. “Now, listen, Sheriff—”
“No, you listen, Mizz Hickam,” the sheriff interrupted. “I don’t like this any better’n you but I know who runs High Top and it ain’t me. Mr. Carter was reminded of this, too. It’s purely amazin’ but he discovered Mr. Feldman’s will he read to you and the others was plumb wrong. The new one doesn’t have you in it, that’s all you need to know. Now, you can skirt around me, come into town a different way, yell at folks, and generally be a pain in the keester to all concerned but it won’t change a thing. Best you just keep on movin’. I’m sorry you got caught up in somethin’ bigger’n yourself and sorry your husband got hurt.”
“This isn’t right,” Elsie said.
“No, ma’am, it ain’t,” the sheriff agreed. He looked back toward town and shook his head. “There’s lots of things that ain’t right just about everywhere you go. I thought when I got into the sheriffin’ business, I could fix some of those things but so far . . . well, it’s been disappointin’, that’s all I got to say. You got to know there was never no way you were ever gonna get any Feldman money. Likely Mr. Feldman knew it, too. He just wanted to make Young Mrs. Feldman and his two kids work for it, sweat a little, you might say. He told them what he thought of them and what he thought of you. Guess that’s your gift from him, if you can stand it.”
Homer walked up. He had obviously overheard. “Let’s go, Elsie. It’s over.”
Elsie was outraged. This was her money! “I’m not giving up! I never give up!”
“Mr. Hickam? You need to talk some sense into your wife.”
Homer put his arms around her. She struggled against him until he tightened his arms around her so hard she could scarcely breathe. “Come on, Elsie. It’s over. Let’s go while we still have our pride.”
“I don’t have any pride,” she said in a muffled voice against his shoulder.
“One thing, Sheriff,” Homer said. “There are a couple of fellows, one real short, the other real big and tall. I last saw them hanging around the ball field. They’re bank robbers and general scofflaws.”
“Slick and Huddie? I arrested them about an hour ago. They were caught trying to steal the mortuary’s hearse. Can’t figger out what they were gonna do with it.”
“I recommend you beat them both senseless,” Elsie said, coming up for air from Homer’s bear hug. She pushed at Homer to try to get away from him but his grip only got tighter. “I wish you hadn’t had that pouch of Brown Mule,” she said with her mouth pushed into his chest. “I wish I hadn’t married you. I wish you would just go away forever!”
“I know,” Homer said, quietly.
“Now, Mizz Elsie,” the sheriff said, “you and your baseball player coal miner boy, you be on your way.”
Elsie’s outrage left her like air out of a balloon. Of course she wasn’t going to get the money. Since when had she ever gotten what she wanted? Homer must have felt her wilt because he released her. She pulled away from him and stalked to the car. When he settled behind the steering wheel, she noticed him grimacing. “Your hand or your wrist?” she asked, not sympathetically.
“Both are killing me.”
“I’ll drive,” she volunteered and got out while he slid across the bench seat and leaned back. The rooster took up station by his head, fluttering sympathetically and cuddling at his ear.
Elsie turned the Buick around, reached back and petted Albert on the snout, then headed back toward Madison Park, which she knew was in a southerly direction. She drove past the park, then drove all day, watching the sun slide across her view until it was on her right. Her anger at Homer went up and down and twisted around like a mountain road. How dare he tell her she didn’t deserve her money? How dare he have that pouch of Brown Mule?
She hadn’t gone far before a sudden thought occurred to her. She’d left her wages from Feldman in the room at the stadium. She pulled over and shook Homer awake. “Homer, do you have any money?”
Homer blinked awake. “Money?”
“Mine is back at the stadium. Do you have any money with you?”
He pointed at the glove compartment. “In there.”
Elsie opened the glove compartment. The snub-nosed pistol she’d stolen from Denver was there and she was surprised the mechanics who’d worked on the Buick hadn’t stolen it. She supposed there were at least a few North Carolinians who were honest! There was also some money and she pulled out the bills and counted them. “Eighty dollars? That’s all?”
“I sent the rest home to Daddy to keep for us.”
“Your daddy? Your daddy plays poker and loses!”
Disgusted, she tossed the money back into the glove compartment and slammed the lid shut. She considered turning around and heading back to High Top to get her money but it was miles back and, most likely, the little room had been stripped bare. “The devil! What next!” she wailed.
She drove on, stopped for gasoline once, took Homer to the toilet, bought some aspirin from the attendant, gave it to Homer, and then inspected his cast. Above it, his arm was hot and red. When she asked him about it, he merely shrugged and tried unsuccessfully not to moan. She was tempted to squeeze his afflicted hand and hurt him like he’d hurt her. But, no, she’d take care of her husband even though he clearly did not deserve it.
Elsie drove on into the night, taking roads that looked like they might be the best ones, rolling through little towns and past cotton mills and through fields of crops—she couldn’t tell what kind—until she began to smell something she thought was maybe the ocean. Big trees hung over the road, her headlights illuminating Spanish moss dripping from them. “I am lost,” she confessed. “Lost,” she repeated, eliciting only a groan from Homer.
At last she arrived at a place where she had to stop. There was no more road in front of her. The headlights of the Buick lit up an old house and beyond it Elsie thought there was water, although she could not see for certain because the lights didn’t reach that far. The smell of the sea filled her nostrils as Albert stirred, perhaps also smelling it. Homer moaned anew. The rooster was silent.
Elsie
said, “Lost” again, and switched off the motor and leaned back to wait for the sun. When it came up, everything was different from anything she had ever known.
I was fifteen and we were vacationing in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was the third summer we’d stayed at a place called Lazy Hill, a collection of clapboard cabins behind a small ocean inlet. Mr. and Mrs. Glasgow ran the place. He’d been a Hollywood writer, and she an extra in a few of his movies, and they had a lot of stories to tell about that.
During our time at Lazy Hill, Dad rarely left the grounds and Mom only occasionally walked the few short blocks to the beach, where she would briefly sit in the sand and watch the sea before walking back. She and Dad seemed to be satisfied doing nothing and going nowhere.
One morning after breakfast, the Glasgows came by our cabin. Mr. Glasgow was building another cabin and needed Dad’s advice on pouring concrete. After they’d left, Mrs. Glasgow said, “Elsie, how about we take my Jeep and drive down to Murrell’s Inlet? Sometimes conch shells wash up there. It’s a special place. I think you’d like it.”
I was surprised at my mother’s reply. “Oh, I know that beach,” she said. “Almost every inch of it.”
Mrs. Glasgow was also surprised. “How is that?”
Came the answer, “Spent some time there. It was a long time ago. Before Jimmy and Sonny.”
Jim had already gone to the beach but I was hanging back to read a new Hardy Boys book. At Mom’s comment, I asked, “Was it when you carried Albert home?”
Mrs. Glasgow turned to me. “Who’s Albert?”
I couldn’t help myself. It was too good not to tell. “An alligator!” I blurted. “Mom raised him in the bathtub! Dad was afraid of him! Buddy Ebsen the actor gave it to her!”
Mom’s look told me I had overstepped my bounds but the damage was done. Mrs. Glasgow sat herself down in the nearest chair. “I’m not leaving until I hear this one!”
Mom gave me another unhappy look, then poured a couple of mugs of coffee, handing one of them to our vacation landlady. I laid myself down on the floor with my hands behind my head, just staring up at the ceiling and imagining everything while Mom told her tale. She gave a quick synopsis of who Albert was and why he was being carried home and then said, “So after we got out of North Carolina, I wasn’t sure where I was but Homer and Albert were with me. And the rooster, although I didn’t know then and don’t know now why he was there. . . .”
PART V
How Elsie Came to Love the Beach and Homer and Albert Joined the Coast Guard
28
CAPTAIN OSCAR’S BOARDING HOUSE, WHICH SAT BESIDE an ocean sound, was surrounded by pin oaks dripping with Spanish moss. It was a lovely old manse built of cedar planks weathered gray, with a roof covered with slate shingles, and a front porch boasting a swing and a dozen rocking chairs. The front yard consisted of sand, saw grass, and sea oats and abutted a well-maintained wooden dock with iron cleats for the one boat that was most often moored there, a fishing trawler named the Dorothy Howard. The Dorothy, as she was affectionately known, was a working boat and fair sailer although not one you’d want to broach up too far in a steep sea and stiff wind. Captain Bob, her skipper, knew all her idiosyncrasies and tricks and treated her like he would treat a generous great-aunt, which is to say with deference and respect.
The boardinghouse required help, and a sign to that effect greeted Elsie on the morning of her arrival. She straightened her shoulders, fluffed up her hair, smoothed her skirt, and knocked on the door. A man dressed in the formal clothing of a sea captain, that is to say a navy blue coat, matching pants, and a white-brimmed cap, came to the door.
Elsie pointed at the sign. “Whatever you might need,” she said, “I can provide if the pay is suitable.”
The man leaned on his cane and stumped out on the porch, there to observe the Buick. Homer was resting, his eyes closed, on the passenger side, and Albert was looking with eager interest through the open window on the same side. The rooster stood on the alligator’s head. “Quite a menagerie you got there.”
“It is, sir, and I’m responsible for the lot. My husband’s hand is crushed and his wrist is broken but he’s not applying for this job. I am.”
“Why do you have an alligator?”
“We hail from the West Virginia coalfields, an unsuitable place for an alligator, or anyone for that matter. I am therefore carrying him home to Florida. He was a gift to me from Buddy Ebsen of Orlando, the movie actor and dancer.”
“I saw a movie once in Chicago,” the man said, wistfully. “It was silent although there was a piano player on the stage.” He approached the Buick and inspected Homer. “He is sweating and his face is pale. I think he is very sick.”
“His hand is infected,” Elsie explained. “I know that because I was once a nurse.”
The man yelled, “Hey, Bob, get up here!” and a bearded young man, dressed in working khakis and a seaman’s cap, walked up from the dock. “Fetch us the sawbones, Bob. And toot sweet, you hear? This young man may be dying.”
“Who do we have here, pops?”
“Never mind that now. Take Wilma and be off with you!”
“Bob” tipped his hat to Elsie, went into a shed, and came back out riding a brown mare. He proceeded to clip-clop up the road Elsie had blundered down the night before. “That’s Captain Bob, my son,” the man said. “I shall introduce you to him at length but first things first. I am Captain Oscar, the owner of this establishment. Now, let’s see to your husband.”
Elsie and Captain Oscar helped Homer inside and laid him on a couch in the parlor. “Tell me how you feel, Homer,” Elsie said in a cold voice. She felt no sympathy toward him, only responsibility.
Homer didn’t reply. He didn’t even moan. He only looked at her with glassy, uncomprehending eyes.
“How did he hurt himself?” Captain Oscar asked.
“He was struck with a baseball bat,” Elsie answered, “and life. They don’t always go together but this time they did.”
An hour later, the doctor arrived in a chuggy old Ford and went inside to see his patient. After his examination, he asked, “Who speaks for this man?”
“I do, sir,” Elsie said. “He is my husband.”
“His hand and wrist are terribly infected and the infection has reached into his arm. If there is no improvement by tomorrow, I will have to take it off.” The doctor handed her a bottle. “These are aspirin. Every three hours, give him two. They will lower his temperature. The infection he’ll have to fight off on his own.”
“He is a coal miner,” Elsie said, her pride overcoming for the moment her anger, “and therefore strong.”
“Bacteria has a way of taking down the strongest of men,” the doctor said as he strapped his black bag shut. “But on the morrow, we shall see what we shall see.”
Homer was moved to a downstairs bedroom, the second on the left, and then Captain Oscar, who was one of those men of indeterminate age who might be anywhere between seventy and ninety, bade Elsie sit with him in the parlor for a while. “You wish for a job,” he said. “I have an opening. It is a maid’s job.”
“I can be a maid,” Elsie said. “I have always wanted to be a maid.”
“And it is a cook’s job.”
“I can be a cook,” Elsie said. “I have always wanted to be a cook.”
“And it is a manager’s job.” He waved his hand to indicate the dusty parlor and its somewhat mildewed furniture. “My wife ran this place until she died and then my daughter Grace took over until she came down with the tuberculosis. Now it has fallen into the general state of disrepair you presently observe. Would you be willing to be the maid, the cook, and the manager of my boardinghouse? I cannot pay you other than room and board until we become more prosperous but then I will give you a percentage of the net, to be negotiated later. What do you say?”
“I have always wanted to be the manager of a boardinghouse,” Elsie swore and stuck out her hand. Captain Oscar shook her hand and Elsie beca
me the maid, cook, and manager of Captain Oscar’s Boarding House, an establishment dedicated to clean rooms and fine food, especially if it was fish.
The next day, the doctor returned as promised and examined Homer’s arm. Homer continued to be generally unresponsive, although when the doctor ran his hand up and down his arm, he flinched. “The arm has not improved,” the doctor announced. “I shall need to cut it off.”
“You shall do no such thing,” Elsie declared, then transitioned into a nursely description of what she had observed the night before while, out of a sense of responsibility, she had tended to her husband even though she could scarcely stand the sight of him. “Although his arm has not improved much, it has improved some. I can tell by a subtle color change that may not be apparent to you. I didn’t rest at all last night. I gave my husband his aspirin but also kept him cool by dipping a towel in ice water and placing it across his brow, a procedure I’m surprised you didn’t prescribe.”
“It did not occur to me that you had ice,” the doctor said.
“I found some in the icebox where the fish is kept fresh. Now, I think what should be done is that you remove the cast, which has become nasty and is too tight, and put on a clean one a bit looser.”
The doctor was affronted. “Madam, I am a graduate of a state-approved medical school and have years of experience. I assure you that if I don’t amputate your husband’s arm, he will be dead within a couple of days.”
“He will keep his arm,” Elsie said, resolutely, “and if he is dead as a result, I will admit that you were right.”
The doctor regarded Elsie, his frown changing to an expression of consternation. “You are a pigheaded child,” he said, “who is gambling with this man’s life.”
“He is my husband,” Elsie replied, “and if a wife can’t gamble with her husband’s life, then what’s a marriage for?”