She pointed ahead to the small, unmarked dirt road. The car veered too quickly and Melody grabbed the door handle in panic. The boy steadied the car before it ran off into the ditch. He apologized and slowed down. They wound through a short stretch of heavy wooded forest and dipped into a cool, dark mist before shooting back out into the brightness of the morning. The road beneath turned from well-groomed dirt to a rutted path. “Man,” one of the boys said. “I didn’t know anyone lived out here. This is bum-fucked middle-of-nowhere!” He cut her an apologetic glance.
“You have no idea,” she told him. Nowhere sounded good to Melody, but this was definitely somewhere. The sky pressed down, heavy and dangerous; the rain clouds moved closer. The boys dropped her at the end of a long gravel driveway. It was a quarter mile from the road to her front door, but she was glad for the walk. Trees lined the path—pecan and oak, magnolia and maple. The path had not been maintained and tree roots jutted up from the earth. If she dragged her feet, she knew from experience, the roots would snag her toes and pitch her forward. She paused by the old signpost planted by her great-granddaddy. THREE RIVERS FARM, the sign announced, a tribute to the nearby converging rivers that once provided irrigation to the crops: the Yazoo, the Yalobusha, the Tallahatchie. Once the sign had been a shiny, sturdy, important marker, a beacon that proclaimed this was land enough to warrant naming. Now, though, the steel had turned black and the etched letters were caked with grime. No one had bothered to wipe it down and polish it the way Old Granddaddy used to do once a month. No one had so much as aimed a stream of water at it in years. It was probably best. The land could no longer rightly be considered a farm. Nothing useful grew here; nothing was planted, produced, or consumed. Old Granddaddy would be appalled by what had become of his land. Fortunately, as Melody abandoned her faith, she’d abandoned the idea that dead people were hanging out somewhere looking down on her. Old Granddaddy didn’t have to be sad or disgusted by the neglect of his land. All he had to do was rot in the dirt, just like the crops he’d once planted.
Melody’s father seemed to be rotting while still alive. When Melody was a teenager, her mother often insulted her by telling her she looked “a caution.” What she meant was that Melody needed to brush her hair, iron her clothes, put on some makeup, and stand up straight, lest she scare off every available male in the Delta. As if Melody wanted to attract one of the big, flat-faced, slow-moving boys in her high school. “I’m throwing caution to the wind, Mama,” she liked to say, just because it pissed Mama off. But when Melody saw her father laid out on the sagging sofa bed, she finally grasped the expression. He smelled of urine or worse. An oxygen tank sighed at the edge of the bed. He was thin; his skin puddled around his bones. Melody’s father had been a lot of things, but he had never been thin. She knew, looking at him, that her mother should have called her months earlier. There was nothing she could do, and she wondered if her father would even know her. She barely knew him.
Her brother emerged from the kitchen and stood beside her. “Bobby,” Melody said. She squeezed his arm. “When did things get so awful?”
“I don’t know, sis.” Bobby pulled away from her. “I reckon when he wouldn’t quit smoking two packs a day after his third heart attack.”
“You can’t blame a man for living,” she said. “Or for dying, I guess.” She blamed her mother; that’s who she blamed.
“The hell I can’t.” Bobby turned and stomped back into the kitchen.
George Walter’s words came back to her: No one has to do anything in this world. Everything is a choice. She wondered what her choices were in this situation. Stay or leave, she supposed, but neither seemed likely to lead to anything worthwhile.
She knelt beside the sofa bed, felt her body fold into prayer position. She hadn’t prayed in years, could no longer bring herself to talk to someone who either didn’t exist or didn’t care. Anyway, her father wouldn’t put up with anyone praying over him, not even Melody. She touched her father’s hair, rubbed the cottony strands between her fingers.
He opened one eye. His pupil dilated. His cheek twitched. Melody felt irrational terror upon seeing that lone blue orb.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Well, I must be dying.”
“How do you feel?”
“I feel goddamned awful. What do you think? Aren’t you supposed to be touring with the Holy Rollers?”
“I’m taking a little break.” No point in telling him she’d offended an entire audience of Holy Rollers and eliminated any chance she might go back. “I’m here to take care of you, Daddy.” She pulled the thin blanket up around his shoulders. “Anything you need, you just let me know.”
“I need a fucking miracle. Did you pick up any miracles out there with the Bible thumpers?”
“Miracles aren’t magic tricks, Daddy. I don’t believe I can just pick one up.”
“Ain’t that the truth, little girl. Ain’t that the truth.”
Daddy was still there inside the decaying body, and he sounded stronger than he looked. “Well, we’ve seen miracles in this family before. Maybe we’ll get another.”
The phone rang. Bobby yelled from the kitchen, “I’ll get it!”
“That could be your mother. Tell her I’m doing okay, would you? Tell her you think I look more handsome than ever.”
“I’m not gonna start lying, old man.” She kissed him on the forehead and rushed to eavesdrop on Bobby’s conversation. She had a few things to say to her mother and she intended to say them all. Bobby stood with the phone against his ear. “Hello, hello.… Hello?”
Bobby had changed in the years Melody was on the road. The delicate, beautiful child she remembered had become a strong, handsome man with a broad chest and biceps that bulged under his cotton T-shirt.
He hung up the phone. “No one there.”
“Hey, little brother.” Melody touched Bobby’s muscled arm. “Someone’s been working out.”
Bobby jerked away, turned his back to her, and rummaged in the refrigerator like he needed something from its cool depths right that minute. His body may have transformed, but he was still her angry, petulant, difficult little brother. He’d drowned his good nature in the baptismal pool.
“You look good. You look strong.” Melody did not look good, and she knew it. Three years of diner food and doughnuts had left her as soft and doughy as the food itself.
Bobby pulled his head out of the fridge. His eyes were damp and his jaw clenched. He glared at her. “You left us. Left us. Left me.”
“But I’m here now.” She reached behind him and pushed the refrigerator door shut, not that there was much in the fridge worth preserving. She began making a mental list of things she would need to do. Go to the store. Clean. Bobby stared at her, gaping. He expected more. “I had a life to live,” she said.
“What about my life, sis?”
“You have a life here.”
“I have a life sentence here.” Bobby looked a bit like the boy he’d been before the baptism; his eyes flashed and his eyebrow cocked. She laughed, too loudly. It felt good to share a joke with her brother, but Bobby wasn’t laughing. She cleared her throat, coughed. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Bobby stared.
A sound like the rattle of a struggling engine echoed through the house. “What on earth?”
“Daddy,” Bobby replied in a voice that made it clear he didn’t care.
“Good Lord!” Melody turned toward the living room, but Bobby grabbed her arm and held her tight. “Let go of me!” She struggled, but Bobby was as strong as he looked. “What are you doing? What’s wrong with him?”
“He pulled out the tube. No breath, no breath. He does it all the time.”
Melody twisted, struggled to wrench free of Bobby’s grasp. “Let go of me!”
“Why, sis? What are you gonna do? Save him? Gonna save us all?”
“Goddamnit, Bobby!” The rattle from the next room grew louder, then seemed to wane. Melody shook against Bobby’s grip like an animal caught in a trap. �
��Bobby, quit it. This isn’t funny. This isn’t a joke.” He released her and she stumbled.
“It’s a funny bit,” he said. “A little bit funny.”
She ran into the living room and slipped the tube under her father’s nose. His skin felt clammy and his eyes wobbled in their sockets. “It’s okay, Daddy,” she told him. “It’s okay.”
Bobby smirked, folded his arms across his chest.
“Shame on you.” Melody wanted to slap him hard across the face. “How could you?” And how could Mama leave Daddy here alone with you? she wondered. In Melody’s mind, one thing was certain: This was all her mother’s fault.
“Hey, sis, he can put it back in himself.”
Melody looked at her father. Bobby was right. Daddy wasn’t paralyzed. His arms worked and the tube was fastened to the bed in such a way that it couldn’t fall outside his reach.
She fell back in the chair next to the sofa bed. “You scared me half to death, Daddy.” His lips curled into a slight smile. He closed his eyes. A familiar, suffocating dread enveloped her. This was what it was like to be home.
“Just keeping you on your toes.” Her father’s weak, raspy voice managed to sound mirthful.
“This is exactly why I stayed away for so long. You’re not funny.” She turned to face Bobby. “Neither are you.” She stood and rubbed her head with her hands. “I’m worn out. I’m going upstairs to take a shower, see if I can find some decent clothes to wear. Then I’ll see what needs to be done around the house. This place is a disaster.”
“Don’t.” Her father reached out and grabbed her hand. “Sit down and tell me all about the Holy Rollers.”
She flinched. “I came home to help and you’re just being mean to me.”
“It was a joke.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
He kept hold of her hand. She considered walking out the door and leaving him there with Bobby. The two of them could sit around in this filthy house and make terrible jokes until Daddy died and Bobby fell to pieces. The big problem with that plan, of course, was that Melody had nowhere to go. If everything was a choice, her options were terrible.
She settled into the chair at Daddy’s bedside and told him as many good things as she could remember until he released a guttural snore. She was hungry and thirsty and exhausted. Her childhood bedroom was just upstairs, the spot where she’d spent her adolescence dreaming of ways to leave. Now all she wanted was to tuck herself under the familiar quilt and sleep the day away. Instead, she stayed with her father, listening to the rhythmic pfft, pfft, pfft of the oxygen tank and the low rattle of his snore. She closed her eyes, just for a minute.
Melody was adept at sleeping in uncomfortable spots. That was the one thing she picked up while touring. While she never slept peacefully, she could get to sleep quickly. So when the front door opened and startled her awake, she didn’t know how much time had passed and was momentarily confused about where she was. That the person coming through the door was a tall, handsome black man, confused her even further. She wiped drool from the corner of her mouth, stood too quickly, and fell back. “What? Who? What?”
The man shifted an overstuffed and scratched leather satchel from his right hand to his left. He held his right hand out to Melody, but she just stared at it.
“Who are you?” Her mouth was dry from sleep, her tongue thick and clumsy.
“You must be Melody,” the man said. “I’m Maurice.”
“Who?”
“I thought your mother would have mentioned me,” he said. “Or Bobby.”
Melody stood, determined to regain some dignity. No such luck. Her right foot was asleep and she couldn’t put weight on it without losing balance. She jiggled her leg, and pinpricks surged through her ankle and lower calf. She sat again, reached down to massage her foot while craning her neck up to see the man. He was obviously no stranger to her family, but he was still a stranger to her.
“Or your father, for that matter. How you doing, Mr. Mahaffey?”
Daddy snapped his eyes shut when she glanced down. He smiled, just barely.
Melody was furious. Why did her family persist in keeping secrets from her? First her father’s illness and now this strange man. She hadn’t been home a full day. What other surprises were they hiding? She found her voice. “What in God’s name is going on here? Who are you? You can’t just barge in here without even knocking. It isn’t right.”
“I’m the nurse from the hospice center.”
Melody stared. That explained nothing.
“Maurice? I’m here to take care of your father?” He clearly thought she should know him.
“I’m here to take care of Daddy,” Melody said. “It’s the whole reason I’m here.”
Maurice knelt beside the bed. He listened to her father’s heartbeat and pulled a syringe from his satchel. He looked comfortable, as if he’d spent a lot of time at the house, and with her father.
“Just how long have you been coming here?”
“Three weeks,” Maurice said. “And don’t worry, there’s plenty for you to do. I’m only here to make sure he isn’t in any pain and to switch out the oxygen tanks. I told Mrs. Mahaffey that if she was going to leave, someone would have to be here to help out. We help people stay comfortably with their families. The family members have to do their part.”
Melody heard the disapproval in Maurice’s voice. “I’m perfectly capable of handling things,” she said, though she didn’t feel at all capable.
“Good.” Maurice filled a syringe and thumped it with his middle finger. “I know this isn’t easy.”
Growing up, Melody’s family never had domestic help. Mama did not allow strangers in the house, said they would snoop and pry. Mama was always hiding something.
“What is that?” She pointed to the syringe.
“Pain medicine.”
“I thought you said he wasn’t in pain.”
“Well, he will be if he doesn’t get his medicine. You call the shots now, though. Want me to skip it?”
The man was rude. Melody couldn’t imagine her mother put up with such insolence.
“You can’t talk to me like that.” Melody’s voice shook. “You don’t know Mama. You don’t know me.”
“No, I do not.” Maurice worked his jaw around as if to swallow something bitter. “All I know about your mother is that she up and left her dying husband. All I know about you is that you’re an Elvis fan.”
“What?” The man was crazy. “What does Elvis have to do with anything?”
“Your shirt,” Maurice said as he plunged the needle into her father’s arm.
Melody looked down, realized she was still wearing the extra-large T-shirt she’d bought at the train station. “You know I’d be happy to call the hospice center and have them send over someone with less attitude.”
“Good luck,” Maurice said. “Before me, there were three other nurses and none of them lasted more than two days. I’m your last option. If you fire me or if I quit, Mr. Mahaffey will have to spend the rest of his days in a hospital and he seems particularly dead set against that. Pardon the phrasing.”
“No goddamned hospitals!” her father barked.
Bobby ran into the room, heavy footsteps banging against the wood floors. “Maurice. Maurice!” He grinned wildly.
Melody shushed him, but he didn’t acknowledge her. He threw his arms around Maurice, who didn’t flinch or push him away, but embraced him.
“Hey, there.” They hugged like brothers who hadn’t seen each other in a year. Melody could not have been more shocked. How had her brother, her difficult and damaged brother, become so friendly with this stranger? And why did Maurice allow it? It was unprofessional, wasn’t it? But why should Melody care? She did care. She stood watching them embrace and she felt alone. No one had pulled her that close since the humiliating encounter with Chris.
They parted and Maurice smiled at Melody. His teeth were beautifully white.
“Sorry to get off on the wrong f
oot.” We can go over everything that needs to be done whenever you’re ready. I’m here twice a day, midmorning and early evening. Sometimes I stop in again late at night just to be sure he’s sleeping okay.”
Bobby grinned. “Sometimes he sleeps here.”
“Well, it’s such a long drive.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, it’s fine.” Melody rubbed her eyes with her palms until she saw stars. She smelled something ripe and unpleasant and realized it was her. She stank. She was exhausted. She was sick of dealing with this man. He had a job to do and she would let him do it. “If someone had just mentioned you before you walked in the door, I wouldn’t have been so startled. I’m not sure why you were such a big secret.”
Bobby laughed, then tapered off into giggles.
She sighed. “I’m just worn out. I need a shower and a long nap.”
“We can go over things when I return this evening.”
“Stay for dinner,” Bobby said. “Melody’s a good cook.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” Maurice said.
“No trouble.” That was a lie. Melody hadn’t managed to feed herself in a solid day, and she was in no mood to whip up a feast for company. She doubted there was anything worth cooking in the house, and the kitchen was filthy. A trip to the store would chew up half the day. She gave up on the idea of a nap, hoped a shower would be enough to revive her. Like it or not, Maurice seemed to be a part of things here. Bobby liked him, and her father seemed comfortable with him. If anything, Melody felt like the outsider. Besides, what Bobby said was true. She was a good cook. She hadn’t prepared a whole meal in years, but she didn’t for a second believe she’d lost her touch in the kitchen.
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