Patient_Crew

by Hannah Kaplan

  “You got the smell out,” he said.

  “Mostly, but you can still smell it in the bathroom,” I said.

  “How have you been?” he asked sharply without smiling.

  My gut was twisted up in knots. “I’ve been better.”

  “I know what you mean,” he cut me off.

  “You’re angry,” I blurted.

  “No,” he said.

  “You sound angry.”

  “Do I? Do I sound angry? Huh, what could I possibly be angry about?” He was being flippant, but I knew it was just an act. He had every right to be mad at me.

  “It is what it is. There’s nothing I can say or do to change what I did.”

  “Hmm.” He was breathing heavily through flared nostrils.

  “Want a drink? A beer? Some wine? Whiskey? Anything that will help ease the situation?”

  “You made a trip to Putnam for booze?” he asked.

  Sunny had been dry since it’s establishment in eighteen eighty. Putnam was due west. It had a skating rink and the only liquor store for forty miles. Pop would joke about the pastor sitting outside the liquor store on Saturday night so he’d know to whom he was preaching at come Sunday morning. I wouldn’t let Jim lead me down that path.

  “No, I brought it with me. Drunks like me never leave home without it. If you want to fight then let’s just go at it and get it over with. Why wait? Why draw it out with insults and innuendos? Come on let’s do this.” I got up and walked the two steps it took to get from the chair to the couch, stood beside him with my fists raised and ready for a fight.

  “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m fighting. It’s what you want, right? You look mad enough to knock my teeth out. I’m tough I can take it. Get up boy and show me what you got, let’s duke this out.” He laughed, I stood my ground, and started to feel like I wanted to punch the laugh out of his mouth so I relaxed my fists, and put a hand on his shoulder, he pulled away. “I don’t know what to do. How do I make it better?”

  He nodded, put his hat on the table, got up and stood close enough for me to feel his breath. I leaned back not knowing what to expect. He gently pulled me close to his chest, and then wrapped his arms around me. His warmth was surreal, safe, home.

  Jim ate two T-bone steaks, and I ate one. The potatoes and salad were good, and he loved the ice-cream-cookie-sandwich. It was just like old times, we gossiped about people, and laughed at their expense. He caught me up on all the scandal and news. His father had passed a few years after I'd left. He didn’t want to discuss that subject. He said the sisters were doing well. His mom was active in the church, Picky was still the only RN at the hospital, and Aunt Polly had been in bad health since her stroke five years earlier. He and Jason were still living with the sisters in the Parker house. I asked him numerous times about Vicky, but he would change the subject. It was obvious he didn’t want to talk about her, and that piqued my curiosity. I assumed Vicky was angry and not ready to face me. She’d probably known Jim was coming for dinner and gave him strict orders not to talk about her. He did confirm that her sister Maria was doing hair at the Salon. I would go there, get a haircut and information.

  The meal had been devoured, the dishes cleared from the table, and the conversation had grown as dim as the light. It was whiskey time. “Shoot or truth?” I set an opened bottle of Johnny Walker Black on the table along with two shot glasses.

  “Are you up to it?” he asked

  “I am.”

  Jim turned up his lip in a cocky grin, and poured two shots to start. We toasted with a clink then drank. The whiskey burned from my lips all the way down to my belly. I liked the way it loosened the mood. He poured us another round. I began to lift my glass, and he put his hand between it and my lips. He looked deep into my eyes; the room spun for a second as I stared back at him. “Take your best shot,” I said, and put the glass down. “Truth.”

  “No lies?” he asked.

  “No lies, but you can’t share what I tell you with anyone.”

  “I won’t share. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been in a Dallas mental clinic.” I’d fully intended on telling the truth, but I needed to be careful of how I went about telling the truth, and how much of that truth I told. “The day I left I went to Anson, and my car broke down—or I ran out of gas, that part I don’t remember. I wasn’t in a good way, I don’t remember how I got where I got to, but I got there and that’s where I’ve been.” I snatched the shot glass out from under his hand, downed it without losing a drop and sat back feeling happy with myself. “That wasn’t so hard. I think that went well don’t you?”

  “Dallas, the whole time? All ten years?” he asked.

  I answered with a nod. “Ok that’s enough farm boy. It’s your turn for truth.” He laughed, and turned a little red on the tip of his nose. “What? You think it’s funny?”

  “I choose to shoot,” he said, and drank.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I fear nothing; I’m simply thirsty. Your turn—truth or shoot?” He filled both glasses.

  “Hit me with a question, I’m feeling brave tonight.”

  “Why?” he asked

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you leave? Why did you leave without telling me? You could have told me.” His eyes were filled with a deep sadness.

  “That’s a shot block,” I said.

  “It is what it is,” he said.

  “That conversation’s going take longer than one night. There’s a lot that needs to be said, it could take months to catch up on ten years. Let’s keep it simple tonight and say I had no other choice. I couldn’t tell anyone. I had to leave. I couldn't face Pop and make him go through it again.”

  “Go through what?” Jim asked.

  “The same shit Zeffie and Momma put him through.”

  “Oh,” he said. He didn’t want to hear more; he knew what I was talking about. It wasn’t something that needed to be rehashed. Jim started to take another shot, but this time I put my hand over his glass.

  “Oh no you don’t. It’s your turn to tell some truths.”

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever lied to you, why would I start now? Go ahead, ask me anything.”

  I took a shot before he had time to react. The whiskey was going down easier, and I’d felt the buzz. My mind raced to remember the questions I had asked for ten years in my fantasies of him, and now—in the flesh—I couldn’t verbalize one. I looked at his strong chin, traced his jaw line down to his rugged neck. It seemed like yesterday that his face was covered in peach fuzz, and now he had a half-day's growth of hard whiskers. His white button up, cotton shirt was crisp with starch, I wanted to touch it, feel his warmth under the fabric. Jim snapped his fingers an inch from my face.

  “I’m waiting for your question.”

  “Don’t rush me,” I said, and poured another shot.

  Jim held my hand instead of the glass this time. “Don’t overdo it,” he said. We froze in that moment—for a split second—both looking down at our touching hands. He moved his, and I followed suit. It was not what I wanted, I wanted him to touch me, but it wouldn't be that easy to regain his trust. All logic was flying out the window my heart was taking over, and in that moment I would have submitted to him willfully. Was this good, or bad? I didn’t know. I didn’t care.

  “Did you think about me?” I asked.

  “Wow,” he said shaking his head.

  “You don’t have to answer. I understand.”

  “What is it that you understand? Are you saying you understand what I’ve been through? You understand what it did to me? What it did to your Pop, to Albee? Do you understand that?” I tried to answer, but he wasn’t finished. “Did I think about you? I searched the whole damned state for your ass. I spent two years of my life searching for you! I fucking thought about you every minute of every day for at least five years! I watched your actions put Pop, and then Albee in the grave. Did I think about you?” Anger puls
ated through his body. He downed another shot, slammed the glass on the table, and wiped his mouth with a sleeve. He looked at me as if he could spit in my face, stood up and put his hat on. “You couldn’t call, just to say you were alive? You couldn’t send a note, a letter? You couldn’t fucking do something so that I wouldn’t think you were—we thought you were dead Shanna. Do you understand that?”

  “No, I can’t understand.” I felt like throwing up. I wanted to run as fast and far as I could. I closed my eyes and disconnected. “I’m sorry, there are no words I can use to defend what I’ve done. You have no idea how sorry I am, and I know it’s not enough. Saying I’m sorry can never make up for anything. I can’t crawl under a rock and die, as much as I might want to. I’ve got to keep going forward. I had to come back. I’m sorry.”

  He quietly thought for a period of time, and then with a calm voice he spoke. “Now that you’re here, what are you going to do? How long are you staying?”

  “I’m here for good. I can’t make any promises, but I’m going to try. I’m going to farm Pop’s land. For now, my plans are to live right here, and farm.”

  “You? You’re going to farm?” he asked, smirking. He was turning red, and tears were coming to his eyes as he laughed at me. “You don’t know the first thing about farming.”

  “How hard can it be?”

  “How hard can it be?” he mocked my question.

  “Have you been out to the land?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a garbage dump. It’s overgrown, and hasn’t seen a plow in seven years or better.” He poured another drink.

  “Well then, it looks as though I have a lot of work ahead of me. I have to get it ready for this year's cotton season.”

  My statement caused him to spit out half of his drink, and stain the white cotton shirt. “You can’t be serious. It’ll take at least a week to get it cleaned, then you’ll need a tractor and seed—you don’t even have an irrigation system set up out there. You do know we’re in a drought, don’t you?”

  “Pop didn’t have irrigation. He did fine without it. I’ll buy a used tractor in Abilene. Does Bradley’s dad still own the Feed and Seed? I’m sure they’ll sell to me.”

  “Woman you need to think straight. You expect these people to sell you seed? Hell, you’ll be lucky if they look at you. You might have a crop by next season.”

  “Oh no that won’t do, not at all. I need to grow and sell this year's crop to pay next years rent.” Jim shook his head and groaned as he thought about my dilemma, but why? This was not his problem. I didn’t need or ask for his help. Why was he assuming I needed a Knight in shining armor; I wasn’t in distress. “You know it’s really not your problem anyway. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You must be crazy if you think for one second that land will be cleaned up and ready for planting without some sort of help.”

  “Then I’m crazy. Let’s just leave it at that. I’m sure the entire town will agree with your assessment of me.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “If you didn’t mean it then why would you say it?” Our eyes met. My mouth was stopped mid question by his firm kiss. His hands held my face close to his. I saw a single tear run down his cheek before I closed my eyes. He slowly pulled away and held my head firm in his hands—eye to eye.

  “This is not going to be easy, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than to get it,” he said. “Stay tough.”

  “I’m tough.”

  “I won’t lose you again,” he kissed me and I could taste the salt from his tears. For a moment, the whole world disappeared as time ceased for us. “I accepted your death, and when I saw you at the cemetery I thought it was a ghost, but you’re not. You’re here—real—alive. I won’t lose you again.”

  5.

  The crew had remained a quiet mumble throughout my evening with Jim. I slept that night with visions of Vicky the day I left. We were standing outside the school. I was pounding my ears while she yelled something I couldn’t hear, and then The Poet interrupted my dreams. It was four in the morning, by six the sun was shining and the session had ended. I thought I would sleep a few hours before going to see Maria, but the doorbell rang followed by impatient knocking.

  I opened the door and standing on my porch, with the rising sun behind them, was Jim, another man and a child. “Hello,” I said. “Come on in.”

  “Hi Miss Shanna I’m Jima,” the child said and elbowed past me into the living room.

  “Jima?” I asked. She was no more than ten years old and looked like a miniature version of Jim, with her hair tucked up inside a baseball cap, and wearing boots, jeans, and a heavy blue cotton shirt.

  “We need the weather report. Do you have a clicker for the TV?” She looked around and spied them on the table. “Found them. My daddy’s told me all about you. He told me he was coming over to help you clean up that junk yard and get it ready for cotton.” She plopped down on the chair, and started flipping through the channels.

  I looked to Jim for an answer and mouthed the word, Daddy, without sound. He turned away. He hadn’t said a word the night before about a daughter. The thought of what I didn’t know made me nauseous. Isn’t having a child something a person would bring up in the course of a conversation?

  “I wanted to come help and meet you. I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. I’m named after my dad. Momma got sick and died when I was a baby so now it’s just me, and Daddy, and Uncle Jason, and Aunt Picky, and Aunt Polly, and Grammy Pilly, but mostly just me and big Jim. If I were a boy, I’d be a junior. Daddy said you and Momma were best friends. I don’t have a best friend, least not yet.” She not only had her father’s looks she had his big mouth as well.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. My face was hot. Jim sure as hell hadn’t said anything about a wife, and the only best friend I’ve ever had was Vicky. Was this her daughter? Jim and Vicky are married?

  “Jason take Jima in the kitchen and get her a drink.” Jim pleaded.

  “Jason? You were just a little boy the last time I saw you,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “Morning Shanna,” he said while carefully avoiding my eyes.

  “I’m not thirsty. Besides, I need to see the weather report!” Jima argued.

  “It’s going to be hot, dry and windy just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that,” Jason said. “Come on squirt let’s get a drink.”

  “Don’t call me that, weasel.”

  “Squirt.”

  “Weasel.”

  “Squirt!”

  “Dad!”

  “Get on outa here!” Jim demanded, and turned to me trying to touch my arm, but I was not having any of that. He should have told me, plain and simple.

  “Don’t even try to make up an excuse for this one—my best friend? Is Vicky her mother?”

  “You’re right, there’s no excuse. I couldn’t find the words, and just as you said it will take some time to catch up on your ten years, it takes time to catch up on mine.”

  “Just tell me if Vicky is her mother?”

  “Yes she is but…”

  “She said Vicky was dead. Is that true? Is she dead?”

  “Yes.”

  The air was knocked out of me. How can that be? Vicky’s married with children not the dead mother of my boyfriend’s child. It was in that second that Jason and Jima came out of the kitchen, still throwing insults.

  “Let’s get going. The day waits for nobody. You better get your work clothes on Shanna,” Jima said.

  “Where are you going so early?” I forced a smile, and asked.

  “Where are we going?” Jason snickered.

  “Did I miss something?” I asked.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” Jim said. “I thought we could get an early start, and God willing we could get that land plowed by the end of next week.”

  “You screwed the pooch on this one cousin,” Jason said, and the minute he did Jim slapped him across the head.

  �
��I had planned to see Maria today, couldn’t we start on Monday?” I asked.

  “Beauty Parlor?” Jima asked. “You want that land ready for this season and you’re worried about your hair? I’ll tell you what you need to be worried about lady.”

  Jim cupped a hand around her mouth not letting another word escape. “Jima! Tell Shanna you’re sorry. Right this second young lady!” He removed his hand. She shyly stepped forward to look me in the eyes. It was as though I’d been transported to a time long gone; she was (as Mrs. Davidson would say) the spitting image of Vicky.

  “I’m sorry Shanna. I just meant,” again Jim cupped her mouth.

  “Learn when to leave well enough alone,” he said.

  “You’re right Jima; this is not the time to fuss over appearances.” I bent down and hugged her and whispered in her ear. “Your Momma would be so proud of you.”

  “You at least need to change your clothes,” she said. “Those’ll be in rags before noon. It’s just a shame to waste good clothes.”

  “She’s got a point there,” Jason said.

  When the doorbell rang, I’d grabbed the first clothes I saw; the linen pants and silk top I had worn the night before. “I’ll change.” I ran into my room unintentionally slamming the door. “Sorry,” I yelled. I put on a sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. I could hear Jim raising his voice in the other room. I pressed my ear to the door and could clearly hear him arguing with Jason.

  “She’s not evil, and you best make sure she doesn’t hear you say that,” Jim said.

  “Did you see her shaking all over? She’s skinny and pale, how’s she going to be able to farm? I bet she can’t even change the gears on a tractor. Only a nut would want to farm that land anyhow. Besides, I ain’t the only person in town that thinks she’s loony tunes,” Jason said. “Most people are scared shitless of her. They say not to look her in the eyes, or she’ll put a curse on you.”

  “That’s enough. You hear me?” Jim demanded.