Last Bus to Coffeeville

by J. Paul Henderson

  ‘You’re not losing your marbles, Mamma,’ Ruby said, ‘and you’ve got to stop saying that. The doctor said that with the right medication you’ll be fine.’

  Martha smiled at her. ‘You’re so sweet Ruby – and you too Nancy: I know you worry about me as well. I hate to be a bother to you both.’

  ‘Mom, you’re not a bother!’ Nancy said. ‘If you were, I probably would put you out with the cotton mouths and bugs, but it’s not going to happen!’

  ‘Oh be whisht, Nancy,’ Martha said, a beam stretching from one side of her face to the other. ‘Sometimes you talk such foolishness.’

  Gene imagined that Brandon stood there thinking it would be okay by him if his Mom got lost for good among the cottonmouths and the bugs; at least he’d be able to get on with his tractoring, or whatever it was he did on the farm.

  Ezra had barely poured Hilton and Martha their drinks when Dora came into the room and told them dinner was ready to be served.

  ‘Give us five minutes will you, Dora,’ Hilton said. ‘Miss Martha and I have only just made it downstairs.’

  ‘Well, jus’ don’t go blamin’ me if the food gets spoilt,’ she said. ‘Not as if I ain’t got nothin’ better to do wit’ my time.’

  ‘Boy, Ezra, you sure got yourself one cantankerous woman there,’ Hilton said.

  Ezra smiled. ‘You bes’ get yo’selves in there or it gonna be the worse for me, Mr Travis. Dora’ll blame me fo’ pourin’ y’all too many drinks or pourin’ ’em too slowly. Either way, I’ll get it.’

  ‘Okay everybody, let’s go sit down and take our drinks with us,’ Hilton said. ‘We can’t afford to lose Ezra just yet.’

  Once everyone was settled, Martha rang a small hand bell placed next to her on the table and signalled that they were ready to be served. Dora, and a young black girl Gene hadn’t seen before, came into the room with bowls of steaming soup. Everyone started to eat except Martha, who appeared to be staring at the mass of silver cutlery surrounding her plate. It seemed to Gene that she was unsure of which implement to choose.

  ‘I’m no world’s expert on cutlery, Miss Martha, but I find this one is probably best suited for the job.’ He then placed a spoon gently in her hand.

  ‘I might be losing my marbles, Gene, but I still know what a spoon is! I was wondering why there was no bread on the table.’ She rang the bell again, and told Dora they needed bread.

  Dora banged a basket of bread on the table without seeing any need to apologise for the oversight. Gene sat there embarrassed, wanting to apologise but fearful of making matters worse. Nancy and Ruby bit their tongues, while Brandon scowled.

  ‘Nancy tells me you’re going to be a doctor, Gene. Are you going to specialise in a particular field or become a general practitioner?’ Hilton asked.

  ‘General practitioner, sir,’ Gene replied. ‘I can’t say I’ve found any particular field that interests me more than another, and I don’t want to have to get involved with any kind of cutting. Surgery’s my least favourite subject at the moment. It seems I have an aversion to the sight of blood.’

  ‘Well, maybe we can talk about this more once the meal’s over,’ Hilton said. ‘Nancy, how are your studies? Last time we talked, you were reading and enjoying the nineteenth century English poets. Wasn’t it Dryden who was your favourite?’

  ‘Hazlitt,’ Nancy corrected. ‘Hazlitt’s my favourite.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is what you’re going to do when you finish your studies,’ Brandon said. ‘I mean, what can you do with poems and books when you get down to it?’

  ‘I’ll probably write verses for the inside of cards,’ Nancy replied. ‘Something like: Dear Brother, I Wish I Had Another.’

  ‘Now you two be nice to each other,’ Martha said. ‘Let’s not spoil the meal, and remember we have a guest with us.’ She turned to Gene. ‘What’s your name again, dear?’

  ‘Gene, Miss Martha. Gene.’

  Gene became further alarmed when Dora served the main course: particularly rare steaks. It struck him that Nancy had failed to mention to either Dora or her parents that since being given a cadaver to dissect, he could no longer eat beef without gagging. Gene looked to Nancy for help, but all she said to him – rather sharply he thought – was: ‘Eat it!’

  Gene made willing and cut the steak into pieces, which he then moved around his plate while eating only the vegetables and potatoes. When conversation revolved around others, and no eye was upon him, he carefully picked up pieces of the meat with his fingers and placed them in his jacket pocket. At other times, he put pieces of steak in his mouth and manoeuvred them into his napkin while pretending to wipe his lips. He would then sanitise his mouth by taking a drink of red wine. By the time Dora and her helpmate came to collect the plates, his was as clean as any. ‘Well done,’ Nancy whispered. ‘Mind over matter, right?’

  Ruby said her goodbyes before dessert: she had a drive ahead of her and didn’t want Homer worrying. As the meal came to an end for the rest of them, Hilton suggested the men step out on to the porch and smoke a cigar.

  ‘One each, or are you going to share the same one?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘I think I can run to three,’ Hilton said smiling. ‘You and Brandon go on ahead, Gene. I’ll take Miss Martha upstairs and get her settled. Nancy can give me a hand – unless you’d prefer to help Dora with the dishes?’ Nancy pulled a face.

  Internally, Gene also pulled a face. Although having promised Nancy to play a full part in the family’s conversations, the idea of being alone with Brandon was a presentiment. His situation might have been eased if he’d removed the meat from his pocket before stepping out on to the porch, where Jefferson now lounged.

  Smelling the meat, Jefferson raised himself from the floor and walked over to Gene. When Gene tried to push him away, the dog started to bark. Believing that the best way to extricate himself from another potentially embarrassing situation was to feed the meat to the dog, Gene took the steak from his jacket pocket and placed it on the porch floor. It was at this moment that Brandon chose to join him.

  When asked by Brandon what he was doing, Gene had no option but to explain his aversion to meat, its origins, and his struggle not to appear rude at the table. It gave the two of them something to talk about, but Gene was left with an uneasy feeling that this wasn’t the last he’d hear of the matter.

  True enough, it wasn’t. The next day, Brandon told Dora that her cooking reminded Gene of dead people.

  The Field of Cotton

  Gene found the days that followed long and increasingly slow to end. It wasn’t simply the fact that it was high summer and the days were naturally long, or that Delta days were always slow to end, but more the strain of actually being there.

  Gene had been apprehensive even before arriving at Oaklands. Nancy had given him a long list of pointers of what, and what not, to say. He was to address her father as Sir and her mother as Miss Martha. He was also to make no mention of civil rights unless her father originated the conversation, and he was certainly to make no mention of the bus they’d ridden to Birmingham – two years after the event, and still Nancy hadn’t divulged this to her parents. It might also be a good idea, she added, if he made no mention of the fact that his best friend at Duke was an unemployed Negro.

  Dora now cold-shouldered him and Ezra, though polite when they bumped into each other, was distant. Conversation with Hilton Travis proved difficult and faltering, and Miss Martha never seemed too sure of who he actually was. On one occasion, she’d reported him to Nancy and asked her to find out from him what his business in the house was.

  He met some of Nancy’s friends but warmed to none of them, and wondered why she’d befriended them in the first place. The only person he truly liked was Ruby. The atmosphere always lightened when she visited the house. Ditsy as hell and always full of fun, she couldn’t have been more different from Homer, who struck Gene as a dufus.

  It was while Gene and Nancy were staying with her parents that Martin
Luther King stood at the Lincoln Memorial and told a crowd of 200,000 that he had a dream. ‘So do I Martin,’ Gene thought, ‘Just to get out of here!’

  The family sat around the television set and watched as King spoke. After only a few minutes, Brandon left the room. Hilton Travis continued to leaf through his newspaper. Dora, who was standing behind them, commented that Martin Luther King was a troublemaker and that no good would come from him stirring things up like this. Nancy watched but made no comment, while Gene pretended to wipe drops of sweat from his face when the occasional tear spilled from his eye.

  The day before he and Nancy were due to leave Oaklands, they took a long walk. Nancy led him through the back garden, past the pecan and walnut trees and out to where the cotton grew.

  ‘This is the most beautiful time of the year in the Delta,’ she told Gene. ‘After the cotton’s harvested in the autumn, all that’s left are dried stalks. Everything changes from white to brown, to monotony.’ Maybe it was this talk of the life cycle that now led Nancy to talk of her mother.

  ‘You might have noticed that Mom’s not well.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘She’s displaying the early signs of Alzheimer’s,’ she continued, ‘and it’s only going to get worse. What do you know about Alzheimer’s? Is it something you’ve come across in your studies, yet?’

  ‘We’ve touched on it,’ Gene said. ‘All I know is that it’s cruel and unforgiving – as much for the family as it is for the person suffering from it. Are you sure it is Alzheimer’s? Your Mom seems a bit on the young side to be starting with it now.’

  ‘We’re sure,’ Nancy said. ‘The doctors in Jackson and Memphis don’t have any doubts, and the specialist in New York that Ruby talked about would only be advising on treatment. The diagnosis has already been made. He won’t be able to change that.

  ‘I saw my Grandmamma suffer from the same thing and it was horrible. She started with the same confusion my Mom’s showing. At the time it seemed funny, and even she laughed about the things she did – much like my Mom does now. But then she got depressed, and then irritable – really irritable. She couldn’t understand what was happening to her and got scared. She ended up not recognising us, and started to look for people who’d been dead for donkey’s years.

  ‘Her personality changed, too. At one time she’d been my favourite of all the family, so sweet and so kind; but then she became abusive and started to say really hateful things and cuss – horrible words. I still don’t understand how she ever knew them.

  ‘She lived with us at Oaklands – in the room you’re staying in – and Mom and Daddy looked after her for years. It was Dora who took the brunt of her insults though, and for all her foibles and occasional rudenesses, my parents would never dismiss her because of the way she cared for Grandmamma. She was kind and patient with her.

  ‘Eventually, my Gran lost control of her bowels and became as helpless and messy as a new-born babe. It got too much for everyone and my parents had to put her in a nursing home. She lingered there for another two years, alive for the sake of being alive, and when she died, I was glad.

  ‘I hated myself for thinking this, but it’s true, I was glad. It put her to rest and it brought the nightmare she’d been living to an end. And her death stopped the nightmare for us, too. I still have difficulty remembering her as the person she used to be, rather than the person she became. It’s so hard, Gene – really hard. And the same thing’s going to happen to my mother.’

  Gene listened as the words came pouring out of Nancy, a log jam of fears and emotions undammed.

  ‘The same thing happened to my Grandmamma’s mother too. We don’t know of any others before then, because people tended to die younger in those days; but there’s something hereditary going on – I just know it. And the same thing will probably happen to me.’

  She made contact with Gene’s eyes and held them. ‘I never want to have children, Gene. If I inherit this dementia, I want it stopping with me. I don’t want to pass it on to my own children!’

  Gene took hold of her hand. ‘From what I know, Nancy, Alzheimer’s isn’t hereditary. There’s no documentation or any proof of that being the case. I know you’re worried, but I think you’re worrying for nothing. Even if it did happen, thirty years from now there’ll probably be a cure for it, or at least medication to control it. Things are moving fast in medicine. I’m sure any children you have would be okay.’

  ‘I don’t care what medicine says,’ Nancy said, ‘or any logic that says it won’t happen to me. All I know is that it happens to people in my family – to the women of my family. Something’s passed from one generation to the next. Maybe it is a strange thing to happen, and it doesn’t fit with medical science, but it’s a fact. You have to take my word on this.

  ‘And now I have to ask you something, something I don’t think I could ever ask another person.’ She let go of Gene’s hand and moved away from him, turning her back. ‘If it happens to me, Gene, and I get Alzheimer’s… I want you to bring it to an end.’

  ‘Of course I’ll take care of you, Nancy. That goes without saying.’

  ‘You’re not understanding me, Gene. What I’m asking you to do is bring my life to an end – prematurely. I don’t want to live through it, and I don’t want anyone who knows or loves me to have to live through it with me. There’s too much hurt, too much damage. I want people remembering me for the person I was and not for the demon I’ll become. Will you promise me, Gene, promise me you’ll do this?’

  Gene didn’t reply immediately. He pulled a cigarette from its pack with his lips and lit it. As he blew the smoke upwards, he noticed white cumulus clouds floating high in the sky without a care in the world. At that moment, he wished that he and Nancy were those clouds.

  ‘But if you feel so strongly about this,’ he eventually asked, ‘why wouldn’t you just take your own life? Why would you need me to do it?’

  Nancy now turned to face him. ‘Because I don’t think I’d be able to do it,’ she said. ‘A small part of me still thinks that suicide is a sin and that if I killed myself I’d go straight to hell. The larger part of me thinks that I’d never get the timing right – and I don’t want my life to end before it absolutely has to. I could live through the early confusion, but once the disease progressed I’d probably lose all knowledge of what I’d intended to do. I wouldn’t have a clue what was going on, and if I tried and botched it, I’d be worse off still and probably placed in a mental institution or something. And you’d be a doctor, Gene. You’d be able to judge when the time was approaching; when the time was right. And I know you’d make it painless for me.’

  Gene thought about it. He was familiar with the Hippocratic Oath and aware that his intended role in life was to save rather than take lives. Saving lives, however, was one thing; prolonging nightmares another thing altogether. He loved Nancy. She was, and always would be, the priority of his life. He would never willingly allow her to suffer.

  ‘Okay, I’ll do it Nancy. You have my word. But don’t live your life expecting the worst to happen. It might not. If it does, then I’ll take care of it.’

  ‘And whether we’re still together or not? Even if we’re not a couple, you’ll do it? I’d still be able to count on you?’

  A quizzical look crossed Gene’s face. ‘Yes, you have my word on it,’ he said, and after a pause asked: ‘You don’t know something I don’t, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Nancy said, ‘but things happen in life. Bad things.’

  That night Nancy did the soft-shoe walk to Gene’s room and told him she loved him.

  Five months later, Gene and Nancy were no longer a couple. She never returned to Duke after the Christmas vacation, and when Gene arrived back at the university a brief letter awaited him.

  Dearest Gene,

  I don’t think we should see each other again. It breaks my heart to write these words, and I know you’ll be just as hurt to read them. Please don’t ask me to explain.

  I hope you have a great life, darl
ing – and I hope that I have a great life too. I just don’t think we can have a great life together. If it’s any consolation, and I hope that it is, please know that I’ll always love you, and you’ll never be far from my thoughts.

  Please don’t try and contact me. This is difficult enough.

  Yours always,

  Nancy

  The letter came as a shock to Gene. He read and re-read it, puzzled over it for days before eventually placing it in a drawer. What the hell had happened? He’d recently and – to his way of thinking – magnanimously agreed to kill Nancy, and now she’d dropped him like a hat. What kind of gratitude was that?

  Nancy was right, however. Reading her words did break his heart.

  It would be another forty-five years before he understood them.

  Hershey

  Hershey is a small town in Pennsylvania, thirteen miles from the state capital of Harrisburg. Surrounded by cows and pastures, it nestles in the rolling hills of Dauphin County and is home to the chocolate manufacturing company of the same name. (The word nestles should be used advisedly in these parts, for fear of being confused with the name of the rival Swiss chocolate manufacturing company, Nestlé.)

  The man whose name became an eponym for both town and company was Milton Hershey, a leading player in the late nineteenth century world of candy, and considered by many to have been the king of caramels. In 1893, however, Milton renounced this sweetmeat crown and became a convert to milk chocolate. He’d tasted the brown delicacy at a world’s fair in Chicago that year, and thereafter lost all interest in caramels; he sold his company in Lancaster and embarked on a mission to bring the luxury of the rich to the taste buds of the ordinary. To this end, he built a factory at Derry Church.