by Tim Sandlin
“I love women.” Shane made a sound like a sigh interrupted by a dry heave. It didn’t seem to bother him or alarm Granma, so I pretended not to notice.
“God, I love women,” Shane repeated. “Did you ever watch a woman apply makeup? Or stockings—I nearly cry when I see a woman sliding stockings over her legs.”
“I generally don’t wear makeup or stockings.”
“It’s not so much the sexual act, although that is wonderful. I still get chills up my back when I recall a blow job given me by Dessie DuBose in 1953. My God, what a mouth on that woman.” He kind of drifted off for a while, reliving a pleasant moment from 1953. I mopped his forehead again and squeezed the washrag into the bowl. Shane’s lips parted as he tried to breathe, and I could see his yellow-pink tongue on his bottom teeth. What would I relive as I lay dying? Bathing my babies, maybe, or one spring day when I took off my clothes and sat in Miner Creek feeling the water on my legs and sunshine on my shoulders.
“It’s not so much the sexual act.” Shane took up where he left off. “What I’ll miss is putting my face against a woman’s neck and falling asleep. The smell is delicious. I hope heaven smells like a female’s collarbone.”
“Maybe you better get some sleep now,” I said.
His eyes shifted and landed on me. “Why? I’ll be gone soon enough. Why can’t I spend my last hours of consciousness conscious? Did you know I once jammed with Son House? Son said ‘Take it, white boy,’ and God, did I take it. I was in heaven that day.”
“Sounds nice,” I said, even though I’d never heard of Son House.
“I’m going to miss my harmonica almost as much as women.”
Later he added, “And Oreo cookies.”
Back in the eighth grade I read every death-of-a-major-character book in Teton County Library—Little Women, Charlotte’s Web, Daisy Miller, Bambi, I devoured Dickens—searching for a clue as to what happens next. Eternal blankness was impossible to understand, but all the other theories struck me as silly. What happens next is the most important question there is, but no one knows the answer, and the only way to have any semblance of a life is to ignore the question.
Through college and into the drunk years, I got caught up in my personal life and managed to ignore the question easily, but sitting in a dark room next to a dying man made the deal hard to beg.
All the individuals I trusted deflected the unspeakable stuff with jokes. Lydia Callahan once told me that when I commit secret, disgusting acts—like ditching gum under a chair or peeing in a swimming pool—an alarm goes off in heaven and the angels gather to laugh at my social blunder. In Lydia’s world, religion and proper douching go hand in hand.
Dad said when people die they go to San Francisco, which makes as much sense as pearly gates and streets of gold. At least San Francisco is real.
“And Jimmy Stewart movies,” Shane said. “The westerns, not the ones where he plays Charles Lindbergh or the guy who went to Washington.”
“What’s that?”
He held up his hand to show me four fingers. “Women, my harmonica, Oreos, and Jimmy Stewart westerns.”
“How about horses?”
“No, I won’t miss horses.”
“My most favorite thing is the sound geese make when they fly over the house in fall.”
“I like campfires,” Shane said.
We were silent awhile, thinking of things we would miss if we died. My list was theoretical.
Shane cleared his throat. He dug under the quilt for a handkerchief, which he spit into, then he folded the handkerchief over whatever he spit and slipped it back under the quilt. The doctor had done something to stop the coughing, but not coughing scared me more than coughing because I could picture his lungs filling with blood.
“Let us review Maurey’s last few weeks,” Shane said.
“Oh, no, surely there’s a better way to spend your time.”
He did the four fingers thing again. “You drove a car with your baby on the roof, you attempted suicide, you got yourself beat to smithereens, not to mention almost raped and murdered, and you killed me.”
“Shane.”
“Frankness is expected from a dying man. It’s the only time in life when honesty goes unpunished.”
“Wouldn’t you rather conserve your strength than talk about this?”
His chins jiggled, causing rivulets of sweat to run onto the quilt. “Do you know why all these disasters happened?” he asked.
I looked at my feet. “Alcohol.”
“Correct. Now, since you caused my demise, I have the right to demand a promise.”
I kept my eyes on the hardwood floor and didn’t say anything. Whatever atonement he had in mind would be brutal. Shane wasn’t the type to ask for small favors.
“Do you agree you owe me a promise?”
“I agree already.”
“I want you to promise you won’t take another drink until I am dead.”
I exhaled. I’d been expecting a dry-for-life pledge. This was short-term enough to deal with. “I was planning to quit forever, Shane.”
His smile made him look ghoulish. The man was melting before my eyes. “Quite admirable, and I hope you follow through,” he said, “but what I demand is a solemn oath—cross your heart and hope to die—that you won’t touch a drop of alcohol while I am alive. If you honor the vow, I shall forgive you for killing me and, even better, give you permission to forgive yourself.”
I looked over at Granma, who was furiously writing in a ledger. She didn’t care if I promised. Shane watched me from sparkly eyes that seemed to be sinking into his flesh. Normally, I don’t care for commitments, but the guy was dying, and it was my fault.
“Okay.”
“Okay what?” he asked.
“I solemnly swear not to touch a drop of alcohol while Shane Rinesfoos lives.”
He nodded. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”
“Don’t you think we’re a little old—”
“Cross your heart and hope to die.”
“Okay. I cross my heart and hope to die.” Interesting phrase for someone who recently attempted suicide.
Shane took my hand again. “Send Lloyd in. Opportunities such as this are rare.”
Feeling dismissed, I stood up. His hand tightened on mine. “Good-bye, Maurey, take care of them.”
“Take care of who?”
“Lloyd and Brad. Marcella and Andrew. They’d be in big trouble without you.”
How was I supposed to take that? “I’ll look in on you later.”
He squeezed my hand one more time. “Life is lovely, Maurey. Don’t forget.”
48
Shane didn’t die that night, or the next day while I was crawling around the strawberry fields, feeling sick. When we stopped for lunch—which Granma called dinner—Marcella said he was in and out of delirium, mostly in. One of the times he was out, he’d had the strength to ask about me.
“I told Shane you were picking,” Marcella said.
“Was he entertained?”
“He said you must be having kittens. I don’t know what he meant by that.”
My stomach refused to accept fried okra or corn bread. It’s like I looked at the glistening grease and a fist grabbed my belly. Instead, I drank a half gallon of pre-sweetened iced tea.
That afternoon Lloyd finished whatever it was he’d been doing in the burned-down barn and came out to help Brad, Hugo Sr., and me with our migrant worker act. Lloyd looked right at home in those white overalls with no shirt, all he lacked was a tattoo—Born to Farm. He worked the row next to mine, which made me somewhat nervous because I knew he was on the lookout for crash symptoms. So was I. I kept expecting the earth to boil over with spiders and cockroaches, but all I saw were a couple of worms that I suspect were real.
“You ever get DTs?” I asked Lloy
d.
From the crouch position, he rubbed his overalls leg. “I never hallucinated that much, but for a couple weeks there whenever I tried to sleep I felt rats running over my body. They would bite me in the face and I’d come to screaming.”
“How did Shane handle it?”
“Made me sleep in a bathtub full of cold water while he watched to keep me from drowning. It was his own technique. I’ve asked people in AA, and no one ever heard of his therapy.”
“Whatever works,” I said.
“Once I felt a snake crawl up my anus.”
“You think that’ll happen to me?”
“I’d been drunk twenty-three years, you’ve only lost eight months.”
I went to turn in a rack of strawberries, and Patrick told me I wasn’t picking fast enough. He compared me to molasses. His family owned a place down the road where they grew green peppers and tomatoes, but every May he and the kids came over to help Granma harvest. Patrick’s respect for a person was determined by their ability to do farm work, so he didn’t have much use for me.
“You’d never last a day in peppers,” he said.
“Yeah, but I can dehorn steers. And I’m a whiz at castration.”
I’d made nine dollars twenty-five cents on the morning shift—price of a midlevel bottle of Canadian whiskey. I wish. At least the temperature was nice. It would have been an okay day if I hadn’t been farming sober.
“Has it occurred to you that Shane drug us across the country simply because Granma needed help getting the crops in?” I said to Lloyd.
He straightened and put both hands on his back. “He had more on his mind than picking strawberries.”
“I mean besides nookie.”
Lloyd took off his cap. “You’re not the only one sworn to carry out Shane’s last requests.”
This was interesting. Shane was using his own death to blackmail his friends. “What’s he got in mind for you, a statue in the town square?”
Lloyd wiped his hairline with his arm and put his cat cap back on. “I can’t leave Granma until the barn is rebuilt.”
“He’s making you give up Sharon?”
“Shane and I stopped a few months now and then to earn money. He’s not making me give up the search, just call an intermission. I figure if we don’t take any days off, we’ll have it built by fall.”
“We?”
***
That night I sat in the rocker watching Columbo while Brad and Hugo Sr. played chess and Lloyd and Andrew played Candy Land. They tried to get me involved, but I wasn’t in the mood. Alcohol withdrawal and Candy Land don’t mix. Columbo had something wrong with one eye, which made him look at everything sideways. For some reason, that chipmunk head twist irritated me. And he carried this pitiful beagle-looking thing around in his arms, like the dog couldn’t walk by itself or something. That irritated me, too.
I wondered what Lloyd would say if I asked for the keys to Moby Dick.
“You’re a cheater,” Andrew yelled. He was wearing his red pajamas with the black oil derricks. Granma had made Marcella cut his hair.
“I am not,” Lloyd said.
“Are too, are too.”
“Am not, am not.”
“Shut up!” I said considerably louder than I’d meant to. Both games halted while the males stared at me, but I didn’t care. I felt reckless. “Nobody in the whole world gives a hoot about your stupid game, so don’t argue about it. You’re taking up too much air.”
After a moment of silence, Brad said, “Mellow out, Miss Pierce.”
I could have used that blatant insult as the excuse to storm out and go get drunk, and a month ago I would have, but this time I stayed put. Let’s all give me some credit here. I bit my lip, forced back the leaky eyes, and rocked the chair for all its worth. Marcella made unnecessary noise bringing in a huge bowl of popcorn—exactly the same as my mom would have done in the situation. Most moms think snacks relieve tension.
“Shane woke up a while ago.” Marcella stood behind Hugo Sr. with one hand holding the popcorn and the other touching his neck above the collar of his Ban-Lon shirt. Something about their domestic casualness made me resentful. I hate it when people are casual while I’m tense.
“He asked if you’ve had a drink yet,” Marcella said.
“Tell him I’m sober as he is.”
Marcella brought the popcorn over. I refused to touch the stuff. “It’s so wonderful what you’re doing for him,” she said. “Shane knows that every hour he can keep going is one more hour you stay sober. All his life, he loved to help people, especially alcoholics, and now you’ve allowed him one last chance to save somebody.”
I rocked violently. “Your brother is a damn saint.”
Marcella seemed surprised. “Why, no, you are, Maurey. You’ve given Shane a reason to live.”
***
After a while, Lloyd and Marcella traded places with Lloyd going in to sit by Shane and Granma, and Marcella dealing with Andrew. Hugo Sr. had been winning most of the chess games before Marcella came in the living room to stay, but after that Brad blitzed him. Hugo was too busy making goo-goo eyes at Marcella for either of them to concentrate on their boards. Andrew gave up on Candy Land and crawled into my lap on the rocker and fell asleep. When Marcella brought Hugo Jr. in to nurse, I thought Sr. was going to drool on his pawns.
Personally, made me sick. I tried to picture the two of them in bed, but in my wildest imagination I couldn’t strip Hugo of his black socks and glasses. A week ago I couldn’t have imagined Marcella making a peep during the act, but the last week had shaken my basic assumptions about human behavior. Maybe meek women have orgasms, too.
Brad got disgusted with his worthless opponent and went out to Moby Dick, where he and Lloyd slept last night. Before he left, he kissed me on the cheek, just like I was a regular mom.
“You’re doing fine, Miss Pierce,” he said.
“Yeah, right.”
Between Brad’s kiss and the smell of Andrew’s hair, the tear duct thing was a constant threat. Dad never had much patience with tears—said they weren’t cowboy. Or maybe he didn’t say it but I assumed he felt that way because he was a cowboy and I never saw him cry. I was getting more and more confused over what people expected of me and what I’d made up along the way. Columbo’s loyalty to the stupid dog had me puddle-eyed, too; then there was a commercial about a mother and daughter that no one could tell apart because their hands were equally soft. By eleven o’clock, I was a mess.
Some domestic signal I didn’t catch passed between Hugo and Marcella that sent them packing off to bed with their flock.
Marcella said, “Sleep tight.”
Hugo Sr. said, “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
“What’s that mean?”
He looked at me without understanding. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite?”
“You think I’ll hallucinate, don’t you.”
“It’s a saying,” Marcella said. “Goes with ‘Sleep tight.’”
“I don’t appreciate these snide little remarks about my condition,” I made my voice high-pitched and tacky. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Marcella loaded up the baby and Hugo loaded up Andrew, and they disappeared up the stairs with Hugo repeating, “What’d I say? What’d I say?”
The news had a story about a family of six who perished together in a trailer fire, tobacco futures were either up or down, and the governor of Wisconsin wanted Nixon to resign. Lloyd came in midway through the weather report and caught me crying like a child.
He rubbed his leg while staring down at the pieces on the chess board. “I don’t think Granma has slept since we showed up yesterday,” he said. “She’s a remarkable woman.”
“Lloyd, I don’t feel so good.”
He looked at me and said softly, “You’re not supposed to, Maurey. If it wa
s easy, there’d be no alcoholics.”
“But it’s not supposed to be like this.”
He came over and knelt in front of me and took my hands. “Just think about how much better your life will be afterwards.”
“Will it?”
“Yes.”
I looked at his face. “I hate myself for thinking it, but sometimes I wish he would die so I could drink in peace.”
“I know. So does he and he understands. It’s normal.”
“Normal? Wishing someone you love would hurry up and die is normal?”
He looked down at our hands. The tears felt kind of nice, in a sick way, and telling him what an ogre I was helped, even though I didn’t believe for a minute it was normal to choose whiskey over someone’s life.
“I’m scared to death I’ll fail,” I said.
“But you’re equally scared you’ll succeed.”
I nodded. “I can’t conceive of my life without Jack. I can’t go on like this forever.”
“Just go on for today. We’ll make it through tomorrow tomorrow.”
I got angry. “Don’t spout AA slogans at me. I’m no wino off the street.”
As soon as I said it I knew the words were bullshit. I was a wino off the street—or something just as bad. Looking at the lines on Lloyd’s face, I had that same powerlessness feeling I’d had when Armand prepared to rape me.
“So, how do people quit?” I asked.
Lloyd’s eyes were totally Jesus. It was as if he’d felt all the pain anyone anywhere ever felt and knew there was more to come. “Most alcoholics do something so awful, they scare themselves off the binge,” he said. “You hit bottom hard and say to yourself ‘My God, what have I become?’ and you stop for a while.”
“I’ve been there. I am there.”
“But I’ve never known fear alone to cause a long-term cure. In a few weeks the denial sets in and you take another drink. To really quit, you must replace the fear with something that lasts. You’ve got to change your entire self.”
I wiped the tears from my eyes so I could see him. “I’m so whacked out tonight I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”