Homesick Creek

by Diane Hammond

  “Look, it could be anything,” the nurse was saying. “It’s flu season, surely you’ve thought of that. Half the people in Sawyer are walking around in some stage of viral involvement. It doesn’t mean they have AIDS.”

  “She says she’s got lumps,” Bob said stubbornly.

  “Lumps?”

  “Yeah, under her arms.”

  “Lymph nodes, you mean.”

  “Lymph nodes, yeah. Those.”

  Gabriella sighed. “That could be an early symptom, yes.”

  “Even if I’m not sick?”

  “No two cases are alike. You know that; we’ve talked about that. You simply cannot measure your wife’s health by your own condition. You might have years before you experience any symptoms. She may have only months. Or the other way around.”

  “So how the fuck am I supposed to know what’s going on with her?”

  “Her blood work, Bob. Her blood work.”

  “Nope.”

  Gabriella Lewis threw up her hands. “For God’s sake.”

  “She’d get scared, and there’s no need for her to get scared. She don’t need to know. I’ll know for both of us.”

  “Has it occurred to you that you’re depriving her of choices?”

  Bob blinked at her. “What choices?”

  “Say she’s HIV positive but she isn’t symptomatic yet. Doesn’t she deserve to choose how to spend the time she has left, especially while she’s still well? Maybe there’s a place she’s always wanted to see or a restaurant she’s always wanted to try; maybe she has family—”

  “Of course she has family.”

  “—that she’d like to reestablish contact with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe there are misunderstandings she’d like to clear up before she’s too sick. Maybe she’d like to set her affairs in order.”

  “She’s got no affairs except me and Doreen and Crystal. And Patrick, except he’s halfway around the world and don’t talk to us that often.”

  The nurse strained toward Bob across the desktop. “All I’m saying, Bob, is that yes, this may be the beginning of full-blown AIDS for her—or not. Maybe she isn’t even HIV positive. You’re depriving both of you of the right to know that and act accordingly.”

  Bob shook his head slowly. “It’s not that simple.”

  “It’s exactly that simple.”

  “If I tell her, she’ll know about me and Warren. I can’t have that.”

  “Don’t you think she’d want to know?”

  “That I’m going to die? What kind of a thing is that to know? Doreen’s eating us out of house and home, and she’s worried about Crystal, there’s me and the drinking, and now you want her to know I’m dying? That’s not love.”

  “It’s honesty. They’re often considered to be the same thing.”

  “With Nita and me it’s different.”

  “You lie to each other?”

  Bob worked a little piece of tobacco between his front teeth. “We spare each other things.”

  “Ah.”

  “What I’m saying is, I’ll know for us both.”

  Gabriella sighed. “Look. Keep a close eye on her then, and keep me posted. Check her tongue and the inside of her mouth. If it gets white, she may have thrush, a yeast infection, but we can treat that. If she starts sounding gurgly deep in her chest or spikes a fever, get her in to see someone immediately, no matter what time of day it is. There is a rare kind of pneumonia we see in AIDS patients, and it kills. Do you understand?”

  Bob nodded.

  “And keep an eye on her weight. If she begins losing weight, she may need to go on food supplements. AIDS patients waste.”

  Bob cracked a tight smile. “She’s always wanting to lose weight. She’d like that part.”

  Gabriella shook her head. Bob’s smile failed. She watched him for a long minute.

  “What?” Bob said.

  “I’d like to check your T-cell levels.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It will give us insight into your own state of health.”

  “My own state of health is that I’m fine.”

  Gabriella raised both hands high in surrender. Bob stood up and tugged his jacket straight. He had reached the door when she said softly, “I don’t know if you pray at all, but if you do, this might be a good time to step things up a little.”

  But Bob didn’t pray. He believed that people like him and Warren, people who’d strayed but not yet fallen, were too insignificant for God’s full attention. If you were very bad, you got a bolt of lightning. If you were good—like Crystal was good, like Anita was—you got wings when it was over. But if you were Bob or Warren, damaged men of no particular accomplishment, you were overlooked by God and Satan alike. You were as invisible as a single drop of rain.

  Bob didn’t get back to the dealership from the clinic until three o’clock, but his service bay was as empty as when he’d left. All was right with the world, at least as far as cars went. Bob stuck his head in Hack’s office and let him know that he was going out again. Hack maintained a no-questions-asked stance around the dealership as long as Marv Vernon wasn’t around, and right now the old man was in Scottsdale, Arizona, playing in some old man’s golf tournament.

  “You want my truck?” Hack said.

  “Nah. It’s not raining anymore.”

  Hack lifted a dismissive hand, and Bob ducked out of the office again. Hack was a good man; God forgive Bob for any time he might have said otherwise, and there certainly had been times. But lately he’d come to find out Hack Neary understood that sometimes a man just needed to be left alone, and that was a rare quality. When he’d seen how Bob had stopped drinking and all, he’d loaned Bob his new dirt bike, no questions asked. Bob kept it stored out behind the used car lot. With the bike, he could get from the dealership to the homestead in ten minutes flat—less on a dry day when he could really open her up and fly. Rain gear took care of the rest. He was usually back at the dealership in time to hitch a ride home to Hubbard with Hack or Doreen.

  Today he made it in just over nine minutes. He slowed down as he rounded the last turn, the one where the road wound down the valley wall like a ribbon of wonder, leading to the homestead he increasingly thought of as his. He and Anita had gone through dwellings like other people went through beater cars, running them down, using them up, moving on. Some had been livable enough. Not all of them, though. And Anita minded, he knew, though she hadn’t talked about it since the eviction from Adams Street. She didn’t need to. He’d seen her in Hack’s living room, seen her face when she beheld for the thousandth time that goddamned baby grand and all those fucking rabbits. Yeah, he’d seen her.

  Now, from his position on the hill, he found himself looking down upon bounty. The roof was completely mended with sound shakes he’d either split or harvested off the barn; the porch was propped up with a couple of two-by-fours, ready for more but stable in the meantime. He’d replaced all the rotten floorboards with barn salvage, and the windows were trimmed out with new frames. He figured he’d pay for a couple of windows out of the paycheck he’d be getting late next week.

  The place was really beginning to look like something, goddamned if it wasn’t.

  He parked the dirt bike inside what was left of the barn—an old carcass of a thing now, whale bones left out in the open too long—and came through the newly weather-tight front door into the house. Dry as dry. He felt the unfamiliar thrill of pride. Warren would appreciate it. He had finally called Bob at the dealership late in the afternoon about three weeks ago, in the middle of February.

  “Jesus, where the fuck have you been?” Bob said once Francine put the call through.

  “Hell.”

  “Yeah, well, even hell must have a phone number and a mailing address.”

  “I’m in a place off Burnside.”

  “That’s the part of town where all those bums are.”

  “Yeah. It’s an okay place, though. I’m subletting it.”
>
  “Subletting?” Bob said.

  “I’m renting it from the guy who’s technically renting it, except he died, so now I’m him.”

  “You’re renting an apartment as a dead guy?”

  Warren sighed. “It’s complicated, Bobby. This place is sort of a hand-me-down from one person with AIDS to another.”

  “Are you kidding? Jesus, Warren—I mean, Jesus. Sterilize everything. Get some Lysol or bleach. Do you have any bleach?”

  “Honey,” Warren said dryly, “it’s way past time to bleach.”

  “Yeah, well,” Bob conceded. “So, you know, are you okay?”

  “Okay? Sure I’m okay. They fired me. Didn’t I tell you they’d fire me? Well, they did. I have a KS lesion on my cheek now, so, you know.”

  “Shit,” Bob said sympathetically.

  “I’m going to try and get on as a checker or something at Fred Meyer. They have benefits.”

  “Yeah?” Bob said. He didn’t really know anything about Fred Meyer. “So how’s Sheryl doing?”

  “I don’t know. She’s called me once or twice.”

  “You tell her anything?”

  “At first I just told her I didn’t love her anymore and that was why I was moving out, but Christ, Bobby, you should have seen her eyes.” Warren’s voice broke. “Hell, I figured the truth might actually come as good news, after that. So I told her the real reason.”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said, Oh. That’s all she said: Oh. I told her I didn’t think we’d need to get divorced because she’d get everything as soon as I died, anyway, and we might as well save the legal fees.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “Yeah,” Warren said wearily. “So what about you, Bobby?”

  “I went to the clinic a few weeks ago. I’ve got it too.”

  The line was quiet for a long time.

  “Warren?” Bob said.

  “Yeah. And Anita?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “Jesus, Bobby, you’ve got to tell her.”

  Bob’s voice dropped. “The thing is, I’m fine, but she’s got these lymph glands. Swollen nodes, or whatever.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. She’s had them for a couple weeks now, maybe.”

  “Tell her,” Warren said. “Bobby, you’ve got to tell her.”

  “Nah. I’ll take care of her.”

  Warren’s voice rose. “What about you? What about when you get sick, Bobby, huh? What are you going to do then?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Listen, I’m working on the old homestead. No kidding, you should see it.”

  “What the fuck are you doing that for?”

  Bob shrugged at the phone.

  “Well, I guess that’s good,” Warren said.

  “You should come down and see it.”

  “Jesus, Bobby.”

  “No, I mean it. Weyerhaeuser’s put a road in through there. You can just about drive right up to it now.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You should come back,” Bob said quietly. “Come home.”

  “I’ve got to go,” Warren said.

  “Just tell me where to find you,” Bob yelled, but Warren had already hung up. Bob started tearing up right there in his service bay. Jesus. He wiped his eyes on his coverall sleeve. Maybe he’d drive up there to Portland, find Warren, and bring him down. Maybe he just would.

  Bob-and-Warren. They were closer than marriage, closer than brothers, than lovers. They were halves of the same whole, a unit indivisible. One plus one equals one, that’s what they used to say to each other.

  Warren had always been the smarter of the two of them, but also more scared. He was afraid of high winds, low bushes, loud noises, certain tones of voice, dying in his sleep. Fear was what had started it all, their spooning up at night when they first started staying over at the homestead. Warren was scared, and Bob was cold, so they started swapping body heat for courage. Bob wrapped his arms around Warren’s skinny chest at night and found him no more substantial than a sheaf of twigs, of bird bones. Bob held on, and Warren whispered stories about princes and wizards, about wise men and saints. Love stories, though Bob didn’t recognize them then. Spooned up like that on the crackling mattress ticking, his little pecker would bloom, and then Warren’s would too, and it had felt good and natural, them playing; something lambs would do, something free and unimportant, like picking your nose. Warren and him, they’d had that secret between them all these years: the fact that they did that when they were alone. To Bob, that wasn’t sex, not the hot, bottomless, black velvet well you could sink down into and die happy. Sex was Anita, the only woman Bob had ever wanted, though some others were nice to look at, even ornamental. And he’d look, sure, he’d look; he was a man, wasn’t he? God had given him eyes. Yes, he’d looked, all right, but he’d never touched, and that was all right with him. Anita had been beautiful enough to last him, and not just when they were younger. She’d been beautiful all the time, even when her hair was messy and her eyes weren’t made up and she’d put on some pounds. Not that he’d ever told her. Not that she’d believe him if he did. He had tried once or twice to tell Warren about her, about what it felt like to love her, but Warren had sulked.

  “I don’t know why you don’t like her,” Bob used to say, running his hands through his hair in vexation.

  “I like her,” Warren said defensively.

  “Well, it sure doesn’t seem like it.”

  “I just miss doing stuff by ourselves.”

  “What stuff?” Bob asked, because even then they were finding time to do that, even if it was only back in the woods at the end of Chollum Road.

  “I don’t know, go out to the homestead. Talk.”

  “We’re talking now,” Bob would point out, but Warren’s eyes would get watery, Bob would chuff in exasperation, and the conversation would be over one more time. It only got better when Bob was able to convince him to date Sheryl Miller so Anita would have another girl to go to the bathroom with and Warren wouldn’t feel left out. Sheryl, with her skinny legs and food allergies, so shy, so needy herself that Warren had seemed robust in her presence. Rumor had it that her father beat her, beat her mother, but she’d never talk about it when Warren asked. They’d coupled up like two broken things, gentle with each other in case they stumbled on something that hurt. It had been touching, seeing Warren pull out chairs for Sheryl, order a hamburger for her so she didn’t have to speak in public. Sheryl had looked just like a doe with her big eyes and the true, trusting nature of a preacher’s daughter. Anita used to say that even when she and Warren joined forces, the two of them could barely stand up in a medium wind; anything stronger, and they’d be blown across three counties. They went bowling together over in Sawyer sometimes, and Sheryl would use a child’s ball, her hands were that small. Bob always remembered that about her, the way she looked rolling those black bowling balls so weakly they wobbled down the alley, bumped into the pins, and stopped. Warren had tried to teach her to be more forceful, to use at least an eleven-pound ball that could pick up speed, but she’d start to cry and Warren would look stricken and they’d end up huddled miserably in the gallery, waiting for Bob and Anita to finish and drive them home.

  Sheryl. As Bob recalled, she’d collected thimbles. They were her single passion, which struck Anita, for one, as pretty damned sad. “If her father really beats her, you’d think she could find something to collect that would at least protect her better—I don’t know, welder’s face shields or baseball catcher’s suits or fencing masks.”

  “Does he beat her?”

  “That’s what they say. She sure is funny about changing in the girls’ locker room, I’ll tell you that. She always goes into a bathroom stall. One time Bernadette walked in on her in the nurse’s office, and she said she saw bruises all over her back.” Bernadette—that had been before Hack changed her name to Bunny.

  “Bernadette lies,” Bob had pointed out.

  “Sheryl lies. C’mon,
everyone does. You never lie?”

  “Not unless I have to.”

  “So when do you have to?” Anita asked. “To me?”

  “Nah, come on, Anita. I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Bet you would.”

  “Would you lie to me?” Bob said.

  “If I had to, I guess I would.”

  “Why would you have to?”

  “I don’t know, Bobby, I’m just saying. And I bet it’s the exact same way for you, only you’re not honest enough to say it.”

  Well, she’d been right about that, the way she’d turned out to be right about most things over the years. That he drank because it was easier than trying; that he sabotaged things when they were going well. That he was a good man who’d never amount to shit, and that it was his own damned fault. But he was proving her wrong now, boy. He was sure going to have something to show her when the homestead was all done, her and Warren. Maybe he’d even take Hack Neary out there one day. Maybe he just would.

  It was past dark when Bob finally got back to the dealership and parked the little dirt bike around back. He was startled to see Anita sitting perfectly still in a chair in the showroom, her face all puffy and pale, her hands folded in her lap like church. She stood up when she saw him.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, wiping his hands and face on a rag.

  Anita waited until he was close enough to touch her. “Sheryl just called,” she said. “Honey, Warren died last night. I’m so sorry.”

  chapter eleven

  Nobody dies of pneumonia anymore,” Bunny was saying to Anita. They were folding clothes at Anita’s kitchen table and drinking coffee laced with Bailey’s Irish Cream. “Nobody young and healthy anyway.”

  “I know,” Anita said, matching socks. “That’s exactly what I said.”

  “So what did Bob say?”

  “It just made him mad. He said if Sheryl said it was pneumonia, it was pneumonia.”

  “Well, I bet she could sue that doctor,” Bunny said, flicking a lint ball off a pair of Bob’s work pants. “I mean, tell me the last time you heard of someone dying of pneumonia who wasn’t eighty years old or a transplant patient or something like that. Name one person. See? You can’t. I bet the doctor fucked up and gave him the wrong antibiotic or something. You should tell her, Nita.”