“Remember this?” she asks softly. I put my tea down and sit next to her. “You taught me this,” she says. “Remember?”
“Of course I do.”
She touches the keys again and starts the melody of “Heart and Soul,” then stops, embarrassed. “Don’t stop,” I tell her.
She sits at the piano and stares down at her hands. “I always loved our little lessons,” she says. “You were the only one who really cared about anything I did.”
“I liked the lessons, too,” I tell her. “You were the only one who cared about what I had to say.” I start to pick out the bass, then stop. “I’m glad you came,” I say, and mean it. She starts the melody again, we sit close to each other, and slowly, stumbling over the keys, giggling at our mistakes, fingers banging into fingers, we play our songs from the past until long into the night. Heart and soul.
Chapter 41
Malachi is admitted to the hospital. We had all gone together to drive him to the emergency room, my mother and Sandra and me. His color had been awful that next morning, his breath coming in choking whistles.
The doctor meets us there, puts him on oxygen, and decides to call in a pulmonologist. The three of us discuss Malachi’s case while my mother and Sandra spend the time at Malachi’s bedside. They are talking like old friends. The doctors and I decide to aggressively treat whatever it is with an initial round of stronger antibiotics before we proceed to a lung biopsy.
* * *
“His sister, Minnie, is supposed to come for him,” I mention to my mother and Sandra as I drive them home a few hours later. “But I don’t know how to get in touch with her.”
“You don’t know anything,” my mother says. “You don’t know old men. I asked him if he had any family and he said no one is left. His sister, Minnie, was the last one and she’s been dead for twenty-two years.”
A shock rips through me. Oh, I suddenly realize, stricken. Oh. Why didn’t I get it? He was talking to me in that code of old men. He was trying to tell me that he was dying. Oh.
“I didn’t know,” I say.
“You never listen,” says my mother.
* * *
The night is falling differently than I ever remember. The shadows are harsher, striking the light from the day. The stars look distant and uncaring. The moon is only a sliver, like a tiny prayer. It’s late summer but the air is unseemly chilly, pulling all hope and warmth from my bones. It is reminding me again of a lesson I learned when I was young: not to love, because love is not a boomerang, it does not come back. It is not an investment, because it does not pay. Sandra can take my mother home with her; I won’t mind. My mother is an entity unto herself. Maybe it was because she poured so much into taking care of my father, there was nothing left; maybe it was because he couldn’t give her anything, and so to make sure that someone paid attention to her, she nurtured herself, getting lost in a world of self-absorption. In any case, there is no love lost between us. She is just unable to give it, and, as I spent a lifetime learning, unable to receive it, either.
I will not lose love anymore, like a bird lost to the night sky, except for Malachi. I love him and I know I am going to lose him, too. I think about him and my throat tightens. He anchored me to my farm and my horses, to the earth that grew things in its own sweet time. He was my source of common sense and strength. How will I bear not having him in my life anymore?
My love for him surprised me. It grew like one of his vegetables that pushed through the fallow ground, a tenuous, pale sliver, then a small plant, then a bush, upright and vital, and finally—tomatoes—ripening full red. I am a tomato. Please, I pray into the darkness, don’t take Malachi.
It seems there is an answer from the wind. It blows a chill through me, and I pull the sweater around my shoulders and feel very alone.
I miss David.
David, whom I always knew was the most dangerous love of all. The one that could annihilate me.
I close my eyes and force myself to stand very still under the indifferent crescent of the moon. Losing David would be like losing the moon. My life would go dark.
I just wish I had told him. I suddenly understand how he had stood in the shadows, waiting for me. How lonely it had to be for him, waiting there. What was I fighting all these years? What have I done? What have I done?
I can’t lose him.
I have to tell him.
David’s cell phone takes my voice mail. “Please call me back,” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
* * *
“Do you ever watch the clouds?” Willie was asking me. He was home, at Rowena’s, discharged from the hospital, less from the fact that his condition was stable, than the Veterans Administration trying to cut costs. “Did you ever watch the clouds, and they look like nothing, and then they shift together, and all of a sudden, you see a picture?”
“I suppose,” I said, wondering what point he was trying to make. This would be my last trip to Boston. Willie had promised his story was almost at the end. He promised. He had called and used that old green banana line on me again, then promised he would finish his story. My sister had taken my mother back with her to Georgia; David was not answering his voice mail; Malachi was getting chemo in the hospital and was spending most of his days and nights sleeping. Danielle was proving to be pretty competent. I figured I wouldn’t be missed much for a few days.
“When I finish my story, it will be like vapor coming together into a cloud,” Willie promised.
Frankly, I was grateful it was coming to an end. Perhaps I would understand a little more why my father was the way he was. Why he never had friends. Why he raged with suspicions, his anger rolling like a loose bowling ball, knocking everything down in its path. He had been blamed for losing a man, a life, and though it hadn’t been entirely his fault, it had been entirely his responsibility. Maybe I would understand that a little more, though it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in our relationship.
* * *
There are no white clouds today, just a gray wash of sky. The Weather Channel on the television has been predicting thunderstorms for the entire Boston area, and there’s a moist breeze blowing down from the north. Willie has a blanket wrapped around him as he sits on Rowena’s little back porch in his wheelchair.
“We’re gonna get some weather,” he announces, pulling the blanket tight up around his chest. “WX.”
“Would you like to go in?” I ask. I wonder whether the rain is going to travel down to New York, whether Danielle will bring the horses in early, whether she will keep an eye on Lisbon, who has taken to ripping down his rope paddock on a regular basis. Did I remember to close the bedroom windows? Is David standing by a window somewhere, watching the rain wash the streets dark gray and thinking about me?
I wonder about something else, as well.
“How come you didn’t just return my father’s ring to him?” I ask Willie. “Why didn’t you just stick it in an envelope and send it to him?”
“Well, I was,” he says. “I was planning to find him and call and apologize, and surprise him by sending him the ring, but Rowena found out at the last minute that he passed away.” His face reflects his disappointment. “I had spent a long time looking for him.”
“Poor Rowena,” I say, “flying all the way to Phoenix on a wild goose chase. At least my mother would have understood you returning the ring. What she didn’t understand was why you sent her an album.”
He shakes his head. “Your mother would have tucked the ring away, and said, ‘Well, here’s this fella that had this ring for some reason, and just found it and returned it to me.’ And she would have sent a polite little thank-you card, and that would have been the end of it. She was awful mad at me for calling your father a murderer back then.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I agree. “But what was she supposed to do with the album?”
“I wanted someone in your family to get curious. I wanted someone to get in touch with me and say, ‘Why did you sen
d me this stupid old album? What is it all about?’ ” He crosses his arms in triumph. “It had to be the right person. I knew that old album would do the trick.”
“Did you really?” I wasn’t sure whether I was annoyed or pleased to be manipulated.
“Oh yes,” he says. “I didn’t even tell Rowena what I had in mind. She would have said, ‘Old man, mind your own business. ’ ”
“I guess your plan worked,” I say, though I still have no idea what his plan was.
He turns his face to the sky and answers my unspoken thought. “My plan was to set things right,” he says. “Before I go to my final rest, I have to set things right.”
* * *
Fleischer and his men had come almost full circle; spring was gone, summer was just starting, and the heat was pushing hard at them. It had been one year ago, when they had come here; you’d think by now they would have gotten used to the Alabama sun. You’d think by now, they would have gotten used to life in the wash rack.
But every day, the chemicals were a fresh assault. Gasoline, carbon tetrachloride, both potent solvents, burned their throats and noses, joining with the smell of wires and steam, and sweat and metal. The heat was unbearable, like they were using a piece of the sun to burn the planes clean, and the racketing noise split into their skulls, day after day.
It had been almost two months since August died. The men had made peace of sorts, with Fleischer, grudgingly resuming a working relationship. They weren’t friendly, they weren’t unfriendly; they spoke to each other with a wary neutrality.
* * *
Midmorning was still the best time of day for the wash rack. The coffee break, followed later by lunch, made the day feel shorter, made it more bearable. Today was no different. They had already turned and burned several planes this morning, and a new plane was being swung into the bay. They finished their coffee reluctantly and swarmed toward the new plane, to work in a rhythm of sweat and steam, degreasing the wings, pulling out the dynamotor with its wires waving, like the legs on a giant centipede, dismantling the radio and pushing it across the floor to the radio room on a dolly like it was a king being brought into court. The assembly crew was almost finished with the plane that had come in before this one, Willie was near the front of the hangar, making last-minute adjustments on the cables that worked the wing flaps, and Fleischer was in the radio room, repairing a transmitter. Earlier that morning, they had given each other a brief hello, said nothing during their coffee break, and just went back to work.
* * *
Maybe it was the flash that caught Willie by surprise, the stunning burst of white light; he turned his head around to see it better. Maybe it was the immediate, thundering throb of noise that blew hard against his body. He was never sure what came first, although thinking back over the years, it had to be the light. All he knew was that his ears felt like they had been blown from his head, that he heard the screech of bells, a ringing so loud that it shuttled his brain from one side of his head to the other. His first notion was that they had been bombed, that it had been sabotage, the Germans had attacked, and the base was being blown up. Or maybe the sun had finally fallen into the hangar, its fiery surface eating them alive. Always their savage enemy, maybe the Alabama sun had grown impatient with its slow sear, and, its appetite more voracious than ever, had plunged to earth in a final effort to devour them.
* * *
The hangar was all raging light, fire, great orange walls, bending and swaying and roaring, alive with fury and appetite, accompanied by the never-ending ringing—no, it was screaming. He was screaming; everyone was screaming with pain. The sun had fallen, the walls had fallen, fire, fire was everywhere, and his body was burning. He was going to burn like Sunday morning bacon. His hazardous-materials suit was nothing against this. His clothes were melting. Oh, the pain! He was going to die! Right now! He would never see New York again, never see his mother, oh, his mother, in her Sunday-going-to-church hat, the yellow one, with the big yellow flower, yellow fire flower, just like this, in this moment, like Jink, he was going to die in fucking Alabama. He was going to burn to death inside the ringing and the screaming, with the pain streaming out from the orange walls, flame arms reaching for him. Now orange, now red, now white-star blue, they were yellow, yellow flames everywhere. The noise was pain, and the light was noise and pain, a devouring roar, a blood-cooking, bone-searing, flesh-burning inferno-roar.
Something was grabbing him; maybe he was hooked on a shard of metal, no, arms, arms were pulling him and he resisted, pushing them away, trying to move himself someplace away from the pain, although he couldn’t see anything but fire. What if it was one of the men, pulling him backward into the heart of the storm? He tried to squirm out of the grip, but the arms pulled him, and he fell into them, and suddenly he was outside of the hangar, lying on blackened, smoldering grass, black, he had never seen black grass, he thought stupidly, but it was black, and then he looked at the hangar, billowing furious streams of flame behind him. Fleischer was standing above him; the arms had belonged to Fleischer. He had pulled Willie from the hangar and then he was gone, disappearing into the smothering smoke, then reappearing like an apparition, emerging from the devouring gold-orange with another man, and another. Willie forced himself to stand, forced his legs to take him away, standing up on bare bloody feet with the skin shredding like pulled pork because his boots had been blown off.
He tried to call out, but the inside of his mouth and throat were rags, rivers of snot poured from his nose, his eyes were hot, all his words were burned away. He fell again to the ground and raised his arms to the sky, a plea, a surrender. “Oh, dear Jesus, please save us,” he tried to say, but the words were burned away.
Huge globes of black smoke and orange flame roiled from inside of the hangar, sending hell up into the heavens. White flames rose in concert with his arms, into the sky; it was the arrival of Armageddon—it was the beginning of the end, it was the end of the end—until one furious blast, a summoning of the damned, a heralding of death to everything in its path, a thundering, consuming detonation that pierced through the strident ringing in his head, that finessed the pain to an even higher plateau and brought the entire hangar down to a pile of molten metal.
* * *
Had it been days? Weeks? Willie wasn’t sure. The ringing filled his ears, day and night, its constancy crying throughout the blank hours, into his sleep, numbing his every thought. His eyes were bandaged; his arms and hands were bandaged; he could feel his body still burning. His mouth was burned, his nose and throat were raw, and he lay in the blackness of his own mind wondering whether the world was still there.
He tried to sleep, but the flames were waiting for him. The men were waiting for him to return to his dreams so that they could die again in front of him, so that they could scream for him to save them, come back, save me. He heard their screams even as he struggled to wake up and flee them.
* * *
“Try to eat,” the nurse was saying to him, but he turned his head away. The ice cream she brought him burned his mouth with its chill. Even the warm soup was too much. He turned his face away and mumbled that he wasn’t hungry.
She brought him toast, but the crumbs were like broken glass, harsh against his tender tongue. She brought him soft bread and butter and he managed a few bites, but the butter tasted like airplane grease, the eggs tasted like gelatin, and he gagged, until he vomited. Fruit juices burned; bananas stuck like paste to the new skin inside his mouth.
“You have to eat something,” the nurse said. The bandages were still on his eyes, and he pictured her looking like his mother when he was five, when she gave him honey and tea for his sore throat. The nurse would be plump and cocoa brown and have her hair done up in big, soft curls. She would be wearing her best yellow dress, with the sunflower print and ruffles around the neck. And the Sunday-go-to-church hat set triumphantly on her head.
“You have to eat something,” the nurse said, and he turned his head away. There was
nothing he could tolerate.
“Try this,” she said one afternoon. She thought she had found something he might eat.
It was cool and sweet, and his healing mouth could taste the subtle flavor of sugar and vanilla and eggs. She fed him spoonfuls and it was okay; he could tolerate it. It slipped down his throat, and settled nicely in his stomach. He wanted it every day and the nurse brought him bowls of it. Every day. The only thing he could, would eat.
“Thank you,” he said to her, opening his mouth like one of the baby birds in the wash rack. And she fed him little spoonfuls and he ate it gratefully. He grew to love it, depend on it. It was all he wanted.
For two months, for two months, three times a day, a grateful Willie stayed alive on tapioca pudding.
Chapter 42
“Where are the men?” Willie asked again, and the nurse averted her eyes and pulled at his pillow to smooth out the wrinkles. “The men?” he rasped. “Where are they?” The bandages had been taken off his eyes, and he could see her now. She was plump, but young, with a beautiful, round cocoa-brown face, skin like a baby, and thick, tight curls pulled up under a ruffled white cap with a black band around it. Her name was Mildred, she said, she was from Philadelphia, and part of the army’s quota of fifty-two black nurses.
“How are you feeling today?” she asked him every morning, smiling with perfectly even white teeth that made her face light up like heaven. But her voice was low; he could barely hear it through the ringing.
“Where are the men?” Willie asked again, more urgently. He knew she understood him; his tongue wasn’t swollen anymore, and they had reduced the morphine, so he was making sense. He could form the words, and he knew she understood what he meant.
“Why don’t you rest, Soldier,” she said softly, smoothing his covers.
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