“Are you hurt?” Dad asked urgently as we all tried to reassemble the various parts of him back on the bed.
“Hurt?” That same cry of anguish we’d heard from behind the doors came chillingly from that deep reservoir where his drill sergeant’s voice had come from. It was a wail of despair, of futility, of heart-breaking sadness. “I can’t HURT. I can’t feel, for Christ’s sake. Except…” he poked all ten fingers hard into his chest. “Except here . . . HERE,” his fingernails bit into the material of his shirt leaving marks, “except here, here, here. Here where it can really hurt. Where it really matters and not a Goddamned thing can be done about it.” He moaned and rolled his head back on Dad’s arm which was still under his shoulders. “Oh God. Oh, my God.” He lifted his head suddenly. “Woody, for Christ’s sake! Go find the boy … go … get … Brad …” He was tugging at Dad’s shoulder with hands like claws and choking for breath. “God … knows what … what … he’ll … do …”
Mrs. Jones was on the other side of the cot, squatting down, leaning her face into the Captain’s, murmuring and kissing and soothing and caressing. Mom came running down the ramp. Dad looked up at her and she motioned with her head toward the garage. They both ran off in that direction. The scene in front of us was so intimate that Junior and I took off after Mom and Dad.
“Junior! Wait!” Mrs. Jones’s voice stopped us dead in our tracks. “Come back and take the captain inside. Hurry!” She put her cheek against her husband’s and then started running toward the garage. Junior passed her heading back. I didn’t know quite what to do until Mrs. Jones came up beside me, panting. “Come with me,” she said without stopping.
She headed for the side door of the garage which was open and we could hear Bradford screaming and cursing and heard Dad’s voice trying to calm him down. I couldn’t see at first because the station wagon was in the way, but I scooted around the tail end toward the back where the Model-A was and the big double wash-tubs on the side wall. Dad was holding Bradford somehow from the back. Bradford’s arms were locked in Dad’s but he was kicking and screaming and butting back at Dad with his head and his bottom. Mom was standing by the tubs holding a broken bottle in one hand and covering her mouth with the other. There was broken glass all over the floor. Bradford’s kicking feet sent shards flying in every direction.
“Stay back,” Dad ordered in a calm voice. “There’s an awful lot of glass.” And blood. I could see it all over Brad and on Dad’s shirtsleeves.
Bradford was like an animal in a trap, kicking, biting, spitting, rolling his head from side to side, banging it back against Dad’s shoulders and chest, all the time growling and gasping and spewing out obscenities from a frothing mouth that looked like he was having his mouth washed out with soap.
Mrs. Jones moved along the wall toward Mom. I followed her. Mom held up the bottle. It was Clorox. “He was drinking this when we came in,” she explained in a quiet voice. “Then he broke it when he saw Woody and …”
“We’ve got to make him throw it up,” Mrs. Jones said quickly. “Carlton, get that glass over there. Milly, get the water warm and make some suds with that wash soap.” She was in charge. We did as we were told.
“He’s calmin’ down,” Dad said. Brad had gone limp in Dad’s iron grip. His head hung forward and his attempts at freeing himself had dwindled down to mere tics now, a spastic jerking that seemed involuntary, his body slack, twitching occasionally as though invisible wires were being pulled.
Mrs. Jones grabbed the glass, dipped it into the suds Mom had created at the bottom of the washtub with the bar of yellow soap. It looked like a peculiar beer, opaque but with a nice head of foam. She turned toward the two men who were still locked together, with Dad holding both Brad’s arms with one forearm through the crooks of his elbows, leaving his other arm free to help support him around the waist. Mrs. Jones approached cautiously, crooning sweetly, “It’s all right, honey. Everything’s going to be all right. Momma’ll take care of everything. Just relax, darlin’…”
We all were holding our breath. Brad’s head still was slumped forward but even his twitching seemed to have stopped. “Now, listen, honey,” Mrs. Jones went on. “This isn’t going to taste very good … it’s nothin’ bad, you know I wouldn’t give you anything bad, my darlin’, just take a good swallow …” She was standing in front of him, slightly to his side, cocking her head to one side in an effort to look up into his face. “It’s me, honey, Momma …” She put her hand on his forehead and eased his head up gently. “Just one big sip, for Momma, honey.” She lifted the glass to his mouth and started to tilt it for him to drink. His head suddenly snapped forward and then backwards with a crunch of broken glass. He’d bitten off a large hunk of the glass which dropped to the floor as his mother let out a little gasp and brought her hands up to her cheeks in surprise. “Hon …” The sound of teeth grinding glass drowned out all other sound for a second. Dad did some quick movement with his free hand, a sort of fist-stabbing into Brad’s solar plexis and at the same time with the same movement, he slapped Brad so hard on the back with the flat of his hand that he was bent double. His breath caught as Dad knocked the air out of him and then out it came. He was throwing up. Glass, gin, Clorox and blood. Choking on an eruption of vile-smelling liquid that was splattering all over himself, Mrs. Jones, and Dad. Dad kept hitting him on the back then jabbing him in the middle like priming a pump to get the flow started only he was trying to keep the flow going.
“Go phone Dr. Larkin, Milly,” Mrs. Jones was back in charge once more, holding Brad’s head in both her hands, moving with him as he retched, wiping his mouth and chin with her bare fingers, using them like squeegees, flicking off the disgusting slime, wiping her hands on her skirt and reaching back to wipe off the endless stream that kept coming like things from a vegetable or meat grinder. Dad’s pumping motion on Brad’s middle was steady and tireless. Mom and I flew past them and out the door.
Junior was handing the captain a fresh drink as we burst into the living room. “I’m to call Dr. Larkin,” Mom said, heading for the library.
“It’s all right, Miz Milly.” The captain was as calm as if nothing in the world mattered except to find out if Junior had put the right amount of bourbon in his drink. He sipped. “Ahhh, Woody-Two, you are really your father’s own son.” He inclined his head and raised his glass slightly. “Thank you.”
“But, Captain …” Mom was anything but calm.
“It’s done, Miz Milly. It’s over and done with. I’ve called.”
“Was Dr. Larkin … It’s Sunday.”
“The call, Miz Milly, has been made.” He looked up at her over the rim of his glass. “Made. Done.” He sighed heavily. “Settled.” When Mom tried to speak again, he raised his hand to stop her. “You’ll know soon enough. You’ll hear soon enough. The ambulance. The siren. We should be hearing it any minute. It’s not that far away.” He cocked his head as though he were listening. We all held our breath again. “There … Isn’t that it? Shhhh. Listen.” We all strained, looking at each other wide-eyed. “Woody-Two, open the front door there. We can hear better. And, I guess you might as well go open the gate.” He motioned to me. “Go help him, Carlton. They’ll need to get in.”
“The ambulance? Which … ”
“The State Hospital, Miz Milly. Right down there on Van Buren.” I stopped in my tracks near the door. Did he mean the mental hospital? Where Winnie Ruth Judd was? The captain and Mom looked at each other a long time. “He is mad, Miz Milly. You knew it, too, didn’t you?”
She held his eyes for a second more and then crossed her arms across her breast the way she had and looked down at them. She nodded, “I think I’d guessed.”
We heard the siren’s eerie call just as we clicked the gate back open onto their metal stoppers. The quiet Sunday evening air was filled slowly with the wail like the sound of a mosquito spiraling around and zeroing in on your ear. But this woeful alarm was one you held your breath for, hoping it won’t zero in on y
ou, leaving that wonderful feeling of relief as it disappears down the street with its sound getting dimmer as it disappears leaving you whole and unaffected. For somebody else, you think. Thank God not for me.
But now, we knew this terrifying siren was for 1548 and it was deafening as the ambulance screeched to a halt just beyond the gate, shifted gears noisily and backed up with alarming speed into the drive in a spray of gravel causing me and Junior to jump back. Two men were immediately out and we pointed them to the garage. They were wearing white uniforms. One was carrying a little bag like a doctor’s, the other a rolled up piece of canvas.
Mrs. Jones appeared at the side door of the garage looking composed and with a gentle, ladylike gesture motioned the men to her. She spoke to them quietly, indicating the inside of the garage with her head. The men hurried past her as she walked purposefully toward the house.
Junior and I were frozen to the spot, the action taking place before our stunned eyes seemed far away, and yet still clearly in focus like a drama being played out on a movie screen. A drama in which we were only spectators. A silent movie, but riveting in its tension and excitement. As that character, the little lady smeared with filth walked tall and straight into the kitchen door, four men came out of the side door of the garage. One man was wearing some sort of thick whiteish garment that covered him from his neck to below his hips, causing his arms to disappear as though the tight shirt was rubberized and could be slipped over his head like the rubber tubes that were slipped over finger-bandages to protect them. The man looked bandaged as though his entire body were bleeding. He looked wounded and it took great effort from the two men to move him along toward the waiting ambulance. The fourth man stood near the garage, his hands held out dangling away from his sides as though covered with something he couldn’t name.
Suddenly, Brad and the two men stepped out of the screen. They were real, Brad’s face the same color as the weird body bandage he was wearing as he slumped against one of the attendants while the other opened the rear doors of the big white vehicle. A chill of recognition hit me. Would they put him in feet first? A litter slid out silently and was put on the ground. Brad’s knees gave way and he collapsed boneless onto its surface as the men straightened him out like a strand of cooked spaghetti. The men picked up the litter and slid it noiselessly into place on the same side of the ambulance as the captain’s cot fitted into the station wagon. Familiar clamps snapped and held it in place.
One of the men sat beside the litter on a small seat that folded out of the wall on hinges as the other stepped back and started to close the door.
I heard the kitchen door slam and Mrs. Jones appeared looking smart in a fresh summer dress, carrying a handbag that matched her high heeled pumps. “Wait,” she said. “I’ll ride in the back.” The man stepped aside, holding the door open for her as the other one inside produced another little seat out of the wall. The door was closed. The man walked around and got into the driver’s seat. The motor started, the siren with it. We jumped back again, away from the ear-splitting sound as much as the flying gravel. We stood stricken, listening to the sound diminish but we didn’t move until we heard Dad call softly, “Close the gate, boys.”
After that the atmosphere at 1548 was heavy with dread and unasked questions. Junior and I dashed off to school gratefully each morning and even started putting off coming home in the afternoons by stopping off at the irrigation ditch for a little light law-breaking. This was the last week of school—of actual working school—then we’d go back for two or three half-days the following week to collect grade cards, have some class parties, turn in library books and generally wind up the school year. A hot Arizona summer then loomed in front of us. We could feel summer’s loose ends beginning to grow and dangle from parts of our bodies in the gathering June heat.
Talk at home was naturally of Bradford. He’d been diagnosed as having something called dementia praecox—a from of schizophrenia or was schizophrenia with just touches of dementia praecox, I never did get it straight. He was having shock treatments, something described as relatively new, and when mentioned everybody made faces of sympathetic pain like you do when you look at somebody’s cut finger or even a healed scar. It took me some time to understand that he wasn’t being given soothing medicines to calm him after the shock he’d been through—that’s what I imagined shock treatment to be—and learned that it meant severe electrical shock actually given to him. On purpose. An accidental shock from a loose plug or light bulb was terrifying enough, but to force somebody to undergo pain for pain’s sake seemed to me to be just the opposite of what a doctor ought to be doing for somebody who was sick.
Mrs. Jones spent almost all her time at the hospital—sometimes even sleeping over. She reported home two or three times a day by phone—often talking to Mom because the captain had commenced an unprecedented number of new projects. He spent practically all day outside with Dad. New loads of manure had been ordered, new plants, seedlings, seeds of a new grass for lawns that he claimed would revolutionize gardening. He kept Dad running and he called me and Junior in as extra hands. The captain was working feverishly, keeping one step ahead as Dad completed each new plan by having another new one at the ready. Dad had even rigged up some floodlights so that he could work outside at night. He was being worked ragged and looked it.
“He’s doin’ this to keep his mind off the boy,“ Dad said, “and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll let him down.”
“It’s the general loneliness, too,” Mom said. “I’m going to suggest we all eat together. Either at the main house or right here. Maybe he’d prefer here. Just to be away from the familiar.” Mom served the captain and Dad beer and sandwiches for lunch wherever they happened to be outside. Dinner in our small kitchen was too cramped for the cot, so we started dining with the captain in the main house when Mrs. Jones wouldn’t be home. As the days wore on, the frequency of the shock treatments increased even though Bradford’s reaction to them stayed fairly negative.
Evenings with the captain were a joy—he talked about everything with knowledge and wit. He’d take Junior into the library after dinner and go over lists of colleges and explain which ones were the best and which offered the best athletic scholarships. He advised, instructed, encouraged, always taking into consideration our financial position but also always stressing our potentialities.
“You’ve got something really special, Woody-Two,” he’d say. “You have the athlete’s body but you have a searching mind. A poet’s mind. My God! What a combination. Hey, Woody—Big Woody!” he’d call to Dad in the kitchen helping Mom. “Do you really know what you have here? You have a budding Babe Ruth—not the candy bar, Carlton, you nitwit—with the soul of … of … a Tennyson or … a Burns.”
“Tenny-who?” Dad asked.
“Oh my God,” the captain would roll his eyes in mock dismay. “Well, Woody, not Tennessee Ernie Ford or the bazooka blowing buffoon on radio. Robert Burns, not Bob Burns.” He’d shake his head at Junior. “I trust your poor father’s ignorance will not be too much of a hindrance in what is otherwise bound to be a brilliant career.”
Other evenings, he’d devote his after-dinner attention to me. Talking about musical shows on the stage in New York. Things I’d only read about. I hadn’t dared mention my dancing dreams, I just said they interested me. He’d tell me which records to play. “There, Carlton, on that shelf. The Cole Porters. Pick any of them. It doesn’t matter which. Each one is better than the last.” When I had them playing he’d say, “Now, listen. Listen to the lyrics. Listen to what he’s saying—how he’s saying it.” And to Junior across the room with a book. “This won’t do any budding poet any harm either. You listen too.” Then after a few minutes. “Of course Larry Hart’s better. Not better, just the best. But Cole, the queer son of a bitch—a Yalie, wouldn’t you know—can still hold his own. But then, he does his own music.”
“You said ‘queer.’ How’s he queer?” I wanted to know exactly what a queer was. What did the w
ord queer—usually sneered— really mean. Having asked the question, a premonitory chill made me wish I hadn’t.
“How’s he queer? They’re both queer, Porter and Hart as far as that goes. Maybe it has something to do with being geniuses. Well, they’re queer like all queers are queer. By being cocksuckers. You suck cock, you’re queer.”
There it was. Just what I’d feared and suspected deep down. Did that mean that Ronnie was a queer? Was Uncle Roy? Miguel? It seemed a simple formula: cocksucking equals queer. I was struck as rigid as Lot’s wife.
“Shame really,” the captain shrugged. “Just a paucity of language more than anything else. A lot of people like to have their cocks sucked but that’s all right. But if you suck one, the only thing you’re called is queer. Nothing nice seems to be said about cocksuckers.” He thought a minute. “I suppose one could say he’s a good cocksucker.”
The Porter record was stuck in a groove and it took me some time to put it right with my fumbling hands.
Wednesday, the last half-day of school was over and we three Woodsmen, under the captain’s supervision had worked all afternoon spreading manure over the entire property on the intricate network of irrigating channels and were just finishing up dinner in the main house when we heard a car pull up outside. Junior ran to open the door. It would be Mrs. Jones’ taxi. She came in through the kitchen door followed by Junior and sat wearily down at the table. I’d never seen her look so sad and defeated.
“Well,” she sighed and gave her head a little shake. “It’s nice to come home to … to the family.” She looked around at all of us and smiled, reaching out and patting the captain’s arm.
“How’s our son and heir.” The joviality was forced and it jarred. He covered her hand with his. “Better?” he said more softly.
In Tall Cotton Page 21