HEY COWBOY
The first time I saw him he was sleeping in the post office, face down under the counter with the shipping slips and red, TYVEK Priority Mail envelopes. He had on brown snakeskin cowboy boots, blue jeans, and a yellow pearl button shirt.
I dropped my letters in the slot then whispered, “Hey man, you okay?”
He sat up, set his cowboy hat on his head. His thin, silver, shoulder-length hair hung crispy, his angular face gaunt. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I’m okay.” His front top teeth were missing. He smoothed his blue sleeping bag out and laid back down. He must have been fifty years old.
I spotted him next when I was walking from the library to my car. He was dancing on the street, one block south of the PO. That was Friday night. He was wearing the same hat, boots, and shirt. Hordes of college kids streamed past, drunk and loud, smoking and laughing. The women wore tight skirts and short summer dresses. The guys texted as they walked, high-fived each other and eyeballed the women. A bluesy R&B band played on the sidewalk, two men hunkered beside amps, one on bass, one on electric guitar.
The cowboy twirled in a fevered counterclockwise circle opposite the band, spinning on the sidewalk’s edge between foot traffic and the curb. He would shimmy a few steps, spin, then his right arm would rise upwards like a broken wing, where it flapped half-extended, palm back as if reaching for the guitar licks, flapped as if that meant something. Then he spun, shimmied, turned and flapped, over and over again. Pedestrians shuffled by. The guitarist sang, “I’m a soul man.”
I considered dancing with him. At age thirty-three it was time I learned. I watch dancers with envy—at concerts and weddings. Even the sloppiest, most shameless squirmers have gallons more guts than I do. I stand there watching but have never willfully entered a dance floor. When I tell people this, they ask why not.
“I’m self-conscious,” I say. “I know I’ll look like an idiot.”
“Women like a man who makes an effort,” they say, “more than his moves.”
Recently I started making an effort, secretly, in my bedroom. I close the door, put on some juke joint blues, something like T-Model Ford with a bump and a shuffle, and I cut loose. I feel my legs wiggle, feel my feet stomp, let my hips float wherever the rhythm takes them and feel how my shoulders follow in an unconscious drift. I stand far from the full-size mirror so I can’t catch glimpses of my uninhibited self, which I fear resembles a beached, gasping carp.
Dancers tell me that the trick is to not think about it. You just move.
I stood on the street that night watching him move. A kid in baggy jean shorts howled, “Hey, cowboy!” Cowboy didn’t hear. His right outstretched arm wobbled as he spun, lifting as a sermonizing preacher’s would at the call of the Divine. The music played. Cowboy spun. Spun, like the wheels on my car as I drove away, round and round in the same dumb direction, going the opposite way that I needed to go for nights turned to decades, spinning, another stifled spirit too scared to do what it needed to do.
EVERY SUPPER THE LAST
It’s tempting to assume that my father didn’t want to celebrate his seventieth birthday because he felt old and fragile and wanted to conceal his decline. But Dad never liked birthdays. He dislikes being the center of attention, prefers not to have anyone make a fuss over him, and he’s never found one’s day of birth worth celebrating.
As he said the day before he turned seventy: “You know me, a birthday is just a birthday. Every day that I wake up is a birthday.” Which is exactly the problem: I live in fear of the day when he won’t wake up.
My dad grew up in the country—first in rural southeastern Oklahoma, then small-town southeastern Arizona. Thanks to a lifetime eating hash browns, white bread, mashed potatoes, and biscuits smothered in thick sausage gravy, he now has three stents placed in his arteries, uses nitroglycerin spray for angina, and takes seven separate medications for high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, and related cardiovascular problems. He was on eleven meds a few years before. He acts like this means that his health has improved. The fact is, he can rarely carry groceries without suffering an angina attack, his diabetes leaves him so tired he naps throughout the day, and his blood pressure continues to rise.
As if he needed another problem, Dad’s primary diabetes medication recently quit working. Now his blood sugar level spikes somewhere between 125 and 230 milligrams per deciliter. The healthy level is 100. At the end of the month his doctor is going to start him on insulin shots. This is upsetting news, not only because injections will leave my father’s fragile, pale skin poked full of tiny holes and put him at an increased risk of kidney failure, heart attack, and stroke. It’s upsetting because, regardless of insulin’s potential effectiveness, it’s another sign that he is going to die, and soon. Possibly within the decade.
Maybe I’m being morbid. Maybe Dad will live into his eighties the way his father did, but I’m not getting my hopes up. Dad’s mother died when she was sixty-five during triple bypass surgery following her third heart attack, and as Dad once told me at lunch: “I never expected to live past sixty-five.” His mother had diabetes too. Her glass insulin vials rattled whenever Dad opened the refrigerator as a kid. She stored them on the top shelf of the door, by the butter.
Ever since Dad’s health soured over a decade ago, no matter what operations he’s endured and what treatment he’s received, he has only acquired new ailments, never cured any. His doctor described insulin shots as “the last tool” in modern medicine’s “kit.” To me, insulin injections seem like a morphine drip for a terminal cancer patient, a way to manage the condition of someone beyond recovery.
People with both diabetes and heart conditions are extremely susceptible to strokes. Many times I have imagined scenarios where I’m helping Dad walk from my car to his house. In the most common scenario, he leans against my shoulder for support as he drags a limp leg beside him, the foot twisted inward and tipped on its side. Other times I picture Dad trying to speak through a set of palsied lips. Spit glistens in the corner of his mouth. His lips slant in what resembles a permanent frown, a frown being the one expression I’ve rarely seen on the ever-jolly Joe Gilbreath. He mumbles something and I say, “What’s that now Daddy-o?” and a frustrated glint flashes in his eyes as he struggles to make the words sound as clear to me as they sound in his head. When I’m able to imagine him avoiding a stroke, I picture a slow deterioration: Dad slumped in a wheelchair, parked in a white corridor in a nursing home with a blanket on his lap. That’s how my granddad looked the last time I saw him alive. During these darker moments, I often wonder how Dad imagines the way he’ll spend the coming years. I hope it involves he and Mom somewhere resplendent, like in a second country home in the pines of northern Arizona. It’s too loaded a subject to broach, though, so I don’t. Even if I did ask, Dad wouldn’t tell me the truth. As my father, he’s committed to protecting me from life’s more agonizing elements. But as his son, shouldn’t I be committed to protecting him from harm?
I wish I could say that I am his greatest ally in the fight against his wasting, claim that I show my love for him by telling him precisely what the doctor did not: that he wouldn’t need so many medications if he’d just improve his diet. I used to tell him that, but no more. He won’t listen to dietary advice. Now, instead of discussing it, I secretly fret.
Dad’s “a birthday is just a birthday” line is his standard birthday preamble. He says it every year, partly because he believes it, partly because he hopes it will keep his family from forcing him to celebrate. Having heard this preamble for thirty-four years, I know what he means by it. Rather than designating a special day to commemorate someone’s existence—the day when people express their gratitude for your birth because, the idea goes, life would be empty without you—Dad thinks we should let people know that we love and appreciate them throughout the entire year. Tell them you love them. Call them out of the blue. Send them a surprise email. Be friendly. I agree with his sentiment and try to put it into pr
actice. What caught me off guard about this year’s preamble was the way Dad added a startling new layer of sincerity. “I don’t need anything,” he said to me in the kitchen. “I have been truly blessed. When you have friends and family, you are a rich man—that’s wealth. At least I think it is, anyway.”
I nodded and thought, Have been? How about I am blessed? Maybe he was feeling morbid too, because his comments sounded like the sort of thing a person says when they think they’re going somewhere.
What he didn’t know at the time was that he was going somewhere, whether he liked it or not. My mom and I told him it would be fun to have dinner, just the three of us. “Nothing fancy,” Mom said. The next day she suggested a new restaurant that he’d never heard of, and when the three of us drove into a part of Phoenix where we rarely ventured, Dad saw through the ruse. “You two,” he said smirking. “I thought I smelled an ambush.”
My three half-brothers, kids from Dad’s first marriage, had reserved tables for a celebratory meal at Manuel’s Mexican Restaurant. When my parents and I arrived, Dad’s youngest brother Mike, and my brothers Scot, Todd, and Mark, and their wives and kids were all there—nearly twenty people total. During dinner Dad played with all his grandkids. He joked and laughed with the adults. He even admitted that he was glad we “forced dinner” on him. “Like anyone needs to force you to eat,” Scot said. But toward the end of the night, after nearly two hours, Dad’s energy waned. He’s a good performer, so unless you know what signs, as I do, you might not notice his fatigue. He becomes less active in what had previously been an energetic conversation. If they come at all, his witty retorts come at slower speeds, and he stumbles over the setup of even his favorite jokes. Socializing, especially with big groups, requires more energy than his diabetes allows.
Yet, as usual, Dad ate crap: a green chile burrito beside a mound of refried beans whose lid of leaking cheddar stained the plate with orange grease. Pork and beans are protein, he would have said had Mom or I critiqued his selections. And what would I have said? You should have ordered a taco salad made of iceberg lettuce served in a fried bowl? There weren’t many healthy options at this Mexican restaurant, and Mom and I booked it.
Dad drank a diet soda, though, as if that made much difference.
While the waiter removed our empty dishes, my uncle Mike leaned over and whispered to Dad, “You have the best family.” Hearing this made me wonder how good of a son I was if I wasn’t trying harder to save Dad from his bad habits. Between sips of ice water, I read Mike’s birthday card. “Joe,” he wrote, “as my older brother, you have always been my idol.” A few of the grandkids ran around the table. Dad smiled and drank his soda while everyone chatted around him. Maybe this was why he avoided birthday parties: the unavoidable realization that eventually, on your birthday, you become closer to death than to birth.
Scot turned to Dad with a mischievous grin. “Hey,” he said, “you know what the good thing about turning seventy is?” Dad shook his head and Scot snickered. “There is none.”
“In that case,” Dad told him, “I’m going to live to a hundred just to piss you off.” They both laughed at that. Even when they were younger, they’ve always been like two old men, ribbing each other for sport. I laughed too, envious of their ability to take it all so lightly.
My dad retired five years ago. Now, every weekday, he eats breakfast and lunch at an old cowboy bar and restaurant called Harold’s. It sits in the desert outskirts of Phoenix not far from our house, a dark-stained wooden building like a Wild West saloon. Between meals Dad comes home and tries to read; usually he ends up falling asleep in his living room chair. With his head tilted back, his mouth falls open, and the book comes to rest atop his domed belly. This is how he spends a large portion of each weekday. After a couple of drowsy hours, he drives back to Harold’s for lunch, jokes around with the other patrons, then comes home and naps for the rest of the afternoon. When Mom gets home they eat dinner and talk. So much of his life now revolves around food. Maybe that’s because, with no business to run or kids left to raise, one of the last pleasures he has in life is sensory. Yet, the more food he puts in his mouth, the more of his time it seems to steal.
Most of his friends from Harold’s are fully or semiretired. These regulars compose what wait staff calls “the breakfast club.” They drink coffee, eat burgers and steak and barbecue brisket, and gab about politics and the day’s news. Long before receiving the news about the insulin, Dad swore to Mom and me that he’d quit eating biscuits, white toast and hash browns for breakfast. He claimed he only ate ham and eggs now. “Protein,” he said, “lean and good for your blood sugar.” But the way he always falls asleep in his chair, who knows what really goes on at that bar. Part of me feels guilty about my lack of involvement, especially since I’m in the ideal position to monitor him since I’m back living at home. Another part of me knows he wants to enjoy himself in peace, so I now grant him that. It’s his life. Why should I tell him how to spend it? I wouldn’t be too pleased if people told me how to live my life: get a normal job; quit this writing thing; wear loafers instead of Vans; get married and have kids; settle down already. As much as it hurts to see him age, I think it’d be worse to see him deprived.
One night, not long after moving back in with my parents, I found Dad standing over the kitchen sink eating Oreo cookies. In a nonthreatening tone I asked if his doctor would think that was a wise idea. Dad said the doctor didn’t know he ate cookies. I didn’t mention how that wasn’t my point. Instead, I asked if he’d considered altering his diet in order to combat his diabetes and heart disease. He swallowed a sip of 2% milk and said, “I have.” Then he told me about that questionable no toast, biscuits, or hash brown policy, and added that he no longer drank cold buttermilk, only 2%.
Another time Dad asked if I wanted to get a hamburger for lunch. I declined. I’m concerned about developing his health problems, so I rarely eat burgers. I also don’t eat fried food, and I eat as many whole grains and vegetables as possible. I drink green tea instead of soda. Also, as much as I enjoy spending time with him, accepting his offer felt akin to endorsing his diet.
“But have you ever eaten a Whataburger burger?” he said. Whataburger is a fast food chain in Texas and the Southwest.
“Not since I was a kid.”
Knowing it was what I wanted to hear, he said he didn’t eat Whataburger very often, and he didn’t eat their fries, but when he has one of their burgers for a snack between meals, man, he cooed, he cannot believe how delicious they are. Feeling like he might still be giving too much away, he added: “It’s like a salad, they put so much lettuce, tomato and onion on it.”
“You don’t have to sell your snacking as healthy to me,” I said smiling. “I’m through bothering you about any of it.”
A friend once commented that living at home must be great. “You get to see your parents every day,” she said. I told her it was great. After living outside my home state for seven years, it was refreshing to spend so much time with my folks, and to enjoy each other’s company as adults free of the occasional disciplinary static that so often colors parental relationships. But living there was also emotionally trying. No one wants to watch their parents age, just as I assume that parents don’t want their kids to see the unflattering side of the aging process.
Over the last few years, Dad’s hair has gone completely gray. Where it used to be thick up front, it’s now wispy thin, and little moles and purplish spots show through on his scalp. The skin on his arms and hands has lost its elasticity and taken on a slack, wrinkled texture that bruises easily. Thanks to his blood-thinning medication, his blood runs easily when he cuts or bumps himself even slightly, and he has to dab the cut with paper towel to help the blood clot. His hands, the hands that once held mine and still hold Mom’s, are colonized by liver spots, and a single, dark mark lingers behind his right knuckles. Of course I know age changes bodies; what startles me is the way he only partially resembles the man who raised me. His perso
nality is the same. His sense of humor is the same. His characteristic laugh, the laugh that people who meet him usually remember, is as warm and loud as ever. The bright green light in his eyes still shines. But his body is someone else’s, and the force within it is fading.
My mother, at sixty-one, is more fit than all of the thirty-somethings I know. Mom eats a stellar diet, exercises daily, and has the trim, muscular build of an athlete half her age. Twice a year she hikes the Grand Canyon from the South Rim to the North Rim and back in one day. I’ve never once hiked the Canyon, let alone made that fifty-mile roundtrip. Her health might explain why Dad gets especially evasive when she tries to discuss his.
“What’d you have for lunch today?” she asks.
He says, “Hamburger, no fries, and a salad.”
Mom’s brows furrow and she says, “What salad?” He never orders salad. At this he laughs and winks at me, knowing that I know he went to Whataburger. “Well,” she says, “I don’t think hamburgers are the sort of thing you should be eating.”
He has never been a man controlled by pride. He never used to embarrass easily and has never once, in my memory, even mentioned feeling embarrassed at all. But part of me wonders if the lessening of a person’s independence also simultaneously increases a person’s pride.
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