A memory tickled the back of El’s mind. “Wasn’t there some kind of weird story about Dora and her daughter?”
Marjorie twisted her mouth and scratched her head. “Nothing weird that I can think of.”
Hours later, half asleep in the passenger seat of his bandmate’s car, El would startle the driver by bursting forth with laughter as he remembered the tale of how Marjorie’s sister, Dora, had climbed into a sycamore tree and given birth to Odette up there after getting stuck. Only Marjorie Davis could have thought there was “nothing weird” about that story.
“Did you know that James is a cop?” Marjorie asked.
“You’re kiddin’ me. My son is a cop?”
“I’m serious as a heart attack. He’s a state trooper. James is cool, though. He’s not out there tryin’ to mess with folks for the fun of it. Everybody likes James.”
El took another sip from his glass. He looked past Marjorie as if he were gazing through the wall at something disappearing over the horizon. “What’s she like, this girl who married my son?”
“I guess the best way to describe Odette would be to say that she could be my twin, except she’s tougher and more manly than me.”
The shocking implications of such a thing—a woman tougher and manlier than Marjorie—caused El to choke on his whiskey. He coughed and gagged as liquor traveled upward and sprayed out of his nose and onto the front of his shirt.
Marjorie let loose a loud bark of a laugh and said, “Calm yourself, El. I’m just messin’ with you. Odette’s not much like me, really. Come to think of it, Odette’s not much like anybody, exactly. She’s strong, like Dora, but she’s got her daddy’s sweetness. And she’s got more brains than anybody in the family. Nobody puts nothin’ over on that girl.
“She looks a lot like Dora. She’s big like Dora, too. Odette’s pregnant now, like I said. But she’s always been big.” Marjorie elbowed El in his side and said, “That’s right, your son went and got himself a big woman. We both know there ain’t nothin’ like the love of a big woman.” She winked at him and took another swig from her mug.
El thought of his own wife and how she had once been as round as a plum. Then he thought of how poverty and worry had worn Ruthie down to a stick. That had been his fault. He pictured James and Ruthie the last time he had seen them, and his spirits began to crumble. El was just a month off of heroin, and that image—his wife, his son, and the life he had burned to the ground—made him crave something stronger than whiskey to drive the memory away. He waved a hand quickly back and forth in front of his eyes to erase that troublesome picture, as if he were sweeping away writing in the sand.
“I wonder what’s keeping Forrest,” he said.
Marjorie issued a loud cackle. “Forrest married a girl less than half his age last night. It’ll probably take him a while to gather the strength to walk today.”
El laughed along with her. The two of them sat listening to R&B on the jukebox and sipped their drinks.
After a couple of songs, Marjorie asked, “You been to see Ruth?”
“The last time I saw Ruthie and James, it didn’t go too good. I figured it was better to stay away.”
“You know she’s sick, don’t you?”
El’s glass of whiskey slipped from his hand and landed on the bar top with a clack. He used a paper napkin with the silhouette of a naked woman on it to wipe up the drops that had escaped onto the scratched and grooved surface of the bar. “I didn’t know.”
“She’s in the hospital. Bad lungs and worse heart is what I was told.”
“Shit.”
Marjorie said, “You can say that again. She’s still a young woman.”
“Is she in Evansville?” When he had lived in Plainview, all the black residents in town had gone to the hospital in Evansville for medical care.
“No. Times have changed. She’s over at University Hospital. Everybody goes there now.”
El picked up his whiskey again. He swirled the liquor around in the glass, first in one direction, then the other. Then he drained it in one long draw.
“Goin’ to see her?” Marjorie asked.
“If I don’t lose my nerve.”
Marjorie poured two fingers of noxious-smelling liquor from her mug into his glass. “Drink this. I made it myself. I call it my ‘doubt remover.’ Swallow this down, and I guarantee you’ll follow through on any plan you set your mind to.”
El chugged the corn liquor. He shivered as it clawed its way from his tongue to his stomach. When he recovered, he reached for Marjorie’s mug, thinking that he might pour himself another.
She snatched it away from him. “No, baby. One takes away all your doubts. Two will take away your liver, your eyesight, and your common sense, if you’re not used to it.”
Marjorie watched El begin to strap his suitcases to his back. When he reached for his guitar and amplifier, she said, “I can keep an eye on those, if you want.”
El was so used to carrying his life on his back that, for a moment, he didn’t know what she meant. When he understood, he said, “No, I’m good.” Fully loaded up, he did a quick soft-shoe to demonstrate just how comfortable he was. “Light as a feather.” Then he said, “If Forrest comes in while I’m gone, do me a solid and ask him to leave the envelope with the bartender. I’ll be back before long.”
“No problem,” Marjorie said. She lifted her glass in salute.
* * *
THE WOMAN ASLEEP in the hospital bed bore such scant resemblance to the Ruth he remembered that he wouldn’t have recognized her. She looked far older than her forty-three years, and there was so little flesh on her that he could see the slow pulsing of her veins beneath her skin. He checked the green paper visitor’s pass upon which the man at the reception desk had written Ruthie’s room number to make sure he was in the right place. After reading the number once more, he set his guitar, amplifier, and suitcases against the wall and approached the bed.
It took him a moment to coax his lips into forming words. “Hey, Ruthie, I came to see how you were doin’. I was real sorry to hear that you were feelin’ poorly.”
He stepped forward and placed his hand over hers. Her bones felt as fine as guitar strings beneath his callused fingertips. “Seems like there should be so much more to say, but I can’t think of anything. Maybe it doesn’t matter now, anyway.”
The curtain that divided the two sides of the room rustled. Just behind him, El heard the clacking of metal fasteners sliding along the track that connected the curtain to the ceiling as the fabric was pushed aside.
“Marcus Henry, leave that woman alone,” a voice demanded from the bed on the other side.
He turned and saw Ruthie lying in her bed. With visible effort, she supported herself on one elbow while holding open the dividing curtain. She was thinner than she had been when he’d last seen her. Her skin had a grayish tint, and her short hair was held tight against her scalp with bobby pins. A piece of translucent tape on her cheek held the oxygen tube under her nose in place. But Ruthie was still very much herself.
If the other patient had been awake, there would have been no confusion. No one had eyes like Ruthie. They were amber with silver streaks. He had seen those extraordinary eyes from the stage of the Pink Slipper the first time she’d come in to hear the band. He had noticed her irises glittering as they reflected the spotlights, and he had spent the entire night singing directly to her. El backed away from the sleeping stranger in the other bed until he was beside Ruthie.
He stood, embarrassed, in the dull fluorescent light of the hospital room, trying to think of something to say that might lessen the awkwardness of the moment. He thrust his visitor’s pass toward her and said, “It says here that you’re supposed to be in bed A, not B. ’Course I was pretty sure she wasn’t you. I was just tryin’ to be friendly.”
Ruthie said, “It’s sweet of you to honor tradition by getting straight to lying to me. Feels like old times.”
He stood there, shifting his weight from fo
ot to foot, until she said, “Don’t worry. The last thing I wanna do is waste time getting worked up over stuff that happened when we were dumb-ass kids.” She pointed to a chair near the window and said, “Sit.”
As El pulled the chair closer to her bed, Ruthie said, “I like your beard. I always wanted you to grow one.”
El stroked the dark bush on his face. “I wanted one, too, but it wouldn’t grow in till I was almost forty.”
Ruthie studied his face for a while. “So you’ve got a new beard. And I heard you have a new name. You must have warrants out on you.”
“No warrants,” he said. Ruthie looked at him with a raised eyebrow. In response to her skepticism, El added, “Well, no warrants in Indiana.”
Ruthie wheezed and gasped as laughing made her already troubled breathing even more difficult. After she recovered, she inclined her head toward the stack of possessions El had brought into the room. “Still loading yourself down like a pack mule.”
“Old habits are hard to break.”
“Looks like the same case, too. You still got that old guitar?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ll never say good-bye to Ruthie.”
“And you’re still a traveling man?”
“Mmm-hmm. I’ve been gettin’ around. I went to Europe last year, and I’m goin’ back next summer. They know their blues over there, a lot better than here. Not too many folks in the States wanna listen to the old stuff anymore. But in Berlin and Paris, man, they treated me like I really was somebody.”
“I’m glad for you. I really am,” Ruthie said. She turned her head slowly away from him to look at the clock on the wall. El saw just how weak she was from the deliberateness of her movements and the way she fell back onto her pillows when she turned toward him again.
He said, “I hear we’re grandparents now.”
A grimace came over her face, as if she’d been seized with a sudden pain. After a moment, the discomfort seemed to pass. She said, “Sing me a song, why don’t you?”
He glanced in the direction of her dozing roommate.
Ruthie said, “She won’t mind. The poor thing hasn’t spoken a word since they brought her in yesterday night. I don’t expect she ever will. Between her condition and mine, I think they’re likely to turn this room over pretty quick.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Just speaking the truth. Now, how about that song?”
El rose from his chair and retrieved his guitar case. He was glad to see that the sight of his spotted guitar with her name splashed across its body seemed to please her. He sat on the edge of his chair and strummed the strings, performing a fast tuning. Unplugged from the amplifier, his guitar made a hushed, almost plaintive sound, and he matched that timbre with his voice as he sang.
“Baby, dry your eyes. I’m here. I’m here to stay—”
Ruthie interrupted, “What’s that?”
“It’s ‘Love Returns.’ Don’t you remember? It was one of the first songs I wrote. I wrote it so you wouldn’t be mad at me when I got back after that first tour.”
“What made me mad was that you got back from that tour, but didn’t come home for another two days.”
El said, “I can’t say that I recall.”
“You wouldn’t. That’s not the one I want to hear, though. Sing ‘Happy Heartache.’ That’s my song.”
“It’s kind of a sad one. Sure you don’t want to hear something cheerier?”
Ruthie lifted her hand and gestured at their surroundings. “After all these years, we’re saying our last good-bye in a hospital room. I can’t think of a better time for a sad song.”
El said, “Guess you’re right, like always.” He cleared his throat and sang: “Love, love, oh love, if you stay away I don’t know what I’ll do…”
Ruthie closed her eyes as he crooned. She rocked her head from side to side and occasionally hummed along. As he sang, she became more and more still. By the end, her only movement was the smile that widened as he intoned the final words.
She opened her eyes and watched him as he continued to strum chords. For a while, both of them enjoyed being lost in another time, picturing bright, optimistic days that had faded into passionate, foolish nights.
Finally Ruthie spoke. “All these years, I believed you wrote that song for me. I figured, Who else would he be writing a love song about? I’m the love of his life. I was proud of that. But now, just now, I realized that it isn’t about me. It’s about you and that other Ruthie. My song is about you and music.”
El played a few more chords, and then he looked into the eyes that he had fallen in love with decades earlier and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I was always going to be second. I just wish I’d figured it out sooner.”
She turned her head toward the wall clock even more slowly this time than before. “Thank you for coming by. It was good to see you.”
Accepting that he was being dismissed, El stood and returned his guitar to the case. When he came back to her bedside again, he said, “I want you to know that I’m sorry for everything that happened. And I’ve changed. I’ve cleaned up.… Well, mostly. I’m tryin’ to be a better man. I’m gonna do better by James.”
The warm expression she had worn since he had pulled his guitar from the case left her face. Ruthie struggled to sit up in the bed, her eyes bulging and wet as she shook with anger. “No! Don’t say that to me. Don’t talk about changing. I heard it too many times. And don’t you talk to me about James. You don’t have the right.”
El raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. I was tryin’ to say that I’m gonna make up for the things I did wrong. I don’t want you to worry that James’ll be alone.”
“James won’t be alone. He’s got a good wife. If you knew anything about your son, you’d know that he has wanted Odette and nobody else since he was ten years old. Now he’s got her and a child and another one coming. Even if he was gonna be alone, you are the last thing he’d need.”
She grabbed El’s wrist with her small hand. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. I know you never meant to cut James. I’ve made sure he knows it, too. But you’ll scar him again if you ever get close enough. You won’t mean to, but you will. It’s who you are. You can’t help it.”
Ruthie’s voice grew weaker, but her hold on his wrist became tighter, and his hand began to throb. “I need you to promise me something. Promise you’ll never come back to Plainview again. Promise you’ll never see James.”
“I can’t—” El began. But she cut him off.
“Promise. I have to know that James is safe.” Her tone softened as she said, “I’m not asking you to do anything new. Just stay away, like you’ve done most of his life.”
His voice, which had been smooth and confident since the first notes he had sung to her, began to break. “Okay, Ruthie. Okay.”
“Swear,” she said. “I need to hear it.”
“I swear on my mother’s grave—”
“No. Swear on my grave.”
“Jesus, Ruthie.”
“Please.”
El took a shaky breath and said, “I swear on your grave that I will never come back to Plainview and I will never see James again.”
Ruthie released her grip on his wrist and collapsed onto her pillows. “Thank you.”
Unable to summon the strength to turn her head, Ruth angled just her eyes toward the clock on the wall. “You should go. James is off work. He’ll be here soon.”
On unsteady legs, El walked over to the possessions he had unloaded earlier. He strapped his suitcases to his back and lifted the amplifier and the guitar case. He returned to Ruthie’s bedside one last time and said, “Good-bye.”
Between panting breaths, she said, “Giddyup, old boy.”
* * *
MINUTES LATER IN the hospital parking lot, El saw James and Odette walking toward him. It was almost funny that a chance meeting would cause him to break even his last promise to Ruthie so
soon after making it.
He recognized Odette first. Anyone who had ever seen Dora Jackson would know immediately that this was her daughter. As Marjorie had related, her niece’s round face and wide mouth were identical to Dora’s.
And James. He was noble and proud as he strode toward the hospital in his Indiana State Police uniform. El was thankful that James was just far enough to his left side that he couldn’t see the scar he knew was on James’s cheek.
James amused the toddler on his hip by making funny faces and imitating animal noises. As he approached El, he altered course to give ample room to the heavily burdened stranger. James walked past his father, bouncing his giggling child and clasping the hand of his big woman.
CHAPTER 19
It was an unusually quiet Sunday supper at Earl’s that week. Richmond, the real talker among the men of our group, had yet to arrive. James and Ray sat, with Richmond’s empty chair between them, acknowledging each other with an occasional brief sentence. My husband and Barbara Jean’s had been close friends for nearly as long as Clarice, Barbara Jean, and I had been a trio. Unless the river was frozen over or summer storms had washed out the back roads, they met nearly every weekend to go fishing together. Still, whenever I asked James what they talked about while standing on the shore or floating in James’s boat, the answer was always “Nothing.” Given their tight-lipped natures, I believed him.
Clarice, Barbara Jean, Ray, James, and I hadn’t waited for Richmond to arrive before filling our plates and beginning to eat. It was Revival Week at Calvary Baptist, so there was no way of knowing when their service might end. When Reverend Peterson dug his teeth deep into a juicy vein of sin, he’d been known to gnaw at it until sunset.
I was glad that we had food to distract us. With the array of frayed nerves, dark moods, and awkwardness at the window table, it would have been a shame to add hunger to the mix.
Clarice was nearly as quiet as James and Ray that afternoon. As the date of her Chicago concert grew closer, she had become more withdrawn. So Barbara Jean and I did most of the talking. Since I was preoccupied with fretting about James’s refusal to admit that he was fretting, Barbara Jean was stuck with most of the work of keeping our conversation going. That was a tough job, because we were both avoiding saying too much about El Walker, the topic that was on both of our minds.
The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues Page 14