It started last Fourth of July, when I drove down to
Tennessee to visit with my friend Sheila, at that time more an acquaintance
than a friend, a woman I used to work with, and heavy-chested at that. Still, we stayed in touch when she moved
away, and I was more than happy to accept her invitation to drive down and meet
her boyfriend Leon and see their new place, a luxury double-wide log cabin mobile
home parked on ten-acres of rambling wooded mountain.
In between fireworks, music, and barbecue, we hiked the
property, Sheila and Leon
and me, along with Esther and Wayne and Ted.
I wasn’t the only one invited to the party as Sheila’s a woman who likes
lots of ruckus, a more-the-merrier kind.
She had hopes from the start that I’d hook up with Ted, but I had to
disappoint her. He struck me as a
specimen of sloth and poor grooming, nothing more, nothing manly at all to
attract me. He couldn’t keep his shirt
tucked in and a haircut was way past due; it was growing down the back of his
neck.
On the second day, when we started out hiking, Ted called
off and stayed behind. I went on with
the others and right away, while stepping down a steep and narrow trail, I
slipped, my heel skidding and digging a trench for my backside to follow, until
I caught hold of a wild mountain laurel and halted my dangerous descent. There it was—the pebble in my shoe.
During that time, and even before, a pebble often
appeared in my shoe. It didn’t matter if
I had on sandals or sneakers, work heels or hiking boots, a left step down
often sent me limping to bench or chair to free my foot and look for what was
poking me. But though I shook and felt
inside my footwear, no pebble ever fell out.
It was a mystery I lived with, one that came and went, while I tried to
get on with life.
There on the side of Sheila’s mountain, my only concern
was the pain. I scrambled back up and
onto a ledge to sit on a fallen log and remove my hiking boot. Just as I’d loosened the laces, Ted’s voice
bellowed out above me, “Lucy Jane! Luce
Jane! Luce Jane!”
“For heaven’s sake,” I said. “What’s his shouting all about?” His caterwauling put me on the wrong side of
cranky.
“He’s not normally a man to get too excited,” Sheila
said. “It’s one of the things I admire
about Ted.”
Leon
advised I should go back to the house.
He said it was bound to be important.
What could I say to that?
I retied my boot and walked back to the house, the pebble all but
forgotten.
It seemed that while I was hiking on the mountain,
probably at the exact same moment of my fall, my brother Daniel had called from
Mount Aerial.
He said to call back right away as the emergency was number-one urgent.
Ted acted overly concerned, saying as how he would gladly
ride me back if the news, whatever it was, put me under any strain, but I asked
him to kindly go away and allow me a few minutes peace. It’s not every day a woman falls down a
mountain and receives an emergency call at the exact same instant. I meditated to calm my nerves, a method known
as Lamaze that Darlene, one of the other tellers, taught me when she was
pregnant. She told me it didn’t help
giving birth—they still numbed up her spine—but it worked when her
mother-in-law came to visit.
After breathing to calm myself down, I returned my
brother’s call. “What is it, Bubba?” I
asked.
“It’s Mama,” he said.
“She needs you right away. It’s
something to do with Daddy. She’s
carrying on fit to kill, I swear. Lucy
Jane, Mama needs you.”
“Wild mountain goats won’t stop me,” I said. “I’ll be on the road before you can spit.” Then I hung up and had to do Lamaze again as
the news was so upsetting. Daddy had
been in the Eldercare
Nursing Center
for months due to the advancement of sinus cancer, leaving Mama alone with her
bad heart and diabetes. Just the thought
of her poor health always broke my heart.
My brother Daniel always said, “Go, just go visit Daddy,”
until his pestering got on my nerves.
Then I’d remind him of the time I alone had to bury his kitten Hamlet
when Daddy ran over the cat with the hedge shears. Do you remember your trauma? I asked him. Did I ever hold it against you? To this day, he doesn’t like the sight of
blood.
Thinking of my family situation got me all
teary-eyed. Ted came in and sat down
across the kitchen table. At least he
had bothered to shower and shave. He
said, “You don’t have to tell me. It’s
bad news. Lucy Jane, if you’re too upset
to drive back, I’d be happy to be your chauffer.”
His steady voice and clean ways were qualities I had
overlooked. I packed up my suitcase and
snapped it shut, bidding my farewells to Sheila and Leon, Esther and Wayne,
while Ted loaded up the trunk. He kicked
the tires and checked the oil before taking the wheel of my Dart. Up and over the mountains he sped like a man
possessed, slapping the gearshift and thumping the dash and singing off-key
alongside my cassette of “The Best of Hank Williams Gold.” Ted’s voice was such that I resented his
singing; he ruined “Jambalaya” forever.
Although I was not a
drinking woman, Sheila had sent along a cold thermos of beer. I sipped on it and breathed Lamaze and tried
to ignore Ted’s singing until we finally arrived in Mount Aerial. My hometown had never looked better, green
trees, hyacinths and clover. When we got
to the courthouse, I asked Ted to pull over.
I told him I’d be right back. I
wanted to make a visit to the statue of General Robert E. McDoogle. Legend is he won the battle even though he
lost the war. They say if you toast him
to roast in hell, it’s like wishing on a star.
I did, but the general only glared at the sky. Parts of him were broken off, and someone had
written, “Eat Me,” in marks-a-lot across the seat of his uniform. As I watched, a small chunk of his hat broke
and struck the ground near my foot. The
pebble appeared, poking my tender instep.
All I could think was, “Oh, Hank, how the world falls apart.” I sat down on the bench beneath the magnolia
tree and cried because I gave up.
It wasn’t too long before my
brother Daniel drove past and, seeing the strange man in my Dart and me crying
on the bench with one shoe off, he diagonally parked in a horizontal and
motioned Ted to get out of the car. Ted
didn’t own my heart at that point—his singing was an insult to Hank—but that
didn’t matter. He didn’t deserve to get
roughed up by Daniel. Replacing my shoe
and gathering my wits, I proceeded to the sidewalk to make introductions,
limping a little as the pebble in my shoe didn’t want to go away. Sometimes it stayed for a second. Sometimes it stayed for hours.
“Bubba,” I said, laying my
hand on Daniel’s shoulder as he turned his head to give me a nod, “this is
Ted. I met him through my friend
Sheila. Ted kindly offered to drive me
home after you called with the terrible news.”
Daniel cracked his knuckles
and offered his hand for a shake. “Any
man does right by my sister is done right by me.”
Ted shook Daniel’s hand,
though you could say he did it tenderly.
“I think I’ll sit in the Dart.
You two have family business.”
Which is something I appreciate, an understanding that some things are
private.
“Lucy Jane,” Daniel said, “that’s one homely man.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked
back on his heels. “I hate to be the
bearer of bad news, but Mama says for you to go over to Eldercare and talk sense
to Daddy. Seems he threw a tray at a
nurse. They’re talking of sending him
home if his own daughter can’t calm him down.”
What could I say to that?
I hadn’t spoke to Daddy in more than five years, not since the
Watermelon Seed War of Labor Day, 1972, when he told me I couldn’t spit seeds
for donkey doo, and he wouldn’t write home about my kissing anymore,
neither. He said this in the most
disgusting way, having slipped up on me behind the shed to try to put his
tongue in my mouth, but I’d gotten right tired of that. I kept my jaw locked up, so my teeth formed a
wall that the assault of his tongue couldn’t penetrate.
“You leave me alone,” I said to Daddy. “I don’t live here anymore.” I had my own place, a nice little apartment
in the complex on the edge of town.
“As long as you’re on my property, girl, you’ll always be
my daughter.”
“Have it your way,” I told him. “I know when I’m not wanted.” Then I turned and left, scraping the dust of
the yard on the grass like Jesus when he left the unrepentant city.
“Go on then, Lucy Jane,” my Daddy called. “Just remember to honor your word.”
I had no problem keeping to my promise, which was that I
would never tell, because I thought I could make Daddy dead to me, that things
between us were settled and done.
I was in no way prepared to meet him again face to
face. I told Daniel he should go get
Mama and bring her to the Mount Aerial Laundromat, which is where I’d most
often met her during the last five years, there or at my apartment. The smell of the laundry, soap, bleach and softener,
has always seemed to me soothing. At
first Mama thought it strange to meet there, until I explained to her the
efficiency of doing many things at one time, both the jeans and the towels, the
visiting and talking.
Mama said, “Lucy Jane, you’re one smart cupcake. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you
weren’t your father’s child.”
When Daniel left to get Mama, I rejoined Ted in the
Dart. I asked would he mind driving
again, as I felt so very tired. He said,
“Tell me where you wanna go, Lucy Jane.
I’m purely at your service.” His
big hands gripped the steering wheel steady as a pike.
“Ted, I think you might be a man who knows his way around
a Dart.”
He smiled without speaking, and his nice even teeth made
up for the sound of his singing.
At the Mount Aerial Laundromat, I invited Ted to come in
with me while we waited for Mama to arrive.
I led him past the folding tables and around the buckers, the three
washing machines in need of repair that Mama and I made Daniel drag in a row to
create a private sitting area. We had
four chairs and two tables arranged with a view out the side window looking
down on a nice little hill.
I sat down in my usual chair. Ted sniffed the air. He said, “Smells like Chlorox,” and I was
happy he noticed. When he sat down right
next to me, my foot almost fell off, the pebble poked it that hard.
“Lucy Jane,” Ted said.
“You know I’m only a plumber. But
this weekend so far, hasn’t it been something?
I think it’s been something, Lucy Jane.”
For a declaration of love, the situation was
out-of-order. I held him off with one
hand and with the other wiggled off my shoe.
It just wasn’t the time, not with Mama due and the pebble poking full
force. “Not now, Ted, please.” I shook my stupid shoe. As always, nothing fell out.
Ted nodded like he understood. Then he said, “Lucy Jane, I notice you remove
your left shoe quite a bit. Do you have
a foot illness?” I realized then that
Ted wasn’t a man given to wrinkling his forehead. When he thought, his face went smooth and
straight, open and puzzled-like.
I hadn’t told anyone about the poking except mention it
to Dr. Mills, who said I should try foam inserts, but they didn’t help. “It’s nothing,” I said. “It’s just sometimes, it feels like a rock in
my shoe.”
Ted nodded, shook his head
and smiled. He said, “May I look at your
foot?”
What could I say to that?
He sat so close, so considerate, believing in the impossible, that he
could help when my own well was run dry.
“Go on,” I told him. “You can’t
make it any worse.”
He took my left shoe and set it aside prior to kneeling
down before me. He took my right shoe
off, too, looking up first to ask, saying that balance was important. His big warm hands wrapped around my feet,
which he proceeded to knead and massage.
Little pebbly pains assaulted my soles, but he just kept rubbing until
the hurt rubbed out and all that was left was tingles. He said, “Why don’t you leave your shoes
off? I’ll be glad to carry them for
you.”
That he would have done that for me! But I had every reason to decline. I told him thank you very much, but I didn’t
think it proper for a woman to walk around barefoot before God and society.
When the cowbell above the entry jangled and announced
Mama’s arrival, I had my shoes back on.
Ted sat up, not knowing what to expect.
I warned him that Mama flares like a paper match sometimes. Before she even got around the broken
washers, she stopped and planted her cane.
“Lucy Jane, where have you been?”
I thought that was unfair, seeing as how I’d told her
where I’d be and left Sheila’s number in case of emergency. But she said, “That’s not what I mean,
daughter. I’m talking about the past
five years. For five years, you haven’t
spoke to your Daddy. Don’t think I
haven’t noticed. I figured you had your
reasons and that was good enough back then.
But that won’t work, anymore.”
What could I say to that?
Every word she spoke was true as a river. I looked at Ted to give me courage. “What is it exactly you want me to do?”
Mama stood up tall and said, “You have to talk to your
Daddy. I need you to go over to
Eldercare and tell him to stop throwing his eating utensils and slapping at the
nurses.” She held on tight to the head
of her cane. “If they send him home, I don’t
know what I’ll do with him.”
My Mama can be a trying woman whom I love with all my
heart. “Why can’t Bubba?” I started, but
she said, no, Daddy wouldn’t listen to Daniel.
It had to be me; it was time to step up.
“Please, Lucy Jane, or I wouldn’t ask you.”
I could never abandon my
mother. Although it had been my
intention to never lay eyes on my father again, I knew I would have to, if only
for her sake. “Ted,” I said, turning and
looking into eyes as brown as a long-eared puppy’s, “would you mind driving me
around a little while longer?”
“You know it,” he said.
“I’ve just been waiting for you to ask.”
He took to the Dart like it was a Roman chariot pulled by
two white horses down Highway 31. In the
parking lot of Eldercare, he whipped into a handicapped spot, saying that since
my mission was so important, parking laws could go to hell, a sentiment that
seemed appropriate for my unwelcome mission.
The nice lady at the front counter told us Daddy was in
the cornermost room of B Wing West. Ted
escorted me, supporting my arm lightly as I limped along. I felt less the pebble than the bruise of a
pebble, like my foot had been thoroughly poked.
Daddy’s room was as dark as a turkey’s innards. I sat down in the chair by his bed while Ted
took a seat by the door. How gray Daddy
looked, his skin slack and in folds, his mouth like a toothless sinkhole. “Daddy?” I said. “It’s me, Lucy Jane. How you feeling, Daddy?”
He opened his eyes and reached out his hand, which looked
more like a crow’s claw than anything. I
took it, just to be friendly. It felt
bony and slack, until he suddenly seized on and squeezed my fingers hard. I snatched back so sudden, Ted stood up to
see if something was the matter.
I wanted not to be afraid, for everyone concerned. “Thank you, Ted, but I’m fine.” Daddy’s hand was crawling facedown on the
covers, like a spider in the throes of death.
“Daddy?” I said. “I’m not here of
my own free will. That said, you need to
stop throwing your plates and silverware at the nurses.”
He shook his head and squawked uh, uh, uh, so the loose skin jiggled at his throat. It was a denial, I could tell, plain and
clear.
“You can’t deny it, Daddy, not once it’s in the report.”
His hand reached into his pajama trousers and he started
rooting around. Oh, Lord, I thought,
forgive him in his confusion. After all
I’d given up, rushing back from Tennessee
from a perfectly wonderful vacation, and my Daddy still thinking with his
pecker.
“What’s he doing, Lucy Jane?” Ted stood right next me. “Maybe we should call a nurse.”
“Why don’t you go find one? I need a few minutes with Daddy.” Ted asked was I sure and I told him most
certainly. I wanted him to go. As soon as he left, I turned to Daddy and
said sternly, “Now, Daddy. Just because
I’m a beautiful woman is no reason for you to lose control. Take your hands out of your pants this
instant.”
Daddy rolled his eyes and his tongue slid out, rutted and
pasty. His eyes caught mine and he
brought out his hand: he offered up a little ball of dooky. I can’t say it a nicer way. Like a perfect brown ball of clay. It was too much. “Look here,” I said, “I read about men like
you in ‘Dear Abby,’ men with wandering tongues and fingers. It’s a hot old place you’ll be heading to,
Daddy, unless you sit up and pray right now, for God’s forgiveness and mine. You have sins that need accounting for.”
His arm fell limp by the side of the bed. The dooky ball skipped off the sheet and onto
the floor. He closed his eyes. If ever a man was needing to pray but unable,
I felt sure it was my Daddy. I bowed my
head and asked forgiveness for him, remembering to also give thanks, for nature
and the convenience of washing machines, and also for Ted, who had appeared
like a gift in my hour of need.
When I looked up, Ted was coming into the room with a
nurse who took Daddy’s pulse. “He’s
gone,” she said, drawing up the sheet.
“I’m sorry. He’s passed away.”
Ted stayed in Mount
Aerial while we made the arrangements,
then he headed back to Tennessee. It wasn’t six months before the distance
became too much for our growing affection.
We took vows halfway in Fountain Run and then I moved south to live with
him. Mount Aerial
was a fine hometown to grow up in, but there comes a time to move on.
As for Daddy’s funeral, I heard there was excellent attendance
and plenty of memorials. I didn’t
go. Mama agreed someone had to organize
the grief foods. She said the eulogy was
real nice, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, but sometimes I wonder if it wasn’t
rocks to air. I don’t know the moment it
happened, but the pebble vanished when Daddy passed. I’ve worn shoes on and off ever since.