Body and Bread (12 page)

“Aw, Dad, it’s only a dream.”

Hugh walked, dragging his toes, toward the doorway. “Did I ever tell you,” my father said, “about my patient whose foot had been eaten by a shark?” They stepped into the hall, and my father lifted his hand to pat Hugh’s head then returned it instead to his pocket. His keys clinked; I smelled coffee, Vitalis.

Hugh’s eyes widened. “You’re just kidding, right?” He grabbed the banister when they started down the stairs.

I unplugged the iron, followed. The only way I’d learn details about my father’s work was by overhearing him with one of my brothers.

“Said he’d been working for Texaco off the Houston coast,” my father said. “Can’t remember exactly how it happened, but with his prosthesis he got around pretty good.”

My father’s patients often called, tongue-tied, or sent gifts, some expensive, but he discouraged visits. Mr. Gueldner, muscled as a weightlifter, his voice like a radio announcer, had come anyway, right before Christmas—he, his wife and three children, one an infant. They brought a Swedish ripple coffeecake baked by the patient himself. “Bless you,” he kept saying while my father mumbled something, shook hands with one of the older kids. They sat on the sofa, and when my father said he’d leave some cake for Santa, they all blinked, nudged one another. After they’d left—Mr. Gueldner thanked at the door, the baby needing to be changed—my father mentioned the leg.

“What’s a prosthesis?” Hugh asked when we reached the downstairs landing. My father checked his watch. He pushed Hugh toward his study.

“Can I come?” I asked.

He nodded while we walked. “It’s an artificial limb.”

“What’s it made of?” Hugh leaned close, tripping on his toes, grabbing my father’s sleeve.

“Various man-made materials are—”

“But how does it stay, you know, on the leg?”

I sat on a stool in the corner while they walked over to the copper kettle filled with bleached human bones. My father picked out a fibula, a tibia, a talus, then one of the feet, its sections held together with wires. Pointing, working the joints, he helped Hugh memorize the names, explained the procedures for making and wearing a prosthetic foot. Hugh assumed I’d already been given the lesson, and my father seemed to forget I was there. Hugh asked questions (“Does it hurt when you walk?” “Can you swim in it?”), and my father answered, using medical terms (“mechanical device,” “supplement the function,” “
extensor digitorum longus
”).

“Are these real?” Hugh asked. “Did you know…him?” He tried to walk the foot across the desk, anklebones limp at the joint, toes skidding.

My father folded a section of newspaper, stuffed it in a wastebasket. “He wasn’t anybody. Granddaddy calls him Beaner.”

I laughed, thinking the name sounded silly. Now, knowing how close my father was to Otis and Ruby, I wonder how he reconciled his father’s racism. Years later, he’d try to explain. “It was common in that generation.”

“Cause he’s like a bunch of beans?” Hugh asked. He turned the foot over, its segmented parts flopping.

“No, it’s just his name.”

“Crazy,” Hugh said, balancing the sole on his hand, toes like claws, dangling. Then, appalled: “Granddaddy knew him?”

My father slumped in his chair, his elbows on his thighs. He wiped one side of his high-boned face, tugged his nose. “No, of course not. I didn’t say that.”

“But where’d the name come from? You said—”

“Granddaddy told me the story.”

“Tell
us
,” Hugh said, peeking over a scapula, “please.”

My father ruffled a book’s pages. “I don’t think so,” he said, looking at his watch, then surprising me with a wink. “I’m awful late. Couldn’t possibly.”

“Awww, Daddy, please?” Hugh’s forehead wrinkled; his mouth fell open.

“Are you big enough?” My father caught Hugh’s arm, pulled him like a crane hook—Hugh’s feet barely kept up with his body. “This is serious, now.”

“Yeah.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

My father glanced at the carpet. “The whole thing started when a farmer and his family were killed, and the sheriff arrested a man who had swum across the border from Juárez. He was wearing the farmer’s pants, and the farmer’s wedding ring was in the pocket.” Folding his arms, he seemed to go into a trance.

Hugh blinked, then stared, receptive as Sam must’ve been at the same age.

“Know what?” My father slapped his thighs then leaned on his hands, serious. “I really don’t like this story much.” He studied his watch, sucked his teeth. “I really do have to go. Granddaddy’s waiting. We’ll have to finish our talk later.”

“But you can’t quit now,” Hugh pleaded, not realizing that our father wasn’t teasing anymore. He wrapped one arm around Dad’s neck. “You already started.”

“Hugh,” my father said, exasperated. He rolled his chair toward the windows, stared at a pecan tree in the yard. “Those days, you see,” his words uttered by rote, as if counted off a list, as if dredged then reported, “Nugent was a wild place with things happening we’d never stand for today.” He faced Hugh again. “And, with everybody so mad at the man for killing their friend, a big crowd got together and, oh, they hanged him. And since nobody knew who the guy was, Granddaddy thought, well…he brought the body home.” He stood, then swatted nervously at a grease stain. “Anyway, that’s Beaner.”

“Uh, Dad?” I interrupted, unable to stop myself. “You mean it was, ah, a lynching?” I couldn’t think about my grandfather and the dead body yet.

“Times were different then, Sarah.”

“But what happened to the skin and hair and all?” Hugh asked, his face puckered as the one he imagined.

“I know—” my father started.

“No, excuse me,” I said, nervous but determined. “Could you tell us anything else about it, the lynching, I mean?” I’d heard about such things, but the men were always black and the hangings happened around the Civil War, on plantations. Not in Nugent with my grandfather in the crowd.

“I don’t know anything, Sarah. I told you, it happened a long time ago.”

“But Granddaddy was there?” I wondered if he’d helped slip the rope around the Mexican man’s neck. “What did he say happened? Did he know anyone who did it?” I was getting scared.

My father sat again. He rolled his chair over to my stool in the corner, pulling Hugh with him. “Sarah, you’re right to be upset. What happened was terrible.” He looked into each of our faces. “A man was murdered by a mob. True, he probably committed a crime, but that shouldn’t matter. He didn’t get a trial, so we’ll never know.”

Hugh bounced the foot skeleton on my lap.

“Stop!” I shouted.

He leaned back, stricken.

My father set the foot beside him in his chair. “The important thing,” he said, “is that Granddaddy didn’t have anything to do with the hanging. I don’t know who did, although I’m sure there must be some kind of record.” He turned to me. “If you’re interested, you might look that up. In fact, I hope you will, because you won’t find your grandfather’s name there.”

“But I don’t know how.” I wouldn’t be placated. I pictured my grandfather describing Otis as “a good and faithful servant.” I wondered if Otis knew how the man from Juarez had died.

“Where do you think you might find such a record?”

“I don’t know…the library is the only place I can think of.”

“Good. When you get to the library, where will you go?”

“Old newspapers?” My father always seemed to be testing. Why couldn’t he just take me to the library himself?

“Sarah, you can do this; you don’t need anyone’s help. As I recall, the hanging took place during the summer of 1915. That’s all you’ll need to get started.”

Buoyed by his rare expression of confidence, I pledged to go to the library as soon as possible. I didn’t know what I’d do if I recognized any of the names, and I prayed he’d be right about Granddaddy. “But he took the dead body?” I was still innocent enough to hope that my grandfather had deserved a professional claim on someone’s son, brother, friend, regardless of whether the man was guilty. Otherwise, how could my father keep the bones in our house, encouraging us to touch them?

“I know it’s hard for you to understand,” he said, rolling to his desk. He began placing the bones back into the kettle as Hugh joined him, “But he was used in Granddaddy’s research.” He glanced at me, cleared his throat, coughed. “Hugh, you’ll learn more about anatomy when you’re in medical school.”

Suddenly I had to know why he didn’t expect me to be a doctor like my brothers. “Can Hugh and I go with you to your lab sometime?” I walked toward him.

“Mama might have something to say about that,” he said.

Before I could answer, bones clacked, rolling. Hugh leaned over the kettle, reaching in.

“Hey, be careful.” My father used both hands, checking. He stacked the bones in their usual order.

“Grandaddy’s what
kind
of doctor?” Hugh said, resting his hand on my father’s shoulder.

“Internist. He operates on the organs.” My father sat back, looking at Hugh.

“Is he, I mean, he’s good isn’t he?”

“Son, your grandfather is the best doctor I know. Do you realize what he’s accomplished, the number of people he’s helped?”

Hugh shook his head, no, his face an empty plate.

I thought about my father meeting with hospital residents every morning, about his patients’ gifts and letters, about his trips to conferences, his work with Boy Scouts, PTA, and his Sunday class. Had my grandfather done more than that?

“Great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities, but to make them.” He wiped his jaw. “Come closer, Sarah. I want to tell you both something.”

We huddled. “About Granddaddy?” Hugh asked.

“Once, when I was a few years older than you, he decided a sore on his lip was cancerous, so you know what he did? He stood in front of a mirror and cut it off. Just like that. ‘Somebody had to get it out of there,’ he said. I remember the blood but not one complaint. Then he had me sew it up.”

“Were you scared?” Hugh chewed his thumbnail until my father pulled his hand away from his face.

“Yes, very.” He sounded out of breath. “But my job was to do what my father expected. He needed me, and it was an honor to help, even though it was hard.” He patted Hugh. “Let men laugh when you sacrifice desire to duty. You have time and eternity to rejoice in.”

Sam appeared, standing sideways in the doorway, gazing at the far windows. He tongued a wad of gum while he held out his hand. “Ready, Hughie?” he said. Kurt was still at the coast for spring break, but Sam had arrived last night after spending his holidays in Laredo. As usual, I’d barely seen him. “We got to go, guy. Cyril and Terezie will be waiting.”

Hugh jumped up, his face a commercial for little-brotherhood. “Where are you off to?” My father scowled at Sam, and I wondered how two people who looked alike could stay so mad at each other.

Sam’s chewing stopped. “Hugh says he wants to look for arrowheads, is all. I said I’d take him.”

“That’s right, Daddy,” Hugh said. “Sam found a midden. We’re gonna look for a Clovis point.” He leaned sideways.

“A midden?” my father said, catching Hugh’s shoulder.

“You know, a trash mound.” Hugh edged toward Sam and the doorway. “Okay? So can I go?”

I knew what my father was thinking. During the Christmas holidays, I’d talked nonstop about Texas Indians, so Sam, who’d been friends since high school with a West Side brother and sister, Jaime and Mariana Cardona (I wondered if they were descendants of Geronimo), brought me a book on Aztecs. “Read this if you want to know who had the smarts over here,” he said. Later, when I told my father that during the Wichita deer ceremony, a newly initiated shaman ate a coral bean so he could be unconscious while the leader scraped him with a garfish jaw, he said, “If you’re interested in the supernatural, think about Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus.”

“Why is it,” my father said to Sam, “you’re so interested in the very things the rest of us try to avoid, and you avoid what we hold important?”

Unfair, I thought. I stepped around the desk. “Dad—”

“Your thinking is somehow off track,” he continued. “Don’t you want to be happy?” He stroked the side of his face. “What attracts you to so much that’s ugly? Pinpoint it, be specific. Please, I need to know.”

“What’d I do?” Sam looked at Hugh and shrugged, trying to reassure him.

My father’s features softened; he slumped. “Sometimes, I wonder if there’s
anything
we can agree about.”

Hugh frowned, confused.

“Embarrassing, huh?” Sam said, his expression open as a child’s. “Or maybe I just remind you of something you’d like to forget?”

My father flinched, leaned forward. “You’re my son. But I don’t like the trouble you take pleasure in causing.”

“Why do you care so much what people think?” Sam’s gaze soured. He leaned close, whispering, “Even I know you’re too good for that.”

“Now that I think about it, your problem must have something to do with me.”