Onward Toward What We're Going Toward (28 page)

He wrote,
Don't tell anyone I can't walk.

“Nobody will have a clue about that.”

“I can get you in the chair. I got you in it this morning. And I got you in the minivan.”

“I'll get the bartender to help.”

Green didn't like this. Sure, he may have said he wanted to do it, but that was in the hospital, that was when he thought that there might be another guy. Maybe he was wrong about the other guy, and if there wasn't some other guy, then . . . then . . . he was dressed up in this ridiculous maroon suit, and Mary was going to
unload him from the minivan like a piece of meat and strap him into a wheelchair and push him into the bar. Why would he want to subject himself to this?

They were exiting off the bridge onto Creve Coeur Avenue. At the bottom of the ramp was a stoplight.

She read the note and drove at the same time. “You said you wanted to book bets, Green.”

He looked out the window. They took a right onto Creve Coeur Avenue.

“You have to quit feeling sorry for yourself.”

He stared out the window: the strip mall parking lots, Kmart, Denny's, the Illinois River running parallel to them, and, on the other side of the river, Peoria and its downtown skyline.

“So this is it? You're giving up.”

Green rolled his head to look at her. At that moment, he wanted her to be Jane. Jane wouldn't be talking to him like this. She'd be nurturing him. She'd have her hand on his leg.

They pulled into the parking lot of the Brazen Bull and found a spot close to the door. There were no other cars in the lot.

I'm sorry,
Green wrote.

Mary put the minivan in reverse and backed out of the parking spot. “Yeah, well, Green, well . . . you know . . . if you think I'm going to sit around the house and feel sorry for you, you're wrong. I'm not going to do that. I refuse, Green. I goddamn refuse to do that.”

 

Mary unfolded the wheelchair next to the minivan and locked the wheels. Green watched her through the window. She hated it when he watched her, with that look on his face. She opened the passenger-side door and grabbed him under the arms. “On three, shift your weight.”The loud voice in her head was laughing at her. This is your future. You're going to be stuck taking care of him for the rest of your life. You need to get out of here. Leave him. “One. Two. Three.” She pulled him out of the seat and got him standing in front of the wheelchair. He was like a puppet on strings. Though he was slim as a razor blade, he was taller than she was by about two heads and still heavy. She struggled. “You're not helping me. Stand up,” she snapped. Gravity brought him forward, and she did everything she could to keep him standing while pulling the wheelchair into place behind him. This is what you have to look forward to, the loud voice said, every day for the rest of your life. She misjudged his weight, and he fell forward, his upper body buckling at the waist. She caught him, and he folded over her shoulder like a rag doll. She tried to lift him up in a fireman's carry while at the same time positioning the chair, but his body shifted, causing his weight to overwhelm her, and they both collapsed to the grass, overturning the wheelchair, Green landing on top of her.

Mary wiggled out from under him. “This isn't easy, you know. You have to work with me.”

Green put his hands over his face.

She grabbed him under his arms and dragged him across the
front yard. One of his ankle boots slipped off. She pulled him up the porch stairs and propped him up against the front door. She then ran back to the minivan, retrieved the wheelchair, and picked up the ankle boot.

Green's maroon suit was covered with grass stains, and a black sock was hanging off his left foot. Mary unlocked the front door of the house and dragged him inside, leaving him in the middle of the living room.

“I don't understand you. You want to go to the Brazen Bull, then you don't. What do you want to do? You can't sit around and feel sorry for yourself all day.”

Mary went outside and got the wheelchair. When she came back inside, Green was lying on the hardwood floor, staring up at the ceiling. She turned on the window air conditioning.

“I'm done helping you. I'm not getting you in that chair.”

“Ma-eee. Eeeeppp.”

“You lie there and think about it.”

“Ma-eee.”

Mary went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. From where she was sitting, she had a view of Green's feet, the black sock half off his left foot. The quiet voice told her to go back and help him. No, the loud voice said. If you go back, you're sunk. Ruined. He's a man who can no longer function as a man. He isn't whole.

It was almost eleven in the morning. She knew that Chic would be at the Pair-a-Dice by now. She could be there in half an hour, then to the Brazen Bull by noon. Quit thinking that way, the quiet voice said.

She went out into the front room and kicked the golf pencil. It shot across the hardwood floor. Green rolled his head and looked at her.

“I'm going out,” she said.

He looked away from her.

She didn't say anything else. You're doing the right thing, the loud voice said. He'll be just fine without you.

The afternoon that every radio and television program was interrupted to announce that John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, Chic was looking for his car keys. He usually put them on the kitchen counter next to the sugar jar, but they weren't there. He was down on his hands and knees checking under the coffee table when, from the upstairs bedroom, Diane called out for him. “Chic. My God! Chic. Chic!” For a moment, he thought that maybe she'd turned a corner and had finally come out of her funk. Maybe she wanted to have sex? He started to get aroused.

She came to the top of the stairs. “Kennedy has been shot. I just heard it on the radio.”

Chic stood there looking at her. He scratched his head. “Yeah?”

“The president, Chic.”

Then it clicked. Right. The president. Kennedy. “That's too bad. What a terrible thing. Hey, have you seen my car keys?”

Diane came downstairs and turned on the television. On the screen, Walter Cronkite took off his glasses. “President Kennedy died at 1:00 p.m., central standard time, 2:00 p.m., eastern standard time, some thirty-eight minutes ago.”

“I'm going to the store. I can't find my keys so I'm walking,” Chic said.

“The store? The president is dead.”

“Well . . . we still need food.”

Stafford's was empty. At the checkout counter, Chic set down a stack of TV dinners and took out his wallet. The cashier, a woman he knew but whose name he couldn't quite remember, asked, “Did you hear about the president?”

“I heard,” he said, taking some bills out of his wallet.

“It happened
just like that
,” she said, snapping her fingers to signify the suddenness of his death.

Chic stopped straightening out his bills. Her snap, and the phrase,
just like that
, had triggered something. He felt like someone had smacked him in the knees with a baseball bat. He wanted to kneel down, but he had to get through this. It was going to pass. He was all right. He pressed two fingers against his jugular vein. Stop thinking about it. Move on. Stop. Don't think. Stop thinking. Concentrate on your heart. Your heart beating. Be in the moment. Stop thinking.

“Mr. Waldbeeser, are you all right?”

He concentrated on his wristwatch. Tick. Tick. Tick. He took a deep breath and removed the fingers from his neck. He smiled at the woman. “I'm fine. How much do I owe you for this stuff?”

The cashier gave him a concerned look.

“Beautiful day out there.” Chic motioned toward the windows overlooking the parking lot; a misty rain was falling. He felt another rush coming on. He imagined a bulldozer pushing the thought out of his mind. He smiled at the cashier, whatever her name was. “You know, I don't think I actually need this stuff. Thank you for your help.” He left the stack of TV dinners sitting on the counter and walked out of the store.

Chic didn't like his job, but then again, he didn't not like it. Sure, he daydreamed sometimes about something bigger and better, something with more responsibility, maybe an office where he could kick up his feet on his desk, but he was a cannery man, his father had been a cannery man, his grandfather had been a cannery man, and Chic knew that he would die a cannery man.
This simple fact gave him a small bit of comfort. At least he knew what he was going to do for the rest of his life.

Every morning, he went to the locker room where he put on his hard helmet and white lab coat and punched the clock before heading out to the production floor. Every day at noon, he took lunch with the other workers in the break room. He unpacked his sandwich. Sometimes someone sat across from him, and he smiled at the person and made small talk. That person, whoever it was, after engaging in pleasantries, usually started complaining at some point: about work, the government, family, etc. and would solicit Chic into complaining along with him. Chic would then chime in about whatever the other person wanted to complain about, such as the town's decision not to line Main Street with American flags during the Fourth of July weekend. It was un-American. Unpatriotic. A travesty. Etc. There was companionship in complaining. So, Chic complained, until the other person finished up his sandwich, shut his lunchbox, and went back to work, leaving Chic looking around for someone else to complain along with.

Sometimes the whole ordeal—work; lunch; small talk; complaining; the death of Lomax; his wife's hatred of him, which he felt but kept locked away in the deep dark part of his consciousness; his brother's thoughts about him, whatever they were; Lijy's disappointment in him, which he couldn't understand since he had done what she had wanted him to without getting so much as a thank you in return (actually, he had gotten a thank you, but not a real, honest-to-goodness thank you); every single thing in his life, actually—got to be so much, so heavy, that he couldn't hold his head up anymore and he would push his half-eaten sandwich aside and put his forehead down on the lunch table and close his eyes. He knew the other workers were probably watching him. Some might even be nudging each other—
What's up with Waldbeeser?
—but he couldn't help it. He felt numb. He felt hollow. It was like he was a seashell and his insides had crawled out and left
an empty body behind. If a penny was dropped inside of him, the noise would echo forever. He was nothing. Chic Waldbeeser was nothing. He was there but he wasn't there.