Shy (27 page)

With Stanley out of the picture for a while, Frank and I thought it would be a good opportunity to try yet again to talk some sense into Joe. It was pointless for him to suffer. There was pain medication readily available. All we had to do was ask for it. With our chores caught up, we trooped into Joe’s bedroom on the pretense of stopping by for a simple chat, but by the leery look in Joe’s eyes, I figured he knew we were up to something, and he was pretty sure he knew what it was.

Joe’s pajamas hung all over him now. He looked like a sick little kid wearing his dad’s pj’s. Frank perched himself on the edge of Joe’s bed and set about nervously smoothing the sheet over Joe’s stick-thin legs, trying to build up the courage to start the argument over pain medication one more time. We had already been through it twice with Joe, and both times Joe got upset with us for interfering with what he called “my own personal business and nobody else’s.” The last thing Frank wanted to do was upset his dad again, but something had to be done. The constant pain was simply killing the man. It had to be reined in. Joe was so tiny now, so wasted away, that even his bed looked too big for him when he lay in it. And these days, Joe could rarely be found anywhere else.

I stood at the window gazing out at the lawn, where Pedro was humping away at the back leg of one of the farm dogs. He looked like he was having a real good time. His tongue was hanging out, his little Chihuahua pecker was all over the place, and his eyes were bugged out in carnal bliss. He looked like a tiny lumberjack hugging a tree, only most lumberjacks don’t get that excited about it. Pedro’s humper was going a mile a minute. The farm dog was two feet taller than Pedro, and unless his chosen paramour had a vagina on her ankle, I figured good old Pedro wouldn’t be having any paternity papers served on him anytime in the near future. He could hump away to his heart’s content, as long as the big-ass hound he was humping didn’t get annoyed enough to spin around and bite his head off. So far she merely looked bored. I read in
Cosmo
that a lot of women aren’t turned on by short guys. Too bad for Pedro. Maybe he should go find a squirrel to hump.

I turned from the window, and my grin faded quickly enough when I saw Frank reach out and gently brush the hair away from Joe’s eyes. The man’s hair was always wet these days. Weakness will do that. I had pneumonia once, and my hair was wet for a month. Couldn’t keep it dry.

Frank gave his dad a little smile. “You need a haircut, Pop. You’re starting to look like a Yeti.”

Joe tried to smile back, but the effort was obviously too much. A flash of pain dimmed his eyes even while he fondly aimed them at Frank. “I need more than a haircut, son. I need a new me.”

Frank nodded. “I know, Pop. I wish I had one to give you.”

Joe looked over at me with his wide concentration camp eyes. So much misery in there. Misery and courage. He was facing his own death just like he said he would—head-on, apologies to no one. He cleared his throat, dredging up the energy to speak. “How’s Grace, Tom? Been to see her lately?”

My face lit up. I could feel it. I loved talking about Grace. I had never saved a life before. Or brought new ones into the world. I figured it was a major turning point in my career as a farmer. At least it was one of the few things I had somehow managed to do right. “She’s great. She and the baby pigs were lying out in the sun soaking up the rays the last time I looked. Pigs are getting big. I think they know me. Grace said to tell you hello,” I added with a grin.

Joe grinned back. It was feeble but it was definitely a grin. “I’m sure she did,” he said. “Hogs are always sociable that way. Very polite.”

“Except for Samson,” Frank said.

Joe nodded. “Except for Samson. He’d rather eat you than say hello.”

“He’s tried more than once,” I said, shuddering at the memory.

“I’m sure he has,” Joe started to say, but a coughing spell stopped him cold. It took a couple of minutes for him to quiet down, and by the time he did, he was truly exhausted. Tears streamed from his eyes, and his skinny chest heaved under the sheet as he tried to draw in enough oxygen to stay alive just a little bit longer. Another day, another week, another month. Whatever God would give him.

I could see he wanted us to leave, his illness always embarrassed him so, but Frank was determined to do what he had come to do.

“You need medicine, Pop. We can make you a lot more comfortable than you are. Why are you being so damned stubborn about it? Give in on something just this once. What’s the point of suffering? Come on, Pop. I’m begging you. I can’t stand to see you like this anymore.”

Joe reached out a trembling hand and ran a gentle finger along Frank’s jawline. “I know it’s not easy for you, Frank, but it’s not easy for me either. And I know what will happen if you bring a doctor around to prescribe me medicine. He’ll insist on getting hospice involved, and they’ll start running the show. The next thing you know they’ll start doing exactly what they want without listening to anybody’s wishes, and I’ll be laying here with a dozen tubes sticking out of me and doctor bills piling up like snow in January. I won’t have it, Frank. I won’t. I watched your mother die that way. They said they were easing her passing. My ass. They didn’t ease nothing. They just added to her misery. And that’s what it was too. Pure, unblemished misery. If she had been here in this bed where she belonged, she wouldn’t have died alone in the middle of the night like she did in that cold hospital without a familiar face anywhere near. I would have been right beside her. Holding her hand. Stroking her hair. Don’t do it to me, Frank. I’m begging you. I’ve lived my whole life the way I wanted. Let me die the same way. Not all doped up and dumb as an ox. I want to know what’s happening. I want to see it come.”

The long speech all but knocked him out. He was so tired by the time he finished, he was almost sobbing. The coughing started up again, and Frank and I bustled around trying to ease Joe through it, offering water, sitting him up and patting his back, pushing the hair out of his eyes and wiping his sweaty brow, apologizing for getting him upset. In the end, the coughing stopped, but not because of anything we did. It just stopped because Joe was too weak to let it go on.

As soon as he quieted down we heard a whimper in the doorway, and turning, we saw Pedro standing there looking up at Joe as he lay in the bed trying to breathe. When Joe looked over at him, Pedro’s tail started doing its happy thing, whipping back and forth like a metronome. He gave a yip and flew across the room and into Joe’s bed like he had been shot out of a catapult.

As weak as he was, Joe found a smile to greet his little friend with. Pedro gave Joe’s face a good washing, then curled up in the crook of his arm where he always lay when he was spending time with Joe. He looked at me as if daring me to argue. Pedro knew where he belonged. Damned if he was going to let me or anyone else tell him otherwise.

Joe watched Pedro twist around in a circle two or three times before settling down, then he turned to Frank and said, “This is all the medicine I need, son. I’ve got you and Tom and Tom’s dog, who’s a fine little rascal, there’s no two ways around that, and I honest to God don’t need anything else. You might light a firecracker under Stanley’s ass to get him moving and maybe help you boys out with the chores, but that’s about all that’s needed. Things’ll work out just fine on their own. You’ll see. So don’t be pestering me anymore about doctors and medicine. Okay? Do we have a deal?”

Frank gave a big sigh and said, “Okay, Pop. If that’s the way you want it.”

I could tell Frank didn’t like it, but what could he do? In the end, I supposed it really should be Joe’s decision. Nobody else had earned the privilege of telling him how to die, least of all us.

Frank looked over at me, and by the time we both looked back at Joe, Joe was asleep. Or pretending to be.

We quietly left the room.

Pedro watched us go, and while we were closing the bedroom door behind us, he burrowed his nose under Joe’s hand and calmly closed his eyes.

F
RANK
was off working in the garden and I was dropping hay bales through the hayloft door for the milk cows’ evening meal when my cell phone rang. It startled me so, I almost fell out of the barn. It hadn’t rung for weeks. In fact, I was seriously considering tossing it into the pond and ridding myself of the monthly bill.

I checked the readout, and the number was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. At least it wasn’t Jerry.

“Yes?”

“Tom? Is that you?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

The caller went through a slightly pompous throat-clearing routine which was also vaguely familiar, but still I couldn’t place who it was.

Finally, the mystery was solved. “Mr. Moonhouse here, Tom. From the bank. How have you been, son?”

That was a bit much for me to wrap my head around on this fine Indiana afternoon. “Son? You’re calling me, ‘son’? It seems like only yesterday that you were firing my ass and telling me to empty out my desk. Son? Fuck you, Moony.”

“Ha. Ha. You always were a kidder. No, seriously, Tom, I’m calling to offer you your job back. I, hmm, uhh, may have been a tiny bit precipitous in making my decision to let you go. Perhaps you could drop by the bank, and we could talk over the particulars of your coming back to work with us. I might even be able to resurrect that idea you had about a wee raise for your services. How would you like that, Tom?”

“Moony, I’m in Indiana.”

“You are? What in the world are you doing there?”

“Living.”

“What about the lawsuit?”

“What lawsuit?”

Moony’s voice tightened. “I just got a call from your lawyer, let me see now, where’s that card, oh, well, your lawyer Mr. Jerry Somebody, and he informed me that a lawsuit was about to be filed against me personally and against the bank in general for unlawful termination on the basis of discrimination against a member of the LTBG community, or BLGB or GLGT or BLT or whatever the hell it is. I assume it means queers. I mean gays. I mean you.”

I bit back a giggle. Jerry was up to his old tricks again. First he got me fired, now he had managed to get me reinstated. Or he was trying to. I guess he was getting worried that I wouldn’t come back to San Diego, and if I didn’t come back to San Diego he wouldn’t have anybody to harangue for the rest of his natural life. Lord, that guy could be a pain in the ass. I couldn’t deny the fact, however, that he certainly still seemed to be in love with me, for all the good it would do him.

Apparently, Mr. Moonhouse was getting worried by the continued silence on the other end of the line. I had visions of him imagining himself at the unemployment office being interviewed by a fifty-year-old queen, currently out of drag for his day job. The queen would be sitting there with an eyebrow pencil poking out of his pocket protector and just a teeny smear of blush coloring his five o’clock shadow. The queen would check Moony’s paperwork, then eye him coldly after seeing the reason Moony was fired from his
last
job. Queens are so sensitive about discrimination. Especially ugly queens. And they’ll take it out on anybody in spitting distance. Maybe Moony was imagining the old queen pulling out a rubber stamp as big as a dinner plate and, being careful not to break a nail, slamming it down on his request form for benefits.
Bam!
DENIED.
Bam!
DENIED.

Moony hemmed and hawed and cleared his throat again. Sounded like he had a seat cushion stuck in there. “Son, I don’t know where you got the idea that I’m prejudiced, I truly don’t. The head office frowns on this sort of hullabaloo, Tom. Gives the public a bad impression of the bank. A lot of queers keep their money with us. I mean gays. I mean people like you. We can’t have them thinking we don’t like them, now can we? I want you to drop this lawsuit business before the legal department gets wind of it. Let’s let bygones be bygones, what do you say? No hard feelings?”

I hated to let the guy off the hook so easily, but aside from sheer petulance, there was really no reason to make him dangle.

“Moony, relax. There will be no lawsuit. On one condition.”

He sounded wary. “What might that be?”

This should be good. “Tell me the truth, Moony. Were you really looking for rolls of quarters all those time you scoped out my crotch at work?”

“
What—why I never—
”

I clucked. “Moooonyyy—”

He gave a sigh that sounded like it came all the way up from his shoes. “Well, I suppose I might have been a
wee
bit curious about that bulge in your—”

That was all I needed to hear to confirm my suspicions. Being the nice guy that I am, I clicked off my cell phone and stuck it back in my pocket, leaving Moony with at least a smattering of his former dignity.

Smiling, I went back to work.

Later, after tearing the hay bales apart and stuffing them into the mangers for the cows to feed from, my cell phone rang again. Wow. Twice in one day.

I flipped it open without checking the readout. It had to be Jerry. “Hello?”

It wasn’t Jerry. It was Miss Wiggins, my apartment manager back in San Diego.

“Tommy! Is that you? It’s so nice to hear your voice! I just want you to know that all your houseplants are back in the apartment and they’re in considerably better condition now than they were when you left them with me, dear. Not much of a gardener, are you? Oh, and I had a girl come in to give your place a good cleaning since it’s been empty so long. Jerry’s got his stuff moved in, and there certainly is a lot of furniture in there now. You couldn’t fall down if you wanted to, but if that’s the way you boys want it, it’s no skin off my nose. I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Frank, he was such a nice boy, but life goes on, and at least now you’re back with Jerry. I’m so glad you’re coming home, Tom, things have been far too quiet around here. That nice couple in 2B are getting divorced, did I tell you? I’m not surprised, really. Did you see that kid they spawned? Ugliest child I ever saw in my life. That would be enough to wreck
any
marriage. Turn you off sex completely, that would. Such a shame, though. But by golly I told them the same thing I told you. Life goes on. Of course, if it goes on long enough you get to be an old lady like me, ha ha, but that’s grist for
another
mill, if you take my meaning. What’s the matter, boy, cat got your tongue? Say something!”