Taft (31 page)

Carl hears something. He has just come in from the garage.

"Dad?"

He can see him from the kitchen. That's the way the house is, everything in one straight line. The bathroom is at the end of the hall. Carl sees Taft lying on the white tile floor, the bath mat pushed under one shoulder.

"Dad?"

Carl is running down the hall. He's only got on his gym shorts and tennis shoes now. He took off his shirt in the garage.

I am there when he gets there. I am standing in the bathtub behind them.

"Dad?"

Carl takes Taft's head and shoulders and pulls them up into his lap. Taft is white and sweating. He is holding his left arm in his right.

"Are you all right?" I say. "Are you all right?"

"I'm going to call the hospital," Carl says. There is so much fear. He is petting his father's head wildly, over and over again.

"Stay with me," Taft says.

"I'll just be gone for one second."

"Stay," Taft says. He is sure of it now. He is afraid to be alone.

"I'll stay with him," I say. "Go on and call. Rim!"

But Carl stays. He listens to his father. Taft is slipping.

"Pinch his nose and open his mouth," I tell Carl from the bathtub. "Blow two deep breaths into his lungs. Give him oxygen."

Carl is petting his father. He pulls the bath mat over Taft's chest. Carl's bare back is narrow and smooth as he leans over.

"Straddle his chest. Put the heel of your hand two finger widths above the breastbone. Cover your hand with your other hand and push down fifteen times. Listen to me. I took a class. The doctor who owns the bar made me take a class before I could have the job. Two breaths, push fifteen times, two breaths, fifteen times. Do this, Carl. Listen."

"Dad?"

Taft's eyes are open. He is looking at Carl. He almost sees him. The blankets over the windows make the room too dark. It is impossible to get up now.

"I'm going to call," Carl says. "I'll only be a second. I have to have some help."

"Blow in his mouth," I say. I crouch down in the tub to be closer to them. I could reach out. I could touch his hair.

"One second," Carl says. Taft doesn't answer and Carl slides his shoulders back onto the floor. He is holding his father's head in his hand, but he can't seem to put it down on the floor. The floor would be cold. His arms are weak from so much lifting. They tremble. He grabs a towel off the rack and rolls it into a sort of pillow which he puts under Taft's head. Then he runs to his parents' bedroom and dials 911 and waits and waits, but the phone is dead. He slams it down and runs into the kitchen. But that one is gone too. He doesn't think they might just be unplugged, that his mother unplugged them just this morning so his father could have a little rest. Carl runs back into the bathroom. Nothing has changed. "I'll just be a second," he says loudly, and he runs out the door to find somebody who can help.

But Taft is dead. I know. I am there with him when it happens. The last thing he thought of was pain and it stays with him on his face. His eyes are open. He is looking for Carl to come back. I slide down into the bathtub and press my cheek against the cold white enamel. Outside I hear Carl yelling. It sounds like he's running around the house in circles. It sounds like he will never find anyone to bring him back inside.

When I woke up, Marion was dressed and her bed was made. She was sitting on the made bed, reading a book. "Are you still alive?" she said.

"I am."

"It might be hard to talk for a while. Don't strain yourself." Marion looked like she got less sleep than I did. There was a black thumbprint under each of her eyes. "All night I was thinking about the neck," she told me. "Do you know what the chances are of somebody getting shot in the neck and coming out of it as well as you? Everything's in the neck. All the veins and nerves, the spinal cord and the spine. Christ, the spine. I can't believe you're even here."

"I'm here."

Marion put down her book and came and sat on the edge of my bed. She wiped my forehead off with a damp towel. "You had a bad night."

"I know."

"Reminded me of when Franklin was little and he'd get those awful flus. Remember that? Every time I'd think he was going to die. His fevers ran a hundred and three, a hundred and four."

"I remember."

"I think that's when I decided to go to nursing school. I thought a person couldn't have a child without knowing how to save his life all the time." She put her hand on my head and smiled at me. It was a comfort having her there. I'd known Marion for a long time.

"You tell Franklin?"

"I told him you had an accident. That you were upstairs sleeping. He wants to come up and see you, but I'm going to wait until that fever is down some. Better he sees you when you're more yourself." She picked up my glass of water from the bedside table and took a long drink. "One of these days you're going to have to tell me what all this was about," she said. "One day when you can talk and we have plenty of time. I want to know what happened."

"Sure."

"And that girl. You'll tell me about her too. I'd say it was none of my business, but the way you showed up here last night I figure I'm entitled."

"Sure."

She slid a pill out of each of the bottles. "I'm going to dope you up again," she said. "See if we can't get a jump on the pain this time." She wasn't asking me. She put her strong arm underneath my back and pulled me up so I could swallow. She held me there, propped up, while I took the pill. "They never teach you how to do these things in school. This is on-the-job stuff you're seeing here." She settled me back against the headboard so I was sitting up. "You're going to feel better soon, tomorrow, the day after. You'll be surprised. You get shot and it'll turn out to be nothing at all. When it's all over you'll be sitting in the bar saying, Hell, I take bullets as a pastime. When I see a bullet coming I jump in front of it." She took a paper sack off the dresser and took out some scissors and tape and gauze. "I'm going to change this dressing while I've got you sitting up. I've got some four-by-fours in here somewhere. Here we go." She held up a package for me to see. "You'd think that a man who had a child might not want to get shot. You'd think he might step to the side."

"Listen."

"I'm not listening because I don't want you talking. Just hold still. This shouldn't hurt."

I felt the cool scissors slide inside the bandage and then I heard her snipping. All that hurt me was to see such pain on Marion's face.

"You've got a hole in your neck," she said. She crumpled up the old bandages and put them in the bag. "I'm going to see if I can't clean this up a little. Just keep your head up, eyes straight ahead." I could feel her swabbing at me. She was trying her best not to let it hurt me and I was trying not to show her that it did. "Just a little bit of infection. It's not so bad. But you've got some blood here."

"Don't tell me," I said. I'd wanted to say that last night at the doctor's.

She smiled. "I don't blame you." She taped on a new set of pads and then wound gauze around my neck. "You look real sporty now. Like you're wearing an ascot." She picked up the trash and put it all back inside the bag. "It's something having you so quiet. If I said so, you'd have to sit there all day and listen to me. I would have shot you myself years ago if I knew that's what it would take to get you to listen to me."

I started to laugh, but it hurt like hell.

"Calm yourself or I'm going to get you a bigger pill."

Mrs. Woodmoore came in carrying a tray. However sorry she was about my being hurt, you could tell she liked having someone sick in bed that she could take care of. "How's John Nickel this morning?"

"Getting better," Marion said.

"I made you a lunch of nothing you'd like," Mrs. Woodmoore said, putting the tray down on Marion's bed. "That's what she told me to do, Jell-O and broth, apple juice."

"I'll give it to him," Marion said.

"You get yourself downstairs and see your son. He wants to know what's going on up here. I'll make sure this one eats. We don't spend near enough time together, me and John. Everybody wants to know what's going on. Your father and your sister have been asking questions all morning. That nice young man Wallace came by with flowers. He says everybody at work is going to want to know."

"All right, all right, I'll go downstairs." Marion sighed and pushed herself up. When she got to the door she turned around and looked at me. This Marion wasn't so different from the old one, not when she was standing in her little girl's bedroom being nice. "Don't keep him up forever," she said. "Let that Demerol knock him out."

"Just as long as it takes him to eat broth."

It was nice outside. I could see out the window. The lilac bush had grown rangy and tall and was pressed up against the second-story glass. Mrs. Woodmoore never let her husband trim the lilac and now it had turned into a sort of tree. I had spent a lot of time in that back yard over the years. I knew those lilacs as well as I knew anything.

Mrs. Woodmoore went and shut the door. "I've got to talk to you," she said. She put the tray in my lap and handed me the spoon. I couldn't look down very well, so she moved my hand so that it was right over the bowl. "That girl, Fay, she wanted me to tell you she wouldn't be coming over. She was afraid you'd think she didn't care about how you were doing. I told her you wouldn't think that."

Fay not coming over? "Course not."

"Quiet," she said, looking at the door. "Eat the soup. I don't want Marion knowing about this. Fay told me things last night. Poor baby, she was so upset. You could imagine she would be. She told me about it being her brother and about her being in love with you."

I was trying to make sense of this, trying to picture Fay pouring out her heart to Marion's mother.

"What you have to understand is that now her mother and her uncle and aunt, they're all going to know, about Carl's problems and her working in the bar. As soon as they found Carl it was all going to come out. Fay said she figured her uncle and aunt were probably looking for her last night. And I think it's only right that those people know what's going on with those children. It's too much of a burden for a young girl to be keeping so many secrets."

I couldn't make sense of these names coming out of Mrs. Woodmoore's mouth.

"Everything's got to be different now. It wasn't what she wanted, but people have to start thinking about what's best. She was thinking about what was best for you and your family, too. That shows real maturity in a girl her age. And I'll say it, she's right. Intended or not, she's brought you a lot of trouble. Just look at you here." She took the spoon from me and fed me some broth. I hadn't been eating at all. "You've got other things to take care of, much as you might like that girl. You're too smart a man to get caught up in something like that. Take a little of the Jell-O now, just so Marion can see you tried some."

I opened my mouth and she slipped it inside. If you don't see the color there's no telling what flavor it's supposed to be. Fay was in the dining room now. They were all sitting around that big table. Carl's arm was in a cast and his head was down. The uncle was talking. I could see it from the window, but I couldn't make out what he was saying.

"You go to sleep," Mrs. Woodmoore said, and picked up the tray. "We can talk about this some other time. I just wanted to let you know. It was so important to her that you didn't think she just never showed up. She was a sweet girl. I could sure see how a person would want to help her."

I eased myself down into the bed and closed my eyes. There were her little hands and the curve of her neck. She was walking away from the bar in a knit cap. She was standing in the light at Shiloh and everything was behind her, the monument and the tombstones and the Tennessee River.

I couldn't keep track of time. When I woke up I didn't know if I'd been asleep fifteen minutes or three hours. It was a sleep so heavy and dreamless that my mouth felt thick with it. I wondered if Marion had put something in that last pill. My neck was stiff but maybe not quite so sore and when I pulled up my hand to touch it I brushed somebody next to me, sleeping in the single bed. I hoisted myself over on my side, but I already knew. There was only one person small enough to fit in that little bed without waking me. Franklin's head fell back over the top of the pillow and his mouth was open. I could see all of his teeth. Not a single filling. Franklin didn't mess around with sleeping. He did it fast and hard. He must have gotten into bed with me to see how I was doing and then conked out himself while he was waiting for me to wake up. Franklin never could watch anybody else sleep. That's how we used to get him to bed when he was little, me and Marion would sit in our chairs and let our eyes close, fake soft snores and drop our chins. Franklin would go out in no time.

But he was a big boy now, he'd caught on to those baby tricks. Asleep in that little bed that had been his mother's, he didn't look too old. Big, bigger than maybe I would have liked, but he wasn't gone from me yet. His blue and red striped T-shirt had ridden way up past his stomach and I ran my hand over his warm skin before pulling it down. There was never anything so smooth. I took hold of his wrist. I could feel the little bones. I could smell his warm breath.

Without waking up, Franklin rolled in towards me. He pressed himself against my arm. He crossed a leg over my leg. Then we were quiet for a while. We stayed there, just like that. When he was with me there was nothing bad that could happen. That was the only way to make sure someone was going to stay safe, you had to keep them with you, close, where you could keep an eye on things. It wasn't possible for me to look after all of them, not every day, every minute, the way they needed looking after. The thing was, you had to choose. Pick one job and do it right. I was picking Franklin.

I had had enough of sleeping for a while, but that didn't mean I was going anywhere. It hadn't been bad not going to the hospital. I'd tell that to Marion when she came back in. Where was I going to find a hospital room like this? A good view and my boy right up in the bed with me.