The Kerr Construction Company (8 page)

“Dalhart.” She grinned. “Are you delirious? You’re such a philosopher. Please, just get well. You’re rambling on like you have to tell your life story in the next five minutes.”

“Can you handle it?” I asked fearfully. “It’s so hungry inside, Carmen. I don’t know if I can make you happy. Other girls have wanted things from me. It gets old. I’m not trying to sound trite, but it gets so shallow. I need more. In Houston they were throwing themselves at me. I didn’t think a person could get bored with sex. But I didn’t want anyone after awhile.”

“It’s okay, Dalhart. Relax. I understand. It’s all right,
mi amour
. I told you about my marriage. I understand what you’re saying. I love that you’re different. Don’t worry. Just get well, sweetheart. Relax, darling.”

“What if you reject me and want the party stuff?” I whined. “I need answers in my life. But I don’t even know the questions yet. I’ll drive you crazy. You’ll reject me.”

“Me reject you? You are crazy. You’re the most exciting person I’ve ever met.”

I reached up to feel her cheek. “Others have thought so too,” I explained. “Until they find out. I’m so complicated. I’m so vulnerable, Carmen. You’ll reject me if all you want from me is a good time.”

She touched my lips with her fingertips. “Shhh,” she said. “You’re sick and feeling insecure. I’m here. There’s more to me than a good time. You haven’t seen that yet? Dalhart, you’re hurting me that you don’t see how I love what we’ve been. I know you’re sick and insecure, but please, know who I am. Know what you’ve made me. Sleep, sweetheart. Stay here all night. You’re home now. With me. Neither of us has anything. Suddenly, with you in my life, it’s like I have everything. Pow, just like that. So go to sleep, Dalhart. Feel my warmth.”

I could barely breathe all night and felt weak the next morning. I was glad it was Sunday, but I had to go to Jose’s baptismal. My throat hurt, but mostly it was my lungs. I felt congested.

Carmen was up by the time I got dressed for Jose’s ceremony. She prepared breakfast.

“Mother saw us on the couch last night,” Carmen said as I sat down at the dining table in the kitchen. “It’s okay. You’re family now to her. She adores you. I explained you were sick, and she kissed you on the cheek and left us. You were snoring. You were so out of it. I wanted to carry you to my bed, but I slept well on the couch even slouched like I was. Our first night together. Well, not counting Monument Valley, of course.”

I smiled at the thought but then turned serious again. “I can’t afford to be sick, and I don’t have insurance, except through Kerr for injuries incurred on the job. Nothing for illness. If your mother doesn’t mind, I’ll sleep on her couch. Maybe I’ll get over whatever I have, with rest and a warm bed, meaning the couch. We’re not sleeping together while we’re at your mom’s. I have to respect her. But I do need a warm bed, if it’s not imposing. I have to go to a baby christening now, but I’ll be back by noon.”

“You don’t look good,
amigo
,” Jose said when I showed up at the church.

“I’m scared I can’t go to work tomorrow. Maybe even for a few days. Doug’s going to fire me.”

“He won’t fire you,” Jose assured. “He likes you. Thanks for coming. And thanks for bringing your Polaroid. I want to remember this day.”

****

I made it through three work days. After each day I went to what now felt like home. Carmen’s mother babied me until her daughter came home from work. Then Carmen took over while her mother trustingly left us to ourselves. Carmen laid out a mattress on the floor next to the couch, to sleep next to me.

I could not get up on the fourth day of my illness. That afternoon I drove to the Kerr offices and told old man Kerr I was too sick to go on. I would return to Texas.

“I’ll never see you again,” Carmen said, bravely as much as bitterly, when I told her of my plans. “You’ll forget us hicks in Gallup, New Mexico. If you’re going to stay at your mom’s anyway, until you recover, I don’t see why you can’t stay here. A mother’s a mother. I come attached with mine.”

“I’ve imposed long enough,” I replied. “I don’t know how long this will take.”

“It’s no imposition,” Carmen pleaded. “You heard my mother tell you this.”

“But then it becomes one.”

“And then what?” she asked. “What will you do then? In your post-Carmen world?”

“I have your address and your phone number,” I said hoping it would reconcile her to my departure.

“Ahh,” she scoffed. “You’re brushing me off. You may not know it, but that’s what you’re doing. You’re not even well enough to drive that far, but you’re still leaving me.”

I stood silently. I wanted so much to convince her, but I didn’t think I could. I even wondered if she wasn’t right. Out of sight, out of mind. Gallup might seem like halfway around the world by the time I recovered. But it was time to leave. Time to find out about the rest of my life and if she would be a part of it.

New Mexico looked even prettier on the drive back. And now it was a part of me.

****

“I remember when you came home from boot camp,” my mother said as she brought soup into my bedroom and set it next to my bed. “You were so gaunt then, sunken cheeks, and so pale. I’d hear you coughing all night, those dry coughs. You were on the verge of pneumonia. Now too, I think.”

“I guess that medicine is helping, though,” I said. “I couldn’t afford a doctor, but a pharmacist recommended something when I told her my problem. I can’t afford pneumonia.”

“You just need some rest,” Mother assured. “You’d be coming home in a couple of weeks anyway. School starts soon.”

“I didn’t save enough money. I don’t know if I can pay tuition and have what I need to live on, besides.”

“You’ve still got the G.I. bill,” she reminded, “and you’re a grad assistant. Did you get enough material for your thesis?”

“I could write a novel.”

“Write your thesis first.”

“I got sick and came home to my mommy,” I mocked. “Jose can’t do that. And he has to worry about being deported, too.”

“You lived in an old panel truck,” she summarized. “You weren’t insured, you survived on minimum wage and saved money for school too. All for a thesis. You don’t do anything the easy way. You can’t stay in summer school like the others and do research in a library. You have to go out in the desert with a bunch of illegals and Navajos. Collecting primary data, you call it. Always living on the edge is what it is. You’ll never change. You joined the Marines in the middle of a war nobody else wanted to fight. Don’t you need security, like a normal person?”

“Security is boring,” I answered, trying to feel brave again. “But—”

“But what?”

“Mother, I need to tell you something. You’re not going to like it.”

“You’re gay?” She looked harshly at me. “That’s why, in spite of all those girls throwing themselves at you, you never got married?”

“Worse than that. I’m in love with a Mexican.”

“Male or female?”

“Female, Mother. Get real.”

“Just thought I’d ask.” She sighed in relief. “Everyone else you grew up with is on their second marriage now, and you go traipsing off into the desert. You may not be gay, but you’re weird. So, what do you mean, you fell in love with a Mexican girl?”

“I met her after I started work in Gallup, a couple of weeks later. It got deep. Real, real deep. Then when I got sick, she and her mom helped keep me alive. Except for her brown skin, you’d love her. She’s poor, though. But she’s got class, and her mom is an angel.”

“What do you mean, if it weren’t for her brown skin? You act like I’m a racist or something. Did you tell her that? Just how serious are you? In love, I know. How much in love?”

“Totally, incredibly in love.”

“From just over a month? Are you sure?”

“I found the love of my life from knowing her just over a month. And not only that, one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had and admired is an illegal from Durango, Mexico. I’m going to miss them. I hate it.”

“You’d have brown-skinned kids, wouldn’t you? If you pursue this relationship with this Mexican girl. I’d have brown-skinned grandkids.” She sat back as a smile eased onto her face. “I’m part Cherokee, after all. I have olive skin. Remember when I’d get sun, and then we’d go across the border and the border patrol wouldn’t let me back in Texas until I could prove I was American? God plays his little games, doesn’t he? So now I’m warming up to her like he planned it or something. When can I meet this girl? Is she going to be my daughter-in-law?”

“I don’t know if she’ll be your daughter-in-law. I’m going to see if I can forget her. Then I’ll know.”

“Here we go again,” my mother complained. “My son just can’t settle down. I finally got me a daughter-in-law and grandkids, and I can’t even meet them because they won’t exist.”

****

The cough persisted until after classes began, and I wasn’t able to jog or lift weights for a month.

One night I dreamed of Jose. I don’t know if it was something I read in my research that stirred it, but the dream haunted. How he called out to me. “Don’t forget me,” he pleaded in the dream. People like him need to know there’s a Dalhart McIlhenny in the world.

And I never forgot Carmen.

“Hello,” I heard her mother say. “Hello. Who is this calling, please?”

My heart swooned to hear her voice. I wanted to talk to her.

“Hey, this is Dalhart McIlhenny,” I said, my voice edged with the excitement of being in touch with them again. “Is Carmen available?”

“Dalhart? This is Dalhart? Oh, Dalhart, are you all right? We were so worried about you this whole time. It’s been over a month, Dalhart. You broke my baby’s heart. We didn’t know if you were okay. You were so sick when you left us, and then we didn’t hear diddly squat. Not even one call from you. Carmen, my poor, poor baby, has been frantic.”

I had to control myself to keep from choking up. I felt terrible. I’d been so preoccupied with getting well and sorting out my life, I left her hanging. I had barely considered that. I understood why. I didn’t want to light any candles of waiting and want. But suddenly I felt so selfish and wondered why it had taken so long to feel the need to call her.

“Carmen,” I heard her mother yell out, with the phone obviously away from her mouth. “Carmen, dear, it’s Dalhart. Come, baby. He’s calling from— Wait a minute.” I heard a breath into the receiver and knew her mother must be ready to talk again to me. “Dalhart, are you in Gallup? You know where we live, though. Where are you calling from?”

“Texas,” I answered.

“Are you still at your mom’s?”

“No, ma’am. I’m at Texas A&M.”

“Texas A&M? Isn’t that where you went to college?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Let me speak to him, Mother,” I heard Carmen’s voice say in the background.

“Here she is, Dalhart.”

“Dalhart. Is this really you?” Carmen asked.

“Yes, it is, Carmen. I’m so sorry I didn’t call. I love you, Carmen. Please forgive me for not calling until now.”

“Is it true? You’re at your college?”

“Yes, it is,
mi amour
. I have so much to say to you.”

“Is that good?” she fretted.

“It’s up to you if it is. I miss you. I want you to come live with me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Do you think that might happen?”

“I don’t know what to say to you, Dalhart. I can’t believe how you just left me hanging. Now you call and somehow at the snap of your fingers I’m supposed to run off to Texas with you? I’ve lived that life before. No, thanks.”

“I know. Can we talk? Can we talk for the rest of our lives? I was sick, and I told my mother about you and she wants me to marry you, and I had to know if it was the right thing to do.”

“How could you not know that? How could you not know that, Dalhart? What did I not do that you don’t know that by now? You hurt me. You hurt me. I wanted to hurt you back, but you didn’t care enough about me to hurt. Why did you call now? Why all of a sudden now? I’m married.”

The silence was deafening.

“No, I’m not,
cabron
,” she finally said, “but I should be. I haven’t even seen anyone, and I should have been dating every truck driver passing through here. Did I call you
cabron
? I don’t want to see you.”

“Do anyhow. I don’t deserve it, but do it anyhow. I want to marry you. I want you to come here to Texas and marry me.”

“Why should I come to you?”

“Because I don’t deserve it. But I’m in school again. I can’t come out there. I didn’t only just now graduate like I told everyone in Gallup. I’m actually finishing up my master’s degree and soon will start my doctorate. I live in an old wooden shack made in World War I. It’s south of the Texas A&M campus. It has a dining room that’s part of the living room, a bathroom, and two bedrooms. I have a mattress on the floor that would be so cozy to share with you. Do it. Share it and my life.”

I heard her chuckle. “
Pendejo
. My God. Yes, I’ll marry you, Dalhart. Of course, I will. That’s exactly what I want with my life. To spend it with you. I love you, Dalhart. I love you so much. You hurt me so badly. I can’t believe you waited for over a month to get hold of me. You were so unsure of yourself while you were here in Gallup. You sound like you know what you want now. I love that it’s me.”