The Leisure Seeker: A Novel (18 page)

John does what I say. “Now put pressure against the table and try to lift yourself with your hands. Now see if you can get some traction with your feet.”

“Damn it,” says John, almost getting his elbow up onto the bench. Then he collapses back into the dirt.

I am picturing how it could be done in my head, but we’re both shook up and scared and dirty and tired. I want to cry, but it won’t do any good. We’ll still be here on the ground when I’m done bawling.

John hurts his back trying to do it again. I decide that it’s my turn. I know I won’t be able to lift myself up onto the picnic table, but I look over at the steps that flip out from the Leisure Seeker when you open the side door. It’s about fifteen feet from where I am, so I steel myself for the long rough scoot over there.

“What are you doing?” says John.

“I’m going to get over to the door of the van, see if I can get in that way.”

John grunts. But I can’t tell if it’s a “That’s a good idea” grunt or a “You’re out of your mind” grunt.

It takes me a good fifteen minutes to get halfway there. I lift, I scoot. I lift, I scoot. I am literally moving an inch at a time. The ground is hard here, so very hard, so many stones and pebbles biting into my hands and fanny. I’m sweating pretty bad now and it doesn’t take long before it’s in my eyes. This is the problem with having almost no hair—sweat goes straight down into your eyes. As I stop and wipe under my glasses with my filthy hands, I remember something from a guidebook, how we are in what the Mexicans called the “bad country.” All the rock formations caused by black lava, with tinges of red that was supposed to be the blood of an awful
monster slain by some gods of war. I don’t know why I remember these things, but I can’t help it.

The bad country indeed. I’m afraid the black earth is already tinged with the blood of this fat old broad. It’s certainly getting no softer as I shrimp my way to the van. I’m numb from all this scraping, but for once I’m glad I’ve got this big rump to protect myself from the ground. This would hurt a lot more if I were one of those bony, rail-thin, smoked-for-a-hundred-years old crones. But then, if I was one of them, I could probably stand up.

John has given up and laid his head against the bench of the picnic table.

“John, why don’t you start heading over here yourself? If I can get up a little bit, maybe you can help.”

He lifts his head up from the bench, nods, then lays it back down, lulled to sleep by the whirr of the projector. I’m on my own.

Something happens when you’re stuck on the ground in the near-dark, scared to death, not sure if you’re ever going to stand up again, wondering what kind of shape you’ll be in when they find you here in the morning. This is what happens: time stretches, pulls and folds itself over, then stretches itself again like Turkish Taffy that’s been in your pocket all day. Right now, I have no idea if we’ve been on the ground for two hours or twenty minutes.

I keep scooting, nothing else to do. John is asleep by the bench. He will wake up wondering what he’s doing on the ground. He will blame me for it, I’m sure of it. I get blamed
just because I’m the only person around to blame. That’s what will happen. He will awaken in a foul mood, thinking I’ve pushed him to the ground. He will yell at me.

Ow. Ow. Ow.
I keep scooting. I hear that damn coyote again. If he comes here, thinking he’s got an easy meal, he will be wrong. He will find what he thinks is a big fat buffet, but he won’t think that for long. He will find a fight. I fought two men yesterday, so I’m not afraid of a coyote. I will kill him with my hands.

This is not where we are supposed to die.

After three breathers, cutting my hand on a piece of glass, crushing a large bug that I first think is a scorpion, but turns out to be a cicada or something, I’m finally at the steps of the van. They are small aluminum flip-down steps, very narrow, much too narrow for my wide beam, but I know they are sturdy because they are what we use to step into the van. Best of all, they are only a couple of inches from the dirt.

I back myself up to the lowest step, feel it with my wrists, which are mostly numb by this time. I take a hard breath and lift. I’m shaking, but I manage to raise myself onto the step. The narrow sides dig deep into my fanny, but at least I’m able to stay put. My tailbone feels secure on the step. It’s such a relief just to be above the ground, I want to rest for about a half hour, but I don’t. I grip the sides of the tiny steps and try to pull myself up again. This time, I can push ever so slightly with my heels as well. I make it up to the second step, but my butt does not feel as secure as it did on the first step. I shift my hands up farther, above the second step, and kick hard into
the dirt with my heels. I’m so exhausted by this time, the tears are pouring from my eyes, but if I don’t do this, we’re going to be on the ground all night. I don’t know if we can survive that.

I push hard and make it to the third step. I’m sitting on my hands now and it hurts. I pull one hand out, then the other, taking care not to lose my balance. I’m shaking so badly now, I don’t know what to do.

“John!” I yell to him, as loudly as I can. I realize that I have not been yelling loudly enough, for fear of waking others. There’s no one around. If there was, they could help us.

“John! Goddamn it!” I scream this time and it rouses him slightly. I see the head rise from the bench, then fall back down.

I search the ground around me. There are stones in the dirt, like the kind that have made my snail’s journey so hard on my hands. I pick up three of the marble-sized rocks along with a handful of dust. My hands are so filthy now, I don’t even care anymore. I chuck a stone at John and miss. I throw another one and miss again. I throw another, much harder, and this one hits home. John gets it in the side of the noggin. I’m ashamed to say that I’m rather pleased. There is a click as it connects, at least partly, with the earpiece of his glasses.

“Ow!” says John. “What the hell?”

“John! Get over here and help me get up these steps.” Why am I doing this? It will take him at least a half hour to get over here. I just don’t see why I have to do this by myself. I throw another rock at John and it hits him in the leg.

“Aah! Quit it! Quit hitting me.” John rises slightly, clutching at the picnic table bench. Quickly, I grab more stones and keep tossing them at him.

“Would you stop it? You’re hurting me.”

I don’t say a damned thing. I keep throwing rocks at my husband. It’s angering him just enough for him to forget how feeble he is. He drags himself to his knees. I land a quarter-sized rock right in his ribs. He yowls and grabs at the top of the picnic table, lifts himself up all the way, groaning. I didn’t think we would do it this way, but this will do.

“Get your ass over here and help me up,” I say to him.

“Go to hell.”

“John, please. I dragged myself all the way here just so I could get you up.”

“I’m going to bed,” he says, rubbing his eye with a filthy finger.

“You can’t get in the van until you help me up.”

I watch him make his way toward me. He shifts and veers a little bit, probably unsteady from being on the ground for so long. But as he approaches me, his gait is better, his stride stronger, the way it usually is. Tonight was just a bad night for him. I just needed to wake him up and annoy him enough for adrenaline to take over.

He unplugs the extension cord at the van outlet and the projector clicks off. John steps back toward the door. Something in his eyes changes as he towers over me.

“You’re all dirty,” he says, looking at me no longer with anger, but with tenderness.

“Help me up, John,” I say.

John grabs one of the large metal handles he installed years ago on both sides of the door, leans forward and I reach out for him to pull me up, but instead, he bends down farther. He kneels at my feet and starts to tie my shoe. I have a hard time tying my shoes and often he has to do it for me. It’s hardly what I’m concerned with at the moment, but I’m not going to stop him if he feels the need.

John ties a sloppy but secure bow on my dirty SAS orthopedic.

“Thank you, John,” I say to my husband.

He smiles. “Hell, honey, you do all kinds of things for me.”

John leans forward and kisses me on the lips. I can feel the cracks in them, the dry skin, but they feel fine just the same. I put my hand on his bristly face. Then he grabs my arm at the elbow and pulls me from the steps.

I’m up. We’re not dead yet. My legs are throbbing, but they are steady enough to support me as I turn and grab the handle on the other side of the door with both hands. I pull my foot up onto the first tiny step, then the other foot. After a moment, I make it up to the next step.

“Wait a second,” says John. He starts brushing the dirt off my backside.

“We’re going to be out here all night if you try to sweep off my entire rear end,” I say, too tired to even laugh.

“Hush,” he says, patting, rubbing away.

So I hush and let him brush me off. Before long, I start
to feel more relaxed. My legs stop quivering. My breathing returns to normal. I did not expect a brush-down to soothe me so, but it does. John’s touch hasn’t changed through the years, still gentle, though his hands are toughened, stiffened, knobbed, and spotted with age, like everything else on our bodies. I experience a twinge of desire for him, through all the discomfort, through all the fear, through all the fatigue. I stand there on the steps, clutching the grip with both hands. I close my eyes.

We don’t wake up until 1:35 in the afternoon the next day. It’s then, when I open my eyes, that I feel as if I’ve gone ten rounds with Rocky Graziano. There are tears in my eyes before I even open them. It’s discomfort, certainly, but also the other thing, the knowing. And the discomfort only brings you closer to that.

Before we went to sleep, I took all my meds, including two little blue pills, then gave John three extra-strength Tylenol and a Valium. I locked the door from the inside. There were no late-night visits to the bathroom, no disturbances, no episodes with John. Exhaustion trumps all disease. For the moment, the body minds only its most immediate need. The rest are left to sit in the corner, unaccustomed to the lack of attention.

I can’t decide if we should try to keep moving today or stay put to rest. I think of Kevin, always the cautious one, saying to me, “Mom, if you feel tired or shaky, take it easy. That’s
when accidents occur. Everything always happens at once.” He’s right, too. Even when you’re at your usual level of misery, you can maintain a certain stability. You’re operating from a familiar place. But when you’re extra scared or fatigued or discomfortable, some other bad thing is bound to happen. The past two days confirm this theory: a flat tire, a stickup, and a bad fall. The Morton Salt girl had it right. When it rains, it damn well pours.

Yet part of me needs to carry on, to trudge forward and shake hands with our grubby destiny. Though I know that it is not to be trusted, that destiny, with his loud plaid polyester suit, his halitosis, his cubic zirconium pinkie ring. Soon enough, we will stumble into his realm where he will heartily slap us on our backs with a meaty dampish paw, smile at us with nicotine teeth and promise us—
this fate here? That’s the best one on the lot
.

Inertia makes the decision for me. I fall back into a semi-conscious state. Around 3:30, John has an accident in bed. This is the first time that this has happened. The warmth seeps toward me, snaps my eyes open. At least it gets us out of bed. My first instinct is to yell at him, but I know it was an accident. Besides, I’m too tired to get mad. I do have to get those sheets off the bed. After I head for the bathroom myself.

When I come out, John has stripped down and is trying to tug a pair of different pants over his pissy drawers. There’s other stuff on the drawers, too, but I’ll spare you a description.

“John, you have to change your underwear.”

“Ah, shut up,” he says to me.

He can’t pull up the pants because he’s sore from last night. “Go into the bathroom and wash up. You
stink
.”

“No, I don’t. I’m fine.” He keeps tugging.

This not washing has been a problem for some time. I’m fed up with it. “All right then. Let me help you,” I say. “Here, just step out of them.”

He stops struggling with the pants. “Why?”

“It’ll be easier. We’ll get you set right up.”

John lets the pants fall to the floor and steps out of them. I reach over to our little junk drawer and pull out the pair of scissors he uses to trim the bread bag ends. Since I’m behind him, he can’t see me snip through the waistband of his shorts. By the time he realizes what I’m doing, I’m down to the hem. I let them fall on the floor.

“Goddamn it. What the hell are you doing?”

“I’ll have a new pair for you in a minute.” I scuttle over to our cardboard clothes chest as fast as my throbbing legs can carry me and snatch a pair of fresh shorts. Then I grab a bar of soap and run two washcloths under warm water. Meanwhile, John is trying to pull the pants on over his bare ass.

“Just a second,” I say. “Sit down. Then we can get the pants on.” He parks his butt on our table with his thing just staring up at me. I rub soap onto one of the washcloths and hand it to him. “Here. Wash yourself off.”

He grumbles, but he does it. It’s nowhere near a good job, but it helps. While he does that, I strip the bed. The mattress is vinyl covered, so it just needs to be wiped down. Then I take
the washcloth, the crusty shorts, the old pants, and the sheets and put them in a garbage bag to be thrown away. Time to start shedding things.

John is just barely able to get the clean shorts up over his knees and over his rump. I take the other washcloth and wipe down his face and neck. Soon, he starts to enjoy his French bath, telling me how good it feels. He always hates the idea of a bath, but once you get him clean, he feels a lot better. I spray him head to toe with Right Guard, then we wrestle on clean Sansabelts and a loud Hawaiian shirt that he picks out. By then, his mood is changed.