The Trouble Way (39 page)

When I left for the military, Lonesome adopted my grandfather. Lonesome was with him when he died on the couch in his living room five years later.

I’d told Bella about Lonesome and she gave me a little plush dog for my birthday.

“
His name is Lonesome,” Bella said after I tore the wrapping off. “I picked him out all by myself.”

Lonesome sits on the floor behind my computer desk in my home office. He reminds me of my sister, my grandfather, and of my sweetie, Bella. I can
’t think of a present I like better.

When Bella had a sleepover, we put Lonesome the head of the cot beside her pillow. She loves Lonesome as much as I do. Sometimes she would hug
that little stuffed dog until she fell asleep.

“
Would you sit and watch me while I go to sleep, Papa,” Bella said to me each night she had a sleepover at our house. “I’m just a yiddo scared of the dark.”

“
I’ll sit here until you fall asleep, sweetie,” I said. “Lonesome and I will make sure you are safe, now go to sleep, sweetie. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

Pr
esent

Clouds covered the sky and it became darker by the minute on the path by the river. Bella made her way slowly and stepped carefully on the rocky path. She was next to the river when she heard someone yell her name.

“BELLA ... BELLA ... BELLA ... “

“
I said I was okay,” Bella hollered back up the hill to Don. She saw that Don was walking along the footpath under the bridge when she realized it was not him who called. She could see he was near the cameras.

“
BELLA ... BELLA .... HELP! The voice bellowed again, louder this time. It was not from the direction of the hill but from upriver.

“
Oh my God,” Bella said and she saw the horror she never wanted to see again in her life. “Gracie! Oh my God, Gracie!” Gracie was in the water up to her neck. She was splashing and screaming and she was upstream about fifty yards away.

She looked quickly in the direction of the path where Don was walking and hollered.
“Don ... Don ... Gracie’s in the water. Help me! Call for help!” She saw him under the light post; he turned and began struggling up the hill toward the emergency phone.

“
Bella ... Bella ... Bella.” She could hear the panicked voice again calling her name and she stumbled over the rocks and saw Gracie floating closer. She was not going to make it, Gracie was too far out. She could see a man struggling to get within reach of Gracie ... he was nearly to her.

Bella put the walking stick into the water and stepped one foot in, feeling for the drop off she feared would be there. Her foot slipped, then hit solid ground and she edged the walking stick out a few inches further and inched her foot to the stick.

They were approaching fast and she took two horrifying steps further without the use of the stick. The water now reached her waist. She took a final look back at the bank to assure herself it was still there and raised the walking stick out to the two in the water. The man had grabbed for Gracie’s arm and pulled her close to him. He saw Bella and the walking stick and grabbed for it. He nearly pulled Bella off her feet and she began to scream. She managed to keep her balance. Gracie was closer and Bella reached out her free hand and grabbed the little girl’s sleeve and let loose of her hold on the walking stick. The man let loose of Gracie, who was gripping a stuffed animal. He floated quickly away from Bella and bobbed along with the current next to Bella’s walking stick.

Three men ran at a fast clip down the slope. Don, breathing hard, was humping it far behind.

“I have Gracie. The man is still in the water,” she hollered to the men. “Hurry.”

“
Bring that load lock over here. Make it snappy, we’re going to lose him,” a man from the freight company hollered to another who had the presence of mind to grab the pole used to hold freight in place in a trailer.

The man with the load lock changed direction and headed toward the hollering man. The two men picked up their speed and disappeared in the darkness and out of Bella
’s sight.

Bella unbuttoned her pea coat and snuggled crying Gracie and her water-soaked, stuffed puppy inside her wet wool pea coat and trudged up the hill toward the sound of the sirens.

“I want my Papa,” the little girl cried.

“
Everything is ok, honey. I’ve got you Gracie. Papa will be ok.”

Sirens were wailing louder as they approached and stopped entirely when they ambulance halted on the trail above where the man was in the river.

Truckers had turned several of the tractors toward the river and turned on their headlights.

“
Over here, over here,” someone yelled. “We got him.”

When the emergency vehicle had maneuvered its way down the bike trail, the three truckers had pulled Jake up the bank and onto the grass next to the trail.

“He’s not conscious,” someone said. “He’s breathing but he’s out. He’s got a big cut on his head, anyone got a rag.”

“
I think I clobbered him with the load lock trying to hook him,” one of the truckers said.

“
It’s better than drowning, don’t worry about it. Looks like he’s got more troubles than a cut on the head,” another said. “Here’s the ambulance people. They’ll get him patched up.”

“
I have the little girl,” Bella said approaching the rescuers in a slow walk with the girl, still huddled inside her pea coat. Don caught up with Bella steadying her as she walked.

“
The man is Jake, the little girl’s papa,” Bella said to one of the medics. “I don’t know his last name. She seems to be okay except for being drenched and scared. She’s been calling for Papa.”

“
Where is my Papa?” the little girl said.

“
He’s alive but he’s not going to be talking for a bit,” a rescuer said. “Tell the little girl he will be okay. Let’s get her into the ambulance. We’ll take her to get looked over at the hospital.”

“
You are going to be just fine, Honey,” Bella said. “Your Papa is going to be fine too.” She finally came to realize it was not her baby sister Gracie snuggled in her pea coat but little Bella, the sweet girl she had given the cookie to near the library with her Papa.

“
Papa,” little Bella said. “I want my Papa.”

“
Honey, he’s right here,” She opened her jacket wrapped around Bella and let her see Jake laying on the gurney.

“
It looks like you might need to be looked at too,” the emergency tech looked at Bella in her water-drenched coat. “Hop in the back with the girl. She seems to have taken to you.”

“
Your Papa is right here. Don’t worry honey, we are going to take both of you to the hospital,” Bella said.

Soon the men got Jake, who was strapped to the stretcher, wheeled into the back of the ambulance. Bella held the shivering little girl close and got into the back of the ambulance. They sat on the side bench and the attendant helped belt them in.

Little Bella looked up from her snug place nestled in the heavy wool coat. “Are we going to see my mommy at the hosta-piddle?”

“
Yes, Honey, we are going to see your mommy.”

“
You did real good, Don,” Bella said.

“
That was quick thinking there buddy,” the attendant said to Don. “If you hadn’t acted so quick and called us, old timer, things could certainly have been a lot worse.” Say, do you need that leg looked at?”

“
No. I got my gimpy leg courtesy of LBJ a lifetime time ago.” Don smiled at the driver and gave a wave to Bella and limped away from the vehicle.

The driver slammed the door securely closed. The siren wailed to life and Bella watched as lights flashed blue and red, reflecting off of Don
’s sweaty face, and she cradled the wet little girl in her arms as the ambulance sped off toward the city lights across the river.

Present

Things were not quite right when I woke up. I was having a hell-of-a time shaking off sleep. The fog refused to entirely lift, like when you’re wearing sunglasses on a humid day and get into the car with the air-conditioner on; they fog up around the edges. I could see clearly if I concentrated, but the edges were just a bit out of focus. I looked around; it was obvious I was not in our bed, the sheets felt crinkly, a bit like paper. Priscilla never puts white sheets on the bed and they never have starch. When I moved my arm, it hit something very cold. I turned my head and focused my eyes on the chrome railing; I was in one of those skinny, antiseptic hospital beds. Right beside the pillow was the fuzzy, little, stuffed puppy, Lonesome, staring at me.

My mind was apparently firing on only a few of the available cylinders; I don
’t know for how long. I saw things that weren’t right ... people ... both people I knew, which was quite all right, and several that I knew when they were alive. Now that was a might spooky. Everyone I saw appeared alive. I saw my mom who has been dead for about twenty years and my dad, who’s been dead for half a century. Maybe my mind was just funnin’ with me, like ol’ Roy used to say.

I heard a whole butt-spank of noises. There was beeps coming from someplace behind my head and the sound of a compressor that would kick in every so often, like one of those rigs that you put a couple of quarters in at a 7-11 to put air in your
bike tires. When I heard that, a contraption on my arm tightened making my arm straighten out and, after a minute or so, it relaxed its grip.

I think a lot of noises were just in my mind, only I couldn
’t separate the real from the imagined. The ringing in my ears, that was familiar, those screaming ants. They always seemed to be in a panic, a billion of them running around, screaming their bloody heads off like you’d imagine they would if some kid set off a firecracker in their big anthill. I’m not saying I ever did that, but I’m not saying I didn’t either. I just don’t remember. I could have. I did. Quite a few times actually, until I ran out of firecrackers. I should not have done that.

I lay there motionless a long while under those stiff white sheets. Nobody talked to me, or visited, people I thought should be visiting if I were in a hospital. My mind went a little catty-wampus and I struggled with the thought I might be someplace other than in a hospital. Yeah,
that
place.

My grandfather had a brother that worked in the Insane Asylum in Salem, Oregon when he was young. He told me and my sister stories about what his brother told him about the crazy people in there. About people carrying on an entire conversation with someone but there was nobody there, sometimes screaming at their invisible antagonists. When one of the nuts kicked the bucket, it was his brother
’s job to put them in the back of a buckboard and take the cadavers over to the school that trains doctors. The students dissected them. That hospital still exists only it isn’t called an Insane Asylum anymore. It’s a hospital but the kids call it the Nut House.

It crossed my mind that just maybe I was in the Nut House in Salem.

Anyway, in what seemed to be real conversation, I was telling someone about Bella. I don’t have a clue who I was talking to. Maybe they were obscured by the foggy side of the sunglasses. Anywho, it sure seemed like the real deal.

Here
’s the gist of what I said:

When Bella was three, she fell into the ice-caked Raccoon River and died. I was watching her at the time. I saw as she climbed on the sparkling mound of snow, lean over the iron railing to look at the ice-flow, lose her footing, and tumble into the river. “Papa …hep you,” she said in her little voice as I felt her fingertips touch mine and watched her eyes disappear from sight. I looked over the side and saw her clinging to a floating branch. Something caught my eye and I looked down. Sitting on the bleach white snow like someone placed him there to take his photo was Lonesome, the fuzzy brown stuffed puppy she gave me for my birthday. She named him Lonesome. She couldn’t pronounce her “Ls,” so she said Yonesome. She was working on “Ls” by practicing saying “yong yegs.” She would say, “Long, long, long, then, yong yegs.

That’s how it went. Stupid. I don’t know why I was discussing how she said her “Ls” when I was describing how she was bobbing down the river, clinging to a branch. Or why I thought of the way she said “hep you,” instead of “help me.” It was pretty-much a one-sided conversation because whoever it was I was talking to didn’t responded or consoled me. It was like I was talking to them through a closed bathroom door. They didn’t say diddly-squat.

I
’d always try to anticipate what Bella might want and I’d say “Do you want me to help you?” and she picked up on that. It is some of the first things she said. Except she didn’t get the concept of me and you and when she wanted help, she would say “hep you,” and hold her arms up to me.

The longer I lay there thinking of things, I came to the conclusion that all that was a dream. The fact is, it didn
’t happen like that at all, I don’t think. I was in a fuzzy condition so I’m not entirely sure on the facts. She did fall in the river. That did happen, I’m almost pretty sure of that.

It
’s late summer, we’re almost into fall, and there’s no snow. At least there wasn’t when Bella fell into the river. I’m not so sure now. Seems like I saw snow on a rooftop out of my hospital room window. Who knows, I see dead people too.

I take care of Bella a lot. Her mom works at a hospital and sometimes she is scheduled late at night. It was on one of these scheduled late nights that Bella and I were taking an evening walk along the river on the trail near where the homeless people live in tents. We like walking together and talking about things that happen at her preschool. She tells me about her friends. It was on one of these walks that she told me that she wished I were her daddy. It may have upset her mom; maybe made her a little jealous and maybe made her think that Bella loved me more than she did her.

We always hoped we’d see that old hobo lady that we met by the library. She gave Bella a cookie once. Sometimes we thought we saw her in the distance and we’d holler “Hi,” but she never looked our direction. Maybe she is hard of hearing, but I don’t think so. I think she was ignoring us. She seemed a little schizoid about people, especially authorities.

I remember Priscilla talking to her at a distance once when we brought some sandwiches to the homeless in those tents. She warned us to stay away from the homeless tents because the cops had cameras and they
’d arrest us for encouraging the homeless people to stay by bringing them food.

The grass was really wet from the rain earlier in the day. Bella was wearing the warm mittens I bought for her to replace the loose knit ones that her mom bought for her. The mittens looked nice but they were not practical for keeping little hands warm. Her mom didn
’t seem to have much common sense when it came to warm mittens, among other things. She was wearing the ones I gave her just for the heck of it, not because it was all that cold but because they were new. The mittens had Velcro straps that tightened around her wrists so they wouldn’t fall off. Bella was holding Lonesome in one hand and I had her other hand when she spotted something on the ground and before I knew it, her little hand had slipped out of the mitten and she ran to pick it up. That Velcro strap is for shit.

She was always picking stuff up off the ground. I saw her moving toward the bank and said
“stop.” I’m a person who always tries to think ahead so we practiced that quite often. It was something I thought would be a safety measure to keep her from running into traffic or something like that. When I hollered, she hit the binders and that is when her feet flipped out from under her and she slid down the muddy bank and stopped just short of the water. She gained her footing and sat on a large boulder with Lonesome hugged to her chest. She wasn’t hurt, just frightened and was crying for Papa.

I slid down the bank and that is when she stood and tried to walk toward me on the wet rocks. Her feet slipped and she tumbled back into the water and she was swept away. She had not gone ten feet before she got hung up on a branch floating with its butt end stuck in the rocks on the bank. She clung to the branch and still had Lonesome in one hand. She tried to clamber toward shore but the branch became dislodged and swung loose in an arch into the river. The river was not flowing very fast but her distance from me increased too fast for my taste. I hollered
“Bella ... Bella ... Bella, a bunch of times and she kept screaming Papa, Papa ... her crying interspersed with coughing from the water.

I tried running along the river and the rocks were too big and so I jumped in and swam as fast as I could toward her. The water was cold. I kept hollering
“Bella, Bella, I’m coming.” She was able to keep afloat with her dog paddling.

Every time I think of her in the water, I start crying. I lost her. She was only three and a half and she was in the cold Raccoon River.

She had been taking swim lessons at the Y so at least she didn’t sink. I think the air in her jacket helped to keep her afloat and I think Lonesome also acted as a float.

When I caught up to her, we were both nearly at the end of our endurance and I caught her sleeve and pulled her close and tried to swim toward the bank. She wouldn
’t let loose of the branch or of Lonesome.

We had almost made it to the bank and I heard a woman screaming. She was hollering,
“Gracie, Gracie.” I saw a woman in a black coat, standing nearly to her chest in the water. I thought there was another little girl in the water too and looked around for someone else in the water. She was leaning on a long stick to gauge the depth and kept looking back over her shoulder as if the land would disappear. When Bella and I were within a few feet, the woman bent and stretched her arm to full length and held the stick out to me. I grabbed it.

“
I got you Gracie, I got you.”

Anyway, I think that is the way it happened. Maybe I
’m getting reality and my dreams all backwards-assward. What I’m terrified of, I think I lost Bella.

I remember looking down and seeing two wires and a hose sticking out of my stomach. It was a thick black hose, like a soaker hose Priscilla uses in her flowerbeds. It had a sort of spongy feeling. There was a catheter sticking out of that special private opening. There was no spongy feel to it. It was fairly stiff, similar to a hose you
’d use to siphon gas, and damn near as large and its surface had the texture of an emery board.

My left arm was totally black and hurt like a bastard. Even my fingernails were bruised blue. There were needles attached to clear tubes stuck in the back of both hands and a metal clamp on the middle finger of my right hand. Once I touched my forehead with my good arm and felt a huge lump there. I must have hit my head on something in the river. I was covered with a sheet and a hanky-thin blanket. I was colder than the brain freeze, like after from taking a huge gulp of a Mocha Frappuccino, I shit you not. Roy used to say that; now I say it all the time, it comes in handy, I shit you not.

Roy was one smooth talking sonofabitch. Once back in college at Monmouth, he talked his way out of a DUI ticket. He and I were soused. We’d been guzzling Buds (You could buy a six-pack of Bud for a buck at the pizza parlor in Independence. They put six bottles, loose, in a paper bag. Monmouth was dry. Right.) with him all night, but we made it all the way home. When he pulled into the parking area of the apartment complex where he lived, he jumped the curb, missing his drive completely. Damn near broke my neck hitting the ceiling when he jumped the curb.

A cop happened to be sitting in his cruiser watching the show and he threw on his flashers and pulled in behind Roy
’s Corvette. “Cut that corner a bit short, didn’t you?” he said after examining Roy’s license.

Roy, with a straight face, calmer than shit, said:
“I always take that corner like that.”

The cop laughed his butt off at that and let Roy off with a verbal warning. What
’s the chances of getting a cop with a sense of humor. Probably two, zero and none.

I think Roy
’s luck is a direct result of him being confirmed in the Lutheran Church back in high school. It’s a mystery to me why I was the only kid in my class that I know of that didn’t get invited to that confirmation bullshit, the only one that wasn’t Catholic or Mormon, that is.

I definitely could have used it more than those other do-gooders in my class, especially after that vamp, Janis, transferred in from Virginia during our senior year and blatantly set out to exploit my susceptible, ignorant ass. If anybody needed guidance in avoiding sin, it was me. But, what happened, my church
’s flock left me to play with the vamp. Janis led me down a sinful path of lust and grab-ass in the pine needles – literally. I’ve mostly forgiven them. I’ve forgiven Janis too but it’s taken fifty years.

Roy was an original thinker too. He played on a town league basketball team. They were sponsored by a steak house called the Lakeside Grill. He came up with the team name.