What Difference Do It Make? (14 page)

Next place we stopped was in the Lincoln bedroom. I swear everthing in that place was gold! Gold curtains, gold carpet, gold chairs. There was even a giant golden crown over the top of the bed. I was standin there tryin to keep my mouth from hangin open when I heard Laura Bush speak up. “Well, hi, sweetheart. I'm so glad you made it.”

I turned around and wadn't lookin at nobody but the president hisself.

George W. Bush walked right up to me and stuck out his hand. “Denver Moore! What an honor to meet you, sir.”

Well, I felt like I had to be dreamin now. Here was the president of the United States of America, treatin me, a poor homeless man off the street, like I was some kinda important person. I didn't know what to think. I don't even remember what I said back to him . . . somethin 'bout bein glad to meet him, too, I imagine. But I shook George W. Bush's hand, and I ain't the smartest fox in the barnyard, but in that handshake I felt like a whole lotta history passed through: croppin all year just so I could pay the Man, passin by water fountains where a colored man couldn't get a drink, and spendin most a' my life bein called a nigger. Bein dragged by my neck behind horses when I was sixteen years old. Scratchin and scrapin and bathin in fountains in Fort Worth. And now here I was, an ol' 'cropper with a prison record, shakin hands with the most powerfulest man on the earth.

Ain't nothin that can do somethin like that but love. The love Miss Debbie had for the homeless had carried me all the way to the White House. And while the president still had ahold a' my hand, God reminded me of that scripture where He says, “Through Me, all things are possible.”

All
things. Did you hear me?

The president was a real Texas fella like Mr. Ron, wearing boots and a cowboy belt with his suit. I liked that. Made him seem kinda regular.

Next thing Mr. Bush did was walk over to that war hero fella, Marcus, and I remember exactly what he said. He said, “Marcus, when I gave you your medal, I gave you my phone number and told you you could call me anytime, day or night. You put your life on the line for our country, and I want to do whatever I can for you. You haven't called me. I want you to call me.”

Marcus smiled and was mighty humble. “Yes sir, I've got your number, and I know I can call if I need to.”

Well, we got finished lookin at the Lincoln bedroom and walked out in the hallway again and looked the place over some more. The president hung around with us for 'bout thirty minutes. Him and Mr. Ron knew some of the same folks in Dallas, and I heard 'em talkin about how Mr. Ron and Miss Debbie used to sit behind the Bushes at the Texas Rangers game when Carson and Regan and the Bush girls was little and Mr. Bush owned part a' the team.

Purty soon this other fella came out and told us, “Lunch is served,” and we all marched into a fancy dining room. The president couldn't stay with us for lunch. Laura Bush said somethin had happened in one of them foreign countries, and he had to go tend to it.

Well, lunch came. I don't remember what they served exactly, but them waiters in black bow ties brung us lots a' different plates, a little a' this and a little a' that. I liked the food purty good, but I was still mighty worried about my teeth.

Someone introduced me to the president's brother and sister. There was another lady there that had wrote a book, and I remember it because I liked the way the title sounded:
The Glass Castle
.

All them folks was real nice to me. When it got near the end of the meal, I thought it'd be polite to say how much I appreciated it, so I got everbody's attention. “I want to thank all you folks for invitin me here today,” I said. “It's the greatest honor of my life. I wish I could thank you all by name, but to tell you the truth, all you Bushes look alike. Matter a' fact, all you white folks look alike.”

I was just tellin it like it was, but I still thought Mr. Ron was gon' have a heart attack.

Lookin back on that day, I can't hardly believe I had lunch at the White House sittin between Laura Bush and the governor of Texas's wife. I didn't know whether to be happy or scared. It kinda reminded me a' that time when Miss Debbie and all them white ladies was sittin outside the mission in Miss Debbie's car, tryin to get me to go up to that Christian “retreat.” 'Course, this White House thing was just one meal, with just
two
white ladies to sit between. I thought I could handle that better than goin up to the mountains with a whole carload a' white ladies and them wantin to cry and pray over me.

'Course, if I hadn't gone to that retreat and had so many folks prayin over me, I might not have ever been sittin there at the White House. I had gone from livin in the bushes to eatin with the Bushes, and I know a whole lotta prayer went into that.

CARMEN

Bossy White Lady

I was hopin God had done broke the mold for bossy white ladies when he made Miss Debbie. But that was about like hopin Oprah Winfrey was gon' ask me to marry her, and sho ‘nough, I met Miss Carmen Brown, this lady on the radio down there in Florida. Miss Carmen is on a show called
The Morning Cruise with Dave, Bill, and Carmen.
She looks like a white man's dream, and I ain't gon' say she was my nightmare, but I will say she pushed me way past the limit on my comfortability.

First thing she did was float me and Mr. Ron up all across Florida on her radio show, like one of them hot-air balloons. Then she and her radio friends started up a great big bicycle ride to raise money for the homeless and got folks from all over the state to join in. I'm tellin you the truth, that lady can talk to a stump and make it listen! She been talkin 'bout me and Mr. Ron on the radio for more than two years now, and ain't no sign of her shuttin up.

I learned a lot from knowin Miss Carmen—geography and stuff like that. First time me and Mr. Ron went to Florida for a visit, we was havin us some breakfast down by the ocean. Now, I ain't gon' lie, I was tired of Mr. Ron draggin me all across the country. I asked him, said, if he was such a good businessman, why didn't he take care a' all our business the first time we was here so we wouldn'ta come back to the same place?

Mr. Ron looked at me over his coffee. “Denver, this is our first trip here,” he said.

“It sure ain't!” I said. “I remember sittin right here by the water that don't stop just a couple a' months ago.”

“Denver, that was California. We're in Florida, all the way on the other side of America, three thousand miles away.”

Well, my eyes got pretty big then. “Mr. Ron,” I said, “you mean to tell me that Florida went and got themselves a ocean too?”

That wadn't the last time I seen the ocean in Florida 'cause Miss Carmen invited me to come back again and again. Fact is, if I answered my phone ever time she called, she'd have me busy till the Lord came back to claim me.

One day in 2007, she bought me a ticket on a aeroplane and showed up at the airport to get me. And there she was, this blonde white lady drivin this flashy white-on-white-in-white foreign somethin-or-other. She wrapped me up in a hug like I was family. Color didn't matter to her, but it did to me. My mind just kinda went back in time to the trouble I'd had with white ladies—like that time I tried to change a flat tire for one of 'em and wound up with a rope around my neck and white boys holdin the other end. I was scared, real scared, like a brother at a Klan rally. Then Miss Carmen pushed a button on the dash, and the whole top a' that car come off and slipped down in the trunk. And there I was, sittin in the front seat of that white lady's white convertible, and me stickin out like a hunk of coal in a snowbank. But Miss Carmen was real proud, and she drove me around town like I was one a' them famous astronauts comin home from a moonwalk.

Now, bein in radio, Miss Carmen knows lots a' famous singers. I ain't really no singer, and I told her that, but that didn't matter 'cause she's like Miss Debbie. When I say I can't do somethin, she don't listen. Before I knowed it, Miss Carmen had done flew me up to Nashville and introduced me to lots of famous singers, like Chris Tomlin. I even got to do a little singin with 'em.

After I got back to Texas, Miss Carmen showed up
again
, this time at Mr. Ron's ranch takin lots of pictures, askin too many questions, and bossin me around just like Miss Debbie did, thinkin she was gon' make me be her best friend. I guess she did a purty good job 'cause today Miss Carmen is 'bout the best white lady friend I got.

20

Ron

B
y the end of 2007, Denver and I had crisscrossed the country dozens of times, speaking at least 250 events. I got so busy on the road, trying to change the world, that I never considered the possibility that I was as broken and needy as the homeless people I championed.

After nearly a hundred events during the first five months of 2008, I retreated again to Italy. I landed in Pietrasanta, an artists' colony and the destination of great sculptors who for centuries went, and still go, to carve the famous Carrera marble. One evening I was enjoying a Cuban cigar and a local wine made from Tuscan grapes with a cadre of international artists when my phone rang.

It was my mama. Dad had fallen. Mom had called 911, and the ambulance had already whisked Dad away to North Hills Hospital.

“Come home, son,” she said, sounding at the end of her rope. “Your dad's asking for you. He's driving me crazy, and I'm praying he doesn't make it.”

From anybody else, that might've seemed callous. But Tommye Hall had put up with a whole lot of grief from her husband over the decades. She was getting old, and I couldn't blame her for wanting to leave this earth with a little peace and quiet under her belt.

I hopped the next plane out of Rome, but Dad still beat me back from the hospital and was at home when I arrived in Haltom City. He was back up, ornery as usual, and complaining about the cost of the ambulance. “Tommye shouldn't have called the ambulance; she should have called the neighbors! There wasn't nothing wrong with me except I couldn't get up!”

Then he said in that joking way that lets you know a person is at least half serious, “Maybe your mother and I will just move in with you. I'll bet it's lonesome in that big ol' mansion with just Denver and you.”

I laughed and asked him if he was trying to audition as a stand-up comic.

Later that week, I was sitting on Mama and Daddy's porch, talking with a longtime neighbor, David.

“I hate to tell tales out of school, Ronnie Ray, but I'm worried about your daddy,” David said. “Earl gets in his truck several times a day and lights out for who knows where. And whenever we ask him where he's been, he can't remember. Only time anybody knows for sure where he's been is when he comes back carryin a fifth of Jim Beam.”

I glanced over at Dad's little red pickup sitting in the driveway. I knew he hadn't been sliding over to the Tailless Monkey since it had been shut for at least twenty years.

David looked me right in the eye. “He's gonna kill somebody, Ronnie.”

I agreed.

That day, I confiscated my parents' car keys. Mama took it in stride. Daddy screamed like a panther and fought me to get them back. “I ain't never had no wreck or no ticket!” he hollered.

I looked at him and said, “Dad, that's God's mercy, defined.”

That night, he fell again. Mama called 911 again. After a few days at North Hills, I moved him to Life Care Center of Haltom, a nursing home. He wouldn't have accepted that from me, but his doctor didn't give him a choice.

I checked him into his room, which had two beds, one of which was empty. That was a good thing since a roommate would've given Daddy an accomplice in planning an escape.

Earl looked at Jerri, the head nurse, a fiftyish blonde, and said, “Honey, I gotta have at least two Jim-Beam-and-Cokes before dinner—not too much Coke—and a cigar for dessert.”

Jerri, who might've been a pageant queen in her younger days, had the sweet smile of a caregiver and the eyes of a drill sergeant. “You try that, Mr. Hall, and you'll be out on the street.”

For the next three weeks, during what must have been basically detox for him, Daddy called me at least ten times a day.

“Why'd you leave me here?”

“Come get me!”

“If you love me, you'll bring me some whiskey!”

I thought about that. The man was ninety years old and had been pickling his innards since before I was in Little League. He was at least ten years past being sent away for treatments and didn't have much longer to live. Why make him spend his last weeks in misery?

So what the heck. I bought him a large Coke at a Sonic drive-in, poured out half, and filled her up with Jim Beam.

When I arrived at the nursing home, Daddy was sitting in a wheelchair beside his bed, watching TV.

I held out the Sonic cup. “Here, you want a Coke?”

He waved me off. “Nah, I don't want no Coke.”

“You better take a drink of it before you turn it down.”

I handed him the Coke, and he took a sip. A big ol' grin blossomed on his face; then tears blossomed in his eyes. “You really do love me,” he said.

A few days after I took Daddy the loaded Sonic Coke, I moved Mama in with him. It turned out he hadn't needed an accomplice, and every time the nurses weren't looking, he had tried to make a break for freedom on his own.

After sixty-five miserable years of marriage, Mama did not go willingly. But she finally agreed to occupy the other bed in the room.

My telephone rang at two the next morning. “Ron, there's an old woman in my room that's been chewing my ass out all night!” Dad warbled into the phone. “I haven't done nothing to her. No sex, no nothing—hell, I ain't even kissed her, and I ain't goin' to! Can you come down here and make her leave?”

“An old woman?” I said, ribbing him a little. “Who in the world is it?”