After the Flag Has Been Folded (22 page)

There seemed to be no escape from the idea that one of us was fated to burn up, either in this life or the next one. It wasn't long after that incident that I introduced my sister to Christ. Linda was in the bathtub, shaving her legs. I went in and sat on the toilet lid to visit with her. When you live in a household full of women, the bathroom often serves as a conference room. It wasn't uncommon for all three of us girls to be crowded in there at once, but Mama was at work that night. Black-and-white images of nude Grecian women graced the matching wallpaper, shower curtain, and window coverings. Mama had gone all out decorating that bathroom.

I had been praying for Linda's salvation for a long time. My heart thudded and my palms grew clammy as I worked up the courage to talk to her about God's saving grace. “Do you know what a Christian is?” I began.

“Sure,” Linda said. “Somebody who believes in God.”

“Yep,” I replied. “But not only in God, but in his Son, Jesus Christ.”

“I believe in Jesus,” she replied.

“I know you do,” I said. “But have you ever invited him into your
life? To be Lord of your life?” Linda looked at me quizzically. “The Bible says in James that even the demons believe in God,” I explained. “It's not enough to believe. You have to ask Jesus to forgive you of your sins and to be Lord of your life.”

“How do you do that?” she asked.

“Well, you just pray. I could pray with you if you like.”

“No,” Linda said. She'd responded so quickly and sharply, I thought I'd offended her. I rose to leave.

“It doesn't have to be anything fancy, Linda.” I said. “You just say that you know Jesus died for your sins, that you're sorry for them, and then you ask him to come into your heart and be Lord of your life.”

“Okay,” she said.

I left the room without shutting the door behind me.

About ten minutes later, Linda called out to me. “Karen,” she said.

I came and stood in the doorway. Linda's dark hair was soaped up and piled high atop her head. I couldn't tell if she had been crying or if the soap had reddened her eyes. “I did it,” she said.

“Did what?” I asked stupidly.

“I asked Jesus into my heart,” she said.

I squealed. Tears streamed down my face. At least one other member of my family was saved from hell's eternal flames. And now, finally, there was somebody else in the house that could help pray for Frank and Mama.

Once the smoke-damaged kitchen, covered by insurance, was restored, there was nothing about that house that needed changing. We all loved it. It felt permanent, like a home should. We'd been living in a trailer since June 1966. Mama had spent years going to school, first to get her GED, then her LPN, and finally her RN certification. It hadn't been easy, but she didn't have time for complaining. She just did what she thought needed to be done. Mama couldn't fix the fact that Daddy had died, but she was bound and determined that his death wasn't going to keep us from having the kind of life he would've given us. She had wanted a home of her own since she'd
returned stateside. She'd been saving for a down payment from the moment she got back to Rogersville.

Now that we had our own place, Mama wanted to bring Grandpa Harve back to live with us. When his health started to decline, Mama's brothers had placed Grandpa in a skilled nursing facility. Now that Mama had a nursing degree, she figured she could care for him better than anyone. But before she could make arrangements to bring her daddy home, he died. He had taken ill with pneumonia. Mama didn't know until the brothers called to tell her their daddy was dead. Uncle Roy and Aunt Katherine sent Grandpa back to be buried in Rogersville.

We made the trip to Tennessee during November 1971. There wasn't any snow on the ground, but the sky was the color of concrete and the ground was frozen and nearly as hard. Only a handful of people showed up at the burial. Mostly family members and a few of the townsfolk, whom Grandpa used to greet on the street, back when he was walking patrol as a Rogersville policeman. Uncle Woody, who worked part-time as a preacher doing pulpit supply, gave the eulogy. Mama didn't say anything. She shed her tears only when her brothers weren't around.

Mama thought crying was a weakness. She was always trying to be strong whenever Uncle Carl or Uncle Woody was nearby. Only Uncle Charlie, who was the closest to her in age, was allowed to see beyond Mama's tough-gal demeanor. She couldn't fool him. Charlie knew Mama better than any of her brothers. But he wasn't at the funeral because he couldn't afford to make the trip from Oregon. He was self-employed as a roofer, and any time off meant a loss of income.

Mama was thirty-four when Grandpa Harve died. She was now an orphan, a widow, and the mother of three fatherless children. Grandpa Harve didn't live long enough to tell his daughter how proud he was that she'd gotten her nursing degree. He never told her that she was sure brave to tackle her education while trying to care for three kids by her lonesome. I don't even know if he ever told
Mama that he loved her, but she knew he did and he knew she loved him. That was enough for the both of them, and to hell with what anybody else thought. Mama never said it, but I always knew that losing her daddy hurt her. Other than her son, the two men she'd loved most in life were both dead. And shortly after Grandpa died, Frank ended up in the hospital.

F
RANK ARRIVED BY AMBULANCE AT THE
M
EDICAL
C
ENTER IN
C
OLUMBUS, THE SAME HOSPITAL WHERE
M
AMA
worked the night shift. By the time we arrived, he had an oxygen tube up his nose and an IV pumping fluids into his vein. Doctors weren't sure what happened to him. Frank had collapsed after class. A classmate had found him, barely breathing. They administered CPR and called for an ambulance. So far the tests were inconclusive.

Mama had been unusually quiet on the way to the hospital. The trip from our new home to the hospital took fifteen minutes, long enough for her to smoke two cigarettes. She didn't have to warn Linda and me to behave; hospitals put the fear of death into us anyway. We didn't say a word to her, to each other, or to Frank. I stood at least a foot away from the bed and watched his chest rise up and down, ever so slowly.

Mama walked up to the bed and touched his arm. Frank's eyes fluttered, then opened. “Hey, son,” Mama said.

“Hi,” Frank replied. He looked quizzically at the IV.

“You probably don't remember collapsing, do you?” Mama asked.

“No, ma'am,” he replied.

“You'll be fine,” she said.

I looked over at Linda. She looked at me. We both wondered the same thing—how did Mama know Frank would be okay? Mama
conferred with a doctor for a while, then she told Linda and me to wait outside for her.

There was a row of chairs in a television room at the end of the hallway, but Linda and I stood, silently, watching as glassy-eyed people wearing hospital gowns and fluffy slippers stared at the TV or at us.

Mama smoked three cigarettes on the drive home. The only thing she said was “You ought to pray for your brother.”

When I got home I called Pastor Charlie and my friends Karen Mendenhall, Patsy Ward, and Lynn Wilkes. I told them Frank was in the hospital and the doctors were running tests. We didn't know what was wrong. Mama wasn't saying much, but I could tell she was worried sick. Mama has a nervous stomach. Whenever she gets upset, she gets sick to her stomach. She'd been in the bathroom since we got back home.

“You want me to come over?” Lynn asked.

“Nah,” I said. “We'll be okay. Just pray for Frank.”

“All right,” she said. “But call me if you need anything.”

Frank spent four days in the hospital. If the doctors knew what was wrong with him, they never told Mama. They just sent him home with a handful of prescription drugs, mostly antidepressants. It was actually drugs that had landed him in the hospital to begin with. The morning he collapsed, Frank had taken about twenty barbiturates.

A month or so later he was in the hospital again, this time for taking a handful of uppers. Frank had never smoked pot until he was a cadet at Lyman Ward. It was there that a buddy from Birmingham introduced him to pot and other recreational drugs. The classmate, a doctor's son, had unlimited access to all sorts of red, white, and blue goodies. And being a generous soul, he shared them freely with my brother. Frank left Lyman Ward with a ferocious craving for something he couldn't quite figure out.

As a nurse. She had to wonder if Frank's problems were drug-related, but if she suspected it, she didn't let on to any of us. What she told us was that Frank's asthma was acting up. She never once
mentioned the possibility of drug abuse, and it never occurred to me. I was pretty sheltered from the drug culture. Shoot, beer was considered taboo by most of my friends. Our Southern Baptist Sunday-school teachers had given us the drill about the evils of alcohol. I believed Mama when she claimed Frank's problems were asthma-induced.

We were all worried that Frank wasn't going to make it to his graduation in May 1972, but he did.

Patsy went with us. Mama had invited her to come along; Patsy had been praying for Frank and Mama for a long time. All of us girls dressed up, like we were going to church on Easter Sunday, except instead of wearing pink floral outfits, we all had on various hues of navy and red. The ceremony was held on the lawn directly in front of the school. We sat on bleachers and folding chairs as somber-faced cadets marched before us, wearing spit-shined shoes, white gloves, and hats that hid their eyes, and carrying rifles. A military band played, and we stood every time the Stars and Stripes passed. There was nothing lighthearted about the event. The cadets flipped rifles and flags with the precision possessed by military drill teams. And when they sat down or stood up, it was in perfect harmony, as one body, not as individuals. At Lyman Ward, individualism was regarded as self-indulgence. Nobody ever wanted to be singled out—they all wanted to fit in, to be part of the whole. On the surface, Frank appeared to fit in very well. He was a model cadet.

To celebrate Frank's graduation, Mama took us all out to a catfish house for dinner. The waiter, a young college kid from nearby Auburn University, asked Patsy how she wanted her fish cooked.

“What do you mean?” she asked. Typically, Southerners prepare fish one way—deep-fried. But this was a nicer restaurant, one that broiled fish. The waiter explained to Pasty that she had a choice.

“So what if I tell you I want it raw?” she asked.

“You can have the fish prepared any way you wish, Miss,” the fellow replied. If he was flustered by her question, he didn't show it.

“I'm only teasing,” Patsy said, flashing a smile. She ordered her fish fried like everybody else. But not one to be outdone by Patsy's flirtatious manner, the waiter served her a platter of raw catfish. Patsy's jaw dropped as she considered for a moment that she really might have to eat the cold flesh. (This was long before the sushi craze swept the country.) The rest of us burst into a fit of laughter. Even Mama was tickled by the smart-aleck stunt.

Later, Mama took us on our second family vacation since Daddy died. We spent a week in Orlando at Florida's newest attraction, Walt Disney World. This time Mama didn't take along any of her nursing buddies. The only thing she drank that week was iced tea.

Frank's future plans were unclear. Lewis had made some calls to some high-ranking officials, and they helped get Frank an appointment to the Naval Academy, but he blew that off and enrolled at Columbus College for the fall term.

Mama was disgusted with his decision. Frank had earned a near-perfect score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. He had a natural mathematic bent and had done well in physics and calculus. More than one teacher told Mama her son was almost a genius. His decision to stay in Columbus and attend a community college stupefied all of us. But as was her nature, Mama didn't say much about it. She just quietly pondered the matter.

In September 1972, a businessman knocked on our door and offered Mama sixteen thousand dollars for our home—two thousand in cash, and he'd pay off the loan balance. The man went to all the neighbors and bought their homes, too. Eventually, all those homes were bulldozed away and they put up a parking lot and a new business, Victory Auto Parts.

Mama found another house, a couple of blocks away, on Fifty-second Street, just down from Allen Elementary School and around the corner from Arnold Junior High (now Arnold Magnet Academy), where I'd finished out my middle-school years. A couple from Rose Hill Baptist Church owned it. They sold it to Mama for nineteen
thousand dollars. We moved in before my sixteenth birthday that November.

The new house had a backyard that seemed as long and wide as a soccer field. For my birthday Mama bought me a used car, a Simca sedan. The only difference between the Simca and a Tyco was the Simca came with an engine in the trunk, whereas toddler feet powered the Tyco. The car was so compact Frank taught me how to drive it in the backyard. Even in third gear, I could still manage to maneuver that baby between the tall pines. About a month after I got my driver's license, Frank borrowed my car without my permission and blew up the engine. I never saw it again.

The three-bedroom brick house Mama bought wasn't much bigger than the house she sold. In fact, the kitchen was only about half as big as the other one. But it had one advantage the other house didn't—central air-conditioning. The first night in the house, I slept on the floor of my room with a sheet spread out over the floor vent. No more running back and forth to a window air conditioner with a sheet over my head, trying to cool down. Now I could sleep all night long without breaking a sweat. I didn't have to snuggle between the bed and the wall to keep cool. The entire house was a comfortable temperature. The freon air made the sheets feel like silk against my skin, instead of like warm compresses.

Frank's bedroom had been a den. He painted the entire room, including the ceiling, black. Then he tacked up posters of rock groups like Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones. His room was situated in the middle of the house, and to get from my bedroom to the kitchen, I had to walk either through the living and dining room or through his bedroom. Most of the time I avoided his room. It always had a funny smell to it. At first I thought it was from his dirty socks. I didn't know about his stash of pot.

I found a Baggie full one morning while rifling through his pockets for lunch money. Frank was already at school. I snuck into his room and began scavenging for change. I found a pair of his jeans on
the floor. I picked them up and reached into a pocket, and pulled out a cellophane bag of what appeared to be oregano. I had no idea what it was, but I figured whatever it was I'd better put it back. When Frank returned home later that day, I asked him about it. “Hey,” I said. “How come you keep a bag of herbs in your pants?”

“What are you talking about, stupid?” he replied. Stupid had long been his pet name for me.

“I was looking for lunch money this morning. I found a bag of stuff in your pocket. What is that? It smells bad.”

“Stay out of my room!”
he yelled. “And don't say anything to Mama, or I'll kill you.”

“Don't yell at me!”
I screamed back. “And don't worry, I didn't tell Mama anything.”

I had no idea why he was so upset. Mama wouldn't care if he carried a five-pound bag of turnip greens in his pocket. Linda and I agreed that Lyman Ward had turned our brother into a raving idiot. I told her about the bag I found, but she didn't have any idea what it was, either.

That Christmas Frank bought Mama new lamps for the coffee table in the living room. We still had the same uncomfortable couch of carved koa wood. The lamps were expensive, about forty dollars each, but he bought them at the furniture store where he worked. Still, eighty dollars was a lot of money for a kid making about two dollars an hour. Mama asked him where he got the money to buy her such nice gifts. He told her not to worry about it; she was worth every penny he'd had to save for them. I think he meant that, but he was lying about everything else.

Frank was dealing dope. LSD and marijuana, mostly. Mama learned of Frank's drug problems from Dave Gibbons, a family friend. Dave was single. His wife had up and left him and their three sons. He and Mama shared their parenting struggles. Dave told Mama about Frank's drug problems in the nick of time. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation and local law enforcement officials had been keeping close watch on Columbus's drug traffic for months. In early 1973, they'd arrested
over a hundred people. About a third of those people were business associates of Frank's. He was either selling drugs to them or buying drugs from them. The GBI didn't have enough evidence to arrest Frank yet, but Mama knew that if he continued his wayward ways, they'd catch him soon.

Mama cried. It was the first time I'd seen her weep since Daddy died. I was furious at Frank for upsetting her so much. She didn't know what to do. Although she was a nurse, she didn't know much about drug addiction. She was scared she was going to lose her only son. So she figured out a way to save him.

Mama never discussed any of this with Linda and me. We didn't know Frank was dealing drugs. We didn't even know what that meant. I just told my friends at Rose Hill that Frank was in a lot of trouble. Mama was upset. And they both needed Jesus. The Monday-night prayer group kept Frank's name at the top of their list. To his credit, Charlie Wells tried to come alongside Frank. He would call him, invite him to join in all our activities at church. But honestly, to my knowledge nobody at Rose Hill had ever dealt with drug addictions before, so they had no idea how to help.

One night Frank stumbled into the house about 1:00
A.M.
I found him in the bathroom bent over the toilet, throwing up, hollering, and holding his head with both hands.

“What's the matter?” I asked. I'd never seen him so sick.

“I don't know!” he cried. “My head hurts so bad.
Oh God!
”

Frightened, I returned to my room and woke up Linda. Mama was at work. “Frank's sick,” I said. “He said his head hurts really bad.”

“You'd better call Mama,” she said.

We rarely called Mama at work. We knew she was tending to really ill people and didn't have time to chitchat. “I don't know,” I said. “Maybe he's just been out drinking or something. I don't know what to do.”

Frank continued to yelp. He was pleading with God to make his head stop hurting.

“I think you better call Mama,” Linda said again.

I picked up the receiver of our white princess-style phone and dialed the number to the Medical Center.

“Nursing supervisor, please,” I said to the operator.

Mama answered.

“Something's the matter with Frank, ma'am,” I said.

“What do you mean?” Mama asked. I could hear worry in her voice.

“I don't know, exactly,” I replied. “He got home about a half hour ago. He's been in the bathroom throwing up. He keeps screaming that his head hurts really bad.”

“Well, hang up and call an ambulance,” Mama said. “Right now.”