Beach Music (21 page)

“Nope,” Dupree said.

“Yeah. It does,” I said. “I know exactly what you’re saying.”

“Me too,” said Tee.

“It all makes sense until something bad happens, John Hardin,” Dallas said. “Then it’s hard to remember that you can’t help it.”

“Getting a shot’s the easiest thing in the world,” Dupree said. “Get a shot, nothing happens. Don’t get one, the race is on.”

Tee said, “He’s old enough to decide whether to get a shot or not.”

“Thanks, Tee,” John Hardin said. “I really appreciate that.”

“Tee’s never around when the flag goes up,” Dupree said.

“Tee’s right,” I said. “It’s up to John Hardin.”

“It’s easy to have theories when you live in Rome, Jack,” Dallas said.

After this exchange John Hardin separated himself from the rest of us and was smoking cigarettes nonstop as he watched the sparse river traffic pass by the hospital. He gave off an impenetrable aura of solitude and danger, though he listened to every word spoken in the room and processed the language through a filter that was haphazard, imperfect. Dallas explained the problem for me when we walked in the hospital garden. For John Hardin, the English language was an instrument of disharmony, bedlam, and obfuscation. Words spoken in innocence by one of his brothers could take on an aggravated significance in John Hardin’s mind. Every conversation with him had the possibility of turning wrong in an instant. He had a great many interests and was extremely well read, but the slightest change of emphasis or shift of intonation could disorient him and send him spinning wildly out of control. One had to cross an eerie demilitarized zone, heavily booby-trapped and bristling with observation points and eccentric, variable passwords to gain access to those stationary realms where John Hardin felt safe. His equilibrium was movable and adrift.

“Has anyone thought about Mom?” John Hardin asked, framed in smoke. “You talk about everything else. Does anyone know whether she’s going to live or die?”

“Dr. Pitts is with her now, John Hardin,” Dupree said, rising and moving across the room toward his brother. “He’s conferring with the doctor.”

“He’s not our real father, you know,” our youngest brother continued. “If you look on my birth certificate you won’t find any
mention at all of any Dr. James Pitts. How do we know he’s telling us the truth about Mom? He could be injecting her full of drugs. Killing her slowly so he can steal all our rightful inheritance.”

“Mom doesn’t have much,” Dallas said, approaching his brother cautiously. “Believe me, I’m the executor of her will.”

“There’s a lot that’s rightfully ours,” John Hardin said. “You guys may wash your hands of material things our mother spent her whole life working for. But I’m made of tougher fiber.”

“Fiber,” Dallas whispered. “He thinks he’s a throw rug.”

“Dr. Pitts likes us,” Tee said. “He won’t try to cheat us.”

“He’s got a burglar’s eyes,” John Hardin said. “He’s the type of guy who’s always looking at the second story of houses, hoping to see an unlocked window.”

“He’s got penetrating eyes,” Dallas said. “He’s a surgeon for God’s sake.”

“No, John Hardin’s right,” Tee said quickly. “There’s something wrong with the doc’s eyes.”

Tee’s irresolution made him sometimes both the ally and the enemy of both sides. It never occurred to Tee that vacillation was a form of taking sides that betrayed all parties.

Dallas began to move about the waiting room, jangling his keys in his pocket so loudly that all eyes turned suddenly on him. He had thought that by earning a law degree, marrying a woman from a good family, and conducting both his business and private affairs with restraint and dignity he would be spared the more baroque and unbridled excesses of his family’s behavior. His family embarrassed him and always had and he sought immunity from its extravagances and its lack of all caution or reserve. Dallas longed for dignity and thought that precious little to ask, especially when his mother was dying. But he knew if he brought it up or laid this request on the table, anything could happen. He knew that this group was capable of anything. In despair, he sat down next to me and said, “This isn’t a family. It’s a nation.”

“Once we find out about Mom, I’m outta here,” I said.

“It’s not like this usually,” Dallas said. “But when we’re trapped … all in one room.”

“Dante couldn’t have described hell more vividly,” I said.

“Never read the cat,” Dallas said. Then looking around the room, he whispered, “Do you know I told my wife not to come here today. Not because I didn’t want her to be here, but because I’m worried about the unknown. I never know what’s going to happen or who’s gonna blow. Humiliation takes so many forms here. I don’t know what to look out for.”

“In our family that’s easy,” I said. “Look out for this: all men, all women, and life in general.”

“Oh God,” Dallas groaned. “Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, here comes Dad. Will it be the drunk Dad or the sober Dad?”

My father knew all the nuances and protocols of the grand entrance, especially when he was sober. He appeared at the door clean-shaven and impeccably dressed. He stood erect, like the infantryman he once was, his eyes sweeping the room like a raptor surveying an acre of hunting ground for prey.

I counted to four and then inhaled; the smell of English Leather cologne stormed my nostrils and brought back everything that was wrong about my childhood. English Leather was an unmistakable sign that my father was going to try to clean up his act and not drink for the next several days. He seemed to have an internal barometer that registered when he had crossed some line of conduct or self-regulation that required fine tuning. He was not just an alcoholic, he was a complicated alcoholic. He used sobriety as a weapon of surprise. All during my childhood he would suddenly stop drinking, splash himself with cologne, and give those who loved him great reason to hope that life would be better. That was the meanest thing about him. But we all eventually learned never to fall in love with our father sober.

“English Leather,” I said. “The smell of pain.”

“I get physically sick when I smell that stuff. I swear I do. I buy him a new kind of aftershave lotion. Think he ever wears it? Hell, no,” said Dallas. “That’s what my office smells like.”

“Boys, I’d like to thank you for taking care of your father last night,” the judge said, his voice avuncular, intimate. “I tried to take a brief catnap in a room not in use. I’ve been so worried over Lucy, I didn’t realize how exhausted I was.”

“No problem, Pop,” Tee said.

“I woke up with a grand feeling this morning,” the judge said.

“Only person I ever knew who liked hangovers,” Dupree deadpanned.

My father continued, “I think her leukemia’s on the run as I speak, routed from the field, and I think we’ll all be laughing about this in a month or two. Look at you guys, down in the mouth, hangdog. Where’s the pep?”

“We don’t need a cheerleader, Dad,” Dallas said. “Try being a father. That might help.”

“A good attitude can carry you a long way in this life,” the judge said. “I suggest you boys start working on one.”

“Good attitude’s tough, Dad,” Dupree said, “when your mother’s dying of cancer.”

“C’mon, bro,” Tee said, “you’re not letting something that small get to you.”

“I confess,” Dupree said, “it bothers me.”

“Relax, boys,” our father said, trying to comfort us. “I know that woman in there better than anyone else alive. Her toughness is going to get her through this. She’s pretty as a picture and that sometimes makes people underestimate her. But that’s a Trojan warrior that gave birth to you. You could stick her hand in a fire and she wouldn’t give you the password to Troy.”

“Our dad,” Tee said. “Homer.”

“Sit down, Dad,” Dallas suggested. “Her doctor’ll be here soon to give us a report.”

“No cancer’s tough enough to kill Lucy McCall,” the judge said. “She’s one tough nut. I need to go in there and let her know I’m at her side. I could always comfort Lucy when the world was going to hell around us. I was her rock, her safe harbor in the storm. During my career on the bench many people used to come before me to plead their cases. I’m a student of the law and have been my whole life. I know the law inside out. I know its majesty and its coldheartedness.”

“Hey, Dad,” Dallas said. “Does this look like a jury? We’re your sons. Don’t make speeches to us.”

“When the law failed, as it sometimes does, I would often fall back on the power of prayer.”

The talk irritated Tee, who said to us, “I like him better when he’s drinking.”

“No one likes him when he’s drinking,” Dallas corrected. “You like him when he’s passed out.”

“Let’s you and me take a ride,” Dupree said to John Hardin, who had begun pacing in great agitation, like a leopard in a new wing of a zoo.

“Drop it, Dad,” I said, not liking what I saw in John Hardin’s eyes. Something was closing in on him from the inside out. His eyes looked as if they belonged in a runaway horse.

“Let me get you some coffee, bro,” Tee said to John Hardin.

“Caffeine makes it worse,” Dupree said.

“Who hired you to be my watchdog?” John Hardin said to Dupree through clenched teeth. “Did you answer a want ad? Who gave you the job of overseer? Who told you to run my life?”

“Fell in my lap,” Dupree said, flipping through a magazine, but not reading a single word, tense, ready for action. “Just blind good luck.”

“He baits me. You’re witnesses to how he drives me crazy. It’s subtle. An undertone you can barely hear. But he’s like an echo. I say something and his voice follows a couple of seconds later. It’s always a slight disapproval. An editorial. A commentary that makes me look like some nut on the loose. What you see is what you get. All of you can see that I’m perfectly okay. There’s nothing wrong with me that a little peace and quiet couldn’t cure. Of course, I’m worried about Mom. They’re lying about her. But lies don’t work with me. I see them for what they are. I’m not saying Mom’s not sick. Maybe she’s got the flu. But leukemia’s out. Leukemia, guys. Remember Mom and leukemia? It couldn’t be. Law of averages, man. Remember.”

“We remember Mom and leukemia,” I said. “Trust me.”

“It’s a joke,” John Hardin said.

My father’s hands began to tremble as he started to speak again. “I couldn’t sleep last night …” he began.

“He was out cold,” Dallas whispered and moved toward the window, which he opened, letting in the smell of the river.

“So I prayed to our Lord for a miracle last night and when I saw the sun rise over the Atlantic this morning, I took it as a sign that he’d heard my prayers and that he’d deliver poor Lucy from her appointment with the Black Angel of Death.”

“I didn’t know death was a Negro,” Dupree said, but he was not looking at his father now, he was watching every movement of his brother John Hardin.

“Shut up, Dad,” John Hardin screamed. “Don’t you ever know when to shut up? There are satellites up there. Miles up there. The Russians put them there. The angels listen to us from up there. They use the satellites. The satellites are connected to these light fixtures. Everybody can hear everything we say or think. So will you shut up?”

“Come with me, John Hardin,” Dupree said, his voice friendly but firm.

“Leave my boy alone,” the judge said. “He’s upset about his mother.”

Dallas looked over at me and said in surprise, “This is why you live in Italy. You’re the smartest one of all of us.”

“Plenty of room over there,” I said, watching as Dupree moved in on John Hardin.

“Two things I ain’t worried about, bro,” Tee said, trying to calm John Hardin down. “Satellites and angels.”

“You’ve never seen the big picture,” John Hardin explained.

The door opened at the end of the room and Lucy’s doctor, Steve Peyton, walked in with James Pitts. Dr. Pitts had tears in his eyes and as Dr. Peyton tried to comfort him John Hardin started to scream.

“Quiet, son,” the judge ordered. “This is a hospital zone. You could get a citation.”

It was his stepfather’s tears that got John Hardin started. Tears were few among McCall males; they were as rare as pearls in that severe treasury where grief was stored.

“No change,” Dr. Peyton said. “No good news to report except that she’s hanging in there.”

“Get hold of yourself, boy,” the judge said to his screaming son, who had lowered his voice to a moan as the doctor spoke.

“No shot,” Dupree said. “The bats in his head are all busting loose.”

John Hardin looked to that part of the room where his brothers were. He shut his eyes, trying to clear his head of extraneous noise and disturbance, but all was humming and in uproar there, and neither world, the one inside or the one he opened his eyes to face, was safe for him now.

John Hardin’s voice broke as he said, “They’re killing our mother in that room and none of us care. We should go in there and help her. She protected us from him when we were just little babies … There’s the bastard who’s killing our mother.”

“Meet John Hardin, Doc,” Tee said. “Bet you didn’t learn about him in med school, did you?”

John Hardin began to walk toward Dr. Peyton in a menacing but mechanical way.

“Let’s move, Jack,” Dupree said, both of us rising to intercept John Hardin’s unsteady passage across the room toward the doctor. Expertly, we altered his path and moved him toward the soft drink machine, where Dupree put in three quarters and got his brother a Coca-Cola.

“I’d rather have a diet Coke,” John Hardin said. “I’m trying to lose weight. Everyone in this town’s fat as pigs and I want a diet Coke.”

“I’ll take the Coke,” Dallas said.

I fished three quarters from my pocket, separating them from a handful of Italian change.

“What’s that stuff?” John Hardin said, taking an Italian coin from my palm and holding it up to the light.

I said, “A thousand-lire piece,” I said. “Coin from Italy.”

“What a stupid country,” he said. “Can’t even make quarters.”

John Hardin put it in the machine and the Italian quarter slid all the way through the system without a hitch. “Worthless. Even the machine won’t take it.”