Border Crossings: A Catherine James Thriller (36 page)

My little obsession went on like that for years before I gave up on trying to talk with the dead.  I figured if I didn’t give it up, I was going to end up in an institution doing finger paintings all day.  I don’t reckon they can talk, since I’ve never heard one.  They can affect, though, and sometimes they let that speak for them.  He never said a word, but I heard that young man in that hotel room loud and clear.

That’s about all I have to say about the dead, I guess.  I’ve lived a long life, seen a lot of things, and that’s pretty much the extent of what I’ve learned about them, which is to say not very much.  They’re just another nuisance these days, anyway, as it’s not the dead that keeps me up but the living.  There’s a man next door to mine that moans and groans all hours he’s awake and the lady across the hall sounds like she’s spitting up a lung when her acid reflux kicks into gear.  This getting old thing sure is a bothersome business, and I'm no longer getting there.  I've arrived, unpacked, and been settled so long you can smell old on me.  My grandkids say it's something between mouthwash and mothballs.  At least I haven’t started making old people noises, like the moaner and the spitter-upper.  You get used to it, though.  It’s just plum amazing what you can get used to after you’ve been around it a long time.

Now that Faceless is gone I reckon I’d better go on and get outta bed.  I gotta take a leak but I was waiting for her to leave me be.  I’m a bit bladder shy, whether the one watching is alive or not.  It’s nearly six thirty and they'll be serving breakfast soon, and I don’t want my eggs to be cold.  I know they’ll be soggy, they’re always soggy, but at least they won’t be cold.  Luckily, I can still move myself around.  It’s not pretty, but I can still haul my old bag of bones about the place without a wheelchair or one of those IV things on rollers trailing after me.  The tile is cold as I shuffle into the bathroom and as I'm relieving myself I catch a glimpse of the man in the mirror.  I have to wonder, who’s this stranger looking back?  Damn, but don‘t he look old.  This mirror must be broken.  I give a big smile and stick my tongue out at myself.  The teeth are yellowed, the gums receding so much my teeth look like I yanked them from a horse’s mouth, but they’re mine.  How many eighty-seven year olds can say that?  Not many in this place, I can say that much.  I look at the person looking back at me and didn’t expect his face to ever look so old and worn.  It creeps up on you, old age.  You look over your shoulder and it's stalking you from about twenty or thirty years out, then the next thing you know it's sinking its teeth in you.  Your body starts staging a revolt and hairs start popping out of your ears.  They crawl back into your skin on your head leaving you bald and then start crawling back out in the weirdest of places.  Then you get more lines on your face than a highway map.  I study him now and wonder where the man I once knew has gone.  His gray hair is receding far back and the bald spot on top of his head is shiny from the reflection of light.  Undoubtedly that spot is where the ear hairs came from.  There was a time when the hair was thick and black as midnight.  The skin that once was tanned and unblemished with youth now hangs loosely on the body, like a suit that once fit perfectly until the man lost too much weight and shrunk into himself.  It’s spotted now, too, as though it needs a good cleaning.  But soap won’t clean these blotches away.  Years ago his skin held tightly, like a fine wrapping to the gift of youth.  Now it is thin and frail like silk.  The slightest bump and it bruises like an over-ripe plum.

His face is weathered and creased.  I make funny faces sometimes, like now, just to watch the wrinkles fold in and out.  I can do the most uncanny impression of a Pug, those wrinkly faced dogs, without even moving a muscle.  I can’t remember first seeing these wrinkles.  It’s like they were always there and just got more noticeable with age.  I know there was a time they weren’t there, though, because I can remember a different reflection staring back at me from behind the glass.  This body’s the same old house that time has redecorated.  I heard someone say that once long time ago and damn if it ain’t the truth.

Back in my room I get my slippers on and my mind quiets a bit.  The only other sound in the room besides me is the groan of the air conditioning that is set much too cold for normal people to enjoy.  It’s a window unit and I walk over to see that it is set as I imagined, full blast and cold as it will go.  I set it like that at night because I like the warmth of the blankets in contrast to the cold.  Makes me sleep better.  My daughter-in-law walked right over and turned it off last visit, rubbing her arms and saying, “Lord, Papaw, don’t you have any blood in you anymore?”  I asked her how that there menopause was treating her and she got red and didn’t say no more.  I've still got a few snappy comebacks rattling around upstairs.  The wiring's old but the lights are still on, by God, and I'll freeze an Eskimo outta here if I feel like it.  Air conditioning was such a novel luxury item the first time I lived in a house that had one.  I can still remember how annoying it used to be trying to get to sleep when it's ninety degrees in your bedroom.  Yes sir, air conditioning is one of the greatest things mankind has ever invented, and I intend to make the most of it in my old age.  And who knows?  Maybe if it’s like a fridge box I’ll be preserved longer and won’t have to worry about what kind of spirit I’ll end up making.  Come to think of it, to hell with that idea.  I don't want to keep on going until I can't do anything for myself like so many others here.  It's better to check out early with most things working than later when you can't do for yourself.  Of course, I suppose letting a nurse like that leggy tan one give me a sponge bath wouldn't be the end of the world.  I see bed-ridden Mr. Collins smiling his toothless grin every Thursday morning over his breakfast when I walk by, and I just know it’s because Thursdays are the days he gets a sponge bath from her.  I know firsthand a man doesn’t get that happy about eating oatmeal.  Over the top of my air conditioner is that window that looks out on the street and houses outside, down to the cotton fields that seem to go on and on.

Outside where the morning sun is rising with its colorful introduction is the small town of Varner Creek, a rural town in southeast Texas.  It’s a typical small town with a Main Street that runs through its center with two stoplights, one on each end.  There are little stores lining Main Street that have grand openings and closing sales just like the seasons.  The only ones that have stood the test of time are the barbershop, the mechanic’s place, the grocery store, and of course the Dairy Mart where the kids can go for a burger.   The other stores that use to be here years ago, the hardware store with the locksmith, the clothing stores that used to have hats and Sunday dresses, the old movie house, they all succumbed to the Wal-mart and mall that moved in just down the highway.  The town’s got an old railroad track the trains come through on, but they never stop anymore like they used to as they trek their way to load and deliver various goods.  The railroad reached Varner Creek around 1900, when a branch of the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway was laid down.  It used to be that we had a train station where we could commerce with the outside world.  Nowadays, though, the cotton, sugar cane, and other agriculture grown around here by the few farmers left gets loaded on trains in towns farther west.  Most everyone here works for the various chemical companies down in the Freeport area or they drive up to Houston.  It's become a community of commuters, so to speak.

The town was established in 1877, not far from West Columbia, TX, where the first capitol of the Republic of Texas was established in 1836.  Varner Creek was named for a Chicago man named Colonel Pritchard Varner who came to the south after the civil war.  He claimed to be a former Union officer who, like a true carpetbagger, believed he could resurrect the plantation lifestyle and claim it for his own.  Nobody knows if he really was a Colonel or not, or even if he served in the Union.  The only thing the town’s historical society could muster up was that he had been running a fabric business in Chicago with his brother, but sold his brother his half and moved to Texas.  There he found himself some rich bottom land with a creek running through it for a good water supply, and bought two thousand acres for cotton, corn, sugar cane, and cattle raising.

The Colonel's dreams of becoming the rich land owner in a slow southern lifestyle ran awry, though, when he swindled one of his laborer's out of two dollars and twenty cents.  An argument ensued one day out in the fields and it ended with a hoe being squarely planted in the Colonel's head.  Local lore has it that he suffered a heart attack at the same moment that hoe found its mark, and in the technical sense, he was dead before he hit the ground.  The man who had swung the instrument of the Colonel’s demise, a former slave named Henry Mullins, took off into the woods never to be seen or heard from again.  He was an avid cock-fighter, old Henry was, and when he disappeared into the thicket he took his prized chickens with him.  Nobody ever heard from Henry again, but his chickens lived on in those woods, and for generations after their descendants crows occasionally echoed in the trees, to which I can personally attest.

As for the Colonel, his wife put him in the ground, sold the house and all their land at two dollars an acre for wooded land and ten an acre for the crops, and went back to what she described as “civilized society” in Chicago.  The folks who bought up the farmland moved in and families expanded eventually creating my hometown of Varner Creek.

I don’t know why I think of the town’s history as I look out over the cotton fields.  A mind unhindered goes where it likes, I guess.  And looking at the town I’m from makes me think of where it came from.  You get to thinking about beginnings near your ending.  It’s just the natural way of things.

After breakfast I make for the game room to play some dominoes.  It’s how I spend most hours during the day.  There’s a few of us who sit around and talk about the old days and about what our children and grandchildren are doing.  I got two boys myself.  One’s a lawyer in Austin, the other is overseas working on the offshore oil rigs.  They’re both good boys.  They write and call me when they can, and I get a visit from the one in Austin every couple of months.  He brings my grandkids by, the ones who decided what old folks smell like, but they don’t like visiting none too much.  I don’t blame them, though, for not being overly enthused.  An old folks home is the last place energetic children should be cooped up in.  They smile and hug but then sit in the chairs and play games and read or whatever to pass the time while he and I catch up.  His wife is a pretty one.  She brings me pies and things but they’re store bought.  Better than what they offer here, but that ain’t saying much.

They offered to let me come and live with them after I fell and the lady doctor with a sharp, narrow nose said I couldn’t live by myself anymore in my old house.  She bore a striking resemblance to a chicken I can still vaguely remember.  I tried to argue with her, but it was to no good.  She just clucked away about what a danger I was to myself, and so that was that.  People always been good about offering me a roof in my life, though.  My son was willing to take me in, but I’m not havin’ it.  They got better things to do than to have to be stepping around an old fart like me all the time.  I don’t think his wife really wanted me, either.  She seemed just content when the doctor told them she thought I’d be best off in a nursing facility given the need for supervision after a fall like that.  Who’d of thought a shower could be such a dangerous thing?  I got a plastic hip that pops when I walk and two pins in my leg from that fall, but I’m still walking.  I just sorta have to lean to the right all the time, now, and kind of swing my right leg out there to get it going.  I guess I look kinda like that there tower of Pisa or whatever it’s called.  I slant most everywhere I go, but I don’t fall over, so that’s good enough for me.

My wife, Helen, she passed some twelve years back from the cancer.  We were married forty-seven years.  She was a beautiful and lovely natured woman.  I never saw her after she passed.  I didn’t really expect to, but if I’m to be honest part of me hoped now and then over the years.  She had gotten the cancer and I knew she was ready to go when the time came, even if it meant leaving me.  I miss her often, but I’m glad she don’t have to hurt anymore.  The cancer had cut her down next to a shadow of herself and that‘s just no way to live.  The day she died she had awoken to constant pain.  She lay in bed, unable to move or speak, but her eyes told what her words could not.  I kissed her on her forehead and told her if she was ready to go, that she should go on, because I knew she was hurtin’ and it was making me hurt, too.  I told her that even though there were some spirits in the world, there weren’t very many, so wherever we go when we die must be pretty nice, ‘cause most folks seem to prefer it.  She looked at me with tears in her eyes, and I knew she was feeling guilty at the idea of leaving me a widower.  That was my Helen.  She was the one dying, but still worrying over me.  “It’s just temporary, Hon,” I told her.  “I’ll see you soon, and miss you every day in between.”  She couldn’t talk by that point, but she gave me a little smile, squeezed my hand, and closed her eyes for a nap she’d never wake from.

After my dominoes and talking with my neighbors here I head back to my room.  There’s a couple of little girls visiting their great grandmother in room 34B, Miss Fitzgerald’s room.  She’s ninety-three years old and will probably never leave her bed again, but she’s happy today and basking in the glow of her own reflection in the faces of her great-grandchildren.  One of them is wearing a ballerina outfit and doing a little twirl with her arms curved over her head.  I hear her Mama say something about a recital later.  A shadow in my memory stirs a little bit but I tell it to stay in its corner.

There’s a little television in my room my son set up for me.  I have to get the nurse to work it for me, though.  All those little buttons give me a headache trying to read ‘em.  I press my call button and in she comes.  It’s not the young one I like looking at but Ms. Rita, a large Hispanic woman with a smile so big it like to blind you.

“How you doin’ today, Mr. Mayfield?” she asks, molars just a sparklin‘.  Either her toothbrush must be huge or she must spend half the morning just brushing her teeth.

“Oh, you know.  Same ole, same ole, I reckon.  Still alive and here, ain’t I?”

“Sure enough, Mr. Mayfield, and not looking like you’re going anywhere anytime soon.  You want your Wheel of Fortune on?”  She knows at three o’clock I watch my Wheel of Fortune.  Chuck Woolery‘s gone, but that Pat fella, he's all right.  And that new lady what turns the letters, Vanna or whatever, she's definitely all right.  She's got better legs than even that young nurse I like so much.

“Sure do, Miss Rita.  Gonna see if somebody don’t win a car again today.  That young girl yesterday got herself a brand new Volvo.”  It was silver and worth nearly as much as I used to make in a year, all for guessing the word Superintendent.

“Shoot, I wouldn’t mind winning me one of those new cars, Mr. Mayfield.  Mine, I got, is on its last leg, I tell you what.  If that husband of mine don’t find himself a job soon to get me a new car it’ll be him that gets tradin’ in, Ha Ha!”  She laughs and for a moment there I’m dazzled by her brilliant smile like a deer caught in headlights, “You play along now and see if you don’t best those contestants.”  She sets the channel and is off to see my neighbor who‘s moaning a bit louder than usual.  I think there’s a whiff of his bed pan floating in.  I wonder what they’re feeding him in that tube of his, cause Lord whatever’s going in, it do smell something terrible coming out.

I hear Miss Rita in the other room, "Wheeew, Dios mio!"

Luckily, I still got pretty good control of my bowels.  I get the flatulence, but that’s not so terrible, ’cept maybe that one time I farted in my sleep and it smelled so bad I woke myself up.  I rolled over ready to complain to Helen about eating her dried apricots before coming to bed again, but she wasn’t there, and that meant the gas was mine.  There’s just something uniquely unpleasant about waking up to a smelly fart and then realizing it’s your own.

That’s not as bad as finding it had company, though.  I’ve had one or two accidents.  No sense being embarrassed about them, old plumbing’s going to have some leaks now and then.  We used to have a smart-ass woman working here and she came in one morning when I had an accident.  When she got up close to me and caught the smell she asked, “Damn, Mr. Mayfield.  Did you crap yourself?”

I’m eighty-seven years old, damn it.  I’m doing good just to wake up each morning, so I looked her right in the eye and said, “Of course I crapped myself, woman.  You think I smell like this all time?”  Like somebody else had crawled in my bed to have themselves a bowel movement.  Besides, it was the damned canned fruit they served the night before.  Stuff is worse than ex-lax.  That lady, she don’t work here no more, though, and I’m glad.  She neglected some of the bed-ridden folks and they got bed sores somethin' awful, so they fired her.  Everybody else here is mostly nice and they treat you right.

I spend the rest of the day watching television until it's time for supper and then bed.  I got this unsettled feeling, though.  Something about today has my thoughts churning and won’t calm down.  The air conditioner is whirring full blast and the moaner next door is now soundly asleep, so I should be down like a baby right now, but I’m not.  I think it was the little girl in her ballerina outfit.  There was something about her that sent a shiver through me.  It’s an old memory, but it never stays in its corner like I tell it to.  I roll around a bit and listen to the air conditioner’s comforting consistency until I start to feel heavy.

I think I’m dreaming.  I have this sensation, like I’m holding on to an invisible fishing pole and somewhere out there a fish is nibbling at my line.  It’s a little tug, then another, and then Yank!  It pulled the line so hard I went tumbling in right after it.  It feels like I’m drowning in something dark, but before I can panic I feel this
pop
!  It was like a bubble bursting except I was the bubble and now my body's in one place and I'm in another. I’m looking down at myself and can see someone standing by my bed.  It‘s that ghost of a woman with no face.  She‘s standing over my body, but she‘s not looking down at it.  She‘s looking up, like she can see me floating around the ceiling.  At least it seems so.  Her head is tilted towards me but with no distinct features it's only an assumption on my part.  I don't have long to wonder, though, before she’s gone, and so is everything else, the room, the building, the town, the world, it's all disappeared.  Or should I say I've disappeared, because I have no idea where I am.  There’s nothing around me but blackness and it’s pulling me down and down into its depths like a hidden magnet pulling a paper clip.  I can feel myself somehow being propelled, but since there’s nothing but pure blackness all around it’s hard to tell how fast I’m moving, or really if I’m moving at all.  I try to breathe but there’s no air.  It's calm, though, a peaceful nothingness.  I’m in an ocean, black as emptiness, and I know there’s nothing but the watery stillness above and below me, everywhere.  My eyes are open but I see nothing but the darkness, and then the obvious realization sets in . . . I just died!  So this is what dying feels like.  Well, it wasn’t exactly unpleasant, just a bit odd.  You feel that little tugging sensation right before you pop out of your body, get one last look goodbye, and then whoosh, you’re here.  But where here is I ain’t got a clue.  And where I’m going if I am really being pulled along in this nothingness is another mystery.

Somewhere above I imagine there are waves licking the air, but I’m miles away down in the deep and it’s quiet and calm with no sense of time.  I don't know if I've been here seconds or hours.  The unusual stillness reminds me of the hotel room so long ago, except it’s peaceful here.  There’s no torrent of terrible emotions pressing in on you, just the quiet solitude.

I’ve been like this a while, lost in this place where my thoughts alone exist.  It’s like being on a long train ride at night.  You feel yourself moving, but you get so used to the sensation it almost becomes a lullaby.  After a while something seems to change.  Part of the blackness is becoming illuminated and I‘m not alone.  I think someone is coming towards me in this black sea.  A dim green light that I remember from my childhood grows in front of me, and then I can see a hand.  I feel it as it reaches out for me and touches me, closing around my own hand and then pulling me even faster towards this unknown destination.  I try to see who is holding on to me but can barely make out a small figure.  I can’t see exactly who it is, it’s still too dark.  I think she’s looking at me.  Is she smiling?  As we move I can make out just a bit of her.  Something about her looks so familiar to me, but I’m so out of touch with my senses from this strange journey I don’t think much about it.

Down the rabbit hole I go.  I wonder if I’ll end up on a heap of dry leaves like Alice.  Mother had just started reading that story, I remember.  But why am I thinking of that now?  There’s a light in the darkness.  It’s so far away at first that I think I’ve imagined it, but then it sparkles like a jewel.  We’re getting closer to it.  There's a bright white glimmering as though a giant diamond were ahead of me, dotted with dancing sparkles like glitter tossed up into a clear night sky but seen reflected in a rippling pool, and it’s getting brighter.  It’s coming much closer, I realize.  I remember the near-death experiences I’d heard people talk about on the television or in books, and I’m struck with the notion that this might be what they saw.  This light ahead of me is beginning to look a lot like a light at the end of a very long tunnel.  It’s so bright now I can barely look at it and then it’s light all around me, like we just emerged from a tunnel into a world full of nothing but light.  And there are faces here.  Do I know them?  I’m still so dazzled from the brilliance of this place I can’t make them out.  Someone is still holding my hand.  I look and through the brilliance I can see next to me a girl in a pink dress kind of like the one Miss Fitzgerald’s great granddaughter was wearing.  I struggle to see her as the light is still so blinding.  Well, there may be no rabbit and no pile of leaves, but darned if there isn’t an Alice.  She’s a young teenager of about thirteen with black curly hair and she’s wearing a cutout crown made of folded paper with sparkles on it.  In her other hand is a little paper straw that has a pink star on top of it that spins around.  It’s covered in sparkles, too.  She seems happy, very happy.  And her happiness is spilling out and washing over me, filling me with happiness, too.

She tells me, “Sol!  Isn’t it pretty?  I’ve been waiting for you for so long.”

My mind sways.  Who is this girl? 
I want you to have it because you remind me of Alice.
Those were Miss Thomas’ words.
 
Down the rabbit hole.  Then what was it?  Oh, yes.  The Pool of Tears.  Mother had just started reading from The Pool of Tears.

“You don’t have to feel bad for me anymore,” says the girl.  “I’ve been so happy here and never alone.  Now I’ll be even happier because you’re here now.”