Not-Just-Anybody Family (3 page)

Beside him on the seat was his dog, Mud. Mud was also enjoying the ride. He was looking out the window, doing what Pap called smiling.

Mud had been Pap’s dog for ten years, and when Pap was feeling good, Mud felt good. When Pap was low, Mud crawled under the porch and would not come out even if somebody called “Supper!”

Pap turned the corner and started up the steepest part of Spring Street. He was whistling.

Suddenly the car in front of him unexpectedly stopped to back into a parking place. Pap didn’t crash into the back of the car, as he felt he certainly had a right to do, but he had to brake so hard that the back of the pickup truck flopped down.

Pap heard a soft, rustling thud as the first bag of beer and pop cans tumbled onto Spring Street. It was a slow-motion kind of thing; the bag just toppled slowly onto the street. Then there was a second thud, and a third.

Pap cussed and pulled up his hand brake, and the old Chevrolet truck shuddered and died. Pap got out to see the damage.

He stood in the middle of the street, hands braced on the small of his back. He looked at the sorry spectacle of his bags of cans lying on the street. He was wagging his head back and forth.

At that moment two teenaged boys in a Toyota cut around the corner. Pap turned with a frown. The boys ran into the bags like kids hitting a leaf pile. It looked to Pap like they had done it on purpose.

The boys were laughing. The driver threw the Toyota into reverse, U-turned, and took off.

Pap reached into the back of his truck for his shotgun. He fired one shot at the retreating Toyota, but he hit the traffic light down the street. It exploded and left some wires sizzled and popping over the Sumter Avenue intersection.

Two of the bags were busted, and Pap was standing over them, worrying about his $107.35, when he saw some people on the sidewalk. He turned to the people with a frown. He was thinking about asking for some help, even though asking for help was hard for him.

The people, however, thought he was pointing the shotgun at them. They divided. Half of them ran into the nearby Woolco, the other half into Winn Dixie.

The stupid fools! Couldn’t they see it was a single-barrel shotgun? All he had wanted was some help, and he didn’t even want that now; wouldn’t let them help if they asked. Stupid fools!

He was trying to gather up the cans and get them back into the truck by himself when the police arrived—two carloads, sirens screaming.

“What’s happened?” Pap wondered aloud. He thought maybe there was a bank robbery up the street.

But the police, guns out of their holsters, were advancing on him!

“Wait,” he said. He took two steps backward. “I ain’t done nothing. I just want to get my cans and get out of here. I just—”

They never let him finish. Two of the policemen grabbed him and shoved him facedown onto the bags of cans. Pap tried to get up.

The policemen were doing something to his arms. Pap didn’t want them to. Suddenly Pap felt the bags break, and he heard cans rolling.

“My cans!” Pap cried. He was struggling in the cans now, sending them on their way faster.

The policemen got him to his feet, took his shotgun, handcuffed him, and threw him into the back of a police car. At one time it would have taken the entire police force to do this, but that was before Pap became seventy-two years old.

They started the police car and drove away while the people were coming out of Woolco and Winn Dixie. One by one the people lined up to tell the policeman with the notepad about Pap threatening them.

All this time the 2,147 pop and beer cans were rolling down Spring Street, across the Sumter intersection, and through the municipal parking lot. From there they rolled into White Run Creek. They were clicking like wood chimes.

In White Run Creek they started downstream, bobbing with the currents, turning the creek silver where the sun hit them.

It was Tuesday morning. Junior was dreaming, as he always did just before he woke up, that he could see through his eyelids.

This dream had become so real to Junior that he believed he could actually do it. Without opening his eyes, he could see his room and his window and the tree outside the window and the beautiful picture of his mother on Sandy Boy. In the picture his mother was leaning off the back of the horse, upside down, one foot in a strap behind the saddle. Sometimes Junior turned the picture around so he could see his mother right side up.

One time, in first grade, the teacher had said, “Now, boys and girls, I want you all to close your eyes because I want you to imagine something.”

Dutifully Junior had closed his eyes and he had, through his eyelids—he was willing to swear this on a stack of bibles—through his eyelids he had seen Mrs. Hodges adjust her brassiere.

This morning he knew, without opening the first eye, that he was somewhere he did not want to be. Beneath him the sheets were stiff and clean. There was a funny smell in the air. There was too much light. Somewhere outside the room a lot of people were doing stuff. Wheels were rolling. Ladies and men talking. A dread fell over him like a cover.

He opened his eyes and gasped with fear. It was the first time in his life he had awakened and not known where he was. He was either in a hospital or a prison, maybe a prison hospital. He had watched enough television to figure that out.

“I got to get out of here,” he muttered.

He tried to sling his legs over the side of the bed, but they wouldn’t go. It was as if his legs were actually attached to the foot of the bed. He sat up; threw back the sheet.

His legs were in white stiff things. They wouldn’t budge. It was yesterday all over again, only now it was his legs that wouldn’t work instead of his winged arms.

He began to cry. Under the white stiff things, where he couldn’t get at them, his legs hurt. They hurt a lot. Just trying to sling them over the side of the bed had made pain shoot through his whole body.

“What’s wrong?”

Junior couldn’t have been more startled if God had spoken to him. He had not even been aware that anyone else was in the room. He glanced around so fast, his neck popped.

A redheaded boy in the next bed was watching him with interest.

“I don’t know,” Junior gasped.

“You must have been in an accident.”

All the horror came back to him then. “I fell off a barrrrrrn,” he wailed. He flung himself back against his pillow.

“A barn?”

Junior twisted his head from side to side, too miserable now to speak.

“What were you doing on a barn? Making like a rooster?
Er-er-errrrrrrrr-err!
” The boy flapped his arms at his sides.

Junior nodded, dumb with misery and pain.

“You were playing rooster? No kidding? You could go on
That’s Incredible
.”

“I wasn’t playing rooster. I was trying to fly.”

“Did you?”

“Not farrrrr.”

“How far? Ten feet? Twenty?”

The distance was so short, Junior could measure it with his hands. He showed the boy a distance of about three feet, then he let his hands drop to his sides.

He wiped his tears on his bed sheet. “Where are we?” he asked the boy.

“Alderson General Hospital, fourth floor.”

Junior looked at the boy with grudging admiration. Here was someone who obviously knew a thing or two about hospitals.

“How did I get here?”

“They brought you down from the operating room last night, eleven o’clock. It woke me up. You were moaning.
Oh, no, no, noooooooooo
. Like that. The nurse said you broke both your legs, but she didn’t say how.”

“The barn.”

Pity crept into Junior’s voice. He wondered if he would ever again be able to say the word
barn
without wanting to weep.

“Don’t you remember anything?”

Junior shook his head.

“They must have knocked you out. Or did they just go ahead and set your legs while you were awake?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, you’d remember if they’d knocked you out. You know how they do it? The doctor takes a great big hammer and he hides it behind his back and then he says, ‘Look over there! Quick! What’s that?’ And when you look, he brings out the hammer and hits you over the head.”

“That’s not true,” Junior said.

“Yes, it is. You know what they did to me?”

“No.”

“They cut my head open and filled it with marbles. You can hear them rolling around when I shake my head.”

“That’s not true.”

“Prove it,” the boy said.

Junior was too busy going over his own memories to worry about the boy’s marbles. To himself he said,
I was up on the barn and the police drove in the yard—I remember that, and I was hiding from them on the roof—I remember that, and I slipped
.

To the boy he added, “If I had been able to go off the roof the way I’d planned, sort of launch myself, I could have escaped over the trees, but they got me all mixed up.” Again sorrow made his voice quiver. “It was the police that made me fall.”

“You probably wouldn’t have flown anyway. People have not had a lot of luck with homemade wings. I saw a whole show that was nothing but people trying to fly—one man had a bicycle with wings on it and he pedaled it right off a cliff. Another man went off a bridge. You were probably lucky just to break two legs.”

“That’s all I’ve got.” More pity.

“You’ve got other bones, though—hipbones, jawbones, backbones.”

It reminded Junior of a song they sang in first grade:
“Dem bones, dem bones, dem dryyyyy bones.”
He never had liked that song.

“You know what they do to you if you break your jawbone, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Wire your mouth shut so you can’t eat for a month.”

“That’s not—”

A cart rolled by the door. Junior, startled, broke off his sentence to swing his head around. “What was that?”

“When they take you to surgery, they put you on one of those carts.”

“I’m not getting on a cart,” Junior said instantly. “No matter what happens, no matter what they say, I’m not getting on any cart.”

“If you won’t get on the cart, then they bring the hammer in the room and hit you over the head right here. They did it to that boy that was in that bed right over there. I saw them. They had to hit him twice. One time he put his hand up to protect his head, and they hit him on the hand. He took his hand down, and they hit him on the head so hard, his eyes popped out.”

“That’s not t—”

Again Junior didn’t get to finish what he was saying, because the nurse came in. He seemed to get smaller as he realized she was coming to his bed.

“Good morning.”

The nurse handed Junior a tiny paper cup. He muttered “Thank you” before he saw there was a pink pill in it. Junior looked at it with suspicion.

“What’s that?”

“It’s your medicine,” the nurse said.

Junior let the pill roll around in the cup. Sometimes Maggie played nurse with him, but she used catsup for medicine.

“Now, open wide,” Maggie would say. She’d pour some catsup into a tablespoon, hold his nose, and poke the catsup in.

He loved to play patient, but he didn’t want to be one. Suddenly he was homesick. Maggie made a better nurse than anybody in this whole hospital. Tears filled his eyes.

The boy in the next bed said, “If you don’t take your pill, they bring in a great big needle—thaaat long, and they give you a shot in your rear end.”

“Now, Ralphie,” the nurse warned, “you shouldn’t scare Junior. He hasn’t even been here one—”

Before she could finish, Junior had swallowed his pink pill. “Water?” He shook his head.

He handed the nurse the empty cup, lay back, and closed his eyes. For the first time in his life he was glad not to have see-through eyelids.

“I’m tired,” Maggie said.

Vern said, “Keep walking.”

“I can’t. My flip-flop’s broken.”

“Fix it.”

“Well, stop and give me a chance.”

Without turning around, Vern stopped. He put his hands in his pockets. He sighed with impatience. He stared ahead at the road. Beyond the curve and the pointed pine trees a huge red sun was sinking. Vern was not admiring the view. He sighed again, louder. “We have a long way to go. We haven’t even crossed the Interstate yet.”

Maggie sat on the side of the road and pushed the worn piece of plastic back into the sole of her flip-flop. Then she slipped her dirty foot through the thong. Without getting up, she said, “I think we ought to call Mom.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I told you. We are only supposed to call if it’s an emergency. You know that. The last thing Mom said was for us not to be calling all the time.”

“This
is
an emergency.”

“An emergency is what we can’t handle ourselves.”

“That’s what this is. We can’t handle this. Pap may be in jail.”

“We can handle it.”

Vern did not turn around during this conversation. He just faced the sunset. His mouth was a straight line in his tired face.

The reason Vern spoke with such firmness about not calling their mom was that the week before, he had tried to call her himself. He had wanted to hear her voice so much that he had walked three miles to the Exxon station and stepped into the pay phone booth.

Every week their mom wrote postcards to let them know where she would be staying. Their mom still went on the rodeo circuit in the summers—she was a trick rider; and she never knew exactly what motel she would be staying at till she got there.

In Vern’s hand was the latest postcard, the latest phone number.

When their dad was alive, they all went on the circuit. They had had a camper, and all three kids had slept on a table that made into a bed. Their parents slept over the cab.

Vern, who was old enough to remember those days, thought they were the happiest days of his life. Just one long stretch of dusty, interesting days and bright nights. Even the rainy days and the mud had been fun.

Vern had looked again at the number. His mom was staying this week at the Paisano Motel. There was a picture of a long brick motel with a sign shaped like a sombrero. The number was printed in big letters. He dialed them.