Suburban Renewal (16 page)

“The last two days,” Sam said sadly, “he had so much fluid in his lungs it was as if he were drowning in slow motion.”

“He'd planned it all through so thoroughly,” my father pointed out. “When someone is that focused…well, I was sure he was going through with it.”

“I guess he just decided to tough it out,” I said.

Dad didn't seem as convinced as he did worried.

“Do you have any idea what he did with the drugs?” he asked Sam.

“He put them in the drawer of the bedside table. They're probably still there.”

Sam got up and went into the bedroom.

The expression on my father's face was pained.

“I don't know how to feel,” he said to me. “When Mike asked me for the drugs, I tried to talk him out of it. But he was adamant, certain he didn't even want to discuss it. I'm happy that he didn't take his life. I'm happy that I had no part in causing his death. But I know how determined he was. He was like the Mike we'd always known, seeing something that had to be done and taking charge to do it. In that way, I was kind of proud.”

Dad's eyes welled up with tears and I took him in my arms. We had both cried a lot that day. But not like this, not together. Somehow the connection made the hurt more painful and the release more cleansing.

We were still clutching each other for support when Sam came back into the room.

“They're not there,” he said. “No pills, no bottle, no nothing.”

1993

A
fter Mike's death my priority became getting a job and providing for my family. That didn't seem like it should be an unreasonable expectation. That's what husbands and fathers did. They worked every day, brought home paychecks, bought houses, saved for a rainy day. I was thirty-five years old. I hadn't held a regular full-time job for five years. My oldest was getting ready to start high school and I didn't have one thin dime saved toward a college education.

The job market was encouraging. Tulsa had really begun to turn the corner on its future, no longer solely dependent upon the oil industry. I was not, however, the ideal candidate for a job in the new economy. I had a high school diploma and a big hole in my résumé. When I'd left the workforce, computers were big machines that office personnel had on their desks. Now even the fast-food restaurants were using them. I had no computer skills. I couldn't even type.

I had more than one human resources receptionist look over the top of her glasses at me like I was an idiot. I got into a night class at the vo-tech center. I never could learn to keyboard worth a damn, but if you
could click it with a mouse, then I could run a computer.

Mike's parents sold his house for a good price and managed to cover his debts. I moved into the Maynards' along with the rest of my family. It was a large, three-bedroom home, luxurious by Lumkee standards fifty years earlier. But with all of us crowded into it, it was very close quarters. Since Corrie was already sharing a room with Lauren, I was obliged to share with Nate.

It had been so long since my wife and I had had a room together, I could hardly remember what that was like. As for sex, well I guess when you're in your thirties, sex just ceases to exist.

What seemed to me as the logical thing to do was to move the family into a nice, good-size apartment in Tulsa. We could be near Corrie's work and school and there would be a lot more opportunities for me to find a job.

Of course, what is logical is not always possible. The kids went ballistic at the mention of a new school. Lauren lay on her bed and cried for half a day. Nate cursed and threw things and threatened to run away. Corrie's parents didn't say a word to discourage us, but they looked so old and so fragile. It was hard on them having us underfoot, but it was also a little frightening to be left on their own.

As it happened, we didn't have to move out into our own place just yet. Cy Walker, one of my old clients who'd lost his company, was now a contractor for a major oil subsidiary. He offered me a job.

“I've got a CO
₂
push going in West Texas,” he told me. “And I'm trying to start up a steam flood out near
Bakersfield, California. I know you can do the work and I could sure use the help.”

It was a great opportunity and good money. I couldn't turn it down. Corrie drove me to the airport. She walked with me down to the gate and waited with me for the plane.

“It's kind of crazy,” I told her. “We've never really been apart, but lately it seems like we haven't been together.”

“What?” she said. Obviously distracted, she hadn't heard what I'd said.

“Hey, I love you, Corrie,” I responded.

She smiled. “You're a good man, Sam,” she told me. “Be careful out there and don't take chances.”

“I won't,” I assured her.

“I don't know how Lumkee will get along without tamales once a week,” she said.

“I suspect they'll manage.”

They called my flight and Corrie jumped to her feet, almost as if she was eager to see me go.

“I'll phone home a lot,” I promised. “If anything happens, don't hesitate to call me on the cell. I'll have it with me all the time.”

She nodded. “We'll be fine, don't worry about us.”

That was, of course, impossible.

I checked in for an extended stay at a reasonably priced chain motel on the interstate. Nothing there but cable TV and a restaurant, but there was enough work to keep me from getting too bored.

The oil field we were working was in the middle of a cotton field. It had a number of low-producing wells. Steam flooding, infusing high-pressure steam into the rock, is a technique used to thin the syrupy molecules of oil that are trapped in rifts and crevices. By changing
the viscosity, the oil flows from the fissures into the main reservoirs so that it can be pumped out. I'd never done it in Oklahoma, where the crude is graded as light and sweet. But the oil in Bakersfield was heavier and more susceptible to the steam flood. Injection wells had to be drilled, three times as many as those producing. Fortunately, they could be shallow, just a little over 3,000 feet. Once they were completed and attached to the steam generator, the small bits of trapped oil would coalesce into the larger pools that were retrievable with conventional methods.

It was work that I understood and was good at doing. I didn't mind working for somebody else and I quickly earned the trust and confidence of the crew. But I was not one of the decision-makers. Neither the problems nor the solutions were mine to stew over. Somehow, that took a lot of the satisfaction out of the job.

But I was glad to be working, glad to be providing for my family at last. When Corrie told me that she was thinking about going on to graduate school, it felt great to say, “Yeah, honey, I think you should go. And I think you should go full-time.”

“It just gives me so many more options,” she explained. “I love teaching, but I think you can burn out too quickly. I want to be able to choose my classroom, not be imprisoned by it.”

“You've got to go for it,” I agreed. “They're going to keep me really busy out here, at least for the next couple of years. While I've got the chance to make some money, you ought to be going after what you want.”

It wasn't hard to convince Corrie to do it, but it was nearly impossible to convince her to do it and not feel guilty about doing it.

But I was happy just to get to talk to her. My life in California was terribly lonely. I was friendly with the other guys in the crew. A number of them, like me, were away from their families. We'd eat dinner together occasionally or drive into town to catch a movie, but once we'd worked all day together, we really weren't all that keen about socializing in the evening.

I read a lot. My year taking care of Mike had broadened my scope of reading interests and, in my off time, I pretty much always kept a book in my hand. That's how I got my nickname. One morning at the restaurant I was enjoying a book with my breakfast when Diedre, one of the waitresses, passed by my table.

“What about you, Mr. Bookworm?” she said. “Do you need some coffee?”

I don't remember what I answered. But none of the guys within earshot could forget what she called me. Within the space of three days, every man and woman on the crew called me Mr. Bookworm. It quickly spread up the corporate chain until even Cy, who'd known me as Sam for twenty years, began calling me that.

“Diedre, you've ruined my life,” I told her a few weeks later.

I was just kidding with her, but I guess I shouldn't have been. She was a cute girl, probably in her mid-twenties. She always wore a bright smile and too much makeup.

She leaned her hip against the edge of my table.

“You give me a chance, Mr. Bookworm, and I can make it up to you,” she said.

I was momentarily dumbstruck. Everybody back in Lumkee knew that I was very married. It had been so
long since a woman had hit on me, I just didn't quite expect it.

“I've got some free time this weekend,” she continued. “We can have a few beers together or something.”

“I don't think my wife would like that much,” I replied.

My answer dimmed her smile. “You've got a wife?” she asked. “You don't wear no wedding ring.”

“When we got married, we couldn't afford to buy one,” I told her. “We were lucky to get the plain gold band my wife wears.”

Diedre didn't give up easily. “How come she's not out here with you?”

“We've got two kids in middle school,” I said. “And Corrie's going back to college.”

“Corrie? That's your wife's name?”

I nodded.

“How long you been married?”

“Fifteen years.”

Diedre's eyes widened. “I didn't think you was that old.”

I wiped a hand across my hair. “That Grecian Formula—it's like a miracle.”

She laughed then and went on her way.

I sighed a little in relief, but I felt a little sad as well. It would be nice to have a woman to talk to, to laugh with.

I went back to my room and called home. Corrie wasn't there. Lauren said that she'd gone to the library. Nate was out somewhere, as usual. I talked to my daughter for a few minutes. Then I was alone in my room again.

Boredom was to be expected when a guy was far from home. The important thing was not to give in to it
and not let it give me permission to do something really stupid.

I became determined to “un-bore” myself. What would I do for fun if I were at home?

“I'd be making tamales,” I answered myself aloud.

I got up, put on my jacket on and headed to the grocery store. Fortunately, a lot of Mexicans live in Bakers-field. I found everything I needed. And I bought two six packs of Dos Equis to insure that I was going to have some help.

I invited over all the on-the-loose guys in the crew. I put a basketball game on the TV and talked them into helping me. They turned out great.

“These are real Texas tamales,” one of them told me.

“Forget that, Mr. Lone Star State,” I answered him. “These are genuine Okie tamales.”

We ate the leftovers the next day.

It was early Monday morning and I was just getting ready to walk out the door when the phone rang. It was Corrie.

“What's wrong?” I asked as soon as I heard the tone of her voice.

“Sam,” she said calmly, “your father passed away last night.”

When Floyd Braydon had walked into my life ten years earlier, he'd turned everything about my world upside down. I'd wanted to believe in him so badly, I had done it in the face of lots of evidence to the contrary. But now that he was gone, I couldn't help but feel sorry. Not sorry that we hadn't been closer. I'd known more about the man than I wanted to know. Not sorry we hadn't had more time together. I was glad I would never have to see him again. But somehow I was sorry that he'd been the man that he'd been.
He was half of me. Half of everything that made me human. And he was half of everything I'd passed on to my children. I was sorry that his half was something about myself that I could never be proud of.

I called my boss, got a week's leave and caught a plane into Tulsa. Corrie met my plane and filled me in on the details as we drove to Lumkee.

“It was a heart attack,” she told me. “He'd stayed late at the bar. Cherry Dale made pasta for dinner and had already fed the kids.”

Corrie glanced over at me. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Everything you know,” I answered.

“Floyd came home drunk and got mad that she'd fixed pasta. He beat her up really bad. He had her down on the floor banging her head against the bottom of the refrigerator when Cherry Dale's kids pulled him off.”

Her words actually made me queasy.

“After he got control of himself, he told Cherry Dale to fix him something to eat. She heated up a can a chili. He ate it and lay down on the couch to watch TV. Cherry Dale didn't disturb him until morning. When she realized he was not breathing, she called old Dr. Billups.”

“She called Billups?” I was surprised. “Why would Cherry Dale call that old quack instead of the EMS?”

Corrie shrugged. “I guess she thought he was closer, or maybe she just wasn't thinking.”

“Dr. Billups said that Floyd just fell asleep and never woke up. He had a heart attack and died right there on the couch.”

By the time we got to the double-wide, Cherry Dale was behaving very calmly, but she did look like hell.
One eye was completely swollen shut, her mouth was at a strange angle, and the lower part of her face so black and blue I worried that something might be broken.

“Did you have Dr. Billups look at your jaw?” I asked her.

“Billups? No, I never use him. I went to my usual doctor in Tulsa. He's patched me up several times,” she said. “I've got a black veil I can wear to the funeral. Nobody will know.”

It was a weird thing for her to say. And, of course, anything that happened in Lumkee everybody already knew.

I didn't remind Cherry Dale of that fact. I just sat there, wishing that I could think of something to say. She had always been so cheerful and funny when she was visiting with Mike. Now she was as ill at ease as I was.

“This kind of thing happens a lot,” she said finally.

I was momentarily startled. Of course, I knew that. You couldn't read the paper or watch the TV without being familiar with domestic violence.

“It's mostly middle-aged guys,” she said. “But Floyd wasn't much older than that.”

“Middle-aged guys?” I repeated, uncertain.

“Yes, they talk about it in the exercise magazines all the time,” she said. “Middle-aged guys often overexert themselves, but they don't have the heart attack during the exertion. It's afterward, when they rest.”

When I realized how wrong-tracked I was, I had to stifle the impulse to chuckle. My father was dead. His girlfriend was beaten to a pulp. There was nothing about it that was remotely funny. It was a serious mo
ment and I had something very serious that I had to say.

“I'm sorry that my dad beat you like he did,” I said. “It was wrong of him to do that. I'm sorry he did it. And I'm sorry I didn't do anything to stop it.”

I could see the tension in Cherry Dale's shoulders relax.

“Thank you, Sam,” she said. “You couldn't have stopped him.”