The Fence My Father Built (13 page)

Lutie took charge. She turned on the call button and adjusted the motorized bed as best she could. The man smiled and thanked her and called her an angel.

A flurry of voices in the hall got Lutie's attention, and she called out, “Praise the Lord, the prayer warriors are here. Tell the ladies to come on in, Frieda.” Lutie moved all three chairs against the wall to make room for the group. Six or seven women from Red Rock Tabernacle stood in a semicircle around Tiny's bed. The irascible guy next to him scowled even harder and drooled a little in the process.

I felt like scowling too. Did my aunt really need to make a circus out of this? No wonder Christians got bad reputa
tions. They claimed to be interested in prayer, but I thought they were just plain nosy. Frieda Long would be wagging her tongue, telling all of Murkee about Tiny's emergency. I wasn’t eager for Tru to see them in action for fear he’d be influenced and turn into some kind of religious nut.

Lutie held her hands up for silence. “Thank you all for coming,” she said. “The good Lord's already working. As you can see, my Tiny's already on the mend.”

Tiny smiled and looked a little embarrassed.

Lutie continued, “Let's send up a prayer of thanksgiving.”

“Prayer is such a powerful weapon,” Gladys Mason chimed in. “Lord, we praise you and we thank you. Thank you, Jesus.”

The scowling man cleared his throat and waved his arms around. He tried to get up, but the tangle of wires and tubes kept him tethered to the bed. He was clearly unhappy, but he didn’t seem able to speak. His eyes held a mix of terror and rage, and a guttural yell emerged from his throat.

I grabbed Tru and held him close. The man looked as if he might attack. The ladies stopped in mid-prayer and were silent for several seconds. Then, softly at first, a rush of musical whispers filled the room. The ladies lifted their hands and closed their eyes and sang words I’d never heard. The singing in a strange language grew louder and more beautiful with each passing moment.

The angry man who couldn’t talk stopped yelling; his face relaxed. He sank back against the pillow and attempted what could have been a smile. Nurses and staff arrived to see what was going on. Before the music died away, the room was packed.

I let go my death grip on my son and remembered the faraway voice I’d heard in my mind. “And give you peace” rang
out again, and I had to admit I hadn’t felt so calm in a very long time.

The Red Rock ladies filed out as suddenly as they’d come in. What would make them want to drive for an hour just to pray for Tiny? I didn’t know the answer, but I wasn’t as put off about their Christian zeal. I only knew there was a small opening in my heart that hadn’t been there before.

The grouchy aide returned after the call button light had been on for about twenty minutes. Somebody could expire in here, and he’d be off roaming the halls. He yanked the poor guy up in the bed without a drop of visible compassion. But I was being crabby. In the library it's the same thing: all the patrons expect you to be in about a hundred places at once. People look at you as if you’ve been sitting there doing your nails when you were really running all over the building, trying to find some out-of-print title or calming down an irate parent who thinks great literature is pornography. I remembered the beautiful singing and decided to cut the aide a little slack.

We waited in the hall while they got Tiny ready to leave. After he was settled in a wheelchair we stopped by the hospital cafeteria before leaving. Tru wanted to push the chair even though Tiny barely fit in it. With Tiny's big feet on those metal flaps, his knees hunched up.

Tru guided Tiny's wheelchair down the slick, waxed corridor. Spectral voices paged doctors; the overpowering odors of antiseptic made me dizzy. I’d rather be any place else. These nurses were lucky I’d never been interested in pursuing a medical profession.

We reached the cafeteria and wheeled Tiny up to a table. The smells here were almost as bad: some kind of boiled winter vegetable. But they did have those little boxes of cereal, juice, and thankfully, plenty of strong, brewed coffee. Tiny
gazed at the pastry selection. Keeping him on a diet wasn’t going to be easy.

“Get used to it, Hon,” Aunt Lutie said. I’d never heard her speak so tenderly to her husband. “Guess we’ll all need to get used to it.”

Fatigue caught up then, and we all appeared comatose for a few moments. I felt much better after the Special K and about three cups of straight black coffee, although I would have given a lot for a Starbucks double mocha today. The cafeteria had filled with nurses and other personnel on an early lunch break. I longed to be where I could stretch out and take a very long nap.

After a while Tiny and Tru chatted. Lutie seemed lost in thought, but her chin trembled.

“What's wrong, my Pearl?” he asked, reaching out to touch her hand.

She looked small and tired now, her cheekbones bonier than ever. She closed her eyes briefly, as if to decide what to say. “It's Joseph,” she said. “All this brings everything back.” She stared at me then, with a sympathetic yet weary look. “Everything.”

“I guess I haven’t asked enough questions about Dad's illness,” I said. Not that I hadn’t wanted to ask, not that I hadn’t been aching to know. I just didn’t know quite how to ask, and I wasn’t sure how to handle the answers.”

“We’ve all been busy,” she said. “I didn’t know if you’d want to hear about it.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Lutie gathered herself up a bit. Her shoulders reminded me of a shirt hung over a broomstick. “We knew he was dying,” she said, eyeing Tru. I knew that meant I might not want him to hear, but I thought he was old enough to hear the facts.

I nodded and she continued. “Liver disease is a terrible way to go. Terrible pain … horrible. Kills you off bit by bit.” She paused, and Tiny squeezed her hand.

“And I got here too late,” I murmured.

“We thought he had a few more months,” she said. “We knew it was close, but Doc Perkins said he might have a month or two. That's why I wrote to you about the property and all.”

“If only I could’ve got here in time.”

Lutie shook her head. “He caught all of us off guard. One day he was walking around; the next he was on morphine.”

Aunt Lutie stopped, and then her face contorted, as if she had inherited his pain. “They said he got enough drugs to kill an elephant.”

“Couldn’t the doctors do anything?” I was stunned and angry, full of sorrow, wanting to turn back the clock and at the same time rend my clothing and mourn.

“By the time we got him to the hospital, it was too late,” she said quietly. “Yesterday I was so scared it would happen all over again.” She looked past our heads into the air.

I was afraid too, afraid of how Tru might have reacted if Tiny hadn’t made it. Afraid of which of my father's genes might be lurking there to devour my son and my daughter. Plain afraid. “The liver disease,” I said, “was caused by alcoholism?”

Tiny spoke up. “Joseph Pond was a good man, Muri,” he said. “I knew him probably ten years. He took care of your aunt here, and when I came along he took care of me too. He had a problem with the bottle, but he fought it as well as he could. I don’t know why he couldn’t kick the habit. I do know he loved the Lord. And he sure loved you.”

That was the truth, although in spite I might have wished it had been my stepfather Benjamin whose alcoholism had caught up with him. Then it hit me: all this time I’d assigned
perfection to a man I’d never known. I’d judged my stepfather as evil and discounted the fact that he had provided for me. Sure, we clashed; and I wasn’t fond of his methods, but would Joseph Pond have done better?

That headache I’d been fighting off threatened again. Being philosophical after a night sleeping on a vinyl chair suddenly seemed like a poor idea. I joined Lutie in staring off into the distance, and then we returned to the room.

The aide rushed in, toting a box full of the stuff Tiny would need now to control his own excesses. The supplies interested Tru, and he rummaged through them while we went out to the discharge counter to sign Tiny out.

“Thank the Lord for Medicare,” Lutie said.

My own thoughts still ran more toward the whys of life: why Benjamin survived his abuses of alcohol; while my real father—the one I never met—had lost the battle. Now my headache was full-blown. Instead of dwelling upon life's apparent injustices, I studied the back of the cocky aide's head as he walked us out of the hospital. I hoped I never saw him agan.

U
ncle Tiny was able to get into the van unassisted for the trip home. He carried a cardboard box filled with everything he’d need: a starter kit of insulin, test strips, a stack of brochures and pamphlets outlining the routine he’d have to follow from now on, packages of gauze pads and Betadine for the sore on his leg, and hypoallergenic paper tape because he was allergic to adhesives. Lutie also made sure he brought home the hospital-issued plastic water pitcher, spit pan, and even the urinal because, she said, “We’re paying for this stuff.”

Truman had fun with that one. He’d already plotted to sterilize and then try to serve apple juice from it. After I glared back at him, he eventually enticed his uncle into a game of counting road signs. I kept the van pointed home as best I could, praying Nova and the pigs were all right and daydreaming about a long soak in a hot tub.

“Hoo boy,” Tiny said, riffling through the stack of American Diabetes Association literature. “It's all so danged complicated. How am I supposed to remember to do all this?”

“That one nurse made us all listen to her speech three times,” Tru said. “It didn’t seem hard.” He pointed at a billboard
on the side of the road. “Viva Las Vegas. That's number nineteen for me.”

“Maybe not hard for you,” Uncle Tiny said. “She sure did have a lot to say, that nurse.” He shook his head. “At least Doc Perkins slows down and uses words I’ve heard once or twice.” Tiny picked up the stack of papers and tossed them in the box. He still looked wan and tired and only halfheartedly pointed out signs on the highway.

“Why don’t we stop by the clinic on our way home?” I said. My muscles screamed. “The nurse said we ought to get in to see Dr. Perkins anyway. Maybe we’d all rest easier.” Lutie smiled at me, and Tiny perked up a bit, ultimately beating Tru in the sign game.

I passed the time by drilling Aunt Lutie with questions about Dad. Suddenly, it seemed as if the door had been opened for me to be curious. I was careful, though; I didn’t want to see her cry again. It might start a chain reaction.

“How many years was he sick?” was the first question on my list.

Lutie folded her hands in her lap and squinched her eyes. “Now let me think on that,” she said, “maybe only five years altogether. Could have been longer, only you can’t always tell these things. Joseph was never a complainer.”

“I see.”

“Funny thing was he always had a smile on his face. Bet none of us would have known how sick he was if it hadn’t been for Doc Perkins. Your daddy always laughed up a storm.” Her face clouded over, and tears welled in her eyes. “Now he's up there laughing with the heavenly hosts.”

“I sure hope so.” I’d always been a little shaky on my theology, having grown up unchurched, as Lutie would say.

“If anyone makes it to heaven, it’ll be your daddy,” she said, slapping her hand across her knee, laughing the way
she had when we first saw her. Her expression grew serious again. “Joseph died with the Lord's Prayer on his lips.”

Tiny heard this from the back seat. “Yeah, my Pearl here was into the third verse of “How Great Thou Art,” standing by his bedside.” He grinned, but it seemed more from embarrassment than amusement. “I thought Joseph was saying, ‘I want water.’ Turns out it was ‘Our Father.’”

Aunt Lutie rolled her eyes and turned around in her seat to face her husband. “It was an honest mistake, now wasn’t it? Lord knew you were trying to help.”

I smiled thinking of the scene, wishing I knew the third verse to “How Great Thou Art” or any other hymn.

A
half hour later I pulled up to the Murkee Clinic. We all trooped into the office, where Doc Perkins’ nurse-receptionist, Clara, sat behind the old metal desk. Clara had been the nurse forever, Dove had told me once, a fact I didn’t doubt. I stretched and felt like a pocketknife unfolded for the first time in years. Tiny, Tru, and Lutie sat on waiting room chairs that looked older than all of us combined, with Tiny still hugging his box of diabetic supplies.

Lutie hovered over him like a sweat bee over a cantaloupe. Those two were a piece of work: the pet names and politeness made me think of bad English comedy.

“Comfy? Anything I can get you, Sugar Bean?” Aunt Lutie said. She leaned against his bulk like a tired child, resting her head against his shoulder.

“Why I have everything I need, my little Pearl,” Tiny answered, patting her hand, “except a glass of your delicious iced tea.” Even Truman rolled his eyes after a while.

I walked over to the desk. “Hi, Clara,” I said, “I’d like to make an appointment for a week from now to check on my uncle's progress.”

“Feeling better, I hope?” Clara's smoker's voice was coarse as a gravel driveway, but I’d heard she also had a heart of gold. “Everybody in town's been so worried. Several of the ladies want to carry covered dishes out to you. All diabetic menus, of course.” She stood up and adjusted her uniform on her considerable hips. “Let me see if the doctor is available. I’ll bet he’d want to see you right away.” Clara disappeared into the patient area, and I smiled at Tiny.

Doc Perkins did want to examine his patient, as well as to write out prescriptions and dispense a stern lecture about managing diabetes. Doc asked us to come into the examination room. I was amazed that my uncle resisted the idea of insulin therapy.

“This whole business is a big hassle,” Tiny grumbled. He sat on the examining table, jiggling one foot against its side. That was the one thing he had in common with Nova—the nervous, jiggling foot syndrome. My daughter did this whenever she acted childish and mule-headed. It wasn’t much different for my uncle.