Almost Heaven (14 page)

She turned and looked out the window, and if the scene hadn't been so serious, I would have laughed at the sight of her jiggly, saggy bottom. She glanced back at me with an icy stare. “I can't believe you called the cops on me. That just proves what kind of low-life scum you've turned out to be. Billy, you are the worst son a mother could ever have. I hope you know that.”

“Yeah, I know it, Mama. You tell me that every day.” I stood and walked out the door without looking back.

* * *

The squad car pulled into the driveway and sank. I leaned against my truck and watched Sheriff Hadley Preston put on his hat and step out.

“How goes the battle, Billy?” Sheriff Preston said.

“You chose the right words, Sheriff. I'm all right. Yourself?”

“I'd be a lot better if I was back in the kitchen eating trout. My wife knows what to do with a rainbow and some red potatoes.”

“Sorry to set your weekend off to a bad start,” I said. “You can go back home. I think the worst is over.”

“From what Callie Reynolds told the dispatcher, she's lucky to be alive.”

I nodded toward the back window of the house. “And there she stands, Grandma Rambo.”

Sheriff Preston stared at the window and made a face. “Nice outfit. I thought you kept the guns locked up.”

“And the bullets, too. Somehow she got into both. That won't happen again.”

“Billy, you know how much Macel and I love your mother. We'd crawl all over this hill to help her in any way we could.”

“And you have, Sheriff. She can't tell you herself, but I know she'd be grateful for all you've done.”

“Well, she ought to be grateful to you. You've been the best son anybody could hope to have. But you know somebody's going to get hurt if you don't do something.”

“She found out I was having her committed. That's what triggered this.”

“Is that so.” He took in a breath and just stood there. “When?”

“I'll do it Monday. I can take the day off work and get the county people to come in the morning.”

“Custer's last stand,” the sheriff said.

“Can't say I blame her. I don't think she really understands what's going on. She went off her medication. Knows something is about to change. She's just scared.”

Sheriff Preston nodded. “I think we all have an internal detector of sorts that helps us know when things are about to change. Good or bad, it's there. Wish I'd have listened to mine a time or two.”

“This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.”

“I expect it is.”

“But I did it to the letter with the lawyer. Crossed every t and dotted every i.”

“Have you actually talked with her about it?”

“I've tried to. She signed the power of attorney a year ago when she seemed in a better place. But every time I try to bring up her moving to the home, it's like talking to a stone that wants to argue about the weather. Nothing that comes back makes any sense.”

“Poor thing.” He said it with a bit of compassion that choked me up.

“Yeah,” I said, looking at her. Mama had pulled a couple of the chairs from the dinner table against the back door and then sat down next to the stove and stared out the window. She was in such a mind that she didn't realize the door opened out and the chairs would be of no use.

“Maybe they can give her some help in there. Get her on something that will help right the ship.”

“I'm afraid the ship has turned over on its side, Sheriff. I should have done this a long time ago, but I just couldn't. She gave her whole life for me. Least I could do was hang in there with her to the end. But I guess that won't happen.”

“You'll still visit her. She'll come around.”

“Yeah, but it won't be the same. She won't be here. This house was everything to her. After you lose everything, any little thing means a lot. This was all she had after Buffalo Creek. It wasn't much, but it was hers, even with all the bad memories of my daddy.”

He shifted and the leather on his holster creaked. “Hard times notwithstanding, she shot at Callie.”

“You know Callie won't press charges.”

Sheriff Preston pushed back his hat and scratched his head. “You're right. That woman would slog through hell and back for your mother. And I think she'd do it because of you.”

“What do you mean?”

“She's sweet on you, Billy. You can't see that?”

I waved him off. “She's just a good friend.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Well, Callie wanted to make sure you and the neighbors were safe from Annie Oakley over there. All you'd need is for her to take potshots at the neighbor kids like she was shooting ducks at the carnival. We need to get that gun away from her.”

“I can get it.”

“Why haven't you?”

“I didn't want to scare her. Plus, maybe I thought I'd get lucky and she'd actually hit me.”

“Sometimes I feel the same way. Just put me out of my misery.”

“Yeah, but then you got that trout waiting back home.”

“You got a point there. The love and cooking of a good woman will keep you going.” He gave me a long look like he wanted to ask me something else, but he held his tongue. “Well, to be honest with you, Billy, your mother doesn't seem scared to me. Looks like she's ready for a fight.”

“Give me a few minutes. If it works, you come in and get the gun. If it doesn't, bring a gurney and wheel me out.”

“I'll be there,” the sheriff said.

Using the truck to shield me, I walked unseen to the porch and entered the front door. The floorboards creaked, but I picked my steps to make as little noise as possible. The front room was an office of sorts, with scattered parts of old radios and things I'd worked on over the past few months. My original Atwater Kent I restored when I was thirteen. A couple of CB base stations and my ham radio and straight key, building plans for a radio station I had salvaged, and what would pass as junk to most people but felt like treasure to me. A pastiche of a solitary life of broken dreams and shattered hopes all strewn about on a workbench.

In the corner, behind a stack of records I hadn't even looked at in years, was my old friend. I pulled it out and went into the living room and sat in Daddy's favorite chair. The strings were rusty, but it didn't take long to get them going. I played her favorite, “In the Garden.” Daddy used to play it for her and she would curl up beside him on the couch and sing along.

The kitchen light was still on and I could see her reflection in one of the windows. As soon as I started picking out the tune, she sat up and her head cocked like an old dog that smells a coon or a rabbit but doesn't have the energy to follow the scent. She made it to a standing position by holding the gun out in front of her and came walking, stiff-legged, back through the darkened hallway. I saw the silhouette of an old woman holding a gun across her chest, a geriatric soldier pushing up one more hill. It is one of the endearing images I still have.

When she got past the bathroom, she stopped and put the gun on the floor. As soon as I heard her voice, I found the spot where she was singing and played along.

When she got to the third verse, she reached the couch and stretched out.

“I'd stay in the garden with Him

Tho' the night around me be falling,

But He bids me go;

thro' the voice of woe

His voice to me is calling.”

By the time she sang the last words, her voice quavered. The back door opened and the sheriff entered.

“Play it again, Other,” she said. “You play it so pretty.”

I started over again, and in the little light there was, I pointed to the ground where Sheriff Preston walked. He saw me and picked up the gun.

Mama sang the words softly again. “‘I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses.'” I could tell there was something going on with the sheriff. He just stood there looking at the two of us in the darkness, as if this surreal image would be stuck in his mind.

He moved back to the hallway and mouthed, “I'll put the gun in your truck.”

I nodded and kept playing.

And He walks with me,

And He talks with me,

And He tells me I am His own,

And the joy we share

as we tarry there,

None other has ever known.

She went to sleep on the couch and I brought her covers and put them over her. I slept in the chair beside her in case she woke up and tried to leave.

10

On Sunday afternoon I told her we were going for a drive. I dressed her in her best outfit, the same one she had worn to Daddy's funeral. She had lost so much weight that it just hung on her like a jacket on a scarecrow. I brushed Mama's hair and tried to tie it in a bun like she always did, but it just came out looking all whopperjawed and I let it hang down her back.

She didn't protest or turn mean, and she even took her pills, which was a blessing. I wanted this to be a good day. I helped her out to the car and buckled her in, talking to her and reassuring her that she'd like the surprise.

We drove to Huntington through the streets that had scared her to navigate when Daddy was having tests and doctors' appointments nearly every week. To her this was a big city with mysterious, tall buildings. But I had gone to technical school here and had been working in town for years.

We drove to Sixteenth Street and turned right on Fifth Avenue and worked our way into an industrial area. The smell of chemicals hung heavy. Mama had her window cracked and she sniffed at the air. “Mmm. Smell those hot dogs.”

Stewarts is one of the landmarks of my childhood, and one of the hot spots in Huntington since 1932. The tiny building that the original owners built in the middle of the Depression still stands. And the secret sauce Grandma Gertrude developed is still hand-cooked.

Mama once said that the hot dogs were so good here because they rolled each one of them up in a napkin. That kept the bun soft and the sauce warm. I'm not sure whether it was the sauce, the onions, the type of bun or hot dog, or if the whole thing was simply the power of memory over the taste buds, but every bite seemed to bring back something good. There are times when I will pull into this little orange shack and sip from a frosty mug and the tears will roll because of what comes back to me. I think that has less to do with the cuisine than it does the past, but the two seem to be inseparable in my mind.

We pulled into the Stewarts parking lot, and a young girl came to put a ticket number on our windshield. She looked into the car and smiled. “Welcome to Stewarts. What can I get for you?”

I ordered five hot dogs for the two of us and a gallon of root beer to go. The girl wrote the order on a green pad and walked off to stick it on the metal wheel inside.

“Stewarts always made the best hot dogs,” Mama said.

“Do you remember coming here with Daddy after his doctors' appointments?”

She smiled. “He just loved these hot dogs, didn't he? And you did too. The four of us could go through a dozen of them easy because Harless always had such an appetite.”

Harless had died long before we ever pulled into the Stewarts parking lot, but I let that go. The girl brought us the jug and a bag of hot dogs.

“You give that pretty little thing a good tip, Son,” Mama said. “He's single, you know.”

The girl bent down and smiled at her. “You have the prettiest hair, ma'am. Just as pretty as a picture.”

I handed her back some of the ones from my change and she thanked me. We turned around and went back up Third Avenue, the smell of the hot dogs making my mouth water. Marshall University was to our left, and Mama marveled at the stadium and the campus. I turned left on Hal Greer Boulevard and headed back the way we had come, but before we got to the interstate, I turned right and wound through the small, two-lane road that ran to Ritter Park. I found a good place to park near a picnic area and helped Mama out of the car.

There was a slight breeze, but the sun was out and warmed us. We sat at the table and I poured her some root beer. She took a sip and closed her eyes like she had tasted a fine, aged wine.

“That's what I remember,” she said. “Now give me one of those dogs.”

She unwrapped a hot dog from the napkin and the look on her face when she took her first bite was priceless. A little smile showed at the corners of her mouth, along with a healthy bit of chili sauce.

Sitting there with her, it felt like some of the hard times just melted away, like butter in her cast-iron skillet. She was back with me. Sitting there with the sunshine on our faces, the sound of children on the playground as our sound track, I wondered if I was doing the right thing sending her away. Perhaps we could make this work.

“You know what this makes me think of?” she said. “The time we went down to Lexington for our anniversary. Do you remember that?”