Same Kind of Different As Me (27 page)
“He never did run me off,” I told Mr. Ron. “Long as I didn’t make my bed till after midnight and was gone by six in the mornin, he let me stay.”
“Did you never even walk in the lobby here? I think all hotel lobbies are open to the public.”
I looked Mr. Ron in the eye. “Homeless folks ain’t no public,” I said.
I guess I was public now, though, ’cause I saw my name on the “Invited Guests” list. When the food come, I took my cloth napkin and put it on my lap. And I kept a eye on Mr. Ron to make sure I was usin the right fork. I had learned by then that rich white folks got a lotta rules ’bout forks. I still ain’t figured out why they got to use three or four different ones and make a lotta extra work for the folks in the kitchen.
We’d about finished eatin when Mr. Ron brought up the subject of namin the new mission chapel after Miss Debbie. “We’ve decided against it,” he said. “We don’t think she would’ve wanted to draw attention to herself that way.”
I got real serious with him then. “Mr. Ron, Miss Debbie is in heaven, and this is not ’bout Miss Debbie anyway. It’s about God. Are you gon’ get in the way of God when He’s on the move?”
Mr. Ron shook his head, kinda hangdog. “No. I guess not.”
“Then just get out the way and let God do His thing!”
Denver
Moore made his way through the glittering crowd of the wealthiest people in Fort Worth and, with grace and dignity, accepted a philanthropy award on Deborah’s behalf. He received a standing ovation.
The next day, I met with the mission board and told them why our family didn’t want to name the chapel after Deborah. But I also passed along Denver’s counsel and so, of course, it was decided: The new worship space would be called the Deborah Hall Memorial Chapel. Meanwhile, the fund-raising drive for New Beginnings, the new mission facility, was officially under way. Within two days of Deborah’s memorial service, while we had been floating on the river in Big Bend, the Snyders and our friends, Tom and Patricia Chambers, had donated $350,000 to the mission in her honor.
That board meeting seemed to mark an end to the grace that had sustained me through Deborah’s burial and memorial service, through Big Bend and the banquet. It also proved to be the last civilized stop before life spit me out on an unmarked trail. I was fifty-five, graying at the temples, with half my heart lying in the ground at Rocky Top. How to survive? How to move forward? I felt trapped in a whiteout snowstorm with no guide and fresh out of supplies. The intensity of my fear surprised me.
For weeks, I wandered through the house like a ghost in a graveyard. I haunted Deborah’s closet, opening the drawers and cabinets, touching her scarves, her stockings, burying my face in her clothes, trying to breathe in her scent. Sometimes I closed the closet door behind me and sat there in the dark, holding the last photograph ever taken of us together.
I combed through files and photo albums and made a scrapbook of my favorite pictures of her and letters she’d written. For several days and nights, I sat on our bed in a daze, slowly turning the pages, reliving moments: the spring I fell in love with her and delivered lemon drops in a tiny brown paper bag to her at the school where she taught . . . the summer we got engaged, swimming in the lake, kissing underwater for so long we’d pop up sputtering for air, giggling that we’d nearly drowned . . . our autumn honeymoon in Vail, so poor we had to share a room with another couple . . . sunny days with the children in the park . . . winters building cowboy snowmen and exploring Indian caves at Rocky Top.
I abandoned my Bible and read hers, not for words of comfort from God, with whom I was barely on speaking terms, but for Deborah’s words—thousands of them, scribbled in the margins of 2,094 pages. She had chronicled our valleys and mountaintops, struggles and victories—in marriage, raising the kids, journeying with friends. Her words—not our money, jewels, antiques, or paintings by twentieth-century masters—were our family treasure: the outpouring of Deborah’s heart, written in her own hand.
My own heart felt shriveled and black, and my body shriveled with it. Nearly six feet tall, I weighed only 135 pounds. Friends told me I looked worse than terrible. I was glad. Thought it was proper. Mary Ellen asked me if I had a death wish. In a way, I suppose I did: I was wishing for someone who was dead.
My fear gave way to anger, and I had plenty to go around. But as I fired arrows of blame—at the doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, cancer researchers—clearly the bull’s-eye was God. It was He who had ripped a gaping and irreparable hole in my heart. Without a gun or mask, He robbed me of my wife and stole my children’s mother and my grandchildren’s grand-mother. I had trusted Him, and He had failed me.
How do you forgive that?
Thanksgiving came, a day to be endured, not celebrated. In a house that on Deborah’s favorite holiday had looked like the Pilgrims’ feast, Denver and my parents were our only guests. I got up early, put a scrawny turkey in the oven, and walked out to the back deck nursing a cup of coffee. As the sun-rise gradually lit the valley, I watched bucks chasing does near the river. Every year until this one, I’d hunted deer on Thanksgiving morning. But death seemed too personal now.
I drove up to sit with Deborah. I sat down on the big rock under the leaning oak, sinking deeper into misery as its bloodred leaves drifted to the ground around me. The white roses on Deborah’s grave had turned brown. Only an ugly mesh of chicken wire shielded her resting place from wild animals.
My heart stung as I asked myself how I could have left her here like this, with no wall or gates to protect her. Denver had told me he wanted to help me turn this place into a family cemetery, so we planned to do it together.
In mid-December, he and I convened at Rocky Top to begin our labor of love, transforming the stark, lonely hill where Deborah lay into a safe harbor of rest. The evening before we started the work, we piled logs in the big stone fireplace and stretched out in leather chairs to warm our feet. Firelight glowed against Denver’s dark skin as we reminisced about Deborah.
“Remember when she threw me that birthday party, Mr. Ron?”
“Sure do! At the Red, Hot & Blue.”
Denver was turning sixty-three, and Deborah had planned a little surprise party. After church, we’d taken him to the Red, Hot & Blue, a barbecue restaurant where Denver and I had often dropped in to eat pulled-pig sandwiches with collard greens and sweet potatoes on the side. Scott and Janina and their kids showed up to honor the birthday man.
“Denver,” Deborah said after we ordered, “tell us about your favorite birthday party.”
He looked down at the table and thought a few moments, then looked back at Deborah. “Well, I reckon this is my favorite birthday party, ’cause it’s the onlyest one I ever had.”
“What about as a child?” Deborah said, surprised.
“No, ma’am. On the plantation, we never celebrated no birthdays. I really never knowed when mine was till I was grown and my sister told me.” Then he brightened. “So this birthday party is sure ’nough my favorite.”
Deborah had brought a little cake, chocolate with white frosting. She lit the candles and we sang “Happy Birthday,” the kids’ voices chirping high while Denver smiled shyly.
He smiled now at the memory, stretching his feet toward the crackling fire. “That sure made me feel good. And the barbecue and the cake was mighty good, too.”
“But you had a heck of a time wrestling with that barbecue,” I said, remembering how showers of saliva squirted through his few good teeth onto the red-checkered tablecloth every time he took a bite.
“I sure ’nough did,” he said, chuckling at the memory. He’d had such a tough time eating his birthday lunch that the next day I’d called Glen Petta, a dentist who had met Denver at the retreat. At the time, he’d offered to make Denver a set of teeth free of charge. When I called Glen, he was happy to keep his word. The next time I saw Denver, he’d grinned a great big I’ve-got-new-teeth grin, revealing a full set of pearly whites lined up neat and tight as the grille on a ’54 Corvette.
“Why, you look like a movie star, Denver,” I’d said, grinning back.
“Which one?”
I named the first one that popped into my head: “John Wayne!”
That seemed to sit well with him, but the teeth didn’t. He wore them only to church. Said they got in his way when he ate.
He wasn’t wearing them now as we sat before the fire, the burning green wood hissing and popping, soothing us down into a drowsy tranquillity. Finally, we heaved ourselves up, and I took Denver upstairs to show him the room where he could sleep. I desperately wanted him to feel welcome there. He had slept at Rocky Top a few times before, but not without coaxing. For one thing, he still preferred sleeping outside. And now that Deborah was gone, I had begun to suspect he felt like a hanger-on. I didn’t feel that way about him at all. In fact, during her illness and since her death, I had come to consider him my brother.
I was
real happy to be goin with Mr. Ron to his ranch to help fix up the place where Miss Debbie was laid. But to tell the truth, I’d never felt as comfortable around him as I had around her. Not really, even though we’d been knowin each other for a coupla years. I was purty sure that the onlyest reason Mr. Ron tried to be my friend was ’cause Miss Debbie told him to. And I figured now that Miss Debbie was gone, wouldn’t be too long ’fore he’d cut me loose.
That evenin, Mr. Ron showed me the room upstairs again, even though I knowed where it was at. It’s real cozy, with a little iron bed and everthing done up cowboy-style. I slept there before but always on the floor, ’cause I ain’t ever been real comfortable sleepin inside in the first place. But Mr. Ron said he wadn’t gon’ hear ’bout that no more and made me promise I was gon’ sleep in the bed.
“See you in the morning,” he said and walked out the door, shuttin it behind him. I just stood there real quiet in the middle a’ the room and listened to him thump down the stairs. When I heard his bedroom door close, I opened mine so I wouldn’t feel so penned in. Then I wrapped a blanket around me and laid down on the bed with the blanket up over my head like a hood and just my nose stickin out, homeless-style. Didn’t matter what I did, though. I just couldn’t get comfortable in somebody else’s bed, and I knowed I wadn’t gon’ be doin much sleepin.
I’d been layin there for a coupla hours, still as a dead man and wide awake, when I heard somethin—footsteps in the room.
For a minute, I froze up, real scared. But then a kinda peace came over me, and I closed my eyes underneath the blanket. Then I felt the covers slip off my head and some soft hands, light as a feather, tuckin em in around my neck. But I kept my eyes closed.
Then I heard the voice of a woman, a voice I recognized: “Denver, you are welcome in our home.”
I opened my eyes and there was Miss Debbie, healed and beautiful. Then, just as quick, she was gone. As sure as I’m tellin you this, it wadn’t no dream, ’cause I wadn’t sleepin. It was a visitation.
I laid there for a long time, tryin to figure out why Miss Debbie had come.
You are welcome in our home.
Our
home.
I took that to mean it was her home
and
Mr. Ron’s home, and that I was still welcome even though she was gone. Now, she was married to him for a mighty long time, so I figured she knowed him purty good. That’s when I knowed Mr. Ron had meant it when he said he was my friend.
Right after I figured all that out, that bed didn’t feel like a stranger’s no more, and I fell into a deep sleep.
We
awoke the next morning to a rose-colored sunrise that turned the frost pink, then gold, as the sun climbed into a cloudless sky. Denver seemed rested and especially cheerful. We parked ourselves on the back deck for coffee and watched as several deer crossed the pale river far below. Even from three hundred feet up, we could hear their slim hooves cracking through the ice that had formed along the riverbank in the night.
Since we’d planned to spend the day gathering rocks for Deborah’s burial site, we were glad for the chill weather. Picking up rocks on a Texas ranch isn’t a job you want to do before the first frost unless you feel like squaring off against an irritated rattlesnake.
Together, Denver and I gathered rocks for three days, passing over the ordinary to choose just the right ones. Then, stone by stone, we laid a wall around the square of ground where I would someday rest beside my wife. We used the best rocks to build pillars that would support a wrought-iron entry arch proclaiming the cemetery’s name: Brazos del Dios. The Arms of God.
By that time, we’d been working for six days, and I thought I’d noticed a change in Denver. Something . . .
lighter
about his spirit. I couldn’t pin it down. While we were stacking the heavy pillar stones, he solved the mystery for me.
“Mr. Ron, I got somethin to tell you.”
“What is it?” I said, shoving a piece of rust-colored limestone into place.
“Well, you might not believe this, but I saw Miss Debbie the other night.”