Taft (30 page)

I could feel some tugging in my neck, but things were good and numb now. The muscle took some time.

"Four-o nylon to close. We'll make these stitches nice and small. I did a rotation in plastics, you know. I was good at it too. Could have gone in for plastic, the real money. Spend my life making bigger breasts and smaller noses. Nobody calls you at three o'clock in the morning because they don't like their breasts. But no, I had to go head and neck. Strep throats and gunshots. Look at this. Look how pretty that is. There won't even be such a scar."

Franklin's Coke bottle scar.

"Let me just debride the wound and we'll be through. I'm just going to cut away what's loose. You got some pieces of muscle and tissue hanging off here that aren't so attractive. This one stays open. Gunshot wounds are dirty things no matter how you clean them up." There were sloshing sounds, the feeling of someone working around inside of me. Then I felt something cold running down the back of my neck. It made a pool on the table underneath me. I had the worst feeling that he had poured it in at the top and it had run all the way through. "Get me some iodoform gauze," he said, and Marion went off. Why did I keep thinking he was talking to me? "I want you to take these stitches out when they're ready. Seven to ten days, whenever it looks good. You'll know."

"Yessir," she said.

He pulled back the sheets and the light came flooding in from everywhere. "Sit up, brother. You lived after all."

Marion was taping pads to my neck and then winding the thing up with gauze. The doctor was writing out notes.

"Go pick these up tonight," he said. "Five hundred milligrams of Cipro twice a day and some Demerol fifty for the pain. Don't slide on the antibiotics. You are an infection waiting to happen."

"When do we come back?" I said, bringing my hand up to touch my neck.

He pushed my hand back down. "You don't ever come back," he said. "I've done my good deed for this year. You have any problems, you go to the hospital. Nobody will bother you about a gunshot wound that's fixed up so nicely."

"I really appreciate this," Marion said.

He put his arm around her shoulder. "I wish you'd come back to Memphis. Nurses good as you are hard to find. Keep an eye on him. Keep him down until he feels like getting up. Change the dressing every day. And you," he said to me. "I'm sending you a bill. A huge bill."

"Right." I put my hands behind me on the table. I was feeling a little lightheaded and I didn't think it would be a good time to fall.

"Call the big guy," the doctor said. "Get him out of here. He looks like he's going to faint."

W
ALLACE CAME BACK
and stuck his head in the open car window. "I, um, I don't have enough money. Either of you have any money?"

"How much is it?" Marion asked.

"One hundred twenty-three dollars and some change. That's with the tax and everything."

"A hundred twenty-three?" What was I taking, uranium?

"It's the Cipro," Marion said, reaching into her purse. "That stuff costs a fortune. I should have thought about that."

"It's okay," Wallace said. "I just don't—"

I was trying to reach into my pocket with my left hand, but I couldn't quite get my shoulder to join in. "Reach back there and get my wallet," I said to Marion. She slipped her hand beneath me and went into my pocket. "Give him the credit card."

Marion handed Wallace my whole wallet out through the window. "Come back and tell us if they give you any trouble."

The all-night pharmacy wasn't close to anything. It was out by the fairgrounds where they held the farmers' markets in the summer. The store was huge and bright and there were almost no cars parked out front. The windows were full of banners, sales on notebooks and pantyhose and diet pills. No sale on antibiotics.

"I should have sent him in there with money," Marion said. She was sitting in the back seat. "I don't know what I was thinking of."

"There's plenty else to think about," I said. I wished the headrest was higher up. I closed my eyes.

Wallace came back and put my wallet and the sack on the dashboard. He backed out the car and headed towards the Woodmoores. Was it four in the morning? Five? We were all quiet. There wasn't anything left to say. We felt sad. I'd been shot, Wallace had seen it happen, Marion had been saddled with fixing it. The two of them had looked inside my neck while I lay there.

When we got to the house the front door was unlocked and the lights in the living room were on. Mrs. Woodmoore was asleep sitting up on the couch, her head back and mouth open. Fay was sleeping with her head in Mrs. Woodmoore's lap, her legs stretched out. Ruth and Mr. Woodmoore had gone upstairs to bed, I guess. It was late.

Wallace and I stood by the door and looked away. I didn't like coming up on people when they were asleep. Marion leaned over Fay and shook her mother's shoulder. "Mama," she said quietly. "We're home."

But it was Fay whose eyes opened first. She sat up quickly and looked embarrassed. Fay moving is what woke Mrs. Woodmoore.

"You're all right," Fay said.

Mrs. Woodmoore shook her head and pushed her glasses back into place, then she wrapped an arm around Fay. "See there? Didn't I tell you he was coming back? Didn't I say he'd be fine? This girl has been so worried about you." Marion's mother got up and put a light hand on either side of my face. "How you feeling, baby?"

"He's tired," Marion said. "He's had a hell of a night."

And I was tired. Too tired to feel like talking about it. Fay stood up from the couch and swayed a little, trying to get used to her own weight. She'd been cleaned up. Her hair had been washed and was still a little damp. She was wearing her jeans and a white undershirt that looked to be one of Mr. Woodmoore's. I could see Mrs. Woodmoore leaning her over the sink and washing her hair, working the blood stains out of her clothes.

"Wallace," I said, my voice feeling sore. "Any chance I could get you to drive me and Fay home?" The way it sounded we were going together. I hadn't meant that.

"You can drive her home," Marion said, "but he's staying here. Somebody has to keep an eye on you for a day or two, make sure you don't start bleeding, make sure you take your pills."

"Isn't it nice having a nurse right here?" Mrs. Woodmoore said to me.

"I think I should get home," I said, but I could have cared less where I slept.

"You don't have to think," Marion said. "I let you out of going to the hospital, but we're not even going to talk about this one."

It would have been good if there'd been a minute to talk to Fay, see how she was doing, but it wasn't going to be possible with everybody standing there. She was looking at her feet. There was still some blood on her tennis shoes.

"Thank you for letting me wait here," Fay said.

"Any time, sweetheart." Mrs. Woodmoore put her arm back around Fay. "I've got half a mind to just keep this girl with me."

Fay dipped her head down and touched it to Mrs. Woodmoore's shoulder, then just as quick she straightened up again. "I'd appreciate it if you could carry me home," she said to Wallace.

"Sure," he said, and he opened up the door for her.

"I'll see you tomorrow," I said. Poor Fay, I was thinking, but then I forgot. My neck was still numb and it gave my head the feeling of floating off someplace by itself.

"I'm so glad," she said, standing in the doorway. "I'm happy that you're okay." Mrs. Woodmoore gave her one more kiss and then Fay turned around and left. Wallace nodded and followed her out.

"Who was she again?" Marion said.

I started to answer, but her mother jumped in. "That's Fay Taft," she said, watching her from the window. "She works for John in the bar."

Mrs. Woodmoore told us good night and we all headed upstairs. Franklin was sleeping in Buddy's room with Ruth, which left Marion and me in the twin beds she and Ruth had slept in as girls. When Marion flipped the wall switch two ruffled lamps on two matching bedside tables lit up. Ruth had been right about the room. The frilly curtains and the rose covered wallpaper made me think of a clipped poodle. The more I looked at it, the fuzzier it got. Marion picked a stuffed tiger off one of the beds and threw it on the floor to pull back the spread. "This one's you," she said.

I'd been in that room before.

She took the two bottles out of their paper sack and handed me a couple of pills, then she went to the bathroom and got me a glass of water. "Take these. They'll be a little hard to swallow."

"I don't have any pain."

"Trust me, it's coming."

I took the antibiotic and it went down like a baseball. As soon as it was past my tongue I knew I'd made a mistake. I started to cough and coughing made everything worse. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed, shaking, worn out from a pill. "I'm going to wait on this other one awhile," I said.

Marion helped me out of my clothes like a nurse. "Put your arms out," she said, but my left arm didn't go out too well.

"This going to be a problem?"

"For a while is all. It's going to take some time for everything to come back." She kneeled on the floor and untied my shoes. I didn't like her doing that, but when I leaned over I felt a throbbing that made me straighten up again. "Just let me," she said.

When I was sitting there in my underwear she put her hand behind my head and helped me lie down. "I'm going to be right here," she said, getting into the little bed next to mine. I didn't know if she was taking her clothes off or not. I couldn't turn my head to the side.

Taft sleeps past one in the afternoon on Sunday. His wife has hung blankets over the curtains to keep the room extra dark. She unplugged both the phones and told the children, "No noise. Nothing." He hadn't gotten in from the lumberyard until after five in the morning. It seems as if it's been weeks since he's had any sort of real sleep. Even when he wakes up and looks at the clock and feels ashamed for having stayed in bed for so long, he's still tired. He could easily roll over and go back to sleep for another couple of hours, but he told Carl they'd get the deck finished today. A person can't spend his whole day in bed. Taft gets up and feels for his bathrobe in the dark.

"What're you doing?" Taft's wife says when she sees him in the hall.

"You shouldn't have let me sleep so late."

"You've got to get some more rest," she says.

"I want to get to work on that deck."

"Oh, who cares about the deck. Take it easy for a change." She reaches up and rims her hand over his head. "Your hair's all funny."

"Hair's not meant to be slept on for so long," he says. He puts his arms around her and squeezes her until she gives out a little yelp.

"Stop that now," she says, laughing. "I'm on my way to church. I want to be sure they'll let me in."

"Church?"

"They're having a rummage sale. I was going to take the kids over so the house would be quiet."

"Well, you better leave Carl. I want him to help me with the deck." Then Taft remembers Fay down at the lumberyard. He should think of a project to do with her now so the two of them can start spending more time together. That would be fair. Something with Carl, something with Fay.

"All right," she says. "If you don't want to rest, I can't make you." She calls for Fay, who comes down the hall towards them. She's wearing denim shorts and a little sleeveless shirt that she's tied up at her waist. "Do you want to run over to church with Marjorie and me for a while and look at the rummage sale?"

Normally she'd say no. Fay doesn't like going places with her mother, but she likes church. Her friends are there. "Sure."

"How'd your date end up?" Taft says.

"Boring till the very end. But I got home early, didn't I?" she says to her mother.

"She did."

"I've been thinking that there has to be a better way for me to spend Saturday nights," Fay says. "Maybe I should try to get a job at the lumberyard, see if I can't learn something about wood."

"What are you talking about?" Taft's wife asks.

But Fay just smiles. She likes having secrets from her mother. She likes the fact that this is something just between the two of them. "See you later, Daddy," she says.

"You girls have fun."

And then they're gone, off to find Marjorie.

Taft checks Carl's room and when he doesn't find him there he goes to look in the garage. Carl's on his weight bench doing butterflies. It's the first time in sixteen years that Carl has gotten up before Taft.

"You want to finish up that deck?" Taft says.

Carl exhales, raises, inhales, lowers. "Sure thing," he says.

"I'll just get cleaned up a little," Taft says.

"I'm going to be done here in a minute." He's covered in sweat. Every muscle looks like it's straining. Taft wonders how much more he could do. Carl pushes his weights up again.

"Take your time," Taft says. Taft walks down to the bathroom to shave. He turns on the water in the sink and brushes his teeth while he waits for it to get hot. He wishes he felt better. He doesn't have enough free time to not feel well for a day.

Something was wrong when I woke up. I was lying in a river of sweat and the pain that was in my neck was pulling all the air out of the room. I was being shot over and over again. Every time my heart beat the gun went off. I heard it. I could feel myself shaking.

"Marion?" I said, but it was hard to make the word. "Marion?"

"I'm right here." She got out of her twin bed and came and knelt next to mine. She put her hand on my chest. It was so cool. It made me think of water. "You want that pill now?"

It is something like indigestion, but he hasn't eaten anything since supper last night. Taft stands in front of the mirror, looking for what's wrong. He thinks the dark blue bathrobe makes him look pale. He opens the medicine chest and takes out a bottle of Rolaids. He has just gotten the lid off when it comes. The first wave hits him in the chest and knocks him back against the bathtub. He is lying on the rose colored bath mat, trying to catch his breath. It is being crushed out of him by something. Something is sitting on his chest. There is that pain he remembers, the one in his left arm that is going all the way up to his jaw. He feels it in his shoulder and neck. He waits for it to stop, but it isn't stopping. He slides over onto his side and lies on the floor. Everything is clear now, what he's done, what he should have done. He is more afraid than he could have thought possible. He calls out, not a name but a low, long sound. He calls until he can't anymore. There shouldn't be this much pain. Not for anything.