The Front Porch Prophet (5 page)

“I have to take them every four hours. Doc Miller said it was very important to be punctual.” Eugene was gazing again, seemingly preoccupied. A.J. could not fathom what was on his mind, but he supposed Eugene would spill the beans in his own good time.

“What did Doc say about washing the pills down with boiler-makers?” he asked Eugene.

“We didn’t actually cover that,” came the reply.

“Probably just as well,” A.J. conceded. Doc was known to have a touchy streak. “So what’s the deal?” A.J. waited for his answer. The silence grew long and oppressive.

Finally, Eugene sighed. When he spoke, his voice was lifeless, as if a rock were talking.

“I have cancer. I’m rotten with it. It’s terminal.” Eugene stared at his lead-poisoned hackberry tree. His words hung over the clearing like a gas attack over the Argonne. A gentle breeze blew through the branches, but the words would not dissipate. Overhead, a contrail made slow progress against the backdrop of soft sky. A.J. heard Rufus down the mountain, barking. The scene etched itself into his consciousness, the sights and sounds permanently fixed in blacks and whites and shades of grey, as if Currier & Ives had come to high Georgia to find a little work and had walked up to the clearing in their tight Victorian pants and top hats to capture the moment forever. A.J. did not know what to say, so he said nothing, and stillness reigned.

Finally, Eugene took a ragged breath and turned to A.J. “But

I’m not dead yet,” he said. He began fumbling with his reloading supplies. A.J. was subdued as he retrieved the can of gunpowder for his friend. Eugene quickly and efficiently reloaded the spent cylinder. Then he offered the Colt to A.J. “Ten dollars
says you
can’t hit the tree six out of six.”

“I don’t feel like shooting your tree,” A.J. said. He knew he should respond to Eugene’s revelation, but his mind was blank. Impending death was not his strong suit, and the episode had taken on aspects of the surreal. He looked over at Eugene, who was staring down at the Colt in his lap.

“How long?” he asked. It was the inevitable question.

“Six months,” Eugene replied. “Maybe less. Doc Miller says he can’t be sure. It started in my pancreas, but now it’s all over.” He spoke matter-of-factly, like he was talking about an outbreak of crab-grass. He looked at A.J. “Of all the things in the world that could have killed me, I never thought it would be my fucking pancreas.”

“You’re not taking Doc’s word for all of this, are you?” A.J. asked. He felt the need to find a solution for Eugene’s problem. “You need to let someone else take a look.”

Doc Miller was the local physician. He was pushing eighty and still a pretty fair hand at setting a broken arm or sewing up a cut leg. He had relocated from somewhere in New York about thirty years ago, and the people of the town had been so overjoyed to have a doctor they chose to overlook the fact that Doc was a Yankee. Over the ensuing years, vile rumors worked their way south, tales of bitter lawsuits and large malpractice settlements. The townspeople’s view was that nobody was perfect, and Doc had always taken pretty good care of all of
them.
Still, medical science had made great strides in fifty years, and it was A.J.’s hope that Eugene might receive a different diagnosis and a less-final prognosis from someone who had attended medical school
since
the Roosevelt years.

“No, Doc sent me down to Emory for tests.” Eugene swallowed before continuing. “It’s official. I’m dead. I just haven’t fallen over yet.”

There was no panacea for his malignancy, and he had come back to his mountain to die on his own terms. A.J. watched as Eugene drew a right-handed bead on the hackberry tree and fired. Ambidexterity with firearms was not one of his strengths, and a hole appeared in the windshield of his Jeep.

“Shit,” he said. He switched hands and put the other five rounds into the tree.

“You never told me why you’re shooting the tree,” A.J. said, changing subjects to allow himself time to assimilate.

“It was Doc’s idea. He told me that I should have a hobby to take my mind off my troubles.”

“I bet he had something like stamp collecting in mind,” A.J. said, eyeing yet another cigarette that had slipped in close to the gunpowder. He picked up the can and placed it once again out of harm’s way. He thought it was a mercy that Eugene had not decided upon doctor shooting as an alternative pastime. He envisioned the scene. Eugene would walk into the lobby down at Emory with the big Colt stuck in his belt, right up in front like Billy the Kid used to wear his. He would saunter up to the Pink Lady at the information counter. “Oncology, please,” he would say, and then all hell would break loose.

“Stamp collecting?” Eugene said, sounding slightly appalled. He shook his head. “No, I’ve got a good hobby.” He dumped his spent cartridges and began looking around for the gunpowder.

“Your hobby is going to get you blown up,” A.J. said.

“I can think of worse ways to go,” Eugene replied with certainty, as if he had given the matter considerable thought. A.J. wondered if Eugene was entertaining the notion of getting it over with, just a boom and a flash, quick and clean.

Eugene arose and left the porch. He moved unsteadily across the clearing toward his violated Jeep. A.J. followed. Eugene stood by the Jeep and looked at the hole in the windshield.

“I can’t believe I shot my own damn Jeep,” he said softly. He looked at A.J. with a slight smile. “If anyone asks, we’ll tell them that Slim did it.”

“Well, they’d believe that,” A.J. said as his own smile appeared.

They were referring to the time Slim Neal had shot the front and back windshields out of John Robert’s pickup truck. Eugene and A.J. had been boys of sixteen, and they were riding around one summer night drinking hot beer because they didn’t have any ice and hoping the six cans they had would be enough to get the job done. They had just finished a short pit stop up a dirt side road when the misunderstanding occurred. As they were pulling back onto the highway, the back glass exploded in a hail of gunfire and several holes appeared in the front windshield. A.J. slumped down and floored it, heading for town and the protection of Slim. Eugene was hunkered in the right floorboard, cursing and bleeding from a small wound in his left earlobe. It seemed that the pale rider was upon them. Then they heard a siren, and a blue light began to flash. The car chasing them was Slim’s cruiser. A.J. pulled over, and Slim was all over them.

“Freeze!” he hollered, approaching the truck slowly behind the barrels of the largest shotgun A.J. had ever seen. Slim eased up to the truck and jerked open the door. Confusion replaced his fierce expression when he realized who occupied the truck.

“What the hell were you boys doing up that road back there?” he demanded, keeping the shotgun aimed in their direction.

“We were taking a leak,” Eugene growled from the floorboard. “I can’t believe you just shot me for pissing on a dirt road.”

“You weren’t stealing pigs?” Slim asked, lowering the ten-gauge a little.

“Do you see any pigs?” A.J. asked. He had a lot of fairly un-explainable truck damage to explain when he got home and was becoming cranky now that another sunrise seemed to be in his future. “Eugene, you got any pigs down there with you?”

“Nope.”

“Goddamn,” Slim said quietly. He lowered the shotgun all the way. “A.J., take Eugene down to Doc Miller’s and get his ear fixed. I’ll go talk to your folks.”

It turned out there had been a rash of hog thefts in the area, and Slim had received an anonymous pork tip earlier in the day. He was a man who would not tolerate pig theft, and even
suspected
pig theft would be dealt with harshly. When A.J. and Eugene pulled up the side road that led to Rabbit Brown’s barn, they had no idea they were under Slim’s zealous scrutiny. When they stopped to relieve themselves, he had vaulted into action. The real swine thief was busy at the time stealing fifteen hogs from Slim.

When Slim attempted to explain the mishap to Eugene’s father, Johnny Mack spoke no word. He simply stepped into the house for a moment and returned with his twelve-gauge and a box of shells. Slim executed a quick retreat as Johnny Mack stood on the porch, slowly loading the pump shotgun. The luckless constable fared no better when he talked to A.J.’s father. John Robert Longstreet was a man of few syllables and spent only one on Slim Neal.

“Git,” he said, pointing to the road. Slim got.

Slim was fired over the incident, but he was reinstated two months later when no one else could be found to take the job for what it paid. The town council extracted his solemn promise to only shoot at confirmed perpetrators in the future. Then they returned his badge after knocking from his wage the price of the new glass in John Robert’s truck. Johnny Mack attempted to whip Eugene over the incident, because the boy should have been home reading the Bible and not out peeing on Rabbit Brown’s pigs. The whipping didn’t go well, however, due to Eugene’s objections over being punished for getting shot while urinating on a dirt road. John Robert didn’t try to whip A.J., but the incident indicated to him that the boy had way too much spare time on his hands. Thus A.J. spent all his free time during the following several weeks replacing rotten fence posts around the back field at the farm.

“If you get to needing to pee while you’re out there, just drag her out and let her rip,” John Robert said, chuckling at his merry joke. “Just make sure your granmama’s not around.”

But those were the old times, long gone and mostly forgotten. Eugene and A.J. stood by the Jeep in the clearing and admired Eugene’s handiwork. Rufus trotted up and flopped down, panting. He seemed tired, and A.J. supposed he had been killing something large. The dog eyed A.J. for a moment, dismissed him, and laid his head on his paws. In the distance they could hear the thrum of a freight train. The haunting sound of shave-and-a-haircut echoed as the engines approached a crossing.

“I guess you need to be going,” Eugene said.

“Yeah,” A.J. affirmed, “I don’t want to get caught in the woods after dark by your dog.” A.J. was feeling an overwhelming urge to place distance between himself and the general vicinity of doom. The clearing held too many problems for him to handle at present. He required time to absorb and consider.

“I need for you to do me a couple of favors,” Eugene said, his halting cadence indicating the difficulty he had asking A.J. for help.

“Sure,” A.J. said. “Anything you need.” It was uncharacteristic of Eugene to request an indulgence. A small dread settled on A.J., a premonition of crisis.

“I would like for you would come back next week,” Eugene said. “I don’t get much company up here, and it gets a little quiet. You can take the Jeep so it won’t be so much trouble getting back up the road.”

A.J. felt bad for Eugene.

“Now, that’s odd,” he said. “I was just about to tell you that I might come up next week and check on you.” He was shaking his head as if he could not believe the coincidence. Eugene couldn’t believe it, either.

“When it comes to lying,” Eugene said, “you really suck.”

“You mentioned two favors.”

“The other one is kind of large.”

“The first one was kind of large,” A.J. pointed out. “What is it?”

“When it’s time, I want you to kill me.” A.J.’s head snapped around as if he had been slapped.

“Run that one by me again.” Maybe it was Eugene’s idea of a joke.

“You heard me,” Eugene said. His tone was so flat A.J. knew it was no jest. They stared at one another momentarily. Then they both looked away. A.J. felt slightly nauseous, as if he had been hit hard in the solar plexus.

“How the hell can you ask me to do that?” he asked.

“I’m asking.”

“You must be crazy. If you want to shoot yourself or blow yourself up, go ahead. But leave me out of it.” A.J. felt like he was breathing mud. “I know ten or fifteen people who would be happy to accommodate you. Hell, Diane’s daddy would
pay
you to let him do it.”

“I’d do it for you,” Eugene said quietly.

“I’d never ask you to,” A.J. said with certainty.

“Never say never,” Eugene said with a small sigh. “You don’t know what might come up.”

“I’ve got to go,” A.J. said abruptly. He had heard enough. He walked across the clearing to retrieve his bat from the porch. Eugene meandered toward the cabin and met A.J. when he returned. They stood like Lee and Grant at Appomattox. Eugene swayed. His pupils were dilated.

“Are you coming back?” he asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll come back, but I won’t kill you.”

“Well, I’m batting .500 at least.” Eugene said. “Take the Jeep. I’m high all the time, now, and I can’t drive it. If I wasn’t dying, I’d be having one hell of a good time.”

“No, you keep the Jeep. You might run out of something to shoot. I’m going to borrow a bulldozer and clean up that road. Winter is coming, and it’s already a mess.” A.J. had decided on the spur of the moment that fixing the road was his best alternative to a series of long walks in the Georgia mountains.

“I assume you’ll be borrowing the dozer from Jesus Junior,” Eugene said, referring to Johnny Mack.

“He’s the only one I know who has one,” A.J. replied. Eugene seemed to consider this for a moment. Then a smile crossed his face.

“Good luck with that,” he said as he walked back onto the porch. A.J. headed on across the clearing and down the trail. As he neared the Lover, he heard six shots ring out, and he knew that Eugene’s faithful Jeep, like its owner, had entered its final days.

A.J. MADE QUICK WORK OF THE WALK DOWN THE
mountain. He was unsettled. The afternoon had been like a trip into the Twilight Zone. So much so, in fact, he wouldn’t have been much surprised to find Rod Serling standing in the road, wearing a black sport coat with narrow lapels, chain smoking and eyeing him with intensity. He decided to stop at Billy’s Chevron for a Coke and some non-apocalyptic conversation. A dose of normalcy would do him good after the recent festivities up on the mountain. The establishment sat at the crossroads right outside of town.