Goodnight, Wherever You Are

They tell me I’m wrong. Every time I ask these incompetent “care givers”, they give me the same blank stare, the same hesitation in their answer. They’re afraid of something, though I can’t figure out what it is. I’m not violent — I never hit anybody like some of these other dotards.

At least. I’m pretty sure I never hit anybody. Yeah, I’m sure.

Why can’t anybody give me a straight answer in this place? You were in bed with me one minute, and the next minute I roll over and you’re not there. You couldn’t have gone far because the wheelchair is still in the room. You never made it far without that creaky old crow.

I remember. I remember when you used to dance. That sticks with me forever. You in our living room, accordion in your hands and feet flying a million miles an hour. That smile spread so wide across your face I thought your cheeks were gonna crack. You know, I couldn’t tell you the year, but it was in our old house. That house up off…well come on now…deer-something road. Deer-something road? Oh for Pete’s sake, I know the name of our road! We spent a lifetime living on that road.

These people here, the nursing staff. All they know is you drooling all over yourself and wheeled around in that damn chair. They don’t know the life you had. They don’t know the woman I love.

But they must know how much I love you. So why do they keep giving me that frightful look? You wouldn’t believe what one of them said to me. Told me you’d gone away.

Can you believe that?! Now how are they gonna tell me you’ve gone away when you were with me all day? When you can’t make it two feet without that cursed chair.

They all saw you. I know they did. We had breakfast together downstairs, we had lunch downstairs, we had dinner downstairs, all for them to see. Didn’t we? Did we eat lunch upstairs maybe? Maybe dinner. Well now…now what did we have for dinner? 

No. They’re wrong. They’re always wrong. I told you so the day we moved in.

I knew it the second we handed over our first deposit to that slug of a salesman, grinning his reaper’s grin. A man selling grave-lots to the old folks. Only you got to live in these grave-lots before you’re dead. Assisted living, what a goddamn load of crock. I’m sorry my sweet, I know it upsets you when I take the lords name, but you know how they rile me. 

Twenty or thirty years as a manager on the factory floor teaches you a thing or two about efficient execution. About doing a job. Nobody around here cares about doing a job anymore. They just want to make everything difficult for each other, always whispering, stabbing each other in the back, taking stuff out of my room when they think I’m not looking.

You would not believe what our grandson said to me. The stones on him. I don’t even know why I was talking with him. I asked these people, these care givers to do their job and they went running to him. They wake him up and put him on the phone. The nerve of these people. I didn’t need to talk to him.

But I’ll tell you…what he said to me, I just don’t know. He put the fear in me, love, more fear than what I got for you being gone. 

He says to me that my wife’s been dead four years now. He says to me I been living alone these last few years. He says I woke up dreaming, or he says my old memories are bleeding into my new ones. And he says it all so calmly. I can hear his love. He’s patient, he’s cool as a cucumber, and yet just below it all, it sounds like he’s said this before. We’ve talked about this before.

And for a second there, I can see it. My life without you. It’s a cold damn place with that old wheelchair in the corner, your clothes gathering dust, and the radio you used to tune to the classical station sitting silent. But he’s wrong, right? I know he’s wrong, but I know he’s right.

It’s all so confusing love. We’ve been together some fifty years and I can tell you the name of our dog we had in the old house. I can tell you about the time I watched the Chinese drop commies out the back of an airplane without parachutes at the end of the second world war. I can tell you about the day I told my mom and pop I was leaving school and that same day I drove up to Chattanooga and got myself a job.

But I can’t tell you what I had for dinner an hour ago. Or maybe it was a couple hours ago. Seems like everybody’s asleep now. I meant what we had for dinner, what we had, because you were there, just a slip of the tongue, that’s all.

Our grandson told me he could only tell me his reality. And in his reality you’ve been dead a while now. And the thing is, I want to believe him. But I know you were just in bed with me. My mind circles the drain more and more these days.

I’m exhausted — our grandson said we should sleep on it and start again in the morning. A new day, new beginnings. I do love him. But for the first time, I think I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid he knows more about this world than I do. And I know that’s the truth of it.

I’m gonna go back to bed now. And I’ll pray to God forgiveness. We haven’t talked in a while, but I know you’ll whisper in His ear for me. I’ll pray forgiveness for taking his name in vain, for running you off, for losing my mind. And I’ll pray you come home soon.

I miss you, love. Goodnight, wherever you are.

Call Her Erratic

A little update on the blog, and finally some new fiction! -

The old woman lived at the end of a long desert road where the wind never stopped blowing. During the summer, a hot dry southwesterly would whip up all the dust and dead sagebrush and send it careening across the valley. The winter brought the bitter harsh northern wind and driving snows that would blanket the jagged landscape for weeks.

     Sometimes she felt as old as the wind, and the house would always remind her of this. Whenever a large gust would surge, the baseboards would creak, the wood siding would shudder, and the roof would maintain its foothold with a series of quiet moans. The old woman would crack her knuckles and go about her business. Or maybe she would sit on her back porch where she let the wind have its fun. It would catch her long hair turned an ashy silver gray and make it dance as she sat. She might tap her feet to a silent tune. She might rock back and forth and mutter quietly under her breath.

     There were whispers she heard on a wind that never stopped. What is she doing in there? Why won't she let us in? Maybe she really is a witch. She loved the idea of becoming a witch as she aged; she could see herself as someone possessed of nefarious intent, engaging in satanic sorcery, and performing in orgies for the Sabbath. Every once in a while she actually believed that she did all these things.

     What the old woman did do was make maps. She took her time, meticulously drawing each crease and fold of the ancient earth as she remembered crossing it. And the old woman had an incredible memory. Her greatest joy came from drawing and naming each glacial erratic that dotted the high desert. She could relate to these giant boulders that came to rest wherever the ice and sun eventually decided. At times she felt like an erratic taking thousands of years to travel across a landscape before finding a home. Of course she wasn't that old, but she would have preferred if the townsfolk had called her something more akin to those rocks. Call her erratic. Call her time and temperature bound. Call her EARTH.

     Her maps were dotted with numbers. For each map she had at least five pages of notes where each of these numbers was given meaning. One is where so and so died of pneumonia. Fifteen is where so and so killed the great bull elk and shared his bounty with another struggling family. Twenty-two is where the great sunflower crop began with the careless toss of a wandering traveler. Each map had its set of numbers and each number corresponded to a different event. This was her history, this was her past, and it was a past she wanted all of them to remember. This is why they called her the names with such a tone as to turn a dry face sour. They hated the past. They hated the dark, they hated the dirt, and they hated the way she seemed to till it all into the light.

     So she moved out here with the wind, the stunted trees, and the river running down the hill from the house. Follow that river for a few miles and you reached the town, you reached the people, and you reached the end of history. People were quick to forget down there where the mill turned every day. Down there where the men, women and children played with time like it was a new toy. Down there where no one wanted to hear how things had come to be. She could always hear their incessant bickering echoing up the hills to linger on her property. She could feel their discontent, their longing for something more that she thankfully no longer felt. The insidious nature of their forward thinking pushed them beyond a past the old woman desperately wanted to cling to. The old woman was content to have the past whip around her like the untamed wind.

     But there were some in town not content to just have whispers reach her. No, these people were possessed by a single word, the most damaging name she could possibly imagine. They usually came in groups of two or three to ambush her as she sat on her porch enjoying the afternoon. These people had the nerve to climb the steps of her porch. They would even insist on going inside her house. The house she built of her own body and spirit. To taint such a safe place with their insistent poking about made her sick. She would retreat inside and explain that her business was none of theirs. They would always shake their heads and whisper the name they reserved only for her. They whispered mother.

     The real terror always came on the days when the wind would quiet, the dust would settle, and the whispers would fall silent. She'd find herself with little to do but muddle through the cacophony of memories that bombarded her. They came in a flourish, ravaging her suddenly quiet mind with thoughts of past years, past conversations, and past people. It was on these days that the old mother might find herself crying alone while mending an old kerchief, only to realize that she'd been sowing the same kerchief for years and hadn't quite finished.

     How long have I labored on this damn fool thing? She might ask herself while she stared at the faded fabric like it was a dangerous animal. But she had it wrong. The kerchief wasn't the animal, the animal was her mind, her memory. She made maps to remember, but when was the last time she sat and finished one? The old woman would leap to her feet in complete disregard for her protesting back and run as fast as she could to the tiny living room that looked out upon her front porch and the desert hills beyond.

     There she would always find the truth scattered chaotically about her desk like a bad dream remembered in the morning. Her notes would reveal an even darker reality. Her numbers were assigned to random points throughout the landscape like darts thrown at a board from long distance. Number thirty-one is the rock where John Haverston killed... and that was all she wrote. Number upon number of half finished thoughts and ill conceived memories plagued those false landscapes upon the page. Sweat might bead down her neck and drip between her sagging shoulder blades. It would settle at the area just above her buttocks, an area that once was smooth, curvaceous and appealing that now felt hard and cracked like the desert floor after days of baking heat.

     The old mother would riffle through the maps, each one confirming the terror was indeed her reality. She'd throw them to her floor and rush out the front door to confront the stifling heat and her failing brain in one fell swoop. Tears would pulse down her cheeks and drip onto her chest to make little navy blue dots on a baby blue sundress. If she looked down she might wonder how she came to wear that dress, how many days had she worn it, and when was the last time she did the wash? The tears would continue until her knees could bear it no longer and would buckle. Then the names would come at her like bats from a cave. STUPID, INCOMPETENT, or even worse DEMENTED.

     There, before the ancient house in the old desert, she would fall to her knees and pray to God to give her mind back. Then, the wind would rise to toy with her hair like so many times before. Her tears would dry and she would stand. She'd smack her dirt covered hands on her dress and blow a raspberry to have dirtied such a fine garment. Back inside she would go, the house moaning and groaning like the bones of her body. Inside, the old woman would find the mess of maps, carefully collect them, and then toss them back on the desk where she might sit and decide on the days new numbers. She would eat, she would bathe, and then she would lie down to sleep as the wind rocked her house and her soul into a broken slumber.

     In the morning she would wake and put on the blue sundress. She'd think about the people in town, the ones that found names for her, and she'd shake her head with great pity. How could those folk ever find a bone to pick with her? All she wanted was to keep the past alive. The old woman might find herself downstairs, working on her maps and if she had her way, the wind might blow all damn day.