A Ford in the River Read online

  I remember him in his blue suit, Mama unfolding her napkin, laying it primly in her lap, her hair gray even then. There’d be this silence when my father said he wanted to quit, fried chicken, fried catfish in front of us, yams, black-eyed peas put on hold while my father studied Mama’s dubious face, knowing always what answer he was going to get yet acting as if he didn’t. As soon as Mama got her napkin arranged, stirred sugar into her iced tea, she’d say “I hear what you’re saying, Pauley, but what would you do if you did retire?” And my father would say, “I’d go fishing.”

  After church my father used to tell Marleah Willis how much he enjoyed her hymn singing. Marleah was married to Buddy Willis at the time. Buddy used to sell Chevrolets, but after the two of them split up he moved to Columbus and started his own used car business.

  Marleah Willis could really sing high and sweet, and when she did a solo for the congregation, my father would lift his head up and close his eyes, her voice taking him where he wanted to go. He’d sit on the end of the pew so he could get out quick when Marleah came our way. When he complimented Marleah on her singing, heads turned, people noticed it. He wasn’t tall but he was broad in the shoulders He had a gut on him then. He could put away steak and potatoes and corn on the cob, fried okra, a dozen catfish, so he took up a lot of space in the aisle. He’d be pointed one way, toward the altar, and Marleah she was on her way out of the church, the traffic backed up behind her, Marleah trying to get past him, knowing she had to say something back. She’d say, “It’s sweet of you to say that, Mr. Creel.”

  Every Sunday it’s sweet of him, Sandy would say, and Mama she’d snap her pocket book shut and shove her hymnal back in the rack.

  Mama had talked to Marleah after church because my father, he wanted Marleah to sing a hymn for him, and Marleah said she would come over in the afternoon. She didn’t want to, that was clear. Marleah scooted the piano bench under the piano, closed up the hymnal, and looked the other way from Mama. She looked at me once, me with Sandy, like I’d better be just another married man. Then she went over to Reverend Hatcher. Smoothing out the lumps in her sky blue dress, Mama headed up the aisle toward the pulpit.

  That Sunday Mama talked to Marleah in church, I was still thinking about what had happened at Jack Lazenby’s annual Fourth of July barbecue. Jack held it behind his house, which was half a mile down the road from the convenience store he owned and ran, The Lazy Bee—Lay-Z and a striped bumblebee Sandy tells me is called a rebus.

  We were sitting around Jack’s barbecue pit, the chigger patch Sandy called it, digesting barbecued pork—y’all come but bring your own lawn chairs and Chigger-Red—that was Sandy’s view of Lazenby hospitality. Marleah was sitting next to me. She was telling me about life without Buddy. They’d been divorced for nearly a year now. She’d had to haul the garbage to the garbage pit down the road, wasn’t that fun, and keep the lawn mowed. Buddy wasn’t making cigarette runs for her Winston One Hundred Lights and his Marlboro One Hundreds.

  Big Jack was shooting off bottle rockets. Fire one, he’d boom out, fire two! I heard them whooshing out in the dark, popping over the pines. Marleah shook her last cigarette out and crumpled the pack. “I’m thinking that’s my last Winston, Wayne.”

  I’d smoked my last panatela, but I wasn’t about to be her errand boy. I said I wasn’t used to making cigarette runs. She tweaked my shirt below the elbow and said she would go with me. Sandy had gone to the bathroom. We might be back before she missed us.

  I decided to stop at the Lazy Bee. Marleah went in with me. We both used the restrooms. Then Marleah bought two packs of Winston One Hundred Lights. I bought a five-pack of Phillies Panatelas.

  After I parked at Big Jack’s place, Marleah said she didn’t want to go back to the party right away. We could hear firecrackers popping and crackling down the road. Marleah moved closer to me, and I heard her catch her breath. I put my arm around her, stroked the back of her neck. She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth, and then she put her head on my shoulder. Having her close to me, I wanted that to last.

  We kissed again, this time tonguing, then I was biting her lower lip. She pulled away from me, I knew I’d gone too far. I hadn’t known when to put the brakes on.

  She smoothed her skirt out. “I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea.”

  Without moving an inch, I pitched my voice into casual. “Far as I’m concerned, nothing happened.”

  Marleah said we should get back to the party.

  When we got back, Marleah went right over to Dottie Lazenby. She listened to Dottie talk about their trip to Disney world and Epcot Center. Sandy said to me, “You missed the bottle rockets.”

  A week went by. I couldn’t get Marleah out of my mind. I even called her house from the parts department, but all I got was her voice on the answering machine. That same day after I got off work Sandy told me she couldn’t sit with my father this evening. She asked me if I would sit with him. She was taking Mama to Walmart to stock up on trash and garbage bags, laundry and dishwashing detergent, a long list of household items substantially cheaper at Walmart than they are at Winn-Dixie, Sandy said, when I asked her why go across town to Walmart when Winn-Dixie was two miles down the road. I was wishing Sandy didn’t have the summer off from teaching, that way Sandy would have been been at Beauregard High, not here asking me to sit with my father while she took Mama shopping on her day to sit with him. I took six garbage bags out to the car and opened the trunk and stashed them.

  I brought the radio to the bedroom and plugged it in. We got a rundown on the ball games that afternoon and some stuff on the Braves game coming up, then some call-ins, then gospel. It wasn’t long before we were playing the leg game. My father’s left leg would fall off the bed. I’d intercept his foot, taking care to avoid his toenails, catch his ankle, and hoist the leg back up onto the bed. He would lower it and I would raise it again. We played the leg game without saying much. Are you comfortable? I’m okay, Wayne.

  Through the bedroom window, across the road, I saw Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s wife, Stephanie, come around their house driving a lawn tractor. She was wearing a halter and loose-fitting shorts. She raised her hand once and patted her hair. The next time I tried to lift up my father’s leg he wouldn’t let me. “Leave it be, Wayne.” So I let it be.

  On Saturday I drove by Marleah’s house. She was outside moving a lawn sprinkler away from the mailbox. She gave me a fluttery hand wave and smiled. I waved back but I didn’t stop. I drove on over to the Lazy Bee and picked up a six-pack of Diet Coke. There was a telephone outside the Lazy Bee. I thought of calling up Marleah then and there, why not, hey Marleah it’s Wayne, I’m down here at the Lazy Bee and thought you might be out of Winston One Hundred Lights. On another Saturday, I might have done it. But on this one I was scheduled to sit with my father.

  Mama was outside weeding her marigold bed, and she looked up when I came up the front steps, my feet crunching down on the welcome mat, and she said Wayne Junior’s in there with him, Wayne.

  My father was sitting on the side of the bed. He had Wayne Junior’s Walkman on. He had his legs spread and his hands on his butt, tapping one foot on the carpet. When Wayne Junior saw me coming, he slipped the earphones off my father’s ears, trying not to upset him too much. Wayne Junior put the earphones over his own tender ears, waiting for me to start in on him.

  His voice was going, “Gimmee that, Wayne.” Wayne Junior looked at me for direction and I told him to turn the damn thing off.

  My father’s hands weren’t on his hips anymore, he was on his feet, he was doing this ballerina twinkle toe step across the bedroom and out the door. We caught up with him in front of the TV set, channel surfing with the remote.

  After Mama talked to Marleah after church, Marleah came over to do what she promised she would do, sing a hymn for my father, whatever hymn he wanted to hear. My father wasn’t wearing a diaper. He had a T-shirt on, khaki pants.
Mama had cut his toenails.

  While Mama went on back to the bedroom, to tell my father Marleah was here, I was talking to Mama, in my head—why does this have to happen, how sad can this get? Don’t you understand, Mama came back in my head, he just wants to hear her sing.

  Marleah was standing in front of my father’s unit map. It was just us, in the living room. “I’m really not sure I should do this.”

  “Do what?” I chanced it. “See me again?”

  “I told your mama I’d sing for your daddy. I didn’t think you’d be here, Wayne.”

  Marleah was smoothing her skirt out again. The skinny soldier my father used to be was where he usually was, tacked to the unit map. Then Mama was back. She said we could see him now.

  Mama went in first, Marleah next. My father was sitting up in the bed. His hands were folded over his belly. Mama sat near the foot of the bed, Marleah stood next to the dresser. When Mama called her over, she came. She let herself down in the ladder-back like my father was holding the chair for her. Leaning forward inches away from him, she took his right hand in one of hers. “How you feelin’, Mister Creel?”

  “He’s doing real well,” I had to say. Paul Creel in his blue suit, the man in the photograph, what if he were here in his Sunday suit, would his left hand be flopping like a fish? But he couldn’t fit into that suit anymore.

  “Mister Creel?” Marleah raised her voice. “Mister Creel, I came here to sing a hymn for you. What hymn would you like me to sing, Mister Creel?”

  “You sing whatever you feel like singing,” Mama said.

  My father’s left hand flopped like a fish. I couldn’t allow him to go on this way. I grabbed his left hand and stopped it. I dragged his right hand loose from Marleah’s.

  My father gave me a look I’ll never forget. He yanked his hands away like I was contaminated. “Leave, Wayne! You hear me? Leave!”

  I wish I hadn’t but I stayed where I was. My father glared out the window at the front yard, the mimosa out by the mailbox, the birdbath, Marleah’s white Honda Civic, Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s place across the road. He had his chin in his hand, his feet stretched out like he wanted to float away somewhere with Marleah floating with him. The air came on with a rush. Nobody said anything. Finally Mama signaled us to leave the room.

  I walked Marleah on out to Mama’s marigold bed. It was hot outside. Marleah’s frilly white blouse was damp. Sweat streaked her layer of face powder. A butterfly flickered behind her. I heard a mocking bird going—joodeejoodeejoodee. I heard a car down the road somewhere.

  Marleah looked at me hard when we got to her car.

  “I only came because your mother asked me to. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “Next time you come I’ll make sure I’m somewhere else.”

  “There won’t be a next time,” Marleah said.

  Marleah got in her car and drove away. Across the road Wyatt Kirkpatrick’s underground lawn sprinklers poked their heads up into Wyatt’s front yard, hissing, squirting out water. I could cross the road, keep going, get wet, plant my feet in Wyatt’s water-soaked grass. If I did that, would my father be watching me through the window he had on the world? What would he say if I trekked past Wyatt’s barbecue pit, the swing set for his two sons, kept on going, the hissing sprinklers behind me now, along with Wyatt, and Stephanie Kirkpatrick, Mama too, Sandy also, Wayne Junior? What would he say if, climbing over Wyatt’s chicken-wire back fence, on my way to the woods, the deep woods, the tall pines that would grow taller as more years ticked off my short life, if I were to do that, and, I told myself, I still might, would I be doing what Denny Maxwell had done, would, in my father’s view, I be doing something stupid? Or would I be doing what would please him most?

  Chairs

  I felt the chair slats ribbing my back, a wedge of hot sun on my feet. I got up and moved my beach chair so it would get more shade from the sun umbrella. Settled back in with my diet drink, I watched my wife pat on more suntan lotion. When Linda leaned over to do her ankles, I saw the lines on her back from the slats of the chairs. The suntan lotion was gritty with sand so I decided I wouldn’t put any on.

  We were the ones who laid claim to the chairs. There were two of them, close to the water. They were low-backed, legs embedded in sand, a ledge of wood connecting the chairs for our drinks and suntan lotion. The chairs were needing a paint job, and the nail heads in the slats were rusted. You saw chairs like these in front of cheap motels, three pairs, sometimes, instead of one. Here there was only one pair.

  We had the sun umbrella from a beach supply store. It had a red stripe and a white stripe, then a dark blue stripe and more white, like one of those paint sample color charts where the colors are clear and bright. We had planted our umbrella in the sand before anyone else caught on to the fact that only two chairs were available here—I mean on the beach, not around the pool or arranged behind the lock link fence, where the chairs were clustered in twos and threes on the sun-soaked concrete apron. We laid claim because we got there first. But that is not to say we monopolized the chairs. We would vacate the chairs when we went out to lunch, when we took a nap late in the afternoon. We let other people use them too for the chairs were for everybody in the motel to share and share alike.

  I was watching this man from Birmingham who spent most of his time in the water. His sun umbrella and beach towel—the umbrella had green and yellow stripes—were a few feet away from where we were, in the chairs, drinking our diet drinks. Linda was talking about quitting Lucille’s. She had worked for Lucille for too many years. She wanted a business of her own. She tilted her bright green plastic cup with the straw poking out of a hole in the lid. With my separation pay and my retirement we could move down here, get out of Georgia. I could say goodbye to Fort Benning. Linda might open up a florist shop down here.

  “We’ll use the equity from our house,” she said. Linda patted my knee. “We can get a thirty-year mortgage. Don’t worry, it will all work out.”

  It will and it won’t, I was thinking. That’s the way it had been in the past. For now, we could sit out here in the chairs. Out here close to the water, our financial situation looked good. I watched Linda open her magazine; then I folded my hands on my belly—still firm, not much fat down there. I watched a gull skim by with a fish in its beak.

  We went out for dinner that night, and then we went to this country and western place. It had a combo and a singer that sang requests. She had a body on her and she could sing. We had a good time dancing, and when we were back in our room we made love in a way we hadn’t done for awhile.

  The next day we went out for breakfast, and when we came back the first thing I noticed out on the beach was that the chairs were occupied. Another couple had taken over the chairs. They were young. I hadn’t seen them before. The backs had been lowered on the chairs so these people could sun themselves. The girl lay on her stomach, her head turned slightly to the right. She was wearing a red French-cut. From where we were, on the sun deck, those squares of shaded sand out there, those sun umbrellas were signaling me to take Linda back to our room for awhile. But I wasn’t about to do that yet.

  “I give them another two hours,” I said. “Maybe more. Who knows?”

  Linda looked up from her magazine. “Why don’t we go back to our room,” she said. “We’ll be cool and comfortable in our room.”

  “This is no time to hole up in our room. Now is the time for us to get some sun before it gets too hot to sit out in it.”

  “Well why not sit here and get some sun?”

  “Come on. We’re going out there,” I said. “We’re not going to waste the morning up here.”

  So pretty soon we set up the sun umbrella and lay out on our beach towels. After lunch we took a nap. I kept the drapes closed until we came out. It wasn’t us who readjusted the chairs so people could sit on them again. We waited for someone else to. We stayed inside until
this was done, watching television after we woke up. Towards evening we went back outside. The chair backs had been readjusted. The chairs were chairs again. This joker and his girl friend must have gotten wind of the attitude here. Hogging the chairs wasn’t right—this certainly would have come through in the way other people would have looked at these two. Other people would have been willing to share the chairs. Other people’s wives wore one-piece bathing suits. Maybe what I was thinking got through to these people because the next day they were gone.

  So the next day went all right. We made sure the chairs were available to whoever wanted to sit in them. We set our umbrella up some distance away, lay out on our towels, got gritty. In a corner of concrete, behind the fence, we kept tabs on who was using the chairs. This man from Birmingham and his wife were stretched out with the chair backs down, very comfortable under their sun umbrella. The wife wore a black and white one-piece. Two old ladies were feeding potato chips to the gulls. After the Birmingham people left we let the old ladies have the chairs for as long as they wanted to sit in them. We spent the day on the beach without sitting in the chairs. Around sunset, making quite a ruckus, more gulls followed the ladies on their walk down the beach.

  We watched the sunset sitting in the chairs. The sun was a paint sample red, and the sky, it was really worth seeing. Such a sunset you won’t see in Georgia, was how Linda expressed it. We had a nice sea breeze on our faces. The chairs were ours to enjoy for as long as we wanted to sit in them.