“Don’t you wish you had just sent me to summer camp?”
I accompanied some of the other workers on deliveries of lumber, paneling, whatever, though I was quickly exiled from the transport of windows and other glass products. I sipped Mountain Dews in the cab or rode on the back of the ancient, snorting flatbed truck as we shook and rattled our way down the freshly tarred roads with the wind blowing my sweaty hair. The drives through the countryside made me see, for the first time, the place I am from. It was not a dry summer. Everywhere, there was green, shade after shade after shade of it. According to the Appeal, Monroe County “boasts more rivers and streams than any other place in Missouri.” Closest at hand, the thick Salt River runs slowly, drearily past the edge of town, flooding the banks when the spring rains come. Here, in the murky waters that mirror ancient overhanging branches, daring children, balanced precariously on fallen trees, are sometimes swept to their deaths, while farther upstream, blacks and Baptists held baptisms and sang hymns, their voices carried by occasional breezes drifting through the steamy mornings. Fifty miles east is Hannibal, where the passing Mississippi brings huge barges loaded with factory products and grain, stopping on their way from Des Moines before heading on to St. Louis and New Orleans.
. . .
On the day we moved from Madison, I was not there when the big trucks came to our house. Knowing my temperament, my mother stationed me at Mammy’s where I lay on her bristly couch. My grandmother shut off the light and let me mourn. At noontime, as the fire whistle announced midday, Mammy, maneuvering now on a walker with an embroidered pouch stitched up by June, brought me warm homemade bread spread with some of her preserves and a 7-Up, the things she made me when I was ill. She sat beside me. She didn’t want us to go, really. Paris was only a dozen miles away, but Mammy wanted Betty close, and not long after would come with us to stay most of the time, leaving the House of Many Chimneys where the summer kitchen had become a dumping ground for things left from the dead: Uncle Oscar’s Smith Corona and boxes of photos and papers that belonged to Wray Chowning. He had died a drunken mess with only the loosest grip on anything resembling reality. Betty had been left to take care of his house. One day, I discovered a paper Wray had written at the university on Shakespeare’s Henry IV; the title was “Harry in the Night.” When driving downtown in St. Louis now, passing the old hotels that were once Wray’s haunts, I tend to imagine him getting drunk enough to entertain the strangers passing through for brief transactions.
The day of the move, Aunt Winnie appeared with a chocolate pie for us to eat that night. She stood at the doorway where I lay and came to brush my hair off my face. “Things gotta change, kiddo,” she said, “things gotta change. One day I’ll be saying good-bye to Madison too, going off to live at Nahncee’s when I can’t keep up the house.” But Winnie never had to say good-bye to Madison. She succumbed to a heart attack after a hearty meal at a function for Christian ladies. She had apparently been stricken suddenly, soon after arriving home, as she was discovered still in her Sunday clothes and best church hat, waiting—eyes wide open—for the savior she had been blessed to expect only briefly.
. . .
A few nights after my encounter with the lawn-mower boy, in the very early morning, I notice him, not in his usual place on the car at the parking lot, but standing in the middle of the lane at the empty car wash where I presume it is a little cooler. With him is the skinny woman I went to high school with, the addict who was after Betty’s money. They look like they are dancing.
“Don’t do it,” I want to yell. “Watch out.” But I think the damage is done. He isn’t sober, and when Boyd finds out, he’ll be out of a job.
I do not get a wink of sleep that night, no good at all because I have so much work to do. My laptop is screwy and I am certain I am under some form of cyber attack. Earlier, after reviewing her marked-up manuscript, my new editing client, a South American economist, has claimed I am not getting her sense of “humous.” But what really keeps my eyes open and my head unable to shut down at all is our upcoming visit to Tiger Place. It is ridiculous to be a fiftyish man who cannot handle a ninety-year-old with narrow feet. For her sake, my mother should not stay here. I should not stay here, all bound up with my mother. I am not making decisions that are right for her. She needs to go somewhere where she can be properly looked after and fed. The only cuisine I have ever mastered was seasonal drugs. But I cannot leave. I will step up. In the morning, before the fog burns off, I will water the roses. I will get them through this summer. They will not wither on my watch.
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