Read What Dies in Summer Online
Authors: Tom Wright
What Dies in Summer (8 page)
There was more noise and movement and different colored lights and pretty soon somebody else’s breath, a man’s this time, and a moving white light in my eyes.
“Okay,” said a masculine voice. “I’d call that equal and reactive. Tracking looks pretty normal, conjunctivae nice and pink, no apparent fractures.” A long-fingered
hand clipped the light back into the pocket of a short-sleeved green doctor shirt. “Can you hear me okay, tiger?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“I’m Dr. Colvin. What’s your name?”
“Biscuit.”
“Biscuit, huh?” He looked at Gram, who nodded.
“His father called him that,” she said.
“What’s your last name, Biscuit?” asked the doctor.
“Bonham.”
“Who was it you wanted to kill?”
“What?”
“You were talking about killing somebody. Sounded pretty serious about it too.”
“I don’t know,” I said. But of course I did, and a wave of angry memories broke over me, followed by a chilling remorse that paralyzed my tongue and drenched me with shame.
He raised his hand, saying, “Okay, how many fingers do you see, Biscuit?”
I focused my eyes. “Two,” I said.
“Stick out your tongue for me,” the doctor said. I did. “Feel this?” he asked, running his fingernail down one side of my face and then the other.
“Uh-huh.”
He took off my shoes and socks and scratched the bottoms of my feet with his pen, seeming to be very interested in how my toes reacted.
“Can you sit up for me, please?”
“Yes sir.” As he was helping me up I noticed he smelled like Lifebuoy soap.
He looked at my eyes again and said, “I need to see if you can keep your balance now, Biscuit.” Behind him I could see L.A. and Gram and a nurse with black hair and a little pointed
white hat.
I stood up. The floor looked kind of far off.
“Any dizziness? Sick to our stomach?”
“No sir.”
“How about your noggin—that hurt?”
“Yes sir.”
“Where?”
“All over.”
He had me turn and tilt my head and close my eyes and touch my nose and tell him what day it was. “Can you smell anything?” he said.
“Yes sir. It smells like alcohol in here.”
“Anything else?”
“You smell clean.”
He smiled at me and said to the nurse, “Cranials are intact and we don’t seem to have any decerebration or anything going on with the brain stem. Level of consciousness is continuing
to come up. I don’t think we’re dealing with any kind of acute bleed here but let’s go ahead and get a skull series anyway, just to be on the safe side.” He looked back at
me. “How’d this happen to you, Biscuit?”
“Uncle Jack did it!” blurted L.A. There was a hot look in her eyes as everyone turned to her. She put her hands in her pockets and looked away.
“We were boxing,” I said.
“That’d be you and Uncle Jack?” said the doctor with a glance back at L.A. She nodded. I nodded too but immediately stopped myself and put a hand on my head to settle the
pain.
“So the two of you, you and Uncle Jack, were boxing and you happened to get knocked out. That right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Any idea how long you were out?”
“No sir. My gloves were off when I came to. Mom was home.”
Dr. Colvin didn’t seem to like the sound of that at all. He peeled back my eyelid for another look, saying, “And Jack, did he do anything to help you, call for help or
anything?”
“No sir, I don’t think so.”
The doctor nodded, but he wasn’t happy.
“You look like maybe a welterweight to me—that about right?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” he said. He clapped me on the shoulder and turned to the nurse. “Let’s get this slugger admitted, make sure we don’t have any slow leaks.”
The nurse nodded.
“Did you say there was already a chart?” said the doctor, and she nodded again, handing him a thick folder.
“Wow,” said Dr. Colvin, looking at me over his little glasses. “Not your first visit with us, I see.” He took the file and sat on a small wheeled stool to read it.
“Spiral fracture, left humerus, three ribs, different dates,” he said to himself as he flipped through the folder, his neck gradually reddening from the collar up. “Mandible,
possible bruised spleen. Jesus Christ, who’s been seeing him?” He checked. “Ferraro,” he said, looking up and closing the folder. “New York asshole.” He breathed
for a while as he looked at the nurse. “This goes back over three years,” he said to her, his teeth showing. She nodded as if she were somehow responsible. “Get him an ice
pack,” he said.
“Yes, Doctor.” The nurse squeaked away along the polished floor of the hall in her rubber-soled shoes.
Dr. Colvin gave L.A.’s shoulder a pat as he passed her, then walked off toward the nursing station. A couple of nurses glanced up at him and moved out of his way. We heard the front doors
open and saw Mom and Jack coming in. Jack was now dressed in cowboy boots, starched jeans and a yellow polo shirt. Mom was wearing her weekend-shortest black skirt and high heels, her hair pinned
back on one side like an actress. Dr. Colvin saw them heading toward the examining room I was in and stopped as they approached. They stopped too.
“Might you be the parents?” he said.
Mom said, “Yes. How is he?”
Dr. Colvin looked Jack up and down, then turned back to Mom as he answered. “He’s had a concussion. Right now it doesn’t look too serious, but he’s going to have to stay
with us at least until tomorrow. We’ll need to see how he does over the next twelve hours.” He moved off again toward the nursing station as they talked, still shooting looks at Jack,
and they trailed along with him. I lost track of what they were saying. The nurse came back with the ice pack.
L.A. poked me in the chest with her finger. “Why the hell’d you have to go over there?” she said. “You’re just a
dumb”—
jab
—“fuckin’ ”—
jab
—“numb-nuts, y’know that?”
“Lee Ann,” said Gram.
This kind of stuff was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted sympathy. I looked at Gram, saying, “Think they’ll let me have some aspirin, Gram?” I balanced the ice pack on my
head with one hand.
“Shit-for-brains,” said L.A. Gram fired a look at her, which I knew would shut her up for maybe five seconds.
“I don’t know, James,” said Gram, moving over to help me keep the ice pack on my eye and cheek. “They might not, because it’s your head that got hurt.”
“Nothing but a flesh wound,” said L.A. “A fat wound.”
I could tell she was starting to cool off. Through the glass I saw Dr. Colvin talking into the phone and watching Mom and Jack, who had now moved into the waiting area, Jack slouching down into
one of the green plastic chairs, cracking his gum. Then the doctor turned away from them with the phone still at his ear and said something else, punching three holes down through the air one after
another with his finger as he talked.
Mom got a cola from the machine against the waiting room wall and walked over to us. “Hey, honey,” she said. “Hi, Mom. How ya doin’, Lee Ann?”
“Hi, Auntie Leah,” said L.A., taking a step back.
Mom glanced back at Jack, then took my hand, saying, “How are you, baby?” She ran her hand through what she could reach of my hair. “I’ve just been so worried about
you.” She took a sip from her drink.
“I’m pretty good,” I said, noticing that although Mom did look sort of worried, most of her attention was directed back at the nursing station and waiting area.
As the nurse was getting me into a wheelchair to go upstairs, a big cop in a brown uniform and a sad-looking woman in a dark dress suit came in through the main doors. The woman had several
manila folders in her arms. Dr. Colvin motioned them over. As he talked he tipped his head toward Jack, who was now paging boredly through an old
National Geographic.
I couldn’t catch
what Dr. Colvin was saying from this angle but it looked like he was angry at the woman, who kept nodding along with his words.
Then the cop thumped his palm on the counter, nodded to Dr. Colvin and stuck a kitchen match in his teeth as he walked over toward Jack, who had stood up when he saw the cop eyeing him.
“Say, podnah,” said the cop, his voice carrying clearly. “You Jack Ardoin?”
“Yeah,” said Jack, hitching up his belt.
“Cajun, right?”
“What about it?”
“Y’know, I’m thinkin’ I might already be acquainted with you,” the cop said as the match traveled slowly over to the middle of his mouth and then back.
“Wrecker service and repo lot offa Harrison, id’n it? You and that joker with the glass eye, what’s his name?” Now that they were standing face-to-face you could see the cop
had at least fifty pounds and five inches on Jack, and he wasn’t giving him any room. Jack had to crook his neck to meet the cop’s eyes.
“Bailess,” said Jack.
“Yeah that’s it, Lester Bailess. I do remember y’all. Old Lester’s uglier’n a Arkansas hairball, ain’t he? Scratches his ass all the time—wouldn’t
doubt but what he’s got pinworms. Went up for something a few years back too, if I remember right. Lessee, what was it, forgery? No, wait, it was messing with little girls, wudden
it?”
Jack swallowed. There didn’t seem to be any need for an answer.
“Oh, well,” said the cop, waving the subject off. “Tell you what let’s do, Jack. Let’s you and me come to the altar here for a minute.”
The sorrowful woman took Gram and L.A. away to talk. I couldn’t remember seeing her before, but it looked like they all knew each other already. As the nurse started to roll me away I
could still see the cop talking to Jack, his voice now too low and soft for me to make out what he was saying. He’d laid his big hand on Jack’s shoulder and seemed to be massaging and
pinching the muscles at the base of Jack’s neck as he looked down at the tip of Jack’s nose and talked around the match in his mouth. He shook his head and made a couple of weed-cutting
strokes in front of Jack’s face with his finger, then put the end of the finger against Jack’s breastbone. Jack had stopped chewing his gum and turned white around the lips but
didn’t say anything, just nodded.
As I watched them an understanding came to me. At that moment I knew that Jack wasn’t seeing the cop at all anymore. He was blinking in a strange way, his hands opening and closing at his
sides, and I knew he was looking up instead at his own drunken, raging father, wishing he could become invisible and doing his best not to piss his pants.
Trying, with no success and no hope, not to be weak.
|
Dreamland
LATER
, lying on the bed in my room, unable to find a comfortable position, listening to the hospital noises, I thought I wasn’t going to be able
to sleep, but I must have drifted off because when I opened my eyes Dee was there, talking quietly with L.A. in the doorway of the room. Then he was standing beside the bed with his hand on mine.
Then Hubert Ferkin was there, saying something to L.A. about “that fuckin’ Jack.”
The next time I woke up it was dark outside the window. I looked around the room. L.A. was curled up asleep in the armchair in the corner. There was an open
Life
magazine and an empty
paper cup on the floor beside the chair. She was lying with her cheek on her hands, and I caught the light sound of her breathing among the other noises of the hospital. I was thirsty, but not
quite enough to get up for a drink.
And then I was crossing into and out of dreams, the long, involved, semi-real kind you sometimes get with painkillers, where it’s not always clear whether you’re thinking about
something that happened or dreaming about it:
It is early afternoon at Gram’s, me on the couch in front of the TV with nothing else to do, watching Daffy Duck harass Speedy Gonzales.
But really mostly thinking about Diana.
L.A. is sitting cross-legged in her blue jeans and an old T-shirt of mine at the other end of the couch with a bottle of cream soda in her hand and her nose in one of Gram’s
magazines. Earlier I saw her sneak a drink of the Madeira Gram uses for cooking, so the cream soda could be for camouflage. The cover of the magazine, which is the kind that has recipes and
pictures of beautiful kitchens and quizzes about how to tell if you’re a good wife, shows a lemon cake with one slice out of it, like all magazine cakes. It looks like it would taste
great, but I can’t focus on that because I can’t stop thinking about Diana. The reason she is a problem for me right now is that I have a more or less major date with her coming up.
Actually it’s a road trip, and even though her parents will be there too, I still have my hopes.
Not that Diana would worry. Except maybe for the possibility of hellfire and damnation, she is mostly fearless, seeing the universe as basically a safe place and generally counting on
things to turn out all right. That seems kind of sweet but contradictory to me, a smart girl like her thinking that way, but I envy her peace of mind. Actually her whole family is like that,
which is surprising to me because of the work they do. Diana’s mom is a nurse at Parkland, which is a place that is somehow both here all around me and also across town, and her dad is a
police detective, which you’d think would make them both pretty serious-minded from constantly looking at people who are sick or dead or guilty. But it doesn’t really work that way,
and this is one of the things I love about all of them. They like to laugh, even Fubbit, Diana’s little brother, whose actual, unused given names are Andrew Gaines. I’ve helped
babysit him several times and know that although he can be a four-alarm screamer if you piss him off, like any baby, most of the time he is either chuckling and grinning or dead asleep and
really almost no trouble at all.
The trip I’m worried about is going to be to the Chamforts’ family cabin at a place called Duck Lake somewhere up near the Canadian border in Minnesota. L.A. was invited too
but after talking it over we decided one of us should stay with Gram. Overcome by an impulsive burst of gentlemanliness, no doubt brought on by the fact I was already throbbing with guilt about
leaving the two of them here unprotected, I actually offered to flip L.A. for it. But she just looked at me pityingly, shook her head and said, “Try not to fall in the
lake.”
The trip will be a completely new experience for me and I have endless fantasies about it, imagining myself swimming with Diana in the cold water or taking her out in the boat or maybe
just walking in the woods with her. The more I think about the possibilities the better it all sounds to me. But I am still uneasy.
“What’s a soul kiss?” I ask L.A. I know what a French kiss is but I’m not sure it’s the same thing.
L.A. puts down her cream soda, saying, “Where’d you hear that?”
I usually give myself credit for being about as smart as L.A., but that isn’t always easy to hold on to.
“Hubert and them,” I say. “What’s it mean, really?”
She gives me the
you poor ignorant child
look and puts her magazine aside.
“Here, I’ll show you,” she says, coming over to sit on my lap facing me, holding my hips with her knees. She brushes the hair back from her cheeks and says, “Close
your eyes.” She takes my face in both her hands, then puts her half-opened mouth on mine and pushes her tongue between my teeth. Her mouth is cool and sweet from the cream soda.
When she draws her head back and we open our eyes, she looks at me with a funny expression, like maybe she’s a little surprised at something, and her breath is coming fast. I see
that her nipples are stiff under the T-shirt, the way they get when she’s cold. She looks down at my lap between her legs and back up at my eyes as I sit breathing through my mouth and
feeling the blood thumping in my neck. My ears are so hot they feel like they’re going to spontaneously combust, and I am wondering where L.A. learned this particular skill and whether
she’d be willing to do it again.
Then suddenly she gives a kind of strangled sob and punches me in the face, then again and again and again, swinging with both fists. I’m almost too surprised to react. I try to
cover, but she’s getting them in there pretty good in spite of me.
“Hey, SHID!” I yell, throwing her off my lap. I grab my nose. “Tha hurds, godabbid!” I feel my lip to see if it’s split. “Why the hell’d you do
that?”
She doesn’t answer, just stands there in the middle of the floor, white as death and shaking from head to foot. She’s looking more or less in my direction, but her eyes are
glazed and unfocused.
