Barking Man (7 page)

You couldn’t call it a real bad winter, there wasn’t much snow or anything, but I was cold just about all the time, except when I was at work. The TOA was hot as a steam bath, especially back around the kitchen, and when I was there I’d sweat until I smelled. In the apartment, though, all I had was some electric baseboard heaters, and they cost too much for me to leave them running very long at a stretch. I’d keep it just warm enough I couldn’t see my breath, and spend my time in a hot bathtub or under a big pile of blankets on the bed. Or else I would just be cold.

Outside wasn’t all that much colder than in, and I spent a lot of time sitting there on that balcony, looking way out yonder toward the mountains. I got a pair of those gloves with the fingers out so I could keep on stuffing my envelopes while I was sitting out there. Day or night, it didn’t matter, I was so familiar with it I could do it in the dark. I’d sit there sometimes for hours on end, counting the time by the trains that went by. Sound seemed to carry better in the cold, and I felt like I could hear every clack of the rails when a train was coming, and when they let the horn off it rang that whole valley like a bell.

But inside the apartment it was mostly dead quiet. I might hear the pipes moaning now and again and that was all. If the phone rang it would make me jump. Didn’t seem like there was any TV or radio next door. The only sound coming out of there was Susan getting beat up once in a while. That was her name—a sweet name, I think. I found it out from hearing him say it, which he used to do almost every time before he started in on her. “
Susan
,” he’d call out, loud enough I could just hear him through the wall. He’d do it a time or two, he might have been calling her to him, I don’t know. After that would come a bad silence that reminded you of a snake being somewhere around. Then a few minutes’ worth of hitting sounds and then the big slam as she hit the wall and the clatter of my pots falling down on the floor. He’d throw her at the wall maybe once or twice, usually when he was about to get through. By the time the pots had quit spinning on the floor it would be real quiet over there again, and the next time I saw Susan she’d be walking in that ginger way people have when they’re hiding a hurt, and if I said hello to her she’d give a little jump and look away.

After a while I quit paying it much mind, it didn’t feel any different to me than hearing the news. All their carrying on was not any more than one wall of the rut I had worked myself into, going back and forth from the job, cleaning that apartment till it hurt, calling up the lawyer about once a week to find out about the next postponement. I made a lot of those calls from the TOA, and Tim and Prissy got pretty interested in the whole business. I would tell them all about it, too. Sometimes, when our shift was done, Prissy and I would pour coffee and sit in a booth for as much as a couple of hours, just chewing that subject over and over, with Tim passing by now and again to chip in his opinion of what was going to happen. But nothing much ever did happen, and after a while I got to where I didn’t want to discuss it anymore. I kept ahead making those calls but every one of them just wore down my hope a little more, like a drip of water wearing down a stone. And little by little I got in the habit of thinking that nothing really was going to change.

It was spring already by the time things finally did begin to move. That sad little apple tree was beginning to try and put out some leaves, and the weather was getting warmer every day, and I was starting to feel it inside me too, the way you do. That was when the lawyer called
me
, for a change, and told me he had some people lined up to see me at last.

Well, I was all ready for them to come visit, come see how I’d fixed up my house and all the rest of my business to get set for having Davey back with me again. But as it turned out, nobody seemed to feel like they were called on to make that trip. “I don’t think that will be necessary,” was what one of them said, I don’t recall which. They both talked about the same, in voices that sounded like filling out forms.

So all I had to do was drive downtown a couple of times and see them in their offices. The child psychologist was the first and I doubt he kept me more than half an hour. I couldn’t even tell the point of most of the questions he asked. My second trip I saw the social worker, who turned out to be a black lady once I got down there, though I never could have told it over the phone. Her voice sounded like it was coming out of the TV. She looked me in the eye while she was asking her questions, but I couldn’t make out a thing, about what she thought. It wasn’t till afterward, when I was back in the apartment, that I understood she must have already had her mind made up.

That came to me in a sort of flash, while I was standing in the kitchen washing out a cup. Soon as I walked back in the door I’d seen my coffee mug left over from breakfast, and kicked myself for letting it sit out. I was giving it a hard scrub with a scouring pad when I realized it didn’t matter anymore. I might just as well have dropped it on the floor and got what kick I could out of watching it smash, because it wasn’t going to make any difference to anybody now. But all the same I rinsed it and set in the drainer, careful as if it might have been an eggshell. Then I stepped backward out of the kitchen and took a long look around that cold shabby place and thought it might be for the best that nobody was coming. How could I have expected it to fool anybody else when it wasn’t even good enough to fool me? A lonesomeness came over me, I felt like I was floating all alone in the middle of the cold air, and then I began to remember some things I would just as soon have not.

No, I never did like to think about this part, but I have had to think about it time and again, with never a break for a long, long time, because I needed to get to understand it at least well enough to believe it never would ever happen anymore. And I had come to believe that, in the end. If I hadn’t I never would have come back at all. I had found a way to trust myself again, though it took me a full two years to do it, and though of course it still didn’t mean that anybody else would trust me.

What had happened was that Patrick went off on one of his mystery trips and stayed gone a deal longer than usual. Two nights away, I was used to that, but on the third I did start to wonder. He normally would have called, at least, if he meant to be gone that long of a stretch. But I didn’t hear a peep until about halfway through the fourth day. And it wasn’t Patrick himself that called, but one of those public assistance lawyers from downtown.

Seemed like the night before Patrick had got himself stopped on the interstate loop down there. The troopers said he was driving like a blind man, and he was so messed up on whiskey and ludes I suppose he must have been pretty near blind. Well, maybe he would have just lost his license or something like that, only that the back seat of the car was loaded up with all he had lately stole out of the hospital.

So it was bad. It was so bad my mind just could not contain it, and every hour it seemed to get worse. I spent the next couple of days running back and forth between the jail and that lawyer, and I had to haul Davey along with me wherever I went. He was too little for school and I couldn’t find anybody to take him right then, though all that running around made him awful cranky. Patrick was just grim, he would barely speak. He already knew for pretty well sure he’d be going to prison. The lawyer had told him there wasn’t no use in getting a bondsman, he might just as well sit in there and start pulling his time. I don’t know how much he really saved himself that way, though, since what they ended up giving him was twenty-five years.

That was when all my troubles found me, quick. The second day after Patrick got arrested, I came down real sick with something. I thought at first it was a bad cold or the flu. My nose kept running and I felt so wore out I couldn’t hardly get up off the bed and yet at the same time I felt real restless, like all my nerves had been scraped raw. Well, I didn’t really connect it up to the fact that I’d popped the last pill in the house about two days before. What was really the matter was me coming off that Dilaudid, but I didn’t have any notion of that at the time.

I was laying there in the bed not able to get up, and about ready to jump right out of my skin at the same time, when Davey got the drawer underneath the stove open. Of course he was getting restless himself with everything that had been going on, and me not able to pay him much attention. All our pots and pans were down in that drawer then, and he began to take them out one at a time and throw them on the floor. It made a hell of a racket, and the shape I was in I started feeling like he must be doing it on purpose, to devil me. I called out to him and asked him to quit. Nice at first: “You stop that now, Davey. Momma don’t feel good.” But he kept right ahead. All he wanted was a little noticing, I know, but my mind wasn’t working like it should. I knew I should get up and just go lead him away from there, but I couldn’t seem to get myself to move. I had a picture of myself doing what I ought to do, but I just wasn’t doing it. I was still laying there calling for him to quit and he was still banging those pots around, and before long I was screaming at him outright, and starting to cry at the same time. But he never stopped a minute. I guess I had scared him some already and he was just locked into doing it, or maybe he wanted to drown me out. Every time he flung a pot it felt like I was getting shot at. And the next thing I knew, I had got myself in the kitchen somehow and was snatching him up off the floor.

To this day I don’t remember doing it, though I have tried and tried. I thought if I could call it back, then maybe I could root it out of myself and be rid of it for good. But all I ever knew was, one minute I was grabbing hold of him and the next he was laying on the far side of the room with his right leg folded up funny where it was broke, not even crying, just looking surprised. And I knew it had to be me that threw him over there because sure as hell is real, there was nobody else around that could have done it.

I drove him to the hospital myself. I laid him out straight on the front seat beside me and drove with one hand all the way so I could hold on to him with the other. He was real quiet and real brave the whole time, never cried the least bit, just kept a tight hold of my hand with his. I was crying a river myself, couldn’t hardly see the road. It’s a wonder we didn’t crash, I suppose. Well, we got there and they ran him off somewhere to get his leg set and pretty soon this doctor came back out and asked me how it had happened.

It was the same hospital where Patrick had worked and I even knew that doctor a little bit. Not that being connected to Patrick would have done me a whole lot of good around there at that time. Still, I’ve often thought since that things might have come out better for me and Davey if I only could have lied to that man, but I was not up to telling a lie that anybody would be apt to believe. All I could do was start to scream and jabber like a crazy person, and it ended up I stayed in that hospital a good few days myself. They took me for a junkie and I guess I really was one too, though that was the first time I’d known it. And I never saw Davey again for a whole two years, not till the first time they let me go out to the Bakers’.

Sometimes you don’t get but one mistake, if the one you pick is bad enough. Do as much as step in the road the wrong time without looking, and your life could be over with then and there. But during those two years I taught myself to believe that this mistake of mine could be wiped out, that if I struggled hard enough with myself and the world I could make it like it never had been.

Three weeks went by after I went to see that social worker, and I didn’t have any idea what was happening, or if anything was. Didn’t call anybody, I expect I was afraid to. Then one day the phone rang for me out there at the TOA. It was that lawyer and I could tell right off from the sound of his voice that I wasn’t going to care for his news. Well, he told me all the evaluations had come in now, sure enough, and they weren’t running in our favor. They weren’t against
me
—he made sure to say that—it was more like they were
for
the Bakers. And his judgment was, it wouldn’t pay me anything if we went on to court. It looked like the Bakers would get Davey for good, and they were likely to be easier about visitation if there wasn’t any big tussle. But if I drug them into court, then we would have to start going back over that whole case history—

That was the word he used,
case history
, and it was around about there that I hung up. I went walking stiff-legged back across to the counter and just let myself sort of drop on a stool. Prissy had been covering the counter while I was on the phone and she came right over to me then.

“What is it?” she said. I guess she could tell it was something by the look on my face.

“I lost him,” I said.

“Oh, hon, you know I’m so sorry,” she said. She reached out for my hand but I snatched it back. I know she meant well but I was just not in the mood to be touched.

“There’s no forgiveness,” I said. I felt bitter about it. It had been a hard road for me to come as near forgiving myself as ever I could. And Davey forgave me, I really knew that, I could tell it in the way he behaved when we were together. And if us two could do it, I didn’t feel like it ought to be anybody’s business but ours. Tim walked up then and Prissy whispered something to him, and then he took a step nearer to me.

“I’m sorry,” he told me.

“Not like I am,” I said.

“Go ahead and take off the rest of your shift if you feel like it,” he said. “I’ll wait on these tables myself, need be.”

“I don’t know it would make any difference,” I said.

“Better take it easy on yourself,” he said. “No use in taking it so hard. You’re just going to have to get used to it.”

“Is that a fact,” I said. And I lit myself a cigarette and turned my face away. We had been pretty busy, it was lunchtime, and the people were getting restless seeing us all bunched up there and not doing a whole lot about bringing them their food. Somebody called out something to Tim, I didn’t hear too well what it was, but it set off one of his temper fits.