Turning off the light, I took my words to heart. Instead of touching the spot against my chest like I'd done every night since first seeing its picture on the X-ray, I closed my eyes and fought to ignore it. A soft breeze brushed against the camper, and the aluminum popped with the movement of the night. I pictured myself riding the wind one more time. Beyond the distance of a whitewashed horizon in my mind, there were no endings. The wind cradled me, and I drifted until peace ushered me into a place of rest.
At a state park, we stopped and collected brochures to mark our journey. I pictured Malley using the colored leaflets to make a companion scrapbook to the one that Mama had kept. A scrapbook of things accomplished.
From the pay phone near the restrooms, I watched people stream past the big poster covered with green dots noting walking trails up the side of a desert gorge.
“Are you drinking the tea? You ought to drink it twice a day.” Grand Vestal's voice echoed from the phone line. I pressed the receiver harder against my ear, trying to make out her words over the group of tourists who were passing by.
“Yes, ma'am. Every last drop. And to tell you the truth, I don't know if it's the tea or the sense of accomplishment, but I've felt better than I have in ten years.”
“I got your cards.” Malley said when she got on the phone. “Did you really jump out of that plane on the postcard?”
“If you're asking, yes. If your mama wants to know, I take the Fifth.”
But Heather didn't even ask. All she wanted to do was talk about the letters I'd mailed to her. Hearing her repeat some of the words that I'd written made my skin burn with embarrassment.
After the call, I searched the gift shop and found my father holding up a beaded belt with a silver buckle. “You reckon this will fit Malley?”
Nodding, I ran my hand across the surface of the belt. “She'll be tickled. Hey, I need to pick something up for Heather. I'm going to run out to the truck and get my wallet.”
“Take your time,” my father said, never looking away from the rack of belts.
Through a maze of sweater-clad women older than Grand Vestal, I made my way down the cobblestoned sidewalk. Right when I reached for the door handle of the truck, it hit me. I'd forgotten to get the keys to unlock the thing.
By the time I'd squeezed through the tour group, the keeper of the keys was nowhere to be found in the gift shop. Wandering through one of the paths, I saw his low-hanging jeans and the untucked shirt dangling from his waist. With his back to me, he was leaning against a bank of pay phones.
His words found me before I'd made it all the way. “Yeah, his appetite is strong . . . still seems to give a little when he walks . . . No, no complaints about pain . . . We're singing from the same hymnal, Heather. I want this trip to be for him too.”
If the sidewalk had been made of quicksand, I couldn't have felt any lower. His words made more sense than I ever thought they possibly could. Here I was thinking that this trip was about bonding with my father, and all it turned out to be was a last trip for the soon-to-be-invalid. He had made this trip only as my sitter, a job he had most likely been begged to take for the sake of the sickly son that might soon be too far gone.
“I'll call and give you an update from the next town.” When he turned to face me, he batted his eyes and stammered. “Uh . . . hey. I didn't see you standing there. I got that belt right here.” He held up the gift for my daughter the same as if it had been a peace offering.
“You just felt like calling my wife, huh?”
Shifting his weight, he tried to chuckle. “Oh that . . . just a trip report, so to speak.”
“Yeah, well, when did my appetite and pain level become navigators for the journey?”
He turned back to look at the phone and sighed. “You heard all that, huh?”
“I heard enough. Look, I don't need you or anybody else playing nursemaid for me. So if that's what you're here to do, then . . .”
“Now, don't get all riled up.”
“Don't tell me how to act. Look, I'm an idiot, okay? I believed we were taking this trip to . . . I don't know, get to know each other.” He just stood there squinting at me like all of the times he'd done in the past. Staring and searching me like he might have just met me for the first time. He never even said a word when I walked away, weaving in and out of the crowd waiting for the park ranger to begin their tour.
Anger brewed hotter than the sun that was baking the rocks and the sand of the desert I was entering. A state park sign pointed straight ahead, so I walked left. The less people I'd encounter, the better off I would be. A rattlesnake slithered off into the distance. Its tracks left curved shapes across the floor, tempting me to follow the trail deeper into the orange-colored sand that lined the landscape.
Looking up at the sun, I opened up my arms and yelled for everything that I was worth. The sound echoed against the rocks, but relief was only temporary. Hot wind brushed up against my face, and the howl it created caused me to turn.
“Sir?” a female park ranger said. “Everything okay?” She moved closer, and I dropped my arms in surrender. No matter how far I might have tried to make it on my own, the part of me that was angry and bitter had taken root too deep inside of me. No place would be far enough to run.
“I just . . . I must've gotten turned around.”
Back at the park, I was the one who did not want to talk. I leaned against the passenger door, folded my arms, and counted the road signs to our destination.
“I'm gonna say this only one time. You can't get mad at people for caring about you,” my father said.
Driving across the vast space on a two-lane road that seemed like a trip to nowhere, I dissected the notion that Heather and my father had set up the whole trip. I pictured them conspiring the plan as I lay in the hospital: one last trip for the boy before the spot grew up and suffocated his lungs.
At a campground, our trailer rested between a tent and a rock garden. That night, after a meal of silence, I retreated into the night and climbed into the back of the truck, dangling my feet from the tailgate. Bare chested and barefooted, I felt free as I could be in that wide space. Through the front window of the camper, I could make out my father lying on the sofa, reading a Zane Gray novel.
Fishing for a new bottle of tea from inside the last supply box Grand Vestal had packed, my hand landed against soft leather. Pulling out a book, a piece of paper fell free and floated to the bed of the truck.
Through letters that looked like the scribble of a fourth grader, Grand Vestal made her opinions known.
Sugar Boy,
When we went through your mama's things the other night, I happened to think about her Bible. Your granddaddy and me gave it to her the day she accepted the Lord and got baptized. She kept this book with her all through her life. When the cover wore out, she took it to a man in Valdosta who charged forty-five dollars to fix it! I told her, “Land, child, I didn't pay that much for the book to start with.” But she said, “Mama, that book is lined with every tear of happiness and sadness I've had in life. Whatever it was, that book and the good Lord got me through it.” Now then, it's time you had this Good Book. I don't mean to preach, but you're searching. I see restlessness all through your eyes. Stop drifting and start leaning. No matter how grown you think you might be, you can't do it by yourself. Nobody can. Let the words of this book be a torch to your path and a light to your feet. That's where you'll find the land of the living.
I love you more than you know.
Grand Vestal
Flipping through the pages that were tabbed and lined with the notes my mother had long ago made, I looked up at the stars and thought of Grand Vestal's old preacher, the one with the patch over his eye and the cockatoo. Remembering the verse he'd recite from the New Testament about God taking care of the birds, I flipped to the sixth chapter of the book of Matthew. There in red letters were the words of Jesus: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” I read the verse six times and pictured it spray painted across the star lit sky.
Before turning the page, I noticed an arrow pointing to the bottom margin. Written in blue ink were the swirled words that my mama had added:
Pray for your inner life: peace, joy, and love. That's the Kingdom of God.
Somewhere in the night, I reached a point of no return. Darkness fell over the sky, but light was just beginning to stir within me. With the rising sun came a rise in my spirit. Words long forgotten from Sunday school lessons and those learned from watching my grandparents and mother washed over me like a current pulling out the trash that littered the shore.
The door eased open, and my father stepped out with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. His hair stuck out just like the cactus he stepped around.
“Morning,” I said.
He scratched his head and kept the cigarette in his mouth as he spoke. “You been out here all night?”
“Yep.”
“Doing what?”
“Thinking . . . praying . . . reading.” I held up the Bible. He stepped forward, squinting his eyes. “That's . . . where'd you get that?”
“It was in this extra box of tea.”
Snuffing out the cigarette against a rock, my father climbed up on the tailgate. He reached for the Bible and rubbed his callused hand across the surface. “She read this book every morning and right before bed every night. Sickness or health . . . she was married to it.”
“The words in there . . . I'd forgotten a lot of them.”
“Like which ones?”
“Forgiveness.”
He looked at the sandstone mountain across the way. The rising sun created a shadow over part of the mountain while the other half glowed a bright orange.
“I . . . I'm sorry for how I acted yesterday. You know, throwing a fit the way I did,” I said.
He didn't look at me. “We all get in spells now and again.”
“No, it's more than that,” I said. There was a distance in my father's eyes. A place that he had long locked away. Before I could find the key, he turned to look back toward the rising sun. “The thing is,” I went on, “I've been mad at you for . . . well, I guess ever since Mama died. And when I found that scrapbook . . . the places she dreamed of going. Well, it just sort of boiled those bad memories up to the surface.”
He leaned down and picked up a rock. Rubbing it between two fingers, he looked down at the stone just like it might have been chiseled with the words that he needed to say. “Let me tell you something. I wanted more than anything to take ya'll on that trip. But when the tractor broke down, the bills stacked up. Do you know how little I felt, calling off that trip? I'm man enough to tell you that I felt like a failure. So I made a promise . . . someway, somehow, that gal was going to get her trip. Five years ago we pulled out that old book of pictures and started planning.” He tossed the rock to the ground and shook his head. “Then cancer got ahold of her. You don't know how many times I wanted to go back in time. If I had it to do over again, I'd drive right out of that doctor's office the first day he told us and keep on driving. We'd have made that trip come hell or high water.”
Nobody said a word as the heat from the sun began to warm us. We just sat there on the tailgate of his truck, watching as the sun spread over the dark places of the desert.
“It's just . . . I never saw that,” I said. “Take the night she died . . . it's always bothered me that Mama died alone.”
“You don't know as much as you think you do.” He choked on the words and turned away. “That night we talked about old times . . . good times. Then all of a sudden she looked at me and said, âI'm satisfied with my life, Ronnie.' That's just how she put it. She was satisfied with her life.”
“But she never even left Choctaw except to go off with you when you were stationed in Colorado.”
“Son, she didn't have the life
you
thought would make her happy. But she had the life
she
wanted. She told me. Now, I know what I'm talking about.”
A coyote called out in the distance, and the sad howl mirrored my own feelings.
“I should've been there that night.” My words trailed off, and I looked at my father for guidance, for reassurance that my absence was not held against me.
“The strange thing is that even after all of those doctors pumped her full of medicine, it's like she knew it was time to pass on, and nothing or nobody was going to hold her back. After we'd talked things over, she reached up and touched my neck.” He touched the place again as if the feeling could be captured as easily as her words. “She looked at me and said, âYou go on, now. I need to rest.' âTo rest.' That's just the way she put it. I grabbed hold of her hand and I said, âI love you, Barbara,' and she smiled. I never said that enough to her. She looked at me and said, âI know you do, Ronnie. I've always known that.'” He was quiet and cleared his throat. “I walked to the door and looked at her, and she kind of motioned me out and said, âI'll see you in a bit.' That's just how she said it.”
A tear fell from my father's eye, and he looked like a man three times his age. “She left the way she lived, not putting nobody out. Not making a big fuss . . . I don't care if you believe me or not, I wanted to stay. I wanted to.”
Reaching over, I squeezed my father's shoulder.
Emotions I'd questioned now ripped through him until his muscles shook. It was all there for me to see in the most naked form, and I was left feeling nothing but shame. Words long scripted for this moment now hung in the back of my throat.
“Your mama was happy in the end because she knew that happiness came from down here,” he said, pointing at his chest. “Umm . . . If I just had one ounce of that woman's wisdom.”