Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (13 page)

About halfway through my beer, I noticed that the barfly closest to me was staring. His weather-worn face looked like an overused catcher’s mitt with eyes. From five feet away, I could smell his sour alcohol breath as it wafted toward me. The overhead fan was too weak to dissipate its weight.

“You’re Big Jack’s boy, aintcha?” he slurred, practically one word.

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Look like him. I know your pa, Veeder.”

“I’ll tell him you said hello.”

“You do that, you do that. But, and this is important, you tell him Squatty ain’t found it yet.”

“Okay, Squatty.” Then out of curiosity, I asked, “Found what?”

“The fucking fort,” he shouted, his voice piercingly high. He wasn’t angry, just uncontrollably excited. Nobody reacted, save for the bartender, shaking his head in that “now you’ve done it” way.

I would’ve let it go, but what the hell else did I have to do. “What fort?”

Out of Squatty’s sight line, the bartender held his finger to his head like a pistol and fired, miming suicide.

“Out there in the dunes. Out past Buttercup. Where nothing lives. That’s where they filmed
Beau Geste
. You’re too young.”

“
Beau Geste
with Gary Cooper. I’ve seen it.”

Squatty laughed, although it sounded more like he was dying. The kind of laugh that is nauseating to hear, thick and viscous.

I took a cigarette out and held it up to the bartender, raising my eyebrows in question. He nodded and shrugged. I lit the cigarette and listened.

“Was a time, used to be able to see the fort from the I-8. They built a full-size fort for the movie, you see. Used to be able to see it from the highway. ’Til about the sixties. See it on the way to Yuma. Then the dunes, the sand, swallowed her up, buried her. But it’s still out there. That fort’s still out there. And I’m going to find her.”

“If you could see it from the highway, don’t you know where it is?”

“That was some time ago. Before you were born. Do you remember anything from that long ago?”

“Do I remember anything from before I was born?”

Squatty thought about it for a few seconds. “Exactly. Do you remember when you were five years old? Do you remember it right? I remember it, but I don’t remember it right. I remember it sorta. The dunes, they play tricks. They change, they turn, they’re alive. You can’t draw a map, ’cause it’d just get you loster.”

“I don’t mean to be a jerk, but why look for it? It’s just an old prop building, right? Just some wood and nails and plaster under the sand. Probably collapsed. You just looking for something to do?”

“You don’t understand. It’s
Beau Geste
. It’s Gary Cooper. It’s a classic. It’s important. It’s more than you. More than me. It’s history. We’re people. We die and it’s done, but history is always. History is forever or at least for longer. Nobody knows it’s there, nobody but the old-timers, nobody but the dying, nobody but the dead. If I don’t find it, nobody will. If I don’t look, it’s gone. Forever. If nobody finds it, then it’s lost. I ain’t ever done nothing important, but if I do this, if I find that fucking fort, then I can. We ain’t who we are, we’re what we do.”

Squatty drained the rest of his beer and then shook the bottle, looking at the liquid at the bottom. Did he really go out to the desert? Or did he just talk about it? It didn’t matter. He was what he did.

I crushed out my cigarette, finished my beer, and threw a ten on the bar, pointing at Squatty to the bartender. The bartender set another Coors Light in front of the one and only Squatty, the Finder of the Fort and the Keeper of History.

“I’ll tell Pop you’re still looking.” I opened the door, blinded by the harsh white light of the midday sun.

It wasn’t quite three, but I had completely exhausted all forms of entertainment that El Centro had to offer, so I headed back to Harris Convalescent. Angie wasn’t at the reception desk to bug, so I parked myself on the couch in the small waiting area.

It was probably half an hour and two issues of
Woman’s Day
later when Yolanda walked into the front. Her smile was radiant. “
Siéntese?
” I asked, motioning toward the chairs. I pointed to myself and then down the hallway. “
Yo quiero dice adios a
Jack, my
padre
.
Sí?
” Yolanda nodded her head and sat down on the chair, her overnight bag in her lap like a schoolgirl holding her lunch pail and waiting for the bus.

Pop was asleep when I opened the door. I thought about waking him, but he looked peaceful. That’s really all I needed to know. I noticed the pill still on the nightstand when I set down the copy of
A Cool Million
. Good for Pop. I backed toward the door as quietly as I could.

When I reached the door, Pop’s faint voice said, “Thanks, Jimmy.”

I just smiled and said, “See you tomorrow, right? Back to the regular grind.”

“Sounds good,” Pop said, turning his head to the ceiling and then closing his eyes again.

I had to pick up some stuff, so it was five by the time we got back to the house. Bobby was in the drive, sitting on the hood of his Ranchero when we pulled up. Yolanda gave me a look, her eyebrows knitted in concern. She gripped her bag tighter, but when she saw me smile, her face and hands unclenched.

“
Mi amigo
,” I said to her.

I got out, grabbing a bag of groceries from the bed of my truck. I picked up the two Hungry-Mans that had slid to the back of the bed and turned to Bobby. “What’s up?” I said, in the form of a greeting.

“I need a favor,” Bobby said.

“I’m kind of busy,” I said, glancing at Yolanda.

“Doing what? Mission accomplished, right?”

He had me. I wasn’t actually busy. In fact, I had no idea what I was going to do until night when I had to bring Yolanda back across the street. “What do you need?” I asked.

“Take about an hour. Two, tops. I ordered water on the forty I got down off Holt. The plot by the big tree. I had a guy that was going to dig out the gopher holes. He didn’t. If I irrigate with that system of tunnels, the water is going to go all flibberty-gibberty, fuck up everything. But I already ordered the water. I’m stuck. Snout and Buck Buck, I can’t find. Probably looking for Bigfoot again. I try to do it myself, I’ll kill my back. I don’t do it, I’m throwing money in a hole. It’s a lot of digging, but not for two people. I got a fuck-ton of beer in a cooler and a bottle of to-kill-ya.”

“Bobby, I’d help you,” I said, “but I’m supposed to leave Yolanda here?”

“She can come. I got three shovels.” He smiled and then went to his serious face. “Look, man. It’s fucked up. I know. But I’m screwed. Like every farmer down here, I’m playing it close to broke. I work my ass off and still might lose money. It might be good money after bad, but I could use your help to try to get to break even. You don’t know how much it sucks to work your ass off and not get paid. The farmer’s fucking life.”

I glanced at Yolanda, who smiled at me, still sitting in my front seat with her overnight bag in her lap. I may have been a bad host, but she should be happy that I trusted her.

It took Bobby and me four hours to dig up all the gopher holes. Fucking things had an underground system that made the Chinese tunnels in Mexicali sound like an ant farm. I officially hated all rodentkind.

Bobby asked me relentlessly about Yolanda and Pop. I took the fifth, and when I say the fifth, I mean the fifth of tequila that Bobby used to try to loosen my tongue. Luckily, I had no real information to reveal.

I did, however, make the mistake of mentioning that Angie worked at Harris Convalescent.

“You going to make the big move?”

“I have enough bruises all over my body, I need to provoke that kind of violence. It’s great to see her though. Brings back a lot of memories.”

“I thought the two of you would be together forever. You never told me how you fucked that up.”

“I never talked to anyone about it. Don’t matter now, I guess. In high school, we never thought about it ending. Hell, we survived senior year, even when she missed her period and for a horrifying four weeks we thought she was pregnant. Scared my shit. We didn’t do it again for three months. I’m talking teenage libido and I was too scared to fuck.

“After we graduated and every day the end of summer got closer, we started getting further apart. We both knew I was going to college and she was staying at IVC, and I think we both knew that it would be the end. Two years and in a couple weeks it would be over.”

“Did you try?”

“Until first Christmas vacation, but we were fucking kids. I finally had my freedom. We never really broke up, we just slowly stopped writing, slowly stopped calling. We both just let it go.”

“That sucks. Least with a big blow-up you know where you stand. I like to end a relationship with explosions. Sometimes literally.”

“I always regretted how it ended—didn’t fit how we felt. We were just too young to know what the hell to do with it. I think about her more than I should.”

Maybe it was the liquor, maybe it was just the need to hear it aloud, but it felt good to tell someone.

Yolanda had cleaned both the kitchen and dining room by the time I had returned. She had swept, mopped, organized papers, and even found some flowers and a vase for the center of the dining room table. I didn’t even remember seeing flowers anywhere outside. They smelled horrible, but they made the table and the room glow. They made it look even cleaner.

By the time I took a shower and got dressed, it was time to take Yolanda back to Morales Bar.

“
Estás lista?
” I asked.

“
Sí
,” she said, standing from the couch and walking to the door.

“I want to pay you.
Pagar tú, por favor
,” I said, taking out my wallet and the ten twenties that I had decided to give her. I wasn’t sure if that was low or high or insulting or not, but I wanted to pay her. It felt right to me. Pop would have wanted me to, I was sure.

“
No
,” she said with a smile, not angry or put off, but strong. “
Ya está pagado
.”

“I want to,” I said, holding out the money to her.

“
Gracias, no
,” she said and walked to the front door. I put the money back in my pocket and followed her across the street.

Alejandro was waiting by his van. “She work out okay? She what you wanted?”

I nodded and glanced at Yolanda, who stood at the open door of the van, one long leg stepping in.

She put her foot back to the ground and walked to me. She stood close enough for me to feel her breasts brush my chest. She stared into my eyes until I smiled and looked away. She kissed me on the cheek and then wiped off the lipstick with her thumb.

“Thank you,” I said. “
Gracias
.”

She closed her eyes and kissed me softly on the lips. And then she was in the back of the van and gone.

Immediately after Yolanda’s visit, Pop’s health slid downhill at a quicker clip. It was as if there was nothing left to live for. Nothing more for him to do. Like he had been falling off a cliff and been in the air so long that screaming or struggling no longer made sense. He just let gravity take him. Doing his best to enjoy the plummet.

I tried to imagine cancer as a small army invading and spreading throughout the body. Little green army men frozen in familiar poses trailing through the bloodstream, pillaging organs and leaving antibody corpses on a fleshy battlefield. But that’s not what I saw most of the time. Whenever I heard “cancer,” I imagined it as a cottage cheese–like substance oozing over mounds of meat. A bubbly, chunky white mass spreading over the cells of the body and leaving decay and disease in its wake in the form of a slimy black jelly.

I used to date this girl who wouldn’t take regular medicine. She was into Chinese herbs and natural remedies. She did acupuncture, saw a chiropractor and a naturopath, and trusted homeopathy unquestioningly. If she got a headache, she’d boil up some twig tea that made her apartment smell like the last day of Burning Man. She held the belief that because something was natural, because something came from nature, it was better. I let her believe what she believed. She was gorgeous and erotically flexible. Who was I to tell her there was no Santa Claus?

I wanted to tell her that just because something is natural, just because something came from her precious nature, that didn’t make it good. Snakebites are natural. Poison is natural. Influenza is natural. And cancer is natural. Sure, flowers are pretty. But for every flower, there is a disease or a disaster or a monster. Nature is beautiful only if you find cruelty beautiful. The true beauty of nature is in the tornado, brutally destructive without conscience or remorse.

Since his arrival at Harris Convalescent, Pop hadn’t gotten out of bed that much. He had tubes in his body that took away the necessity of getting up to go to the bathroom. He had his meals and medicine brought to him. He only walked when he wanted to. And the only time he usually wanted to was every other Friday when they had bingo in the cafeteria.

As Pop had told me, “Boredom brings out the bingo in every old fart.”

I think he found bingo both tedious and lacking in skill. But every other Friday, he hobbled down the hall and gave it a go. He walked shakily, resting every dozen steps with a hand on my shoulder.

It was about two weeks after Yolanda’s visit. I had decided to stay late and play a little bingo with Pop. I had asked him what the prizes were, but he just laughed and said, “It doesn’t get much past bragging rights and an extra cup of tapioca. Officially.” Then Pop looked around conspiratorially. “But Dallas Lowrie won fifty bucks last month. On a side bet. It’s all about the side bets. A couple of the long-timers talk about some grudge matches from five years ago like it was Chacon-Limon.”

When Pop left his room, he never wore scrubs or a robe. If people were going to see him, he wanted to be dressed “like a man, not an invalid.”

So there I was, helping my father get dressed.

He shifted his weight and used his hands to help move his legs to the edge of the bed. I helped him put on a pair of loose-fitting pants. He got the shirt himself. He had a hard time with the buttons, his fingers fumbling with each one. I could tell he was getting frustrated, but I could also tell that it was important he did it himself. A pair of athletic socks and tennis shoes later and Pop and I were ready to head to the other side of the building and play some Big B.

Pop eased himself further along the edge of the bed, his feet tentatively touching the ground. Testing the water. Toe tips first, then feet flat. Then he stopped, both hands clutching the thin blanket on the bed. He turned to me. And the look in his eyes. I had never seen Pop look so sad. Never in my life. Not even close. He looked devastated. Like something had shattered inside him. The look of a boy who just watched his dog killed by a speeding car.

“I can’t walk,” he said, his voice more confused than sad.

I put my hand on his elbow and braced him upward. “You can do it,” I said.

“No, Jim. I can’t. My legs won’t do it.” Pop looked down at his feet as if they were traitors. “I need a wheelchair, I think.”

I quickly raced into the hall. It was empty. I quick-walked to the front and finally flagged down a nurse as she exited a room. She told me where the wheelchairs were on the other side of the building.

I had taken too long.

By the time I got back with the wheelchair, Pop was on the ground. He had slid off the bed. Why hadn’t I put him back? I heard “wheelchair” and latched onto the one thing that I could actually do.

I moved to him. Pop shook me off with a weak hand. “I’m fine. Just fell. Nothing broke.” An honest smile told me he really wasn’t hurt. “You missed a solid pratfall. My slip leg went high into the air. More Keaton than Chaplin.”

I picked Pop up. I was in such a hurry that I almost threw him through the ceiling. I had expected him to be heavier, but he weighed next to nothing. And his skin, I could feel his loose and soft skin between my fingers. It felt like warm, raw chicken skin seeping between my fingers, dripping off his body and filling the gaps in my grip.

I smiled like it was nothing and set Pop in the wheelchair. But I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to run out of the room and never come back. I wanted to punch a stranger in the face. I wanted to erupt.

Nobody should have to carry their father. You want your father to carry you.

It’s hard to admit, but at that moment, when I was holding what felt like the ghost of my father, some horrible shit entered my head. I wanted Pop to die. I tried to tell myself that it was because I no longer wanted Pop to be in pain. That I no longer wanted Pop to suffer the indignities of dying. I’m sure that was part of it. I saw only the decline of worsening days. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also want to stop the suffering for myself. I had my own selfish reasons that ate at me. I didn’t know how much longer I could watch him wither.

We made it to bingo with Pop in the wheelchair. I think I even won a game, but I can’t be sure. The rest of that night was a blur. I tried to steer my thoughts away from Pop, but my brain kept pushing them forward. I wanted my mind to be in neutral instead of that spinning sickness that felt like an attack.

Over the next couple of weeks, I sank into a kind of depression. Not noticeably. Not around Pop. We still joked and laughed, although the Big Laugh seemed far out of reach. We invented new games to play. Wordplay. Jokes. It was a challenge, but I found I had it in me to put on my game face and sit with Pop. The problem for me was that at the end of the day, I had left it all on the field. When I left Pop’s room, I had nothing left. I was completely spent.

Then Pop’s eyesight went.

To that point for all his suffering, I had never heard Pop complain. He treated the nurses and employees with respect and reverence. He was always polite, raised as a “sir” and “ma’am” kind of guy. But when he lost his eyesight, I finally saw his frustration. Not being able to read or do his crossword puzzles, that was Pop’s personal hell. We could talk, but I didn’t expect to see him laugh again. When I wasn’t there, all he could do was lie in his darkness and listen to the radio.

When I left home for college, Pop had given me only one piece of advice. He told me that the lowest points in my life would be the times when I lost my sense of humor. He had told me that if I could keep my sense of humor, I could survive anything. That was the whole point of my visits. I wanted to remind Pop of his own advice. I wanted to tell him to lighten the fuck up, that it wasn’t so bad. But when he had given me that advice, he was talking about getting a flat tire or breaking up with a girl. Not something real. Not something serious. Not something terminal. There was nothing funny about what was happening. There was nothing to laugh at.

I spent more time reading to Pop than talking to him. It was easier on both of us, I think. I didn’t have to manufacture good cheer, and Pop didn’t have to participate, which I could tell was a struggle with his ebbing energy level. But that day, after reading a chapter of some pulpy Frank Kane story (
Trigger Mortis
, I think), Pop spoke up.

Pop’s voice was just above a whisper, raspy from disuse. “I know I said I was only going to have the one dying father talk, but I’m half liar. So we’re going to have an encore.”

“Sure,” I agreed, leaning in to make sure I heard and was heard.

“Ain’t never believed in God. Wasn’t how I was taught. And those lessons were only reconfirmed through my life. I never saw no evidence. But now, this close to being done, I’ve realized something.”

I waited.

“I realized I was right. And how sad that is. I know there ain’t no God. I know, because God ain’t no asshole. And God ain’t no hypocrite. It would be a pretty sad perfect being that would accept faith from a dying man. That’s like letting a murderer go because he cried on the electric chair. If I suddenly found God now, I would hope God or St. Peter or whoever would laugh in my face and send me straight to hell. What kind of sucker god would let anyone into heaven on desperation and a loophole?

“All that God stuff forces everyone to play their hand to the end. But that’s not how poker works. That’s not how a good poker player acts. If the winning hand always won, poker would be a lousy game. It would be a game of luck. The fact that any player can fold anytime is what separates poker from other games. You can quit on each hand. You can quit whenever you like. You can quit the game in the middle. You can quit up. You can quit down. It’s your choice.”

“In poker, you can fold, because you know there’s another hand to play,” I said, not comfortable with where the conversation was going. I was even more uncomfortable that Pop was talking in metaphors, which he generally made fun of whenever he had the chance.

“And in poker, you can win with bad cards, but it’s a lot easier to win with good ones. I got a losing hand, Jim. I’ve been bluffing for months. That’s all I’m saying. I’m holding jack high, Jim. I can’t win.”

“You want to fold?” I asked.

Pop didn’t answer, and I didn’t press him. It took about a minute before Pop broke the silence.

“You been prodding me for war stories. I’ll give you a war story. Don’t worry none about the details. Going to try to make a long story short. Just know that while I saw some action, I wasn’t no hero. There’s no such thing as heroes.

“I was dug in with this kid. Just a kid. Hubie something. Don’t know if I ever knew his last name. Wasn’t in my unit. It was the end of three days of fighting. Nobody giving any ground. Me and this Hubie, we were in a foxhole taking some fire. Couldn’t move, but okay where we were. Waiting for the cavalry. Trapped, but safe.

“At some point in the night, when things had been quiet, Hubie makes a break for it. Got scared, took off. Like you’d expect, the shooting started up, clipping at his feet. I jumped from the foxhole, tackled the boy, and threw him into this ditch that provided just enough cover. Fool thing to do.

“For the rest of the night lying in that ditch, he kept thanking me for saving his life. Wouldn’t shut up about it. He was ashamed that he got scared, and that I could’ve got killed. Shit, I was scared too. He kept calling himself a coward, but he was just a kid. Mostly he kept on about how I had saved his life.

“The next morning, we were still tucked in that ditch, more of a wide truck rut. A Marine unit found us, drove back whatever force was shooting at us. We joined them, ready for a fairer fight. Two seconds in, Hubie took a bullet in the face. Soon as he stood up.

“I didn’t save his life. I didn’t save shit-all. I postponed his death. By eight hours. Goddamned pointless. I gave him eight terrifying hours. That’s all I gave him. We’re all dying, Jim. From the moment we’re born. That ain’t some deep philosophy, just a fact. Nobody can save no one. You can only postpone the inevitable.

“Or hurry it along.”

We sat in silence for two or three minutes, until it was my turn to break it.

“I thought of a new game,” I practically shouted, not subtle about changing the subject.

“Yeah?” Pop said, barely interested. “Are we done swapping war stories?”

“Is that what we were doing?”

Pop turned to me, his glassy eyes looking past me. “Go ahead. You got a new game?”

“You know Mister Wiley a couple of doors down. His hearing is completely shot, right? But he won’t admit he’s deaf. Well, every time I talk to him, he misunderstands me, but he never asks me to repeat anything. The other day I was looking for Angie, and I asked him, ‘Have you seen the head nurse?’ I’m not sure what he thought I said, but he answered, ‘No, my wife never wanted to.’”

Pop chuckled despite himself.

“So I was thinking we could come up with some things to say to him. See how he reacts. See if we can get him to ask us to repeat it. What could he misunderstand completely wrong? Like I was going to tell him, ‘The other day, I parked my Explorer in your daughter’s carport.’”

Pop laughed. I could immediately see the wheels spinning. “Nothing like making fun of the handicapped.”

“I’m not making fun of him—I’m exploiting him for my own amusement. Completely different. And they prefer to be called disabled,” I said.

“And secretaries prefer to be called administrative assistants. Don’t mean they don’t make the coffee.”

“Touché,” I said, thankful that we were back on less serious ground.

He quickly said, “How about, ‘I heard that politician polled the electorate in the southern region.’”

I laughed and then responded, “My wiener dog bit that shih tzu.”

“I forcefully popped my shuttlecock in Virginia,” Pop said.

It took me a second to ingest that one. But when it finally sank in, I started laughing. And I couldn’t stop. Then Pop joined in. I could feel it starting. It was the beginning of the Big Laugh. Pop’s laugh made me laugh and the same back. Pop let out an uncontrolled snort that sent me over the edge. Tears rolled down my face. My side ached on top of my already aching ribs. I almost fell out of my chair.