The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (81 page)

Between the jet lag and their naps, they have trouble falling asleep in the hotel. Rett turns on the TV and is delighted to catch an old
Twilight Zone
, but the viewers' anticipatory smiles fade as they come to understand the plot. A white man accused of killing a brutal Klansman is about to be hanged. While all this is happening, the sun refuses to rise. The teleplay features a monologue about hate by a black preacher, and hate seems to be directly related to the 9:30 a.m. pitch-blackness. Rett and Dwight wait wordlessly to see what event will finally bring back the light but they are surprised by the end: the world just gets darker.

**

The next morning Rett sleeps while Dwight writes in his memory book. The phone rings. It's Cousin Liddie, excited. Turns out she works at the Kmart with Lucy so heard all about Dwight's visit with Eliot's boy. They chat a while, Rett putting his pillow over his head. Ten minutes later another ring. “Jeanine! Liddie called you
already?
” As Dwight is hanging up, Rett drags himself out of bed.

“Jeanine was your daddy's friend, they was the same grade. She'd like to have us over for breakfast. Liddie's our cousin, around the same age as your daddy. She'd like to have us over for lunch. I told em we have a few things to do today, I'd check in with you.”

“Yes, yes,” Rett mutters as he closes the bathroom door.

Jeanine still lives in the house where she grew up. She'd never married, and two years ago had to put her mother into a nursing home. Sausage and eggs and fried potatoes and onions and fried apples and cantaloupe and pulpy orange juice from the carton, the type of feast Jeanine clearly rarely indulges in as she's quite slim.

“Your uncle tell you we useta call this Colored Street? An him an your daddy lived on Mixed Street?” She's a jovial sort, and her reminiscences bring out a cheerfulness in Dwight that Rett didn't know existed: panting as they climbed up to the colored tier of the old movie house, the white driver who nearly hit Jeanine in the snow and got a taste of colored kids' sass from Mokie the twin. And she turns to Rett and tells him about playing jump-rope with Eliot, about the day Eliot picked Parker out of her cat's litter.

“You know your daddy was the smartest in our class, firs grade on up.”

As they're leaving, she can't take her eyes off Rett. “God, I can't believe how much he's Eliot!” Then to his uncle: “You know, I often think about your mother's funeral. The lass time I seen him. I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but I guess, cuz the only other funeral we'd both been to was my uncle's, I was half expectin Eliot to tell me your mama weren't dead. Was a rabbit in that box!” She laughs and wipes a tear.

Dwight and Rett drive around, the elder continuing to tour-guide his past, and at 12:30 they knock on Liddie's door. Their cousin answers with a huge grin, giving each of them a bear hug. She's nearly as round as Lucy.

“That damn Jeanine tole me she was invitin yaw to breakfast, I suppose she done filled ya up before ya got here.”

It's true. Dwight was bracing himself to politely force down more food but, mercifully, lunch is simply gazpacho, a new recipe Liddie's trying for the hot weather, with watermelon for dessert. The concept of cold soup was insane to her, but the dish turned out pretty good she thinks, “Delicious” according to Dwight. They sit outside, her backyard patio under a tree.

“Walter Joe got on at the textiles, that's why we moved back here from Bear. Bear, West Virginia,” she clarifies for Rett. “Then it closed like all the rest of em. The mill, the tires, brewery. Glass where your daddy worked.
Any
way.” Sighs. “Jus wish my husband coulda been here to see ya but he's out at the Kmart too, workin today.” She sucks on a piece of watermelon. “You remember that bike I stole for me an Eliot?”

“No!”

“Borrowed, borrowed!” She turns to Rett. “Me an your father was aroun third grade. My family over for Thanksgivin, an some neighbor white family gone for the holiday. I didn't see the harm in takin one a their damn bikes jus for a few hours, teach ourselves to ride. Your daddy refused, we hadn't asked permission. Well I recalled visitin weeks before when we
did
ask permission, just to share it with the boy, ride it when he took a break. ‘No!' that stingy brat said, so Thanksgivin I took his ugly ole bike, an by enda the day I could ride! Eliot watchin the whole time, eyes drippin the envy, but he never joined in. He waited till I finished an watched me put that cycle back where I found it, then he gone inside, quiet. I felt bad, your daddy's sad eyes sure whipped the conscience into me. Him goin into law didn't surprise me a bit, from the beginning he always seemed to have that sense: right an wrong.”

After lunch, she takes them into her living room. Pictures of her parents (“That's your great-aunt Peg-Peg,” Dwight inserts), of her brother Mitch and his wife and kids (“Yeah that rascal finally settled down,” Liddie remarks), of Liddie's own five grown children and plentiful grandchildren. Dwight remembers Liddie's oldests when they were small themselves, the twins Felicia and Fiona.

“Do you have any of my father when he was little?”

She thinks. “You know, Rett, I don't believe I do. But I'll ask my mama. She was the keeper a
all
the pictures.”

They're driving again, and Rett pulls into a convenience store lot. When he comes out sipping a gargantuan caffeinated soft drink, Dwight is standing next to the car.

“I don't wanna do this if you rather keep explorin around. But I was thinkin. Maybe I go on and visit Roof.”

“Okay.”

“Visitin hours jus startin. Two. Maybe you drop me off at the hospital? I'll call a cab to bring me back to the hotel when I'm done.”

“Okay. Or. You just want me to come with you? Stay in the waiting room?”

“Dontchu wanna look around Humble some more?”

“Well. What do
you
want?”

Dwight gazes at his nephew.

“You know what? Maybe I'll jus keep showin you around, that's what we come here for, right?”

“You came here too, Uncle Dwight. You have stuff you need to do.”

Had Rett said
want to do,
Dwight might have been able to talk himself out of this task.

“Okay. You drop me off, then keep the car. I'll call a cab later. Meetcha back at the hotel lobby.”

“Okay. What time?”

“Well. Ferguson's closes at five, so we need to leave the hotel no later n 4:30.”

“Okay.”

“No later n 4:30.”

“No later n 4:30.”

At the hospital information desk, Dwight is directed to the third floor. He passes the room twice before seeing the name in the slot outside the door. The space is a double but only the bed near the door is occupied. And the very old man, wrinkled and white hair and colorless skin with the breathing apparatus and numerous other machines, Dwight now comprehends, is Roof. He walks through the doorway, approaching slowly. Roof breathes loud and uneven through his mouth. He's asleep but at one point his eyes open wide, fixing on Dwight, but seeming to register nothing before they close again. And Dwight wonders if this is all a terrible idea, a
selfish
idea. Why's he here? He prays not to upset Roof, and if he doesn't, what does that mean? Absolution for himself? He takes a step backward toward the door.

“Whoa! Careful there. You can go on in.”

Dwight, startled, turns around to stare at a fortyish black man in a nurse's uniform, a combination he has
never
before seen in Humble, standing at the room entrance. The man enters, checking on the various mechanisms of life extension. After a few moments, noticing Dwight still hasn't moved: “Please come in. He seems to do better with company.” He indicates the visitor's chair next to the bed, and Dwight warily takes it. “If you talk to him he might hear you, even if he doesn't appear to respond.”

Dwight stares at Roof, says nothing. The nurse marks on a clipboard. “Your first time visiting?”

“We knew each other, kids. I moved away a long time ago.”

The RN nods, not looking up. When he finishes with the chart, he hangs it back on the foot of the bed. “Talk to him.” He smiles and leaves.

Dwight sits for a very long time, Roof's heavy, labored breathing the only sound. Finally the visitor quietly walks out. The nurses' station is right across from Roof's room, and the surprised RN looks up.

“He's not. Is he in a coma?”

“No. He's just asleep.”

“Oh. Because you said. About he might hear me but not respond.”

“Sometimes when he's very tired it's hard for him to open his eyes. But other times he does.”

“Oh.”

A public-address system request for Dr. Mukherjee to come to the ICU.

“I couldn't really talk to him, not knowin whether he's seein me. Knowin me. Too many years.”

“Well. He might wake soon.”

“My nephew and I jus happened to be in town. We gotta go back to D.C. this evenin, catch a plane. So I have a few minutes, but.”

The nurse nods.

“I live in San Francisco, my nephew's visitin me this summer.”

The nurse smiles politely before going back to his paperwork. After a few minutes he notices Dwight looking at a display of several photographs above his work area. Children.

“She died. Dysentery.” Dwight is disconcerted, then aware that his eyes had settled on one particular child. “Spent a couple of years working in Ethiopia. They're orphans.” He picks up the picture of the little girl. “I'm gonna adopt one of those kids. It's complicated, taking them out of their own country, Americanizing them. But I don't think as complicated as needless juvenile death. I'd do my best, make sure my child knew where she came from. Or where he came from.” He's quiet a moment. “Other obstacles too. Prejudice.”

“Lem. You doin a double today?” Another nurse standing at the station, this one white and female.

Lem nods. “Be here till eleven.”

“Okay.” She walks off.

“You ain't from here.”

Lem laughs. “Detroit.”

“So how you end up in Humble?”

“I go where there's need. Ethiopia, Uruguay. Small-town America. Thinking about New York after the end of the year.” He looks at Dwight with meaning. “AIDS is cleaning us out.”

Whether by “us” Lem is referring to black men or the black community, or to black
gay
men—because the visitor had discerned a certain vibe from the nurse—Dwight cannot be sure, and before he can ponder on it, Lem says, “Look.”

Dwight turns around to see Roof's eyes open, staring directly at him. He cautiously enters the room.

“Hey Roof.” His voice is quiet.

The patient's mouth open, allowing for more oxygen to enter his lungs.

“Remember me? Dwight? From kids?”

Roof continues staring, not blinking an eye. Dwight could interpret the expression as Roof remembering him and hating him, or Roof utterly baffled as to who stands before him. Finally, between breaths: “Whatever. Happen ta. The Architeck Club?”

At first Dwight thinks Roof is confused, dreaming awake or mistaking Dwight for someone else. Then he remembers their boyhood clubs, and laughs. “I don't think we quite made our membership quotas.”

And then they're talking. And in the talking Roof seems to start breathing easier, and so does Dwight. Tarzan movies and exploring the old Messengill house and Roof's father dropping them off at the fair, Dwight's father letting them on the train that time. Roof had married at seventeen, the girl the same age. “Yeah, I remember hearin about that. Gloria her name?” Thirty-seven years they'd been together. Eleven kids and he's lost track of all the grands, and a couple of the
next
generation. Dwight's mind is boggled by his contemporary speaking of great-grandchildren. No, Dwight didn't marry, been living in California nineteen years. They never mention Carl.

When there's a brief lull Roof, grinning, says, “I done you wrong. Time or two. The movie thee-ater.”

It takes a moment for Dwight to realize Roof is referring to the instances when he would come to the pictures with Dwight, then exercise his right as a Caucasian to abandon his colored friend and sit in the floor seats. “Yep. You sure did.”

Then Roof's eyes narrow. “An a time
you
done
me
wrong.”

Dwight stares at him. Their eyes are frozen on one another, Dwight not knowing what to say, Roof not helping. Finally Roof looks away, trying to make himself more comfortable on his pillows. “But guess what. Useta picnic. Roslyn County. My wife n kids. They wanna swim the river.” He goes into a coughing fit. Every time it seems about to stop, it becomes more severe. Dwight looks at the nurses' station but no one's there. He stands, about to run out to look for someone, but Roof raises his hand, waving him to stay, and finally the bout ceases. “I cain't keep em from swimmin. I ain't swum myself since.” The rest of the story, which Roof doesn't finish, is part of Dwight's most catastrophic childhood memory. But he sees Roof remembering it, and he beholds Roof's thoughtful calm. “Well I think. I had to, I
could
save em. Any of em drownin. I oughta thank you for that.”

Dwight says nothing, his eyes soft, gazing at his old friend. Roof, lying against his raised pillow, turns to look out the window. “Eliot an that ole cat.” Roof laughs softly, his eyelids getting heavy. “Eliot, Eliot.” Minutes pass, both of them silent, and Dwight realizes Roof is asleep.

It's four when Dwight walks into the hotel. He and Rett have already checked out of their room, their bags in the rental car. Just off the lobby is a phone booth. Dwight, grateful for the privacy, closes the folded door and pulls out his address book. It has been a
lot,
the last twenty-four, but his second call in as many days to his sponsor is as composed as the first. He'd been concerned for his nephew on this trip, but only now is he aware with great relief the miracle that he didn't fall apart himself. Toward the end of the chat he becomes remotely worried Rett may not be here at 4:30, that he may have gotten distracted or lost, and Dwight starts devising backup plans but his nervousness is for naught: when he slides open the door, he immediately sees Rett from behind sitting on the lobby couch, wearing his headphones and perusing hotel flyers for local state parks. Dwight walks over and gently taps his nephew's shoulder.