“Uh-huh.”
“We call her Claws. She’s sort of the watchcat around here. Anyway, when the notary reached in to get the papers from Buddy, who of course was soused and barely
conscious, Claws jumped from the car and attacked the notary. Cost us sixty bucks for the doctor’s visit. And a new pair of panty hose. Have you ever seen anybody with acute leukemia?”
“No. Not until now.”
“I weigh a hundred and ten pounds. Eleven months ago I weighed a hundred and sixty. The leukemia was detected in plenty of time to be treated. I’m lucky enough to have an identical twin, and the bone marrow’s an identical match. The transplant would’ve saved my life, but we couldn’t afford it. We had insurance, but you know the rest of the story. I guess you know all this, right?”
“Yes. I’m very familiar with your case, Donny Ray.”
“Good,” he says, relieved. We watch Dot shoo away the cats. Claws, perched on top of the car, pretends to be asleep. Claws wants no part of Dot Black. The doors are open, and Dot sticks the contract inside. We can hear her penetrating voice.
“I know you think they’re crazy,” he says, reading my mind. “But they’re good people who’ve had some bad breaks. Be patient with them.”
“They’re nice folks.”
“I’m eighty percent gone, okay. Eighty percent. If I’d received the transplant, hell even six months ago, then I would’ve had a ninety percent chance of being cured. Ninety percent. Funny how doctors use numbers to tell us we’ll live or die. Now it’s too late.” He suddenly gasps for breath, clenching his fists and shuddering all over. His face turns a light shade of pink as he desperately sucks in air, and for a second I feel as if I need to help. He beats his chest with both fists, and I’m afraid his whole body is about to cave in.
He catches his breath finally, and snorts rapidly through his nose. It is precisely at this moment that I begin to hate Great Benefit Life Insurance Company.
I’m not ashamed to look at him anymore. He’s my client, and he’s counting on me. I’ll take him, warts and all.
His breathing is as normal as possible, and his eyes are red and moist. I can’t tell if he’s crying or just recovering from the seizure. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
Claws hisses loud enough for us to hear, and we look just in time to see her flying through the air and landing in the weeds. Evidently, the watchcat was a bit too interested in my contract, and Dot knocked the hell out of her. Dot is saying something ugly to her husband, who’s hunkered even lower behind the wheel. She reaches in, snatches the paperwork, then storms toward us, cats diving for cover in all directions.
“Eighty percent gone, okay?” Donny Ray says hoarsely. “So I won’t be around much longer. Whatever you get out of this case, please take care of them with it. They’ve had a hard life.”
I’m touched by this to the point of being unable to respond.
Dot opens the door and slides the contract across the table. The first page is ripped slightly at the bottom and the second has a smudge on it. I hope it’s not cat poop. “There,” she says. Mission accomplished. Buddy has indeed signed it, a signature that’s absolutely illegible.
I point here and there. Donny Ray and his mother sign, and the deal is sealed. We chat a few minutes as I start glancing at my watch.
When I leave them, Dot is seated next to Donny Ray, gently stroking his arm and telling him that things will get better.
Thirteen
I
HAD BEEN PREPARED TO EXPLAIN TO Barry X. that I wouldn’t be able to work on Saturday, what with more pressing demands around the house and all. And I had been prepared to suggest a few hours on Sunday afternoon, if he needed me. But I worried for nothing. Barry is leaving town for the weekend, and since I wouldn’t dare try to enter the office without his assistance, the issue quickly became moot.
For some reason, Miss Birdie does not rattle my door before sunrise, choosing instead to busy herself in front of the garage, below my window, with all manner of tool preparation. She drops rakes and shovels. She chips crud off the inside of the wheelbarrow with an unwieldly pickax. She sharpens two flat hoes, singing and yodeling all the while. I finally come down just after seven, and she acts surprised to see me. “Why good morning, Rudy. And how are you?”
“Fine, Miss Birdie. You?”
“Wonderful, just wonderful. Isn’t it a lovely day?”
The day has hardly begun, and it’s still too early to
measure its loveliness. It is, if anything, rather sticky for such an early hour. The insufferable heat of the Memphis summer cannot be far away.
She allows me one cup of instant coffee and a piece of toast before she starts rumbling about the mulch. I spring into action, much to her delight. Under her guidance, I manhandle the first hundred-pound bag into the wheelbarrow and follow her around the house and down the drive and across the front lawn to a scrawny little flower bed near the street. She holds her coffee in gloved hands and points to the precise spot where the mulch should go. I am quite winded by the trek, especially the last leg across the damp grass, but I rip the bag open with gusto and begin moving mulch with a pitchfork.
My tee shirt is soaked when I finish the first bag fifteen minutes later. She follows me and the wheelbarrow back to the edge of the patio, where we reload. She actually points to the exact bag she wants next, and we haul it to a spot near the mailbox.
We spread five bags in the first hour. Five hundred pounds of mulch. And I am suffering. The temperature hits eighty at nine o’clock. I talk her into a water break at nine-thirty, and find it difficult to stand after sitting for ten minutes. A legitimate backache seizes me sometime thereafter, but I bite my tongue and allow myself only a fair amount of grimacing. She doesn’t notice.
I’m not a lazy person, and at one point during college, not too long ago, I was in excellent physical condition. I jogged and played intramural sports, but then law school happened and I’ve had little time for such activities during the past three years. I feel like a soft little wimp after a few hours of hard labor.
For lunch she feeds me two of her tasteless turkey sandwiches and an apple. I eat very slowly on the patio,
under the fan. My back aches, my legs are numb, my hands actually shake as I nibble like a rabbit.
As I wait for her to finish in the kitchen, I stare across the small green patch of lawn, around the monument of mulch, to my apartment sitting innocently above the garage. I’d been so proud of myself when I negotiated the paltry sum of one hundred and fifty dollars per month as rent, but how clever had I really been? Who got the best end of this deal? I remember feeling slightly ashamed of myself for taking advantage of this sweet little woman. Now I’d like to stuff her in an empty mulch bag.
According to an ancient thermometer nailed to the garage, the temperature at 1 P.M. is ninety-three degrees. At two, my back finally locks up, and I explain to Miss Birdie that I have to rest. She looks at me sadly, then slowly turns and studies the undiminished heap of white bags. We’ve barely made a dent. “Well, I guess. If you must.”
“Just an hour,” I plead.
She relents, but by three-thirty I am once again pushing the wheelbarrow with Miss Birdie at my heels.
After eight hours of harsh labor, I have disposed of exactly seventy-nine bags of mulch, less than a third of the shipment she’d ordered.
Shortly after lunch, I dropped the first hint that I was expected at Yogi’s by six. This was a lie, of course. I am scheduled to tend bar from eight to closing. But she’d never know the difference, and I am determined to liberate myself from the mulch before dark. At five, I simply quit. I tell her I’ve had enough, my back is aching, I have to go to work and I pull myself up the stairs as she watches sadly from below. She can evict me, for all I care.
THE MAJESTIC SOUND of rolling thunder wakes me late Sunday morning, and I lie stiffly on the sheets as a heavy rain pounds my roof. My head is in fine shape—I
stopped drinking last night when I went on duty. But the rest of my body is fixed in concrete, unable to move. The slightest shift causes excruciating pain. It hurts to breathe.
At some point during yesterday’s arduous ordeal, Miss Birdie asked me if I’d like to worship with her this morning. Church attendance was not a condition in my lease, but why not, I thought. If this lonely old lady wants me to go to church with her, it’s the least I can do. I certainly couldn’t be harmed by it.
Then I asked her what church she attends. Abundance Tabernacle in Dallas, she answered. Live via satellite, she worships with the Reverend Kenneth Chandler, and in the privacy of her own home.
I begged off. She appeared to be hurt, but rallied quickly.
When I was a small boy, long before my father succumbed to alcohol and sent me away to a military school, I attended church occasionally with my mother. He went with us a time or two, but did nothing but gripe, so Mother and I preferred that he stay home and read the paper. It was a little Methodist church with a friendly pastor, the Reverend Howie, who told funny stories and made everyone feel loved. I remember how content my mother was whenever we listened to his sermons. There were plenty of kids in Sunday School, and I didn’t object to being scrubbed and starched on Sunday morning and led off to church.
My mother once had minor surgery and was in the hospital for three days. Of course, the ladies in the church knew the most intimate details of the operation, and for three days our house was flooded with casseroles, cakes, pies, breads, pots and dishes filled with more food than my father and I could eat in a year. The ladies organized a sitting for us. They took turns supervising the food, cleaning the kitchen, greeting even more guests who brought
even more casseroles. For the three days my mother was in the hospital, and for three days after she returned home, we had at least one of the ladies living with us, guarding the food, it seemed to me.
My father hated the ordeal. For one, he couldn’t sneak around and drink, not with a houseful of church ladies. I think they knew that he liked to nip at the bottle, and since they had managed to barge into the house, they were determined to catch him. And he was expected to be the gracious host, something my father simply couldn’t do. After the first twenty-four hours, he spent most of his time at the hospital, but not exactly doting over his ailing wife. He stayed in the visitors lounge, where he watched TV and sipped spiked colas.
I have fond memories of it. Our house had never felt such warmth, never seen so much delicious food. The ladies fussed over me as if my mother had died, and I relished the attention. They were the aunts and grandmothers I’d never known.
Shortly after my mother recuperated, Reverend Howie got himself run off for an indiscretion I never fully understood, and the church split wide open. Someone insulted my mother, and that was the end of church for us. I think she and Hank, the new husband, attend sporadically.
I missed the church for a while, then grew into the habit of not attending. My friends there would occasionally invite me back, but before long I was too cool to go to church. A girlfriend in college took me to mass a few times, on Saturday evening of all times, but I’m too much of a Protestant to understand all the rituals.
Miss Birdie timidly mentioned the possibility of yard work this afternoon. I explained that it was the Sabbath, God’s holy day, and I just didn’t believe in labor on Sunday.
She couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Fourteen
T
HE RAIN IS INTERMITTENT FOR THREE days, effectively suspending my work as a yard boy. After dark on Tuesday, I am hiding in my apartment, studying for the bar exam, when the phone rings. It’s Dot Black, and I know something is wrong. She wouldn’t call me otherwise.
“I just got a phone call,” she says, “from a Mr. Barry Lancaster. Said he was my lawyer.”
“That’s true, Dot. He’s a big-shot lawyer with my firm. He works with me.” I guess Barry is just checking a few details.
“Well, that ain’t what he said. He called to see if me and Donny Ray can come down to his office tomorrow, said he needed to get some things signed. I asked about you. He said you ain’t working there. I want to know what’s going on.”
So do I. I stutter for a second, say something about a misunderstanding. A thick knot hits deep in my stomach. “It’s a big firm, Dot, and I’m new, you know. He probably just forgot about me.”
“No. He knows who you are. He said you used to work there, but not anymore. This is pretty confusing, you know?”
I know. I fall into a chair and try to think clearly. It’s almost nine o’clock. “Look, Dot, sit tight. Let me call Mr. Lancaster and find out what he’s up to. I’ll call you back in a minute.”
“I want to know what’s going on. Have you sued those bastards yet?”
“I’ll call you back in just a minute, okay? Bye now.” I hang up the phone, then quickly punch the number for the Lake firm. I’m hit with the rotten feeling that I’ve been here before.
The late receptionist routes me to Barry X. I decide to be cordial, play along, see what he says.
“Barry, it’s me, Rudy. Did you see my research?”
“Yeah, looks great.” He sounds tired. “Listen, Rudy, we may have a slight problem with your position.”
The knot claws its way into my throat. My heart freezes. My lungs skip a breath. “Oh yeah?” I manage to say.
“Yeah. Looks bad. I met with Jonathan Lake late this afternoon, and he’s not going to approve you.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t like the idea of a lawyer filling the position of a paralegal. And now that I think about it, it’s not such a good idea after all. You see, Mr. Lake thinks, and I concur, that the natural tendency for a lawyer in that position would be to try and force his way into the next associate’s slot. And we don’t operate that way. It’s bad business.”
I close my eyes and want to cry. “I don’t understand,” I say.
“I’m sorry. I tried my best, but he simply wouldn’t give. He runs this place with an iron fist, and he has a certain
way of doing things. To be honest, he really chewed my ass good for even thinking about hiring you.”