Broke Heart Blues

  His face was shiny with sweat and he was breathing hard, his breath steaming, if he'd been running uphill. "You O. K. , mister?" one of the deputies Heart. "Need somebody to look after that? "--meaning his bleeding face.

  Quickly, annoyed, John said, "No." It was nothing, a scratch.

  just wanted to get the hell out of there. He had the distinct idea, Nola want to talk him out of it, that the deputies were eyeing him with astonishment, contempt, that he hadn't fought his opponent at all, letting himself be hit, called names, what kind of a guy's this?

  They watched him, how many eyes, limping to the sky-blue Ford pickup.

  His left knee aching. Left eye, where the retina had come detached, ago, blinded with tears. MR. FIX-IT, that's who this guy is?

  Carpenter, handyman? HAVE TOOLS--WILL TRAVEL! The hopeful telephone number beneath, (716) 737-9542. Six-year-old Ellen had helped him paint bright yellow sunflowers on the sides of the truck and these looked, in the light of a cold March morning, like goofy grinning decapitated heads. Nola called hesitantly after him, "John? --wait." But he wasn't going wait, and she knew it. He was in one of his moods and wouldn't talk, he'd sulk off to nurse his wounds. The aftermath of fury pumping his heart for he was a man of pride born to fight, to use his fists, or a tire iron, a claw hammer, tools he carried right there in MR. Flx-IT's pickup. But I won't. Because am strong enough to resist. Because, whatever is believed of me, I can overcome it.

  Nor would he press charges against Leavey. He guessed that the wouldn't arrest Leavey, they'd let him off with a warning, poor bastard, they saw it at the courthouse, in family court, all the time, a father, custody suit, he's desperate to see more of his kids, discovers after he loses them how he loves them, and the wife, too. The woman's got a live-in boyfriend, in this case, as everyone seemed to know, an ex-con.

  Sure, the deputies would be sympathe ic with Jordan Leavey. If didn't know about the drinking, and the abuse, hearing his sad of being kicked out of his own home, you'd be sympathe ic with him, too.

  K, He hadn't prayed. That hour, that night his life was changed forever.

  Hadn't known yet about praying. Emptying yourself, being filled God. A rush of brilliant blinding light. A rush of certainty.

  called in their groping fumbling way

  "God." He hadn't prayed, praying was beside the point. It had happened so swiftly--a fraction of a second. Do what you have to do. And what you do, you look back and say, I to do that.

  And so I did.

  They hadn't wanted him to sacrifice his life. Aged sixteen.

  They'd wanted him to sacrifice his life. Aged sixteen.

  No, they'd loved him. Her, especially. It was his idea, not theirs.

  All of it, John Reddy Heart's idea.

  Not that they would speak of it. Ever. As words, printed words a page, columns of print, sometimes confused him, dazzled his brain, so words, uttered words, his own words especially halting and inadequate in his ears, embarrassed him. I had to do that. So I did.

  Sure there was pride in it, vanity, that he'd been man enough, enough, just a kid of sixteen at the time. And the years to follow.

  And the long nights. Why? Because I am strong enough. I did what I did, grew into my strength.

  Rushing up the stairs to Dahlia's bedroom, knowing what he'd find.

  nearly. He'd heard the gunshots. And stooping to pick up the gun.

  Grandpa's gun. A gun he'd held many times in his hands, as a boy.

  That instant, that swift irrevocable decision--he'd done it, and so it was done.

  Grandpa's gun. Dropped onto the floor after it had been fired, three times, Lying now at the edge of the beautiful dusty-rose thick-piled carpet already beginning to soak with blood. The gun that would be to, forever afterward, as the murder weapon.

  One of those mysterious word-terms. Like God. Sounds you hear, hear, so many times. You lose the meaning. If there was ever a single coherent meaning.

  A murder weapon means there's murder, means there's a murderer.

  He hadn't wanted to sacrifice himself, aged sixteen. But it had happened.

  Wanting only, since his father's death, to keep the family together. Nothing terrified him more than being lost, scattered.

  It wasn't that he might lose the others, or be lost by them--if he lost them he'd lose parts of himself. He believed this. For it was so easy to be broken apart. For they'd traveled so often, those early years. From Lubbock, Texas, where his father stationed at the Reese Air Force Base and where John Reddy Heart born, to Gila Bend, Arizona, and the air force base there, where Farley Heart was born, at last to the base at San Angelo, Utah, where his father killed in a plane crash on a routine flight. (So through his life he would envision his airman father's death in a glittering silver attack jet falling out of the cobaltblue desert sky to smash on earth. "Mechanical failure.

  " Yet the pilot hadn't ejected himself--why? Had he refused to surrender the plane?

  Imagining he could bring it under control? The wreckage, on an isolated mountainside, yielded no secrets. ) After San Angelo there was Sparks, Nevada, there was Reno and at last Vegas where his grandpa Heart came to live with them.

  Wanting only that their lives wouldn't unravel like one of the cheap sweaters their mother bought them at Sears. Fall apart like her cheap high-heeled shoes--the heel suddenly detached from the shoe so that poor Mommy, flushed with shame, had to limp back home. Wanting that their wouldn't be shattered like glass, how the desert at the edge of the city with broken pieces of glass and other debris, cellophane wrappers, scraps. This world is flling up with the shit of munkind one day choke us as we deserve Grandpa Heart observed with vehement satisfaction raising his glass of bourbon in a toast to such a fate. Oh Dad-dy! Mommy cry, exasperated. Stuff it. Wanting only that their lives wouldn't glitter melting in the sun the way, suddenly bored with her own drink, or maybe the drink had turned tepid, ice cubes melted to thin crescents and the whisky to taste, Mommy would toss the contents of her glass out onto the soil beyond the porch of the shabby little bungalow on Arroyo Seco, Vegas, and whisper, Oh shit. Stretching and yawning like a big cat. By this time Mommy was

  "Dah-lia Heart" and her voice was throaty, shivery. It was a voice that invited you to look at her, to admire.

  I am a woman who can do anything, no one can stop me.

  When news came to her of her husband's death she had not been that woman, a younger sister maybe, naive, a fool, anyone who has luck has got to be a fool was Dahlia Heart's judgment. Her eldest son John Reddy, John, could recall only vaguely the circumstances of those days, the news of the death, Mommy stunned, stupefied, hair in a between her shoulder blades, barefoot, her skin tight-stretched sallow, arms and legs oddly thin beside her distended belly which resembled watermelon shoved up inside her clothes. For when her husband Lamarca was killed, Dorrie Lamarca was seven months pregnant with baby girl who would be Shirleen.

  She'd screamed, waking John Reddy and his brother. She'd fallen into a faint, hurt her head. Later she would beat at her great belly her fists, hysterical, weeping, as a child might weep. She tore at her hair, raked her hands and arms with her nails. Other women on the base had cared for her.

  And for the little boys John Reddy who was six, Farley(who was three. The baby girl, Shirleen, would be born prematurely, in andther month, in the emergency room of a Sparks, Nevada, hospital to which, reeling a combination of tequila and speed, bruised from a fall, or a scuffle, in a bar, Dorrie Lamarca had been brought by a man in a creamy-white cowboy hat disappeared immediately afterward and was never heard of again.

  Twentyhve when my husband died. My handsome air force husband. My herohusband. A lieutenant. A hghter pilot. Flew an A-10 Thunderbolt at the San Angelo Air Force Base. And that was how he died--a crash, two into a mission, something wrong with the engine, he'd been on many missions, he was thirty-one years old. Oh, God--I loved him. I will always love him.

  Tony was my hrst love. We met when I was hfteen. There is no love like
hrst love. He died, and I was only a girl. I'd married him so young. He'd come get me, I had to go with him. I hadn't any choice. I was just a girl, in Lubbock. Tony made me have babies. His babies. I loved him, I wanted to have babies.

  Seven months pregnant when he died. I can't forgive him for dying.

  Can you imagine--three children, and I was twenty-five. Yes, I wanted to die. But I did not die. I loved my babies, I love my babies. Tony didn't in birth control.

  Wouldn't speak of it, it disgusted him. I didn't know any better.

  I did what he wanted. What he wanted, I wanted. There is God pushing through to be born, Tony said. He'd get excited especially if he was drinking. You learn to stay out of their way. My own father. Other guys at the base.

  Tony was Catholic but that wasn't it. He argued with other Catholics. I don't hate my babies. I love my babies. The Messiah might be born, Tony said.

  Catholic but never went to mass. He hud ideas he'd elaborate. For instance-Jesus needs to be born again, and again. It wouldn't be only one time. He'd get in crazy arguments. He liked to get a rise out of people. I don't hate my babies I love them. All I have left of their father. Especially my Johnny.

  My little love.

  He's promised to take care of his mother who's a widow. All our life.

  Those long nights before the baby was born. Just the two of them Mommy's bed.

  She'd held him, her Johnny, locked safe in her arms. Safe, and tight.

  She'd given him Daddy's Air Force wristwatch with its large flat face, its greeny-glowing numerals and hands--"But you're too young to wear it yet.

  Someday." But sometimes he wore the wristwatch anyway, on his forearm, grimy adhesive tape wound around the band to make it fit.

  warm face pressed against Mommy's heavy breasts lightly perspiring, smelling of talcum through the nylon lace of her nightgown he would very still listening to the minute tick-tick-tick of Daddy's watch.

  This was in the motel with the rainbow neon in Sparks, Nevada, they rented a room by the week. Most nights were sultry, the sky rippling with flashes of heat lightning. Sometimes the TV was on, only the picture not the sound. The old movies Mommy liked best weren't color but in black and white--"Things were more serious then." So he'd come to believe that the past, the time before he was born, had been black and white. On the bedside table was Mommy's tumbler of whisky, her black plastic ashtray heaped with cigarette butts and ashes. She'd let Johnny sip from the tumbler, she'd let him draw a puff on her cigarette and smile when he coughed. "Take your time, hon. There's plenty of time waiting.

  " He was fascinated, a little frightened, feeling the baby kick inside Mommy's tightstretched belly. "Your little sister, Johnny. I know she's going to be a girl. Feel her? Shirleen." Shirleen. He'd helped Mommy choose the name.

  Always he would feel he'd had a hand in the making of her. His sister.

  One day she'd change her name, taking the veil as it was called, bride of Christ. But always she was Shirleen. Always he would remember her Mommy's belly kicking against his amazed outspread fingers. "Baby?

  Hi! It's me. Johnny." And Mommy would laugh liking him when he was funny sad. When he said kooky unexpected things like people do who've drinking.

  He was six, almost seven. He'd lost interest in playing with children his own age. And anyway there wasn't time. At the San Angelo base he'd had to drop out of first grade to be with Mommy. In Sparks, five or six weeks in the motel, he went to school not at all. Nor in Reno. Though in he'd start school again, reluctantly. In the Sparks motel his little brother Farley slept on a vinyl sofa covered with towels, a single sheet and blanket.

  and snuffling in his sleep. Farley who'd had bronchitis for five months. Farley who was forever sniffing, snuffling. Poor kid, a hairless rat.

  No rival for Johnny who looked like their father. "Your eyes exactly like his!

  Oh, God." Those nights she woke him repeatedly from sleep to take his hands in hers, spread the fingers and press them in wonder against her belly that was always burning-hot to the touch. Her young face, a girl's face, swollen, lumpy, glaring with tears. Her face that was the last thing he saw as he drifted into sleep, too exhausted to keep his eyes from closing, and the first thing he saw when she nudged him awake, needing him she said, not wanting to and alone she said. "Because I'm afraid. I just don't know what might happen if I'm alone too much." Mommy's face and Mommy's belly that shimmered pale through the gauzy fabric of the nightgown. "Johnny, d'you know you come from here, too? When you were born. Your daddy put you me, his seed, out of this," touching his quivering penis gently, almost shyly, though his body was entirely her possession yet allowing him to know how special this part of him was, and how special he, Johnny was, "--and inside your mommy and you grew there, like your baby sister is growing now. That's why no one can love you like your mommy loves you. Because you of Mommy when you were born. And you can love no one like you love mommy. Understand?" It wasn't noted that Farley too had been born out of Mommy's belly, put there by Daddy. It was possible to believe, those nights, that Farley didn't exist. And through his life John Heart would recall his young, enormously pregnant, whisky-smelling mother he'd adored feared. How many times running his hands in reverence yet in familiarity over a woman's body. Of course he had the right, of the woman wanted him. Never any doubt. How could there be doubt. Running over Nola Leavey's body and knowing she loved him, beyond the of his love for her though he did in fact love her and wished to marry her if marriage to John Heart, an ex-con, would not endanger her custody of her children. For always it comes to the matter of children. A child is someone you love more than yourself And a hell of a lot more than you love your own happiness Nola had said.

  She'd recognized him, maybe, a man who loved women, and was loved by women. A man in awe of women. A man wary of women. Without him, she'd known.

  Of course the child Johnny had adored his baby sister Shirleen when she was born. A wizened red-faced little monkey sputtering with what like indignation. "Oh, God. I've got to keep this one alive, too.

  I'm so tired." Mommy was a long time recovering from the birth. Mommy cried a lot.

  There'd been some worry that Shirleen might not live. Or, living, might not be "right." The fact was, Mommy had disappeared from the motel days before the baby was born, she'd gone drinking with a man and

  Johnny and Farley alone in the motel room. That was O. K. , Johnny twenty dollars she'd left for him, there was a 7-Eleven store across the highway and a vending machine just outside the door.

  There was TV through the night to keep them company. There was the telephone that, though didn't ring, might ring, at any moment. "Johnny baby? Hi! it's Mommy in, sweetie. Everything under control?" One day Johnny would from a mean remark of Grandpa Heart's that Shirleen had been born with "poison" in her blood. Alcohol? Drugs? She'd weighed less than five pounds.

  Born six weeks premature. At first her eyes were slightly crossed. She hadn't much appetite yet was capable, as Mommy marveled, of vomiting up more she'd consumed. "We could get her in Ripley's Believe It or Not, think?" She was colicky, fretful. Worse than Farley. (Johnny been her dream baby, for sure. Slept for six hours straight the first home from the hospital. ) Shirleen cried feebly, like a sick cat. Yet she could cry for hours. She could cry, Mommy said, like the Chinese water torture.

  you couldn't hear her, if you actually went to listen closely, she'd be crying.

  Mommy tried to nurse Shirleen but Mommy's breasts ached. Mommy as she nursed but it didn't seem to help. Mommy said, puzzled and resentful, "It's like this one isn't Tony's. It's like she's else's." Sometimes Mommy was panicked, her hands trembling.

  "What if I can't keep her alive? What if she dies, will I be to blame? Who'd take care of kids if--?" At other times she joked about leaving the baby in the Dumpster, with a wink, "Just kidding!" Johnny helped feed Shirleen, to prepare formula to exactly the right temperature. He came to believe that his baby sister knew him, smiled at him. He was special in her eyes. If
Mommy's hands shook too much to risk bathing Shirleen, Johnny bathe her Mommy watched from a chair. Johnny toweled the tiny body dry, talcum, diapered her. He liked it that Shirleen was a little girl, and that little girls hadn't penises like little boys. He liked it that he was special. He was in charge of bathing Farley, too, and could almost believe that was a girl.

  Yet Farley could be a tough little bugger for his size. Hated having his hair washed. Screamed like he was being killed if soap got in his eyes.

  Actually-this was funny! --tried to fight his older, bigger brother who could pin him in three seconds, like a TV wrestler, flat on the floor with the of one hand.