“Mom? It’s me.”
“Well, where are you?”
“The same place. Did I call at the wrong time?”
“I was lying down on the floor with my legs on a chair. It’s the only way I can get any relief, if I lie perfectly still and not move.”
“What’s wrong, your back?”
“I had to crawl to the phone. My back has never been this bad in my entire life.”
“I’m awfully sorry, really. Did you call yesterday?”
“I called twice. You gave me the wrong number. I’ve been in terrible pain ever since that man was here and gave me the back rub. Oh, my Lord, when I try to move. I have to crawl to the bathroom to go the toilet. I didn’t sleep all night with the pain, I couldn’t.”
Carmen stared at the front window in the living room.
“What man? Who was it gave you the back rub?”
“From the company Wayne was working for, when you left. They want to send him his check.”
“He picked it up,” Carmen said. “I’m pretty sure.”
Her mother groaned saying, “I’ve never felt pain like this. I imagine you can tell from my voice. It’s just something terrible when I try to move.”
“Mom, you let a man give you a back rub you don’t even know. What’s his name?”
“He seemed nice, he said he learned from a therapist how to do it. Now I can’t walk, I can’t dress myself or take a bath. I should’ve known better than to let an ironworker touch me. I’m not going to the hospital, the way they treat you. If I lie here on the floor and try not to move . . . It’s so cold in the house, I’m gonna have to see if I can reach the thermostat and turn the heat up. But I raise my arms, it just about kills me.”
“Mom, if I was home you know I’d come. I’m seven hundred miles away.”
A car appeared in the front window. There for a moment creeping past the house. A light-colored car.
“How long would it take you?”
Carmen stared at the window, empty now.
“Not more than a day, would it? . . . Carmen?”
“I can’t just drop everything and come. Wayne’s off on a job.”
“I don’t need Wayne. You drove your car, didn’t you?”
“There must be someone you can call, one of your friends.”
“Like who? They work or baby-sit or have husbands they have to take care of. Doctors don’t make house calls, they don’t do you any good anyway. Sit and wait hours to see them, they give you a prescription . . .”
The car appeared again and Carmen was ready. A cream-colored Plymouth, Ferris’s car, no doubt about it, creeping by, going the other way now. She couldn’t see the driveway in the window. The car passed from view but might have turned in.
“They give you so-called pain pills that don’t come near reaching the pain I have now. If you ever suffered from it you’d know what I mean. Well, I’m gonna try to get up those stairs and go to bed. I have that extra-firm mattress with a board under it . . .”
“Mom, I’ll have to call you back.”
“Not that it did me any good last night, and I can’t stay up there, but I just don’t know what else to do.”
“Mom!”
“What?”
“Someone’s here. I’ll call you back, okay?”
“Who is it?”
Carmen said, “I’ll call you as soon as I can,” placed the phone on the floor and ran into the living room.
Wayne’s pickup stood in the drive. There was no sign of a cream-colored Plymouth.
Carmen stood by the window knowing Ferris would be back, wanting to be ready but thinking about the keys for the pickup too, wanting to get out of here.
She had looked everywhere in the house Wayne might have dropped or left a ring holding a half dozen keys and a St. Christopher medal. She had looked in the pockets of his dirty coveralls, the pants and shirt he’d worn yesterday, on top the refrigerator, where his new work gloves were lying and he’d forgotten them, even inside the refrigerator and behind it. She pictured him entering the house last night, turning the light off in the kitchen, he might’ve gotten a beer but she didn’t think so, coming in the bedroom then. She tried it again, pictured him entering the house and stopped, almost certain where the keys were.
She found them, the house key still in the side door, the rest of the keys hanging from the ring, the door open a few inches, like that since Wayne had run out of the house this morning.
Carmen changed her clothes, from jeans to a pair of good beige slacks. She stood in the bedroom in her cotton bra trying to decide what to wear on top, a blouse, a turtleneck, wanting to hurry, get dressed and get out of here. But couldn’t make up her mind and ran into the living room in the bra and slacks and felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.
Ferris’s Plymouth was coming up Hillglade Drive.
She watched it slow down, coasting, and creep past the house, its windshield wipers sweeping back and forth, side windows streaked with rain, a figure inside that had to be Ferris. The car disappeared up the road, past a stand of trees.
Carmen moved closer to the window and stood watching for several minutes, wondering why Ferris hadn’t stopped. The only reason she could think of, he saw the pickup in the drive and thought Wayne was home.
It could be safer to stay than leave. She turned a chair to face the window and sat down. About ten minutes later the phone rang. Carmen remained in the chair.
By noon it had stopped raining.
At twelve-thirty the cream-colored Plymouth came up Hillglade Drive again and crept past the house. The car’s side window was down and this time she saw Ferris behind the wheel, his face, sunglasses on, looking at the house.
Fifteen minutes later the phone rang. Carmen didn’t answer it.
Ferris drove by again at one-thirty. Carmen was sure he was going to stop this time. The car seemed to pause at the driveway before continuing up the road. She waited for the phone to ring, but no sound came from the kitchen.
At two o’clock she changed back to her jeans, took off her bra, put on a tank top and a clean white Oxford-cloth shirt and returned to the window to watch and think some more, though she was almost certain now what she was going to do, tired of watching, tired of being here.
As dumb as Ferris was he could find out Wayne was off somewhere on a towboat. Or even if he thought Wayne was home he could ring the bell to find out, or he could walk in—why would he be afraid of Wayne? And if she saw him coming up Hillglade again, called the Cape Girardeau Police and told them he was driving past the house . . . Oh, is that right? They could find him in the house, so what? It was his. They would have to catch him ripping her clothes off . . .
Carmen went into the kitchen, stood at the breakfast table, dialed a number and waited.
“Who is this?”
“Mom? I’m coming home.”
“Well, it’s about time. Are you watching Phil Donahue?”
“No, I’m not.” Carmen brought the phone away from the table to stare through the living room at the front window, bright sunlight outside.
“He’s interviewing couples who live together and engaged couples who say they aren’t going to, you know, have relations till they get married. They show one of the girls real close and the word virgin comes on the screen telling that’s what she is, a virgin, like she’s some kind of rare bird. Can you imagine? It’s like they’re saying, ‘Look at this virgin, everybody.’ You didn’t see it?”
“Mom, I’m leaving as soon as I hear from Wayne.”
18
* * *
THE CAPTAIN OF the Robert R. Nally said to Wayne up in the pilothouse, “Put your hand on your chest halfway between your neck and your belly button. Now look over there at your elbow. That’s the kind of bend I’m coming to at Gray’s Point and have to get around without stubbing my tow on a sandbar. If I do, this whole shebang will come apart on me and I won’t look too good, will I?”
In the rain and mist, fog shutting them do
wn as they approached the Thebes railroad bridge and the captain told Wayne Thebes was where the rivermen sued the railroad for building these obstructions, Abe Lincoln represented the railroad and the scudders won. Wayne said, well, you have to have bridges, don’t you? “Nineteen and forty-eight,” the captain said, “I was a deckhand on the Natchez when she hit the Greenville bridge and went down in ninety feet of water, twelve drowned. Abe Lincoln might’ve freed the slaves, but he didn’t help rivermen none.” The captain in his suit and tie stood there working his chrome-plated controls staring straight ahead, his three football fields of barges hidden in the mist. He had radar and two deckhands on the front of the tow with Handie-Talkies, but still couldn’t run a bridge in fog, so an eight-hour trip was going to take about ten.
Wayne drank coffee with the captain in the pilothouse, with the chief engineer down in the racket of diesel engines, with the mate and the two off-duty deckhands at the long table in the lounge. Coffee with noon dinner and pie for dessert, the woman cook asking Wayne if he wanted her to a-la-mode that for him. The table reminded him at first of a steel-company trailer at noon hour, except here they talked about Cardinals and Cubs instead of Tigers and Jays and the deckhands were young guys, they were loud and laughed at stupid remarks.
The mate, on the river twenty years, sat hunched over his coffee, holding it on the table with two hands. When he stood up he was still hunched over, one of those skinny guys with high bony shoulders and slicked-back dark hair Wayne saw in cheap downtown bars after he came off the steel. The mate said the work suited him, he liked the thirty days on and thirty off. He was leaving the boat at Cairo to go visit his girlfriend in Marysville, she was doing a stay at the Ohio Women’s Reformatory. Wayne asked him if he wanted to be a pilot. The mate said he knew the river and the Rules of the Road backward, but the chickenshit government people wouldn’t let him have a license on account of he only had one eye, this one here was glass. Once of the deckhands said the mate had as much chance of getting up to the pilothouse as growing hair on his tongue. The other deckhand thought that was pretty funny and the mate got up and walked out of the lounge. The deckhands told Wayne the mate had been fired and was being put ashore for getting caught drinking on the boat. It wasn’t allowed, unless you went overboard and if you came up they might give you a shot.
They talked about barge lines they’d worked for, about captains and pilots that were pricks, about guys falling overboard, some popping up astern, some not and getting carried downstream to be found on a sandbar or lying cold on the riprap, the crushed rocks you saw along a revetment. It was slippery out on the barges from all the grease and shit, or you could trip on a ratchet, and if you went over at night you better have a flashlight on you. It sounded like they wanted him to understand this was no place for sissies. Wayne could have recited the book to them on falling from all kinds of places, buildings, bridges, factories, but didn’t; or tell them his trade or where he was from and the deckhands didn’t ask.
He began to think you had to start young in this river business. As in any other.
He was alert the first few hours of the trip, then felt it becoming tiresome. Even if you were working there wasn’t that much to do when the boat was under way, and with all those barges it only went about eight or ten miles an hour. They’d be moving south making headway, flank around a bend and be going in the opposite direction for the next hour or so. There was nothing to see but mist and rain most of the trip and you had to wear a life preserver when you went on deck. When he tried to forget it on purpose, the mate caught him, asked Wayne if he thought he had special privileges. Once in a while that morning there’d be a glimpse of shore or an island. There’s Counterfeit Rock. There’s Burnham. Over there’s Commerce, Missouri. The sky cleared by the time they got to Dogtooth Bend, a name to store away and tell Carmen. After that the points of interest were Greenleaf Bend, the I-57 highway bridge, Eliza’s Point on the Illinois side, some more bridges and finally Cairo.
To the mate: “Is it a nice town?”
“What, Cairo? No, it ain’t.”
“I’m thinking of getting off with you.”
“Do what you want,” the mate said.
With the end of the trip in sight Wayne returned to the pilothouse. He could actually see a line where the two rivers met, the muddy Mississippi running past hard, the beautiful Ohio settling in a pool to keep out of its way. Rounding Cairo Point the captain said, “Now I’m gonna stick my head over into the Ohio, leave my stern in the Mississippi and just kinda flip her around, like the catch on an outhouse door.”
“It’s been a trip,” Wayne said, “but if you don’t mind, I’m getting off here.”
“We have better days than this, when you can see the countryside. We have worse ones too.”
Wayne said, “There’s all that engine noise and vibration,” and was surprised he thought that; ironworking was way noisier. “Or else I’m too old to learn a new trade.”
“Ride down to New Orleans with me,” the captain said. “That town will make you feel young again.”
By the time they tied up at Waterfront Services, Wayne was out of his coveralls and had on his ironworker’s jacket. He picked up his overnight bag and followed the mate carrying his suitcase across barges to get ashore. They walked past the floodwall and through a decaying area where bums hung out, sat in discarded chairs and car seats around a fire that became a cloud of smudge rising in the damp air. Wayne said it looked like more rain was coming. The mate didn’t say or care. They walked a long block to the Skipper Lounge—Beer, Wine, Liquors & Pizza—that was maybe one notch above a skid-row bar. No cars in front, full of guys off boats.
They ordered bourbon and shells of beer, the mate looking around at the rivermen in here, nodding to some, Wayne looking at his watch. Ten to five. He’d have one and call his honey, tell her the good news, that he’d be home in the morning if not before. They tossed down the shots and ordered another one each.
“I have to see about a ride back,” Wayne said. “I was told it can be arranged. Here or down at Waterfront Services.”
The mate stood hunched, leaning on the bar. He looked past his shoulder at Wayne. “You had enough, huh?”
Wayne shrugged, sipped his beer.
“I could’ve told you.”
Wayne watched him straighten to drink his shot.
“You could’ve told me what?”
“You weren’t ever gonna cut it.”
The mate looked at the bartender for another shot, pointing a finger at his glass. Wayne looked at his watch. It was still ten to five.
“How’d you know that?”
“What?”
“You don’t think I can cut it.”
“You remind me of these college boys come along in the summer, looking for a trip on the river. They last about two days. But that’s longer’n you did—up there Mr. Big Shot in the pilothouse.” The mate tossed off his bourbon and got back down on the bar before he said to Wayne, peeking past his shoulder at him, “What I wondered was if the captain let you suck him off.”
Wayne’s overnight bag was sitting on the bar. He pushed it aside and leaned on his arms to get down closer. “You don’t know who I am, anything about me. Why would you say something like that?”
“Well, you’re a queer, aren’t you? Isn’t that what queers do?”
Wayne studied the man’s one-eyed face, his dumb mean expression, one of those nasty drunks Wayne could never understand, why booze turned them bitter, made them want to fight or tear up a place or drive their car into a tree. It had an opposite effect on Wayne, it made him feel warm and witty, able to abide even assholes and mime the tune “My Girl” the way the Temptations did it, with all the moves. But he wasn’t drunk now or anywhere near to feeling good. He said to the mate, “Which one’d you tell me was your glass eye?”
It caused the mate to stare, hesitate, but only a moment. “You don’t know shit, do you? Can’t tell a towboat from a coal hopper, a real eye from one tha
t ain’t.”
“The clear one,” Wayne said, “that isn’t all bloodshot. You lose it in a bar?”
“Boy hit me with a bottle.”
“I can believe it, the kind of mouth you have. I’m surprised you aren’t dead by now.”
“We’re getting to it,” the mate said, “aren’t we?”
Wayne said, “No, we’re there.” He straightened and put his hand on the man’s bony shoulder. “And I’ll tell you where we’re at. You’re gonna quit mouthing off, okay? You don’t, I’ll pound that glass eye into you so hard you’ll be using it to peek out your asshole.” Wayne got a grip on the man’s coat, pulled him straight up and held him there one-handed looking into his good eye. “Is that what you want? Nod or shake your head, but be careful you don’t speak.”
The poor dumb one-eyed drunk seemed to shake his head. Or was that a nod? It didn’t matter—what was the question? The guy’s breath was so bad Wayne had to put him down. He saw the bartender coming over with a stern look.
“I’m okay, but give him one. Where’s your phone?”
The bartender was a big bald-headed guy in a plaid wool shirt. He hooked his thumb toward the back of the room.
Moving along the bar Wayne looked at his watch. Not yet five. He had hoped to call earlier and was anxious now, getting a quarter out of his pocket as he reached the phone booth, stepped inside and closed the door. He’d reverse the charge, no problem, Carmen would be home. He raised the quarter to drop it in the slot and an awful feeling came over him. It caused him to say out loud in the quiet confinement of the booth, “SHIT!”
He didn’t know the goddamn number.
It was in his mind last night when he was talking to Carmen, telling her how the operator wouldn’t help him—Write it down before you go to bed. He could remember telling himself that. And forgot to do it.