The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story

  Father Frank was at the front of the mob. He and Brother Raymond were counting through a stack of checks and bills.

  “What are you doing, Frank?” Jack said. “Nobody can afford this. I can just sit back there. If somebody could get me ESPN—”

  Frank passed the money across the desk to Randy, who began counting it reluctantly.

  “We’ve got to get you out, boyo,” he said. “It’s your father.”

  Jack felt his stomach lurch, and he leaned into the desktop. “What happened?” he asked, and he started to come around the counter.

  “You’re still in jail, Jack,” Randy said, not taking his attention away from his counting. “Until I say you’re not.”

  Jack stopped, leaned across the counter again. “Frank. Brother Raymond. What’s happening?”

  “Mary found Tom unconscious at the house,” Frank said. “High fever. Difficulty breathing.”

  “They took him by ambulance to Kerrville,” Raymond said. “They’ll know something by the time we get there.”

  “Oh my God,” Jack said. He looked at Randy, making tidy little stacks of fives, tens, twenties. “Can you hurry up?”

  “Officially,” Randy said, now tallying the checks, “we’re not allowed to take personal checks. And I’m not supposed to release you before you go in front of a judge.”

  That brought an outcry from the assembled, although Randy did not look up from his counting.

  “But unofficially,” he said, “I do not want you here. Any of you.” He laid down the last check with a flourish. “That’s it. Five thousand dollars bail.” He put the money and checks into an envelope, wrote Jack’s name and the amount on the outside, and put it into a metal box that resembled the tackle box Jack had owned as a kid.

  “Are you kidding me?” Jack asked. “Five thousand dollars?” He didn’t know whether to be offended or to laugh. “Am I a flight risk?”

  “Not my idea, Jack,” Randy said, locking the box with a padlock and putting it into a desk drawer. “I think you were supposed to sit in jail for a long time. But like I said, I’d just as soon not have you around.” He closed the drawer and locked it with a key.

  Randy slid a manila envelope down the desktop to him. His personal effects. Wallet, change, cell phone, keys. Jack saw that he had seven messages on his phone, most from Mary’s cell.

  “Your hearing is scheduled for Thursday afternoon at three,” Randy said. “Municipal court. I’d bring an attorney.”

  Jack barely heard him. “Where’s my dad?” he asked. He had somehow forgotten, but wherever it was, he needed to get there in a hurry.

  “Kerrville,” Raymond said.

  “I’ll drive you,” Father Frank said. “I don’t mind speeding. In fact—”

  “I’ll come with you,” Raymond said, and he and Frank nodded at each other. “If we get pulled over, two pastors—”

  “Three,” Frank said gently. He took Jack by the arm, led him through the throng, down the hall, and out to Frank’s old Chrysler. Jack got in the passenger side. Brother Raymond climbed in back, moved Frank’s box of cassette tapes. Irish reels. Seventies rock.

  “What is all of this?” Raymond asked, as though he were being asked to sit next to a pig carcass.

  “Pure gold,” Frank said, throwing the car into reverse. And off they went.

  They made the drive in short time, and didn’t encounter a single officer of the law. “What’re the odds?” Frank asked. He seemed a little disappointed.

  Tom was at Peterson Medical Center, across the Guadalupe River on the south side of town. Mary had told Jack that they were in Emergency.

  Frank pulled into the clergy space in the parking lot with practiced ease. He and Raymond had done more than their share of hospital visits. They hurried into the ER reception area. “Tom Chisholm?” Jack asked the nurse on duty.

  “Relation?” she asked, looking up at him.

  “He’s my father,” Jack said.

  “And to these gentlemen?” she asked, making a note in the computer.

  “Clergy,” Brother Raymond said.

  The nurse nodded, impressed, and buzzed them back. “Number eight, straight back past the nurse’s station.”

  They walked back. The nurse’s station was on the right; a paramedic crew was wheeling somebody into a bay on the left, his shirt bloody, his head bandaged. Father Frank stopped and made the sign of the cross before joining them in bay eight.

  Tom was hooked up to a ventilator. Jack felt tears come to his eyes, and then Mary was in his arms, and she was weeping. “Thank God,” she said. “Thank God you’re here.”

  A doctor was bent over Tom and entering data into his tablet PC. He turned and saw the new visitors. “Jack, is it?” he asked. He was about Jack’s age, short graying hair, dressed in pale green scrubs with a white jacket thrown over them. “I’m Dr. Powell. Glad you’re here. Really glad. You’re medical power of attorney.”

  “What?” Jack said.

  Mary nodded. “Always have been, it turns out.”

  “Well,” Jack said. “That’s just—dumb. I didn’t even come back here until—”

  “We lost him on the way over here,” the doctor said. “And you were unavailable. So the paramedics intubated him. Maybe you wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “Of course I want that,” Jack said, trying not to shout. “Why wouldn’t I—”

  “It’s just that he’s got a DNR on file,” Dr. Powell said. “Do Not Resuscitate. We found it when he checked in. But this isn’t the cancer.” He showed Jack an X-ray of lungs, cloudy white. “The cancer has weakened him, sure, and that might have made this infection opportunistic. It’s viral pneumonia.”

  Frank and Brother Raymond had already gone over to the bed. Frank had taken Tom’s hand, the one without the IV and sensors. Raymond had taken out his pocket Bible and put one hand on Tom’s sweaty head.

  “Is he—” Jack looked back at the doctor. “Is he going to be okay?”

  “He could be,” the doctor said.

  “My daughter—his granddaughter—is coming on Friday,” Jack said. “This is her first visit.” Mary nodded, took his arm.

  “Even if he gets better,” the doctor said, choosing his words carefully, “I think he’s probably still going to be hospitalized.” He shook his head. “His age, his condition—it means every illness is much more serious.” He took a step closer, put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and spoke gently. “He shouldn’t even be here.”

  “In the hospital?” Jack asked, baffled.

  “On the planet,” the doctor said.

  “Well,” Jack said, nodding slowly. “I guess he had a few things he was living for.”

  “I hope he still does,” Dr. Powell said. “I’ve got a bed in ICU where we can monitor him around the clock.” He checked his watch, made a notation, looked up at them. “We’ll give him the very best care we can. He’s going to need a lot of rest. But I’ll okay family visitors in ICU for the first night.” He made one final notation, closed the cover of his tablet.

  “Thank you, Dr. Powell,” Jack said. They shook hands, Mary thanked him, and the doctor went out into the hall, where Jack heard him asking the paramedics, “Okay, what do we have?”

  The slow and steady beep beep beep coming from the monitor could have been heart rate or something else—Jack had not done enough time in hospitals to know—but it was a comfort. It meant Tom was alive, was going to keep on living at least for a while.

  “I was worried,” Mary said. “About him. About you.”

  Jack looked over at the bed, at the two clergymen praying. “I had good friends,” he said. “Have,” he corrected, a note of wonder in his voice.

  “How was jail?” she asked, digging an elbow into his side.

  “Not as great as they make it out to be,” he said. “I’m glad you were here. I’m glad you’ve always been here.”

  She nodded. “Me too.” She sighed. “I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  To
m was moved up to ICU an hour and a half later, and Frank and Raymond took the opportunity to depart, promising they’d be back. Mary and Jack took turns sitting by Tom’s bed during the night. Dennis sat with whoever was in the ICU waiting area—he had arrived shortly after Jack and couldn’t convince the nurse he was of sufficient relation to be allowed back. They had little room left for anyone else as it was.

  “I told them Tom was my future father-in-law,” Dennis said around three a.m., after he and Jack had drunk their third Dr Peppers from the vending machine downstairs. “Does that mean I’m, you know, going to hell or whatever?”

  “Is Tom your future father-in-law?” Jack asked.

  “I hope so,” Dennis said. “I’ve asked her, you know. To marry me.”

  Jack shook his head. “She never told me. What did she say?”

  Dennis shrugged his wide shoulders. “She told me that she loved me,” he said. “And she said she was tabling that motion for the current fiscal year.”

  “Ah yes,” Jack said. “That MBA is doing everyone a world of good.”

  Mary sent Jack home around five to get an hour or two of sleep and to open—or close—the store.

  On the drive back to Mayfield, Jack listened to his messages—the ones from Mary, in ascending panic, one from Father Frank telling him they were on their way—and then realizing he probably wouldn’t get the message, “you being in jail and all”—and one from Danny Pierce.

  “Jack,” he said. “Why haven’t we heard an answer from you? Martin told me he called you. We want you to come back. I want you to come back. I don’t know what you’re playing at down there, but we’re in a world of hurt and all people can talk about is bringing you home.” There was a long silence, and Jack prepared to delete the message, and then Danny said, “I can’t do this job, Jack. I thought maybe I could. I had a good teacher. But I can’t. Please come home.”

  Jack put the phone on the dashboard, took a deep breath, put his hands at ten and two. There were a lot of curves coming his way.

  His sleep when he got home was anything but restful. In his dream, someone was shooting at him. Bang bang bang. He was ducking behind a bus or some kind of big machine, and zombies roamed about. He was supposed to save a woman or maybe she was going to save him. It was all unclear up to the point when he awoke and realized that someone was banging on the door.

  “¡Déjame en paz!” Jack shouted, before realizing that he was not in Isla Mujeres, and it was probably fruitless to ask someone in Mayfield to leave him alone, in Spanish no less.

  He padded barefoot downstairs, still in his clothes from the work site, jail, and hospital, and he opened the door.

  A uniformed sheriff’s deputy stood on the front porch. It was one of Shayla Pierce’s ex-husbands. Buddy. No. That was the name of the bar. Barry?

  “Jack Chisholm?” he asked.

  “You know it is,” Jack said. “You were three years behind me. What is it now? The jail want me back already?”

  Buddy/Barry looked at Jack as though he were speaking—well—Spanish. Then he handed Jack an envelope.

  “You are hereby served,” he said. “Have a nice day.”

  Jack opened the envelope. Being served is never a nice thing. He expected—what? A summons to a hearing? A lawsuit from the Gobels because they didn’t like their garage?

  What he found was this:

  Superior Court of Washington

  County of King

  In re the Marriage of:

  Tracy Rainhold Chisholm, Petitioner,

  And Jack Joseph Chisholm, Respondent.

  No. 924A2013

  Petition for Dissolution of Marriage

  Jack raised a hand to his face and slumped against the door frame. He couldn’t breathe. His vision got fuzzy, but somehow he read on.

  Tracy was suing him for divorce. They were the parents of one dependent child, Alison Martha Chisholm, age eight. And the reason for the petition: “This marriage is irretrievably broken.”

  He staggered back inside, picked up his phone off the hallway table, called Tracy.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Tracy,” he said. “Please. Please.”

  But still the words read in undeniable black and white.

  Irretrievably broken.

  It was almost noon—he had slept much longer than he planned.

  And it was still too early.

  Buddy’s wouldn’t open until four.

  But the Buy-n-Buy was selling beer at this hour.

  He put shoes on. Didn’t bother to tie them. Got in the car. Bought a twelve-pack of Miller Lite on sale, which made him feel a certain sense of thriftiness. Then he drove to the creek, took five beers down to the water, sank four in a plastic sack he tied to a cypress root, drank the other without stopping to breathe.

  On the third beer his phone rang, and he pulled it from his pocket. “Yes,” he said. “Tracy?”

  “Jack,” Mary said. “Where are you? Why haven’t you been to the store? Someone just called me—”

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Nothing matters anymore.”

  Mary didn’t speak for a long time. He checked to see if they were still connected, then put it back to his ear.

  “Jack,” she said at last. “Where are you? What’s wrong?”

  He finished the third beer, dropped the empty can to the ground. “I was wrong, sis. I was wrong about everything. But I can get her back. I know I can.”

  “Jack,” she said. “Dad’s awake. He’s asking for you.”

  “Tell him I’m going away,” Jack said. “I’m going back to my old job. I’m going to get her back. I’m going to fix everything.”

  He hung up and opened the fourth beer. Then the fifth. He needed to sink a few more, but he wasn’t ready to stand up. He would make this one last a few minutes.

  The car didn’t surprise him. “Do you have a homing device on me, Batman?” he asked Kathy Branstetter.

  “How’s your father?”

  “Peachy,” Jack said, taking a long drink of the fifth beer. “Couldn’t be better.”

  She drew near, assessed the wreckage, sat down next to him. “Wow,” she said. “I thought Father Frank was just your pastoral model.”

  “He is a reliable guide to all of life,” Jack said. “Sometimes a man just wants to drink.”

  “I can see that,” she said. “Can I ask—”

  “Divorce papers,” Jack said. “I just got served. By Barry. Buddy. One of those guys.”

  Her eyes got big, and then she dropped her chin to her chest. “Wow,” she said. “I’m—well, I guess I’m sorry?”

  “That was a question mark.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She stared at him. “Clearly you’re really upset.”

  “Upset?” Jack said. “I was upset when you sent off my picture to the national media. I was upset when James told CNN that I was a fake and a phony. This is beyond upset. This is—overset. Aboveset.” He paused, took another drink, looked at her. “Those are not even words, are they?”

  She shook her head, although truth to tell, she looked overset. “Can I have a beer, Jack?”

  “In the car,” he said. “Bring an armload.”

  “I think I will,” she said.

  She clomped back with four more beers—Jack sank two, opened two, handed her one of them.

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re gonna do,” Jack said. “I keep asking. And you keep not telling me.”

  “What are you going to do?” she said.

  “I asked you first.” He checked his watch. “Hey. Buddy’s is open.”

  “I’m still trying to decide,” she said. “And your decision would help me make my decision.”

  “Same here,” Jack said. “Same here. Hey, beer number six. I’m going. Is the answer to your question.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Yuh-huh,” he said. “I’m going to get my old job back and fix everything and she will come back to me.”

  “And if wis
hes were horses, beggars would ride,” she said.

  He looked at her. “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was—rude.” She took a long swig of her beer.

  “That’s right,” he said. “This beggar will ride.” He nodded. “I will not have my horses sitting around doing nothing.”

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “It’s just that—” She shook her head. “Forget it.”

  “No,” he said. “No, no, no forgetting. Forget what?”

  She set her beer down, her face had gone very red. “I just don’t know,” she said, “if she knows you anymore.” She became even quieter. “If she even knows how wonderful you are.”

  “Of course she—” Jack stopped. He looked closely at Kathy, who was still blushing, who was still staring stolidly at the ground. “Why do you always want to know if I’m going or staying?”

  She was blushing more fiercely than ever, but she looked at him now—and shook her head.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you really are an idiot.”

  “An idiot!” he said. “An idiot? Why am I—”

  Then he saw into those adoring eyes, and realized that he was indeed an idiot for not seeing it all along.

  “Oh,” he said. “Oh. I—Kathy, I can’t—”

  “I only wanted to know if you were staying or leaving,” Kathy said, scrambling to her feet. “You’re leaving? Okay. Great. That makes things easier. I guess I’ll go too. Who wants to stay in this two-bit town? Not me. That’s for sure.” She said this last part as she fast-walked back toward her car, spilling some of her beer in her wake.

  “Kathy,” he called. “I—I didn’t know. I—”

  She was in the car. She was backing up. She was gone.

  “Wow,” he said. “One walks out the door. Another tries to walk in.”

  He took another drink.

  And another.

  He went on drinking once he got to Buddy’s. Finally, that evening, Shayla refused to serve him any more. “Go home, Jack,” she said. “Get some rest. Eat something, please.” She looked around the room at the media filing in. “You’re going to make their jobs way too easy.”