Cherry herself does not believe there is any such thing as coincidence. Cherry thinks there is a master plan for the universe, and what is meant to happen will. She thinks it’s all set in the stars. For the first time, Harold thinks maybe she’s right. He sees part of a pattern in the works, but dimly, as if he is looking at a constellation hidden by clouds. Mainly, he sees her face.
Harold gets up from the sofa and goes into the kitchen, suddenly aware that he isn’t supposed to be here. He could be arrested, probably! He looks back at the living room but there’s not a trace of him left, not even an imprint on the soft white cushions of the sofa. Absentmindedly, Harold opens and shuts the refrigerator door. There’s no beer, he notices. He can’t have a Coke. On the kitchen calendar, he reads:
Harold Jr to dentist, 3:30 p.m. Tues
Change furnace filter 2/18/88 (James)
So James is changing the furnace filters now, James is the man of the house. Why not? It’s good for him. He’s been given too much, kids these days grow up so fast, no responsibilities, they get on drugs, you read about it all the time. But deep down inside, Harold knows that James is not on drugs and he feels something awful, feels the way he felt growing up, that sick little flutter in his stomach that took years to go away.
Harold’s dad died of walking pneumonia when he was only three, so his mother raised him alone. She called him her “little man.” This made Harold feel proud but also wild, like a boy growing up in a cage. Does James feel this way now? Harold suddenly decides to get James a car for his birthday, and take him hunting.
Hunting is something Harold never did as a boy, but it means a lot to him now. In fact Harold never owned a gun until he was thirty-one, when he bought a shotgun in order to accept the invitation of his regional manager, “Little Jimmy” Fletcher, to go quail hunting in Georgia. He had a great time. Now he’s invited back every year, and Little Jimmy is in charge of the company’s whole eastern division. Harold has a great future with Food Lion too. He owns three stores, one in downtown Greenwood, one out at the mall, and one over in Indianola. He owned two of them when his mother died, and he’s pleased to think that she died proud—proud of the good little boy he’d always been, and the good man he’d become.
Of course she’d wanted him to make a preacher, but Harold never got the call, and she gave that up finally when he was twenty. Harold was not going to pretend to get the call if he never got it, and he held strong to this principle. He wanted to see a burning bush, but if this was not vouch-safed to him, he wasn’t going to lie about it. He would just major in math instead, which he was good at anyway. Majoring in math at Mercer College, the small Baptist school his mother had chosen for him, Harold came upon Joan Berry, a home ec major from his own hometown who set out single-mindedly to marry him, which wasn’t hard. After graduation, Harold got a job as management trainee in the Food Lion store where he had started as a bagboy at fourteen. Joan produced their three children, spaced three years apart, and got her tubes tied. Harold got one promotion, then another. Joan and Harold prospered. They built this house.
Harold looks around and now this house, his house, strikes him as creepy, a wax museum. He lets himself out the back door and walks quickly, almost runs, to his car. It’s real cold out, a gray day in February, but Harold’s sweating. He starts his car and roars off toward the hospital, driving—as Cherry would say—like a bat out of hell.
* * *
They’re letting Harold stay with her longer now. He knows it, they know it, but nobody says a word. Lois Hickey just looks the other way when the announcement “Visiting hours are over” crackles across the PA. Is this a good sign or a bad sign? Harold can’t tell. He feels slow and confused, like a man underwater. “I think she looks better, don’t you?” he said last night to Cherry’s son, Stan, the TV weatherman, who had driven down from Memphis for the day. Eyes slick and bright with tears, Stan went over to Harold and hugged him tight. This scared Harold to death, he has practically never touched his own sons, and he doesn’t even know Stan, who’s been grown and gone for years. Harold is not used to hugging anybody, especially men. Harold breathed in Stan’s strong go-get-’em cologne, he buried his face in Stan’s long curly hair. He thinks it is possible that Stan has a permanent. They’ll do anything up in Memphis. Then Stan stepped back and put one hand on each of Harold’s shoulders, holding him out at arm’s length. Stan has his mother’s wide, mobile mouth. The bright white light of Intensive Care glinted off the gold chain and the crystal that he wore around his neck. “I’m afraid we’re going to lose her, Pop,” he said.
But Harold doesn’t think so. Today he thinks Cherry looks the best she’s looked in weeks, with a bright spot of color in each cheek to match her flaming hair. She’s moving around a lot too, she keeps kicking the sheet off.
“She’s getting back some of that old energy now,” he tells Cherry’s daughter, Tammy Lynn Palladino, when she comes by after school. Tammy Lynn and Harold’s son James are both members of the senior class, but they aren’t friends. Tammy Lynn says James is a “stuck-up jock,” a “preppie,” and a “country-clubber.” Harold can’t say a word to defend his own son against these charges, he doesn’t even know James anymore. It might be true, anyway. Tammy Lynn is real smart, a teenage egghead. She’s got a full scholarship to Millsaps College for next year. She applied for it all by herself. As Cherry used to say, Tammy Lynn came into this world with a full deck of cards and an ace or two up her sleeve. Also she looks out for Number One.
In this regard Tammy Lynn is as different from her mama as night from day, because Cherry would give you the shirt off her back and frequently has. That’s gotten her into lots of trouble. With Ed Palladino, for instance, her second husband and Tammy Lynn’s dad. Just about everybody in this town got took by Ed Palladino, who came in here wearing a seersucker suit and talking big about putting in an outlet mall across the river. A lot of people got burned on that outlet mall deal. But Ed Palladino had a way about him that made you want to cast your lot with his, it is true. You wanted to give Ed Palladino your savings, your timesharing condo, your cousin, your ticket to the Super Bowl. Cherry gave it all.
She married him and turned over what little inheritance she had from her daddy’s death—and that’s the only time in her life she ever had any money, mind you—and then she just shrugged and smiled her big crooked smile when he left town under cover of night. “C’est la vie,” Cherry said. She donated the rest of his clothes to the Salvation Army. “Que será, será,” Cherry said, quoting a song that was popular when she was in junior high.
Tammy Lynn sits by her mama’s bed and holds Cherry’s thin dry hand. “I brought you a Chick-Fil-A,” she says to Harold. “It’s over there in that bag.” She points to the shelf by the door. Harold nods. Tammy Lynn works at Chick-Fil-A. Cherry’s eyes are wide and blue and full of meaning as she stares at her daughter. Her mouth moves, both Harold and Tammy Lynn lean forward, but then her mouth falls slack and her eyelids flutter shut. Tammy sits back.
“I think she looks some better today, don’t you?” Harold asks.
“No,” Tammy Lynn says. She has a flat little redneck voice. She sounds just the way she did last summer when she told Cherry that what she saw in the field was a cotton picker working at night, and not a UFO after all. “I wish I did but I don’t, Harold. I’m going to go on home now and heat up some Beanee Weenee for Mamaw. You come on as soon as you can.”
“Well,” Harold says. He feels like things have gotten all turned around here some way, he feels like he’s the kid and Tammy Lynn has turned into a freaky little grown-up. He says, “I’ll be along directly.”
But they both know he won’t leave until Lois Hickey throws him out. And speaking of Lois, as soon as Tammy Lynn takes off, here she comes again, checking something on the respirator, making a little clucking sound with her mouth, then whirling to leave. When Lois walks, her panty girdle goes swish, swish, swish at the top of h
er legs. She comes right back with the young black man named Rodney Broadbent, Respiratory Therapist. It says so on his badge. Rodney wheels a complicated-looking cart ahead of himself. He’s all built up, like a weightlifter.
“How you doing tonight, Mr. Stipe?” Rodney says.
“I think she’s some better,” Harold says.
Lois Hickey and Rodney look at him.
“Well, lessee here,” Rodney says. He unhooks the respirator tube at Cherry’s throat, sticks the tube from his own machine down the opening, and switches on the machine. It makes a whirring sound. It looks like an electric ice cream mixer. Rodney Broadbent looks at Lois Hickey in a significant way as she turns to leave the room.
They don’t have to tell him, Harold knows. Cherry is worse, not better. Harold gets the Chick-Fil-A, unwraps it, eats it, and then goes over to stand by the window. It’s already getting dark. The big mercury arc light glows in the hospital parking lot. A little wind blows some trash around on the concrete. He has had Cherry for three years, that’s all. One trip to Disney World, two vacations at Gulf Shores Alabama, hundreds of nights in the old metal bed out at the farm with Cherry sleeping naked beside him, her arm thrown over his stomach. They had a million laughs.
“Alrightee,” Rodney Broadbent nearly sings, unhooking his machine. Harold turns to look at him. Rodney Broadbent certainly looks more like a middle linebacker than a respiratory therapist. But Harold likes him.
“Well, Rodney?” Harold says.
Rodney starts shadow-boxing in the middle of the room. “Tough times,” he says finally. “These is tough times, Mr. Stipe.” Harold stares at him. Rodney is light on his feet as can be.
Harold sits down in the chair by the respirator. “What do you mean?” he asks.
“I mean she is drowning, Mr. Stipe,” Rodney says. He throws a punch which lands real close to Harold’s left ear. “What I’m doing here, see, is suctioning. I’m pulling all the fluid up out of her lungs. But now looka here, Mr. Stipe, they is just too damn much of it. See this little doohickey here I’m measuring it with? This here is the danger zone, man. Now Mrs. Stipe, she has been in the danger zone for some time. They is just too much damn fluid in there. What she got, anyway? Cancer and pneumonia both, am I right? What can I tell you, man? She is drowning.” Rodney gives Harold a short affectionate punch in the ribs, then wheels his cart away. From the door, apparently struck by some misgivings, he says, “Well, man, if it was me, I’d want to know what the story is, you follow me, man? If it was me, what I’m saying.” Harold can’t see Rodney anymore, only hear his voice from the open door.
“Thank you, Rodney,” Harold says. He sits in the chair. In a way he has known this already, for quite some time. In a way, Rodney’s news is no news, to Harold. He just hopes he will be man enough to bear it, to do what will have to be done. Harold has always been scared that he is not man enough for Cherry Oxendine, anyway. This is his worst secret fear. He looks around the little Intensive Care room, searching for a sign, some sign, anything, that he will be man enough. Nothing happens. Cherry lies strapped to the bed, flanked by so many machines that it looks like she’s in the cockpit of a jet. Her eyes are closed, eyelids fluttering, red spots on her freckled cheeks. Her chest rises and falls as the respirator pushes air in and out through the tube in her neck. He doesn’t see how she can sleep in the bright white light of Intensive Care, where it is always noon. And does she dream? Cherry used to tell him her dreams, which were wild, long Technicolor dreams, like movies. Cherry played different parts in them. If you dream in color, it means you’re intelligent, Cherry said. She used to tease him all the time. She thought Harold’s own dreams were a stitch, dreams more boring than his life, dreams in which he’d drive to Jackson, say, or be washing his car.
“Harold?” It’s Ray Muncey, manager of the Food Lion at the mall.
“Why, what are you doing over here, Ray?” Harold asks, and then in a flash he knows, Lois Hickey must have called him, to make Harold go on home.
“I was just driving by and I thought, Hey, maybe Harold and me might run by the Holiday Inn, get a bite to eat.” Ray shifts from foot to foot in the doorway. He doesn’t come inside, he’s not supposed to, nobody but immediate family is allowed in Intensive Care, and Harold’s glad—Cherry would just die if people she barely knows, like Ray Muncey, got to see her looking so bad.
“No, Ray, you go on and eat,” Harold says. “I already ate. I’m leaving right now, anyway.”
“Well, how’s the missus doing?” Ray is a big man, afflicted with big, heavy manners.
“She’s drowning,” Harold says abruptly. Suddenly he remembers Cherry in a water ballet at the town pool, it must have been the summer of junior year, Fourth of July, Cherry and the other girls floating in a circle on their backs to form a giant flower—legs high, toes pointed. Harold doesn’t know it when Ray Muncey leaves. Out the window, the parking lot light glows like a big full moon. Lois Hickey comes in. “You’ve got to go home now, Harold,” she says. “I’ll call if there’s any change.” He remembers Cherry at Glass Lake, on the senior class picnic. Cherry’s getting real agitated now, she tosses her head back and forth, moves her arms. She’d pull out the tubes if she could. She kicks off the sheet. Her legs are still good, great legs in fact, the legs of a beautiful young woman.
* * *
Harold at seventeen was tall and skinny, brown hair in a soft flat crew cut, glasses with heavy black frames. His jeans were too short. He carried a pen-and-pencil set in a clear plastic case in his breast pocket. Harold and his best friend, Ben Hill, looked so much alike that people had trouble telling them apart. They did everything together. They built model rockets, they read every science fiction book they could get their hands on, they collected Lionel train parts and Marvel comics. They loved superheroes with special powers, enormous beings who leaped across rivers and oceans. Harold’s friendship with Ben Hill kept the awful loneliness of the only child at bay, and it also kept him from having to talk to girls. You couldn’t talk to those two, not seriously. They were giggling and bumping into each other all the time. They were immature.
So it was in Ben’s company that Harold experienced the most private, the most personal memory he has of Cherry Oxendine in high school. Oh, he also has those other memories you’d expect, the big public memories of Cherry being crowned Miss Greenwood High (for her talent; she surprised everybody by reciting “Abou Ben Adhem” in such a stirring way that there wasn’t a dry eye in the whole auditorium when she got through), or running out onto the field ahead of the team with the other cheerleaders, red curls flying, green and white skirt whirling out around her hips like a beach umbrella when she turned a cartwheel. Harold noticed her then, of course. He noticed her when she moved through the crowded halls of the high school with her walk that was almost a prance, she put a little something extra into it, all right. Harold noticed Cherry Oxendine then in the way that he noticed Sandra Dee on the cover of a magazine, or Annette Funicello on American Bandstand.
But such girls were not for the likes of Harold, and Harold knew it. Girls like Cherry always had boyfriends like Lamar Peebles, who was hers—a doctor’s son with a baby-blue convertible and plenty of money. They used to drive around town in his car, smoking cigarettes. Harold saw them, as he carried out grocery bags. He did not envy Lamar Peebles, or wish he had a girl like Cherry Oxendine. Only something about them made him stand where he was in the Food Lion lot, watching, until they had passed from sight.
So Harold’s close-up encounter with Cherry was unexpected. It took place at the senior class picnic, where Harold and Ben had been drinking beer all afternoon. No alcohol was allowed at the senior class picnic, but some of the more enterprising boys had brought out kegs the night before and hidden them in the woods. Anybody could go back there and pay some money and get some beer. The chaperones didn’t know, or appeared not to know. In any case, the chaperones all left at six o’clock, when the picn
ic was officially over. Some of the class members left then too. Then some of them came back with more beer, more blankets. It was a free lake. Nobody could make you go home. Normally, Harold and Ben would have been among the first to leave, but because they had had four beers apiece, and because this was the first time they had ever had any beer ever, at all, they were still down by the water, skipping rocks and waiting to sober up so that they would not wreck Harold’s mother’s green Gremlin on the way home. All the cool kids were on the other side of the lake, listening to transistor radios. The sun went down. Bullfrogs started up. A mist came out all around the sides of the lake. It was a cloudy, humid day anyway, not a great day for a picnic.
“If God is really God, how come He let Himself get crucified, is what I want to know,” Ben said. Ben’s daddy was a Holiness preacher, out in the county.
But Harold heard something. “Hush, Ben,” he said.
“If I was God I would go around and really kick some ass,” Ben said.
Harold heard it again. It was almost too dark to see.
“Damn.” It was a girl’s voice, followed by a splash.
All of a sudden, Harold felt sober. “Who’s there?” he asked. He stepped forward, right up to the water’s edge. Somebody was in the water. Harold was wearing his swim trunks under his jeans, but he had not gone in the water himself. He couldn’t stand to show himself in front of people. He thought he was too skinny.
“Well, do something.” It was the voice of Cherry Oxendine, almost wailing. She stumbled up the bank. Harold reached out and grabbed her arm. Close up, she was a mess, wet and muddy, with her hair all over her head. But the thing that got Harold, of course, was that she didn’t have any top on. She didn’t even try to cover them up either, just stomped her little foot on the bank and said, “I am going to kill Lamar Peebles when I get ahold of him.” Harold had never even imagined so much skin.