Uncle Brucker felt much better after I rescued him from the hospital. The next morning his temperature went down to 100 and he wanted a home-cooked meal. I cooked him a rib eye out back on the charcoal grill. I boiled a whole can of peas. I cut up the steak into little chunks and he fed himself left-handed. He sucked up half a can of Boomers through a straw and said, “I ain’t wastin’ half a Boomers.” Then he sucked up the other half. I gave him a soup spoon for the peas.
Later that week he got sick from leftover pneumonia and his temperature went up to 102 again. Keith Weir offered to take him to the hospital, but my Uncle refused to go back there and lie in another tie-down hospital bed. He fought the idea for a week while his leftover pneumonia went away and his temperature went back to normal.
During the next two weeks his health improved tremendously. For his breakfast I mixed two multi-vitamin cereals, Cheerios and Total. “Gimme three,” he said, and next morning I added Wheaties. His appetite came back strong and he put on eight pounds. Bit by bit his body took back what the stoke carried away. Feeling came back first to his left side, then his right side. Then feeling turned into strength.
But I thought he should be careful. Don’t move too fast. Rest, sleep in the hammock, go fishing. And lay off the rats!
He took my advice and slept out back in the hammock for one hour every afternoon. He refused to lift anything heavier than a six-pack. He went fishing on Sunday with Keith and Reed Weir and he came back with two big bass and color in his cheeks. He loved to fish, and he bought an expensive reel and fancy tackle. Three more bass and a couple of brookies. The color stayed in his cheeks.
In two weeks he had regained all his energy plus reserve energy for doing extra things such as painting the exterior of the house. That was all he thought about. Painting the house. Finally he had the energy. With my help, he’d get it done. He felt good, very good, and that made me feel good too. He felt good enough to start the job immediately. Get him a roller pan, he had the rollers, we’ll finish the job in no time.
He felt so good he swore his vital organs worked better since he had the stroke.
“A jolt like that sends a warnin’ to your body and gets the whole system workin’ again,” he told me. “That’ll teach those lazy orgins. Most orgins are capable of doin’ a far better job. But after a while they get bored with pumpin’ and digestin’ and filterin’. It’s borin’ routine stuff. A stroke tells ‘em how it’s gotta be. Wise-up you lazy orgins! Do your job! That’s what happened to me. That was a revitalizin’ stroke, Walt. Coupla revitalizin’ strokes and you can really accomplish somethin’.”
After dinner he moved to the living room and sat in the recliner and turned on the TV. It was 7:30, time for Cole’s Law starring Rad Kielly as detective Boyd Cole.
I don’t like that dumb cop show, but Uncle Brucker thought it was TV at its best. It was his favorite but it was on the bottom of my list. Baseball players can’t act, to begin with. Washed-up baseball players like Rad Kielly can’t play ball and they can’t act. Uncle Brucker was always trying to get me to watch a great episode of Cole’s Law.
“Have a seat. This is a great show,” he said.
“Sure it is,” I said.
“You got some problem with great shows?”
“Everybody likes a great show, but this ain’t it,” I told him.
“There’s nobody watches it don’t think it’s great.”
“What about me? I don’t count?” I said.
“Maybe you ain’t watchin’ it close enough.”
“I ain’t gonna put my head through the screen,” I told him.
“You know what I mean.”
“Maybe I’ve done enough watchin’ and I don’t like what I’m seein’.”
“That’s a mighty big maybe.”
“No biggeran yours,” I said.
“How do you know? You ain’t measured it,” he said.
A few minutes later during a commercial he noticed an ad on the back of a circular that came in the mail.
“Hey, they got off-white!” he said.
Next day we drove down to Schnells Hardware and bought three gallons of exterior off-white for the price of two and a discount roller pan, and I put it in the basement. He had somewhere in the basement a couple of hardly-used rollers that Bill Voght gave him. He was serious about painting the exterior and he thought about painting the dining room, but we had to move all the furniture out first. And where the hell did he put those damn rollers? No hurry, but he wanted to get the job done. Sit down, have a beer. The house ain’t going nowhere. Exterior first, interior maybe in the fall.
One night before I fell asleep, Uncle Brucker came into the bedroom and said he owed it all to me.
“It was you who recovered me, Walt, and you did a damn fine job. To you. He sat on the bed and raised his can of Boomers and drank the whole thing. “That’s a full toast,” he said and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
He kept his War Medal in the middle of the high shelf in the living room. The War Medal was the one thing he cared about. You could throw out the TV, his rat rifle and everything else. He never cleaned the Medal or dusted it off since he got it because war isn’t clean or neat. It was presented to him for one particular battle but in the dust was a history of all that happened over the years.
I’d been staying at the old house since he came home from the hospital, so I guess you can say I moved in.
It was all OK with my father. Raylene moved in with him and he kept the garage door closed, and he was glad to get rid of me.
He drove past the old house once or twice. Once I was out back at home plate with a bat in my hands. Leroy threw a speedo and I whacked it over his head. When I saw the Malibu coming I quit and hid behind the barn until Bones gave me the all-clear. See ya next time, dad.
But there was no next time.
My father never drove by again. Raylene moved in with a guy named Chuck in Neidersville, and her younger sister Crispy stepped in. He wanted to buy a gas station and set up a repair shop. I never found out what happened to my mother. She left when I was eight. My father said he wouldn’t know, how would he know? He wouldn’t tell me anyway. I took off on my father and my mother took off on me.
Uncle Brucker said what’s his is mine. I guess that means the old house is mine too. This includes the barn, an old John Deere tractor and six junked cars my father left that I was fixing up. I had already pulled the front brakes off the Camaro and found an oil pump at Sturdevants in Crawley. New plugs too. I mean almost new. Next, the distributor cap and a not-too-old Diehard I hoped Otto’s Auto was still saving for me.
Someday I’ll get the Camaro back on the road.
Except for new gray hairs sticking out of his beard, a shaky left arm and a winky left eye, there was no evidence that Uncle Brucker ever had a stroke.