There was but one person that didn’t have no intention of staying at the Gallagher house, and that was Hiram. Oh, he didn’t have nothing against Mina and Chester, but soon as he knew he was leaving the hospital, he told anybody who’d listen that he wanted to go home.
“It’s a mess,” I told him. “Reeks of smoke half a mile away. The floors and beds are soaked through. There’s scum on the walls and nothing in the larder.”
“As long as it’s got a roof,” he’d say.
Well, it turned out the mattress to his old bed weren’t too badly off—at least it didn’t squish when you laid on it. I dug a ratty quilt out of the closet, and Mina brought over a pillow and a fitted sheet, and Earle, he brought Gus, who was longing so bad for the old homestead he come near to tearing down what was left of the front door.
Hiram was walking with a cane now, but he took the last few steps to bed by himself, and Gus jumped in.
“Looks like we’re good to go,” he said, thumbing down his lids.
When I pulled up next morning, he was already standing in front of the store. Staring at it with God-fearing eyes.
“What you waiting for?” I asked.
“Guess I lost my key.”
He shuffled from aisle to aisle, taking in every improvement. The oak floors, still smelling of Murphy Oil Soap. The track ladders and the new hardware cabinet—eight-sided and revolving—and the icebox. The pickle barrel, even stouter than the last, with its handsome iron hoops. The pea, rice, and bean bins, each with their own glass front.
He saved the best for last. The cherrywood store counter, planed down to the smoothness of new skin, shiny with mineral oil and beeswax. And sitting atop it a spanking new National cash register, courtesy of Venable’s Drug.
“I’ll be,” he said softly. Using his cane for balance, he propped himself on his brand-new stool. “Don’t know that I deserve all this.”
“You’ll get used to it,” I said.
We hadn’t put out word on when Hiram was coming back, so every customer who walked in the store that morning give a little shout of surprise at seeing him there. From outside, listening to all the greetings and pleasantries, you’d have figured the old times had marched right back into town without missing a step.
But your eyes would’ve told you different.
Like you’d hear Joe Bob call out, “Hiram, what you got in this here blend? It’s your best joe yet.” Then you’d watch him pause in the doorway on his way out and give his head a hard shake. Minnie-Cora Harper, she brought in her new (old) beau, chatted up a storm, then left with an ugly crease on her forehead. Dutch went in noisy as an osprey, then staggered out with a face grave as winter. Mrs. Goolsby run back to her car like Old Scratch was on her tail.
And here’s the thing, not a one of ’em would look me in the eye as they left. Even Warner! It made me wonder what all them folks was seeing that I couldn’t. So I went in the store myself, but all I found was Hiram fast asleep.
An hour before his usual nap time. And instead of being tipped back in his stool, he’d just gone and laid his head on the counter. When I come back half an hour later, he was just sputtering back to life. When closing time come, he shuffled out toward the pumps, beckoned Dudley over, and leaned into his ear.
Now, I couldn’t hear what was being said, but when I got to the station next morning, Dudley was getting the lay of the store. Item by item, Hiram walked him through the inventory. Told him which shelf placements worked best. How to keep the coffee from turning bitter. Little tricks to make the ice last longer in the icebox. Where to order pickles from, where not to. When to go with the Heinz supplier over the Campbell’s supplier.
“Now listen, Dudley, some lady tourist comes in looking for a Nestlé bar, what do you do?”
“Sell it to her?”
“Then what?”
“Don’t know.”
“You say, ‘How ’bout some film for that Beau Brownie camera of yours? Say now, is your husband a fisherman? Well, now, there’s a lure that drives Shenandoah trout wild with desire, and it’s right over here.…’”
“I don’t think I can do all that, Hiram.”
“There’s no trick to it. You’re just showing them all the things they’d be buying if they only knew.…”
Again, if you was just to listen to him, you’d have thought he was back in business. Only he fell asleep even earlier than usual and slept for longer, and when two o’clock rolled round, he tapped Dudley on the shoulder and said, “Packing it in, my friend.”
He slept the rest of the day. Woke a little after seven in a fever, his breath coming in quick hard gasps, his heart pecking like a bird. He was able to swallow down some aspirin, though, and when I left him at nine, he was fast asleep with Gus curled up at his feet.
Next morning, he was still asleep, but all the sheets and linens and quilts had been thrown off, and Gus was running round the bed, barking up something fierce and giving a specially nasty look at Hiram’s feet, which had swollen to near half again their size.
I put in a call to Doc Whitworth, who was there inside an hour, clutching the same bag he’d brought to see Janey. This time I didn’t have no front porch to wait him out, so I hung over by the garage, finding new ways to arrange socket wrenches. Can’t rightly say if the time passed quick or slow. All I know is I looked up at some point and Doc Whitworth was there, the bag still in his hand.
“Want to go for a walk?” he said.
“Can’t you just—”
“Let’s walk,” he said.
We didn’t go far, maybe fifty yards west, before his head lowered a grain.
“It’s not looking good, Melia.”
“They got the bullet out,” I said.
“I know.”
“They got it out. They sewed him up.”
“The infection’s spreading all the same, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. His organs are shutting down.”
I don’t know why, but I thought of the organs they used to have in movie theaters—before the talkies come. Shutting down and nothing left but pictures flickering on a screen.
“How long we looking at?” I said.
His hands circled by his side. “Maybe a couple days. Maybe a week.”
“And there ain’t nothing else you can give him?”
“We can set him up with some morphine. To ease the pain.”
“Pain.” I snorted, half turned away. “We got Emmett Tolliver’s moonshine for that.”
“I could find you a nurse, too, if you like.”
“You’re looking at her.”
“Melia…”
“Oh, what?” I said, turning on him. “You think it’s too big a job for a little girl? You think I don’t got enough experience in this line of work?”
“I’d say you’ve altogether too much.” With sad eyes, he watched a produce truck trundle down the road. “Do me the one favor,” he said.
“What?”
“If you’re going to stay with him, at least don’t sleep here. Give yourself that much. Spend your nights with the Gallaghers.”
“How can I do that?”
“You won’t do him any good if you’re dead on your feet, Melia. Sleep in a real bed and come back the next morning. Will you promise me that?”
I started walking back toward the station. Long, twitchy strides. Then I stopped and waited for him to catch up.
“Only if Hiram’s okay with it,” I said.
He nodded. Swung his bag to his other hand. “Wife’s holding supper.”
“’Course.”
“I’ll check in tomorrow, shall I?”
“Sure.”
“Can’t tell you how sorry.”
I closed early that evening. Looked in on Hiram to make sure he was sleeping. Then sent Dudley home with a message for Chester and Mina. Ate a dinner of Kraft Caramels and Sugar Daddies.
The night come on slow, and in the space of time just before the sun snuffed itself out, I found myself staring at the branches of the crape myrtles. Wondering how it was they could carve themselves out of the sky like that.
“Jesus, what time is it?” Hiram stood wobbling in the front doorway.
“You shouldn’t be up,” I said.
“I can’t just lie around all day. I’m not a fungus.” He give his head a long scratch. “Any chance you can rassle up a cig for an old man?”
I got him a pack of Lucky Strikes from the store. Lit one for him and one for me.
“Where the hell’s the porch?” he said.
“It went away in the fire.”
“Huh.” He stared at the ramp beneath his bare feet. “Where are we going to sit, I wonder?”
So I fetched a couple of saggy-ass cane-bottom chairs from the house. It took him a few seconds of writhing before he could get anywhere close to comfort. We was quiet awhile. Then, from nowhere, he said, “I’ll miss this place.”
“Hell,” I said. “It’s not like you got anyplace else to be.”
“I have many places to be. I only said no one was—”
“—expecting you at any of them. Yeah, I remember.”
Five and a half months ago.
“What I mean,” he said, “is this is probably the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.”
“Go on.”
“No, I mean it.”
“What about Hong Kong?”
“Bah.”
“New York. San Francisco. What about Hollywood?”
“Just a big ashtray with palm trees stuck in the middle. It doesn’t have this,” he said.
By now, there weren’t no hard edges left anywhere. Just a soft hump of purple that I knew to be mountains.
“You gotta understand, Hiram. To me, all this was just what was keeping me from going anyplace else.”
“And where was it you wanted to go?”
“Anyplace else.” I smiled, dug my heel into the gravel. “Don’t know as I had a special place in mind. Pittsburgh, maybe.”
“Well, now,” he said with a wriggle. “I’ve got news for you, Amelia Hoyle. There’s nothing keeping you here but you.”
“Spoken like a rolling stone.”
He chuckled. “Not anymore, ma’am. I’m head to toe moss.”
“Thought it was fungus.”
We was quiet, smoking our cigs. Though I noticed, after a while, Hiram weren’t even smoking his, just bringing it in the direction of his mouth and letting it drop again.
“Know what?” he said. “I hope you do some rolling of your own, Amelia. But don’t be surprised if you end up where you started. You’re the deep-rooting kind of plant.” The cigarette—just one long pillar of ash now—fell to the ground. “You should be getting on back.”
I stood up. Give him the once-over.
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Gus and I have some serious hay to hit.”
“And you don’t need nothing?”
He shook his head.
“There’s some cans of Franco-American if you get hungry.”
He nodded.
“I’ll come by early tomorrow,” I said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
He shrugged. But as I was walking back to the truck, he called after me.
“Amelia.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s an honor being your dad.”
“’Course it is,” I said.
Well, true to my word, I was back by five thirty the next morning. I give a little knock, for politeness’ sake, then pushed the door open.
It was quiet, which I figured to be a good sign. He was still sleeping, wasn’t he? I turned the corner and pulled open the curtain, and there was Gus doing his little worry dance about the bed. And there in the middle of the bed lay Hiram. Who weren’t worrying about nothing no more.
His brogans was fresh polished, his shirt and trousers ironed, his hair washed and combed. At the foot of his bed sat a row of six empty bottles, all with the same label. OPIUM CAMPHORATED, FOR U.S.P. TINCTURE: LIQUID NO. 338.
Lord only knows how he put his hand on that much laudanum. I can’t imagine Doc Whitworth would’ve gone to such a risk, so either Hiram smuggled it out of the hospital himself or he bribed somebody to do it for him. The only thing I can say for true is how he forced that bitter liquid down. Beneath his outstretched right arm sat a half-empty bottle of Dr Pepper.
The same soda-pop chaser I’d used with Mama in her final hours. Which Hiram Watts knew full well, just as he knew this was the bed where she’d given up her last breath. What better place, he must have thought, to make his own peace?
I set myself down next to him. I wrapped my fingers round his cold, cold hands. I said, “The honor was all mine.”