First my goddamn hair fell out. I wasn’t going to get any pussy looking like that. So I gave in and got a hairpiece. Royals got it for me. He’s about my size so he went down and got one and brought it to the hospital and I wore it home.
All this time, from the day I found out to the day it spread all over town to the day my hair fell out on the third floor of the hospital. All that time the assholes were waiting to see what would happen next. My friends were pulling for me and the assholes couldn’t wait for me to disappear. Cancer, my fucking ass. I’d better stop here and describe myself to you. I’m a goodlooking son-of-a-bitch. Six three with blue eyes and steel-white hair. I’ve got six kids by three wives and four yard-children and nobody’s ever heard me complain. You’re in the garden and if you’re a fool enough not to know the garden when you see the garden then go shoot yourself. I’m a heavy-equipment salesman and I’m the best. Ask around. They know Nat McFarland in Jackson, Mississippi. I never broke a promise even if I made it when I was drunk. So, the gang down at Poet’s is waiting to see what I’ll do with cancer, this shit eating up my guts. I must have got it the month I tried to be a beer-drinker. It wasn’t a week after I went back to red-eye that the pain began and after that I was spending half my time in a goddamn doctor’s office and then this chemo-crap. Lying in a hospital bed with my hair fallen out and too weak to even lay a hand on a pussy if I could have quit throwing up long enough to find one. There was this little roadwhore named Sally in here that Royals knew but I couldn’t even get up the interest to talk to her. I’m in this fucking roll-up bed and two miles away it’s five-thirty and the gang is getting together at Poet’s to start the good part of the day. Where’s Nat? I guess they’re saying. Oh, he’s lying up in Saint Dominic’s with his hair fallen out and his dick fallen off. You ought to go up there and visit him.
Not a chance. They’re not coming up here to watch Nat throw up and fill the goddamn room with a bunch of fucking flowers. I had a No Visitors sign put on the door. I let my own kids in and Royals and maybe one little roadwhore, this girl named Sally I’ve got the hots for.
So every afternoon I can hear them thinking about me. I’d picture the bar and Bill and Dutton and Reta Anne all down at our end moaning over the coming death of old Nat McFarland, who could drink anybody under the table and outfuck anyone in the whole state of Mississippi. It drove me crazy thinking about it.
Here’s what I decided to do. No matter how sick you are from chemo there’s a certain little slot of time when you feel okay. The trick was to make it happen when I needed it to happen, which was five-thirty on weekday afternoons.
I lay in that goddamn hospital bed and made my plans. Charlie Trane keeps an apartment in the French Quarter Inn across the street from Poet’s. I knew he wasn’t using it for anything that month as he had just married some roadwhore from Meridian and she had him so pussy-whipped he wouldn’t even have a drink with you. I called him up.
“Charlie, can I borrow your place up by Poet’s? For a month or two while I get over this chemo shit?”
“Don’t run the goddamn phone bill up. The last time I lent it to you it cost me seven hundred dollars.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry.”
“I heard your goddamn hair fell out.”
“It’s growing back in.”
“Well, pick up the key at my office.”
“You’re a good friend, Charlie.”
“Don’t die on us, you son-of-a-bitch.”
I checked out of the hospital on a Monday afternoon. I still had to go in every day and have my blood checked out, but aside from that I was free. So Royals helped me move and I set up housekeeping in Charlie’s apartment right across the street from Poet’s. We got this girl in to give me massages and stocked up the refrigerator with a bunch of goddamn orange juice and Royals goes downtown and picks me up a couple of suits. Dutton Marks keeps my measurements at the store so I didn’t have to go in to have them fitted. I told him, send out the best, Nat McFarland has decided to live.
About two o’clock on Thursday afternoon I started getting ready, sipping orange juice and having the girl give me a manicure and glue the wig on my head. Then Royals helped me dress and at exactly five-thirty Jackson time I swallowed five milligrams of truck-driver dex and tied on my shoes and walked across the street and into Poet’s. I am wearing this white suit that cost six hundred dollars and a light blue tie and I wander down to my end of the bar and order a shot of red-eye.
“Jesus Christ, Nat,” the bartender says. “What the shit, man, we thought you were dead.”
“It was hard. It was rough going there for a while.”
“So you’re feeling great now, or what?” He handed over a shot of whiskey and I held it between my fingers.
“I’m doing okay. I can’t complain.” I drank the whiskey and circulated around, nodding at a couple of roadwhores I used to service and generally being noticed. I let about thirty minutes go by.
“Holy shit,” I said, “What the fuck time is it, anyway?”
“Quarter after six, fifteen after.” This from one of the whores.
“I got to get somewhere. Got to see a man about a dog.” I set the glass down on the bar and laid a ten-dollar bill beside it. “I can’t stay. Got to be somewhere at six-thirty.” I patted a whore on the fanny and let myself out and Royals was waiting by the door with his Lincoln and he took me on home and put me to bed.
I pulled it about six times in the next month. Sometimes with Royals and sometimes alone. Once or twice with the massage girl dolled up in a dress we bought her. I pulled it enough. Old Nat’s licked cancer’s ass. That’s what they’re saying at Poet’s now. “Did you hear about it? Yeah, he was in here the other day on his way to see some roadwhore. Yeah, looking great, man. Looking like a million dollars. That goddamn Nat. They don’t make them like that anymore. He’s licking cancer’s ass. You wait, he’ll probably be over here before the night’s over. That goddamn Nat. That son-of-a-bitch. They threw the mold away when they made that one. Would somebody bring me a drink? Goddammit, what do you have to do to get a drink around this place?”