Archives: SouthView

Second Place Winner of the Summer Fiction Writing Contest
Kero

Chuck Strangward

Overnight the smoke from the heater had blackened his cheeks and forehead, and his beard and hair looked as if they'd been rubbed with soot.

In the winter I saw him at the diner, eyes as white as the eggs on his plate, perhaps even whiter against the charcoal-colored skin — a player from an old minstrel act.

Patrons stared or shook their heads, made silent, disapproving gestures. The waitresses liked to serve his food and check together, as if he'd told them he was in a hurry. But he was never in a hurry and lingered in the booth with his newspaper, drinking coffee and struggling with crossword clues until the refills ceased.

Rawley hooked his fingers into the squares of the chain-link fence, waiting in blackface. Behind him the VFW, nestled between the Cheap Sleep Motel and Moody's Pool and Subs, squatted in one neat, cubic lump. The cops kept a presence there on Friday nights, so when the patrons left the establishment they remembered to leave their drinks on the parking stripes. On Saturday mornings an amber-colored array of beer bottles, shiny aluminum cans and plastic magnum empties littered the parking lot in orderly arrangements like the pieces of a low-rent chess game. Rawley took his linen hamper, the one on permanent loan from the hotel, and lined it with a trash bag before setting out to clean up.

RAWLEY MAINTAINED THE grounds at the VFW. He wore grimy jeans and scuffed boots and a faded olive jacket that reminded me of my dad's Army fatigues. One afternoon in February 1968 my father busted his ear drum firing a howitzer during a training exercise at his base in Germany. As a Marine, Rawley had spent that same month in Khe Sanh, and it was at Lang Vei, while feverishly lifting the dead and dying onto the litters, that he too was wounded. The sniper's bullet merely grazed his clavicle, but when it exited took a coaster of skin with it. He'd described the incident to me several times, using the word "sporty" a great deal to describe the extraction work he'd been doing that particular day.

"If our pilot was chewing gum during the pre-flight you knew it was going to be sporty. You expected the LZ to be hot. Evacuations went bad 50 percent of the time. High pucker factor whenever chewing gum was involved. In fact, I still get a little tight whenever I see the stuff in somebody's mouth."

Once, Rawley removed his jacket and showed me his scars. Even in the summer, with no shirt, he'd have on that jacket, a gray bush of chest hair tangled in the zipper's teeth.

"What you got for me today, Boss Man?" He always called me Boss Man.

"Which first, the good news or the bad?"

"Bad."

"Light bill came today."

"And the good news?"

I showed him a package addressed from the V.A. "You've been waiting on this, right?"

"Sure have," he said hoarsely. "That's the good stuff."

"Must be. You have to sign for it."

He remained on the other side of the fence. I curled the peach-colored form around a pen and tucked it through one of the openings. The package, however, was too big. "Toss it over," he said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Toss it."

I could feel the pill bottles: two of them, small but heavy; they had been shipped loose and slid around in the bag, making the parcel's flight characteristics similar to that of a Frisbee with a baseball glued to its edge.

I backed up, surveyed the height, lobbed the package high but with enough arc to clear the rusted barbed wire running along the top. It tipped end over end in a series of clumsy airborne rolls. As it reached its apex, directly above the fence, Rawley assumed an outfielder's pose, hands up and fingers stretched. Perhaps the pills shifted at the top, or a mischievous wind blew unnoticed; whatever the reason the package's descent was of a different nature than its takeoff: rather than continuing horizontally it followed a more or less vertical path on the way down and snagged a corner on the concertina.

"Uh oh," Rawley said.

I hooked my fingers into the squares and jingled the fence. "I thought it was going to make it," I said. "I can climb up there real quick."

"No, no," he said. "Liable to cut yourself. I got a rake in the shed."

"Sorry about that."

"No problem, Boss Man. Probably fall on its own if we give it a minute. You got a cigarette?"

"I quit, remember."

"That's right. Did you ever call one of them hot lines?"

"No. I used the patch."

"Well, there's a number you can call and somebody will try and talk you out of lighting up. Sounds like AA, don't it?"

"Listen, Saturday's going to be my last day. Finally getting my own route."

"Good. And how long did it take you?"

"A long time."

"I guess this is it then."

"It'll be next Saturday, not today."

"Won't be here Saturday. I got to go Wednesday and start serving them 10 days I owe. Did you see my picture? They put it in the paper."

"I saw it."

"Real flattering, huh?"

"You're lucky you didn't hurt somebody."

"That's what the judge said. That I was lucky."

Silence. The package dangled above in a lazy, compact arc, like the pendulum of a clock. "I told him I was dumb," he said.

"If you want I'll give you a ride down there. I've got Wednesday off."

"I appreciate that, Boss Man. I called my daughter but she" — he threw a pine cone at the package but missed — "hung up. I guess she reads the newspaper."

"Nine sharp. Listen out for the horn."

I find Rawley's house at the end of a long row of mobile homes, lot numbers stenciled in the bottom corners. The places are in bad shape; the neighborhood could be a junkyard for domiciles. Trailers of every size and age in various stages of disrepair clutter the lots, along with discarded sofas and bedroom furniture, old stoves and metal filing cabinets, toilets hidden in the tall grass like uncolored Easter eggs.

The yellow caution tape is wrapped against the trailers' sides, not stretched into a perimeter the way it's done on the television cop shows. The leaves of a banana shrub block the trailer's number so I walk over to make sure I have the right address. It is near the house when I smell the odor: a cloyed mix of kerosene, gasoline and stale combustion.

"You the son?" a woman asks from the porch next door. "They got him early this morning."

"The police?"

"The ambulance."

"What happened?"

"You know I didn't call at first, 'cause it's always smoky over there. But then he shows up at the door bangin' and screamin' and naked as a jaybird." Along the front of the trailer, above the windows and clearly noticeable from the car, were dark stains left from the smoke. "I told him that kero had gone bad, that he should get some clear stuff. And that fool knows I wasn't talking about gasoline."

I locate Rawley at the hospital, propped up in bed. Eating toast. Watching "The Price is Right."

"Overbid," he says, eyes fixed on the television. "Ain't no microwave cost a thousand dollars. Would you believe I was on this show once?"

"Seems like I would've known that."

"I used to live in Pasadena. Me and Joanne, my first wife. You should have seen her face when my name got called. They told me to come on down and I went, Boss Man, I went."

"Did you win anything?" unsure if the story were true but willing to hear it anyway.

"A television. It bothered her. She took it when she left." He adjusts one of the pillows, and I notice a gray smudge, what appears to be ash. "Joanne could be like that."

"You've got to take better care of yourself," I say to him. He'd been careless with the fuel cans, confused the color scheme for combustibles. "As soon as my 10 days are over I'm going to straighten things out for good," he told me. With a plastic knife he spreads a trembling glob of grape jelly onto a browned triangle of bread. "I wonder if they have TV in the clink. I hope so."

THE NURSE APPEARS and asks Rawley if he needs anything. "Morphine!" he declares. "More morphine!" On the television a woman jumps up and down and claps hysterically. The camera cuts to a man in the audience who pumps his fists and points at the stage where the woman had now begun to cry. She presses the tears out of her eyes with a thumb, fans her face with fingers stiff from adrenaline.

"I reckon she knew her microwaves."

"Do you have a son?"

He lowers the volume of the television. The greasy salt and pepper hair was combed straight back into a thin, shiny slick.

"No, why?"

"When I came to your house this morning your neighbor assumed I was your son."

"Forrestine said that?"

"Your neighbor, whoever she is. She didn't introduce herself."

"Forrestine has eight children. They're in foster homes. Family Services got them. Came with a van."

"Oh."

"Hears voices," he says, and, to make his point clear, circles an index finger next to the side of his head. "A voice told her to feed them nothing but marshmallows. One day I caught one of the boys using the bathroom out in the yard. 'Don't you got a toilet?' I said. He was young, maybe 8 or 9, and just stared at me. Then he yells 'Snake!' and takes off. Well, I thought he'd seen a snake on the ground. Turns out his mother was keeping a python in the bathtub. They were scared to death to go in there. Later one of the little girls squatted in some poison ivy and had to be taken to the hospital, after it'd worked its way into her bloodstream."

"I've never had poison ivy."

"Social worker showed up soon after that."

I stand and stretch. I am not sure of my reason for being here. I pause near the door, my hand on the knob, listening to the hum of the machine next to Rawley's bed. I feel a tentative push from the other side of the door. I step back, and a woman walks into the room. She smells like an ashtray — an ashtray into which a tube of Bengay has been squirted — and her right arm is hooked through the strap of her purse, which rocks beneath her elbow. Clasped together over her chest were her hands as if she had just finished praying, or about to begin at any moment.

"I heard it on the scanner," she said. Her voice was deep and windy, of a timbre created from years of smoking.

"Boss Man, this is my daughter, Miranda."

I nod, offer my hand. She takes it, and her left hand shoves the purse farther up her arm until it rests on her shoulder. I'd felt a ring during our contact and notice a miniature royal flush spread out in golden cards on one of her knuckles. "Here, have a seat. I was just leaving."

"I'm in pretty good shape," Rawley says. "Doc says I might have a couple of scars here on my legs, but that don't matter."

"I expected you to be dead. I wanted you to be dead."

"Well it was nice meeting you," I say, my hand fidgeting with the knob. "Take care, Rawley."

"You loan him money?"

"Who, me? I haven't loaned your father anything."

"You a preacher?"

"No."

Rawley says: "I ain't gone yet," and pushes the tray of food to the foot of the bed, grabs a pillow and spanks it before re-stuffing it behind his head. My chances for a graceful exit are gone. Except for the intercom announcements that echo in the corridor the room is silent.

MIRANDA'S PURSE HANGS limp against her body, flat as a folded shirt. It has a floral print and leather straps and I recognize her face, perhaps from a restaurant or grocery store in which she is a cashier.

"Here. This is yours."

"What's that?" Rawley says.

"A restraining order."

"I need the nurse. Boss Man, find the nurse for me. Please."

"Take it easy. What's the matter?"

"I'm dizzy."

"You've got the remote in your hand."

"That's the television."

"No, it's for the nurse. Press the red button."

"Withdrawals," mutters Miranda.

"I'm pressing it and nothing's happening. What did you say, Miranda?"

"I said have fun in jail."

"Let me get someone," seizing the opportunity to leave. Miranda follows me into the corridor. "Hurry," I hear Rawley moan.

I do my best to avoid hospitals. I hate the florescent lighting, the emaciated bodies, the wide thresholds that are crossed slowly, carefully, in uncomfortable pauses, beats peculiar to the knife and needle. I see myself, older, lodged in this antiseptic hotel, lying in one of the metal beds, my pale lips chapped so badly I can't feel the ice chip I've maneuvered there with my tongue. Bouquets shelved everywhere. A miserable-looking teddy bear jammed into a coffee mug. A small heart-shaped balloon, metallic and stiff. It does not sway like the other balloons.

"He feels dizzy," I tell the nurse at the counter. She is on the phone.

The humming machines. The liquids suspended in bags. The writing on the bags, whole paragraphs, thin words in curved black font. The bag is almost empty and the letters sag and droop near the bottom, drawn in at their corners as if they too will disappear along with the drip.

"Is there a restroom around here?" Miranda asks the nurse, who is still on the phone. "Hey," — more forcefully this time — "y'all got a bathroom on this floor?" The nurse's identification, which she wears on a lanyard around her neck, is scratched and faded. I can't read the name.

"HELLO. THE LADIES ROOM?"

The nurse cups the receiver. "Fourth floor. Elevator's down the hall."

"You work at the Stop and Go, that place on Stabler Street," I say to Miranda. "I get coffee there sometimes. I thought you looked familiar."

"I don't work there anymore." Her eyes were a rich uneven brown, the color of Rawley's toast.

"Hasn't been easy, I guess. Your dad and all."

"For not being a preacher you sure act like one."

"I barely know your father. I don't encourage him, is what I mean."

"He loves to blame the war," Miranda says. "But the truth is that my dad was slurring his ABCs in the fifth grade." She opens the oversized purse and takes out what appears to be its only contents — a small photo album — and flips to a picture of a young girl with her arms wrapped around a very large cat. The feline's long, slackened body is nearly as tall as the girl's.

"It was my fault, really. I'm not a good judge of character. Never have been. You'd think I'd know more, about him at least because he's my father, but it didn't work out that way."

"Is she the reason for the restraining order?"

"They went for ice cream. He tapped the fender of the car ahead of him in the drive-through line at Dairy Queen. I went to the police station to get Jeanie, and the other driver, the one who'd called the police, apologized to me. Explained that he felt bad but hadn't known what else to do. Had no choice once he saw the kid, he told me, because the grandfather smelled like a distillery."

"Excuse me, coming through," a nurse says. She pushes a gurney swiftly past, accompanied by two orderlies wearing latex gloves; the trio negotiates the assorted wheelchairs and hampers and trolleys stacked with supplies that cramp the hall. "Excuse me, coming through please, behind you now, coming through."

"You said Room 502, right?" the nurse behind the counter asks me, "the man who felt dizzy? He's being moved to the O.R."

A flustered Rawley lies on the gurney, which has been pushed up against the smooth cinder block walls of the corridor.

"They just rolled me out here and left," he says. "I wish I had a cigarette."

"They'll be along. Try to relax."

"Where's Miranda?"

I look away, to the double wooden doors up ahead and the "NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL BEYOND THIS POINT" signs that mark the entrance to the surgery unit.

"She'll be back."

"Ten days." Rawley sighs. "Next time we meet I'll be a different man. The lady on the hot line told me it's never too late to change. Oh well," he says again. "Ten days — could be worse I suppose. I just hope they've got a TV in the slammer. Wouldn't that be some luck if they did?"

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