Joe's Black T-Shirt (6 page)

***

Mike came to the hospital quarter after ten. He had disobeyed his mother’s order to go directly home and raided the meager resources of the local Library. He blindly pulled books until he had collected a full armload from the shelves. Some he knew by author, others he chose solely by their cover. The librarian seemed frustrated to be checking out so many books at once. He tried to reassure her using his best imitation of Father’s smile. She had no use for such conveyances.

Uncle Henry sat where Mother had been before when Mike came into the room. Unlike Mother, however, his uncle had his boots propped up on the bed, watching the Rams offensive line get trounced by the visiting Forty-Niners.

He bounced to his feet upon seeing his nephew and gave him an unusually long hug. The big man pushed away first. He was a five-year younger carbon copy of Father and seemed all to ready to cry. He changed the subject to avoid it.

“Dang, boy! I ain’t seen you since Cindy got married. How’s life down there in the middle of God’s country?”

“Pretty good. The village has three horses now, but there is talk of getting a fourth.”

“Why do all good lawyers have to be such smarty pants?” Uncle Henry asked loving every minute. Mike may have looked like his Mother, but it was a disguise. Inside, he was every bit quick as his father.

Not much for small talk, Uncle Henry shook his nephew’s hand and wished him well, then left.

In the still warm chair, Mike sat next to his Father. With nothing to distract him, he randomly chose one of the books he had brought. The story was vaguely familiar and it was likely he had already read it years ago. It offered him a comfort, an escape, he gladly accepted to defy reality.

***

At one a.m., a nurse came into the room. She smiled toward him and wordlessly changed Father’s IV’s. Methodically, she charted her duties on an aluminum clipboard. Mike was grateful for her silence.

This was the hospice ward. The patients cared for here were not going to become well. The staff and the families who shared these sanitary rooms moved among each other with delicacy. No one wanted to be here but made the best of things if they had to be.

Mike’s head was bobbing up and down, trying to resist the natural urge to sleep, when Father awoke.

“What the hell is going on here?” his Father’s voice barked.

“Dad,” Mike answered.

“I asked a question, boy, and I expect an answer.”

The stern response made Mike wonder.

“You’re in the hospital, Dad. Mother will be here soon,” he said.

“Don’t you hand me that hogwash,” Father said. “You’re in a heap of trouble.”

The agitation caught Mike off-guard. He was accustomed to the soft-spoken, laconic man his father normally was.

“Now if you’re smart, you’ll tell me the truth. I’ll do everything I can to make it look good that you confessed.”

His Father was awake, but not in the present. Not knowing what else to do, Mike decided he would try and play along.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheriff.”

“The hell you say.”

This game wasn’t fun. His Father had helped him a few times with advice on interviewing clients. How to discern the truth from the lies, the facts and not the feelings, no matter what the alleged crime.

He recognized this as a rudimentary backseat-interrogation, some ghost of Christmas past come to visit. Whoever Father was speaking to, he had them dead to rights. In a blatant disregard to his own best advice to clients, Mike confessed.

“You got me Sheriff,” Mike said. His intonation reminded him of a black-and-white cowboy movie, maybe something staring Gary Cooper or Henry Fonda. “I’ll be happy to oblige you and show you where the gold is buried.”

The rage that poured from his Father was a volcanic fount. His face became red, enraged by the obvious insolence. “Son-of-a-whore! Son-of-a-bitch!”

Father’s words struck out and felt cold against his cheeks. It was as if he had stepped into an unexpected winter storm. His face burned with shame.

“After what you have done, you’re in no position to play games,” Father said.

Above a whisper, he answered him in a voice he hadn’t used since he lived under the man’s roof. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” Father said. His rage seemed to have left him as quickly and suddenly as it had found him. He was still mad, but the meds were doing their job. Unable to differentiate pain from outrage, the crystalline water dripped faster into him, releasing its magic formula. “Now, let’s start over. Where is…the…girl?”

“What girl?” Mike asked. He asked again shaking Father by his softened bicep, “What girl, Dad?”

His spirit dwelled somewhere else again, far away, waiting.

Mike, now wide-awake, sat with great attention toward Father. The man never discussed his work with him, even after law school. Now he was walking down a nightmare version of memory lane holding his father’s hand and praying to God for the strength to continue.

***

His mother came into the room promptly at six. She took pride in being on time and likened tardiness to sin itself. Mike hadn’t been less than fifteen minutes early for an appointment, meeting, or casual party since puberty.

“Right on time,” Mike said rising to salute Mother with a ritual kiss upon her cheek.

Her focus was immediately drawn toward Father. The machines that surrounded his bedside clicked and beeped with their electronic efficiencies. Mother studied them for the smallest changes. Whether good or bad she wanted to know. Every moment at this point was precious.

“Did he talk to you last night?” she asked as she sat in the chair.

The question surprised Mike. “He did, a little.”

“He talked to me yesterday,” she said. “He thought we were getting married. I think he is remembering all the good things.”

Mike didn’t know about that. Mother had been with Father every day for the last thirty-five years. It was no surprise to him there could be a surplus of good memories for her. How couldn’t there be? He, on the other hand, had not been making much time for Father since college. Over the last five years, he saw him purposefully two days a year: Fourth of July and Christmas. Beyond that, they talked mildly on the phone. Outside the subject of law, they didn’t have much to discuss.

“Will you stay for breakfast?” Mother asked.

Her question brought him back to the present. “Yeah, sure, Mom,” he said.

As the day nurse came on, talking with Mother while simultaneously administering to all of Father’s needs, he had a thought.

After breakfast he would forego sleep a bit longer. An old friend, an under-grad in pre-law until his senior year, was now a newspaper editor. Maybe he could help him figure out this puzzle.

***

Daniel worked for
The Riverfront Times
, a weekly rag supported mainly by advertisements for strip clubs and bars that were handed out free to the public. Occasionally it broke a real news story. In the world of journalism, it was a by-line for Daniel, something that would look good on his resume in retrospect. In reality, it was nothing more than a regular paycheck.

Mike had hoped to catch him at the office. After leaving three voice-mail messages, he was almost asleep when Daniel returned his call. Shaking off the cobwebs, they agreed to meet for a late lunch downtown.

After the waitress with a purposefully exposed cleavage left them alone to eat their toasted ravioli and pizza, they were able to talk.

“Sorry about your dad,” Daniel said through a mouthful deep fried pasta.

“Shit happens,” Mike said. He took a slice from the pizza, but had lost his appetite. “I need you to help me with something, if you can.”

“Yeah, man. Anything.”

“I’m not sure if this is legit.”

“Where I work, that’s our specialty.”

“I want to know if you can find out about a case my Dad would have worked. It’s probably nothing and I doubt you will find anything.”

“So what,” Daniel said as he let out a smelly belch. “I spend most of my day going over copy written by amateurs that wouldn’t be taken seriously by a comic book publisher. I’ll run your dad through all the databases. You would be surprised. We all leave digital footprints. Things you wouldn’t have thought anybody could know are somewhere. It’s a matter of looking in the right place.”

“Thanks, Dan,” Mike said.

“Your dad was a great sheriff. I’m sure I’ll find a ton of stuff.”

Mike almost corrected his friend then stopped himself. His use of the past tense in reference to his father was not that far from wrong.

***

Mike was barely able to get four hours of sleep before his shift. After a quick shower, he threw on jeans and a t-shirt despite the cool northerner coming in. The light jacket that had seemed overkill a couple days before now couldn’t keep him warm.

Quickly walking into the hospital room, worried he was late, he felt little relief in arriving ten minutes early.

“Sorry”, Mike said trying to apologize. “I overslept.”

Uncle Henry was once again kicked back with his boots on the bed. He was reading one of the books Mike had brought with him last night. A paperback Mike had grabbed without much thought from the ‘Oprah’ section about two brothers who sell knives door-to-door for a living. Hell, if she liked it, there was fifty-fifty shot he might as well.

Dog-earing the page to mark his place, Uncle Henry looked his nephew over.

“It’s dang near winter, fella. Where’s your coat?”

“How’s Dad doing?”

“No change.”

Mike wanted to know more.

“Did he say anything?”

“Oh, sure,” Uncle Henry said falsely, “he said if you see that know-it-all boy of mine, tell him to get a coat from my closet.”

“Funny,” Mike said, “you should take that act on the road.”

“Believe I will,” Uncle Henry said. While he put on his coat, he kept hold of the book, shoving it through the sleeve. The pages curled into a thick half-circle. Its cover was now misshapen and creased. Mike almost laughed aloud thinking about how distraught the librarian would be at seeing this.

“Mind if I hang on to this?” Uncle Henry asked waving the book.

“Might as well.”

After he gave his uncle a playful bear-hug goodnight, he took over in the chair. Five minutes into his shift, Mike fell asleep.

***

Mike awoke with a start. He didn’t realize how tired he truly had been. Mad at himself for it, he reconciled his thoughts of inadequacy by vowing to not allow it happen again.

Father was awake, staring at him. His mouth clamped tight, almost in a grimace, his jaw moved left-to-right as he ground his teeth.

“Dad,” Mike said blinking and rubbing his sleep-swelled eyes, “It was an accident. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

Father’s jaw unlocked with a viciousness.

“You’ll burn in hell for this, you lousy son-of-a-bitch. I don’t give a good goddamn who your family knows up there in Jeff City or how much money they have.”

Tonight, Mike promised himself, he would not play games. He wanted answers. If Father was trying to send him a message, it was his duty to decipher the code.

“What is it? Who do you think I am?”

“Don’t act stupid. Maybe most folks around here don’t give a rat’s ass about some little colored girl, but I do. I already called the sheriff and told him what I know you’ve done. He said he’d be here soon enough. Until then, I’m not to let you out of my sight.” The exertion of speaking tired him more than a ten-mile run. Father carefully chose his next words. “I hope the sheriff let’s me cut your balls off.”

Exhausted, his eyes fluttered closed.

Mike hadn’t liked what father had said, but was glad he was consistent. Any doubts he had as to his father’s sanity were disqualified. He was of sound mind if only it was in a distant memory.

***

Mother brought Mike a coat, one of Father’s many and insisted he put it on before leaving the hospital room. It was a full size to big, accustomed to wider shoulders and a larger tummy. The furry lamb’s wool lining dyed dark blue was warm and soft. Two silver rings, where a badge would have been clipped over the left breast, were vacant. He felt like a child playing dress-up.

After breakfast with Mother, he came home. Daniel’s voice echoed from the answering machine as he came through the door. He rushed to pick-up the cordless extension, tripped, and fell in a slide across the linoleum kitchen floor. Embarrassed, he used the counter’s ledge to get back to his feet.

With regret, Mike pressed the machine’s play button. Where his mother loathed tardiness, he hated voice mail, forced to listen to people as they pretended to talk to the person they had called. It seemed counterintuitive. Likewise, he shunned cell phones. How the world’s problems were going to somehow be solved while driving seventy miles per-hour was a mystery to him.

“Hey, Mike it’s Dan. You there, buddy?” Daniel asked igniting another pet peeve of Mike’s. It was like writing a letter with the opening sentence asking if you were reading this. Some things were apparent. “Guess not. Look, dude I’ve been checking sources against what you told me, but haven’t found anything that sits on all four legs. I’m on my way now to meet a buddy. He’s got stuff going back before the bible. I’ve got a hell of a busy day ahead of me. Call me on my cellie if you want, but that’s pretty much it for now. I will be in the office all day tomorrow fact-checking. Let’s have a couple of brew-hahas for old time sake, say about six at Fred’s place tomorrow night? Anyway, call me, dude. Let me know what’s up.”