Making Waves (25 page)

“I've been begging Jesus to forgive me, and now I need to ask you to. Because I see now I not only did Tim wrong, I did you wrong, too.” Her pale eyes looked at me pleadingly. Without her teeth, her words were slurred somewhat, like a drunk. I had to lean close to understand her.

“Aunt Della—,” I began, but she grabbed my hand hard, surprising me with the force of her grip, her large bony hand covering mine.

“No, baby—you listen to me. When you would ask me about Tim these past two years, I always told you he was okay. But I knew he wasn't—I knew he was lame and that he couldn't use his right arm. But—I was scared, Taylor. I was so scared you'd have another nervous breakdown if you knew … so I let you think he wasn't bad hurt....” Her voice broke off in a sob and tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes.

I reached over and touched the teardrops that fell, wiping them away with my fingertips.

“Aunt Della, you did what you thought you had to do. Okay—so it was wrong, in a way. But your heart was right.”

Still she shook her head, closing her eyes tightly. “Not for Tim it wasn't. Poor little thing! I let him think you didn't care enough about him to call or—nothing. I don't see how neither one of y'all can forgive me.”

I took her chin in my hand, turning her face toward me, and she looked at me with shame glistening in her tear-filled eyes.

“You hush about that, you hear?” I told her firmly. “You and I both made mistakes. But I did mine out of self-centeredness and yours was an attempt to save me. Knowing your honesty, I can only imagine how much that cost you. You've paid for your sins. You can't pay for mine—I gotta do that.”

“But—how, honey?” she whispered, looking up at me. “Me and Harris both—give him credit—tried to help Tim afterwards. He was too proud to accept anything from us, even a job at the bank from Harris. He kept insisting the wreck wasn't your fault.”

I shook my head. “Damned idiot—he knows better than that.”

“I don't know what he'll let you do…”

“I don't know either, Aunt Della,” I admitted. “But I'll find a way to do something. That I can promise you.”

“Baby? You've got to face Tim again before you can do anything else. You've
got
to. Promise me you will.” Again her gnarled old hand grabbed mine painfully. “I know one thing for sure—if you give me your word you won't break it.”

“I'll see him, Aunt Della. I promise you that.”

A faint smile touched her lips, though I could have been imagining it, the light from the hallway was so dim. She let go of my hand and nodded. “I'm putting that on my prayer list. Right now.” And she closed her eyes.

I was stretched out in my bed later, smoking a cigarette in the dark. In spite of the scare of the dizzy spell and my fear for Aunt Della, I couldn't help smiling to myself remembering her horror when she realized I was going to have to help her undress. I almost lost it when I looked at her as I pulled her dress over her head and noticed that her eyes were tightly closed. She was like a refugee from another era, somehow caught in a time warp in the eighties. Sarah said that both Aunt Della and her Aunt Maudie were so incredibly naive, it blew her mind. We had a long bullshitty discussion of small-town life and the way it shelters one from the larger world. Actually, we had this conversation the other night on the banks of the Black Warrior, over a beer, passing a cigarette back and forth.

I smashed my cigarette out in the bottle cap I used for an ashtray, dropped the butt down an empty beer bottle by my bed, and turned over, hoping to get a decent night's sleep. Even though Aunt Della scared the hell out of me when we got home, it had been a good night—just being with Sarah made it good. Seeing Tim had thrown me, shaken me up more than I realized until now. And Tim—he'd surprised me by looking as shaken as me. God! I was at an advantage, in a way, having seen him from a distance at the football field my first day back. But me suddenly materializing like that, right before his eyes … I bet he almost shit a brick to look up and see me there. At the Catfish Cabin in Mt. Zion, of all the damn places.

The Catfish Cabin became one of mine and Tim's favorite hangouts after our first trip there, quite a few years ago now. Tim had finished the football season of his sophomore year, the first year he started as a varsity player.

It was sort of a fluke—some good old boy, I can't recall who now, was the first-string quarterback and he got his bell rung third quarter. Desperate, Coach Mills put Tim in and he astonished hell out of everybody with his throwing arm, getting himself written up in all the local papers. By the end of the season, Tim had taken over the starting position and was getting all sorts of attention from state-wide sports writers, heralding him as a young Namath or Montana. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.

So it was after the state playoffs his very first season that we decided to celebrate. I offered to take Tim out on the town for dinner, going into Tuscaloosa to a nice place. I got all dressed up in a dark suit and tie, trying to decide between the Cypress Inn or the University Club, even toying with the idea of going into Birmingham to Southside, when Tim came over. He too was dressed fit to kill, in a god-awful brown polyester suit that he'd borrowed. He had his hair all slicked down and I had to struggle to keep from laughing at him—I couldn't help it, he looked so much like a country boy out for his first night on the town. I held myself together until we got in the car and I told him I hadn't quite decided the best place for us to go to celebrate. His fresh-scrubbed face lit up and he turned to me eagerly.

“The whole time I was getting dressed I kept thinking,” he said breathlessly, “reckon Taylor wants to go someplace
really
nice, like the Catfish Cabin in Mt. Zion? I've always wanted to go there.”

“Man, you've got to be kidding,” I told him, shaking my head in feigned astonishment. “That's
exactly
where I was thinking of taking you!”

After that, going to the Catfish Cabin became our way of celebrating, especially after big victories. The only time we didn't was after Tim's last game, one I'll never forget. It was the first and only time I ever saw Tim drunk.

It was the state championship game, our senior year, Tim's triumph in a career of triumphs. It was his final game, and all the damn reporters, photographers, and TV cameras in the state of Alabama turned out for it. The Blue Devils captured another state championship in divison 3A, mainly because Tim played such an incredible game, completing twenty-four of thirty passes for over four hundred yards and five touchdowns, breaking records like hell. Tim was the one lifted on his teammates' shoulders in the final seconds instead of Coach Mills, though that could have been because no one could lift his fat ass that far.

Donnette, of course, was all over Tim—they were a steady item by then, and pictures of them kissing hit the local papers the next day. She clung so tightly to him that I couldn't get close enough to even congratulate him. I always swore she saw me coming toward him and dragged him to the dressing rooms before I could reach them, unwilling to let me share this triumph with him. Then she stood guard at the door, supposedly to fend off the reporters and all the well-wishers so that Tim could shower and get out of there before being bombarded again.

So I had gone back home then, thinking I'd wait and catch Tim tomorrow, knowing now that the two of us wouldn't be celebrating that night as was our custom. It was a long drive home; the game was played at Legion Field in Birmingham, and I didn't relish driving back alone. Normally I shunned the high school crowd, but for some crazy reason that night, I'd longed to share in the glory of the state championship and resented hell out of Donnette's petty jealousy.

It was much later that same night when Tim and I had our celebration, though at first he almost literally scared the shit out of me. I was sound asleep, sawing logs like an old man, right here in this bed. I never knew what caused me to wake up—my subconscious suddenly knew someone was in my room. I rolled over and Tim was standing there, next to my bed.

“Jesus Christ, man! You scared the shit out of me!” I'd yelled at him. The fool had evidently crawled in my window. It was late November, cold as hell, and even in the dark, I could see a window wide open.

At first he didn't say a thing, just stood there, grinning at me like a possum caught in headlights.

“God, man—I thought you were a ghost or something, appearing in the night—don't ever do anything like that again!” I kept yelling at him. I'd never been so scared; my heart was literally jumping around in my chest like a trout thrown on a riverbank.

Tim laughed like I'd never heard him before. “Hey, Taylor. Were you asleep? Tay-were boy?” Sometimes he mocked Aunt Frances Martha, ribbing me like that.

“Was I—naw, of course not! I'm rarely asleep at three o'clock in the morning; I like to close my eyes and snore like hell and fake it. What in the name of sweet Jesus are you doing here, man?” I couldn't believe my eyes. Straight-as-an-arrow Tim, doing something that weird.

Tim was in dress pants, a button-down shirt, and his blue-and-white letter jacket. The cold moonlight caught the gleam of all the gold footballs decorating the white CHS on his chest. Then I saw a big dark stain on the front of his white shirt. I grabbed my robe off the bedpost and stuck my arms into it, inside out.

“Hey! You okay, Tim?”

I realized then that he didn't look right. His eyes were glazed and he swayed as he stood by my bed in the moonlight, holding on to the bedpost for support. Here I was yelling like a Cajun fishwife at him, and he was hurt or something.

“No, I ain't, Taylor. I'm sick as hell.” His voice was slurred, too.

“Oh, goddammit, Tim—why didn't you tell me—me yelling at you like that?”

Stumbling sleepily over my own feet, I reached for the lamp by my bed. Before I could turn it on, though, Tim grabbed my arm, almost falling on me.

“Don't turn the light on, okay? My eyes hurt.”

I grabbed both his shoulders and turned him around so I could see him better in the bright moonlight. I was terrified to look at the stain, fearing blood and guts, at the very least. And then I knew.

“Well, I'll be damned! You're
drunk
.” The smell of booze was overwhelming—if I hadn't been asleep, I would've noticed it right off. The gory stain was just puke.

Tim started laughing like hell and fell over on my bed. He lay flat on his back and laughed like Br'er Rabbit in the briar patch, a drunken laugh that wouldn't stop, flapping his arms and kicking his feet in delight.

“Oh, shit!” I sank down beside him on the bed. For some reason, the only thing I could think of was that Coach Mills was going to blame me for this, him knowing that me and Tim always celebrated together. He'd love an excuse to beat the crap out of me.

“I can't believe Donnette let you get drunk like this, man,” I sighed.

Tim had finally stopped laughing and was now wiping his eyes on my sheets, like a little kid.

“She don't know,” he muttered, his eyes closed. “After I took her home, I was coming over here to see you. Why didn't you come to the dressing room after the game, man? I looked all over for you, you damn shitass.”

Like a fool, I didn't say anything, not wanting him to think I was trying to turn him against Donnette.

“On the way over here,” Tim continued, “I ran into Tater and Matthew and them—Pleese Davis gave us some moonshine to celebrate.”

“That sorry son-of-a-bitch white trash! Goddammit, Tim, that rotgut stuff will kill you,” I yelled, furious with Pleese, with Tater Dyer's sorry redneck ass, wishing I could beat hell out of all of them, or at least that I could slap Tim sober. He never drank, never broke his precious training, not even for an occasional beer.

“Why did you drink that stuff, you goddam fool—you've got better sense than that!”

Tim just shrugged, giggling helplessly again, and I continued to rant and rave. “And why the hell did you crawl in my window?”

It was the only time I could remember being mad at Tim since we became buddies in the ninth grade. What if I'd seen him at the window, got Aunt Della's old shotgun, and killed his ass? I was thinking I should shoot him anyway, upsetting me like that. His answer was a snore. He'd fallen instantly asleep, lying halfway across my bed.

I didn't even try to shake him awake, having been in his situation enough to know the futility. No, I'd have to let him sleep it off right where he was, lying across my bed, and unload all the schoolbooks and crap from the other bed and try to sleep the rest of the night there. Tim and I had been friends for years, but we'd never slept over at each other's place. What an occasion!

I knew I'd never be able to sleep with the smell of puke so strong in the room, that nostalgic odor of drunken adolescence. So I began to pull Tim's jacket off of him. It wasn't as hard to do as I expected; he hadn't fallen into a total dead drunk state yet. I lifted each of his arms and lugged on the sleeves until I freed the jacket. His arms fell limply down and he snorted loudly again.

I threw the jacket on the floor, then began to unbutton the soiled shirt. God, it stunk like hell! Yanking it off him, I wadded it up and tossed it as far as I could into the darkened room. Turning back, I removed his loafers. Only then did I hear some sort of moaning sound from Tim. He was trying to say something to me.