Old Powder Man (43 page)

That summer Buzz was in town for several weeks. They took the wives out to dinner and played cards. Afternoons when he did not feel like doing much, Buzz sat with him. They talked about old times. Buzz asked what advice he'd give a young boy starting out as he had. Son said, Don't. He'd hate to see any young boy starting out to stay on the road the way he had. Then I'd tell him one thing I learned quick. Don't ever order any kind of egg out on the road but a fried one; and don't eat it unless it'll stand up and look at you. They talked of things they were proud of. Son said one thing was thinking up the way to set off a whole line of charges with one cap. He sat back, laughing so hard he had to have a whiff of oxygen afterward. Once he had been shooting such a charge, a ditch in a farmer's pasture. At the last minute the man said he had his prize Black Angus bull in there; but it was too late. As the charge went off the bull straddled it, was lifted straight up; he came down tail first and lit out, unhurt, running. That farmer told me, Son said, reaching for the oxygen again, he didn't find that bull for three days!

Buzz left, saying he'd see him Christmas. O.K., old man, Son said. Take it easy, thinking, Roll-o would be here too.

In the fall he crawled behind decrepit leaning school buses overloaded with cotton pickers, a water barrel strapped to the rear, Jesus Saves scrawled along the side. With cool weather people were inside and only dogs stood at doors. The foliage was gone, the countryside was bare, and he had covered every road he could find more than once and began to stay at home. One day he thought about a steak and a butcher shop across town where they would cut a good one. Kate had gone out. He asked Sarah to come with him. She exchanged working shoes for her Sunday pumps, put on a brown wool tam, doubled a shiny velveteen ascot across her neck. They bought steak and pork sausage the butcher made the way, they both said, their Mammy had. What did she need to make a cherry pie? He bought those things. He bought dog candy on display and peppermint sticks for himself and Sarah. While Tippy ate on the back seat, they ate. He drove Sarah to see the first little bungalow he had ever owned and Sarah told about her sister who wanted to buy a house. He told things her sister ought to know before she did. Another time, having bought another steak and more candy, he drove Sarah out from the city to see his office. He told how he had come to have it, how he had gotten into the dynamite business, some about good times and bad, and about the redecorating he had done. He gave her more advice for her sister, who was negotiating about the house, and told what it had been like giving up his business.

Regularly they went to buy food that struck his whimsy, Sarah in her Sunday clothes. They bought pecans from a friend of hers who had a good crop and was selling them cheap. A week, he sat by the gas logs shelling pecans. Later Kate was to say it was then he began talking to her in a way he never had, even asking questions about things she did, people she saw.

One morning a dozen roses arrived. Coming from the door in amazement, holding the card that read Happy Birthday from Frank, Kate entered his room and bent anxiously to the bed. He lay so still, so pale, and it was unusually late. But he was breathing. She waited a long while until he woke. He had had to take a pill, toward dawn. He struggled up and she motioned to the flowers she had set in the room. “Frank, I never have been so surprised,” she said. He grinned and she said, “How did you know it was my birthday?”

He said, “Hell, you've talked about it for a week.”

She said, “I've talked about it thirty years and I never got anything before.”

He said, “I was too busy selling powder to listen. How old are you?”

“Fifty-five,” she said. “And you don't have to put it in the newspaper either.”

“Whew. Pretty soon I'm going to be sixty years old. Goddamn,” he said. He got up and went to eat and talked to Sarah about problems her sister was having with her mortgage. Kate went into the kitchen, having decided to make herself a birthday cake. Once she came out to say she was making the kind Cally had. When the doorbell rang, he got up and went into the living room to see the man Sarah let in. Holding his hat, the man said, “Dynamite, you remember me?”

Son said, “Damn, if I know.”

He introduced himself. He was one of the salesmen Son had run out of the territory. He had been out ever since, selling equipment in the southeastern part of the state: retired, he had come to live with his son. They talked until the man said he had to go home, his daughter-in-law was expecting him. “I was driving by and saw your name on the mailbox and I got to thinking about old times. I didn't see what difference it all made now. I just thought I'd like to see old Dynamite.”

“I'm mighty glad you stopped in,” Son said.

“This being retired now ain't what it's cracked up to be, is it?”

“Naw,” Son said. “I guess all us old peckerwoods were any good for was work. We worked too, didn't we?”

“You can say that,” he said, shaking hands. Son said stop in again when he had a chance and the man said he would. Son stood at the door a long time, having watched him go, breathing in. Then from the closet he took an old leather jacket he had worn to shoot ditches in the fall.

Kate had closed the oven door when Sarah, wide-eyed, tip-toed in, saying in a whisper for no reason except from surprise, “Mrs. Wynn, come quick and look.” They stood together at the front window in astonishment. He was halfway down the driveway in slow but certain steps. At the end, he stood, hands in his pockets, looking both ways. Shortly, he returned. Kate said, “Sarah, I swear he's been taking more oxygen lately. I think he's getting better.”

“He been looking better to me too,” she said. “I pray so.”

He came inside saying he had just thought he could make it; and he had. “I got to have my wind up if I'm going to start teaching Roll-o to fight when he comes.”

In the kitchen Kate struggled with herself and won. The rum flavoring she did not put into the cake, she returned to the shelf. She had acknowledged long ago it was the first drink in the morning she had to get past; if she did, she was all right the rest of the day. She had finished the icing when he came in and said, “Tippy's about to run me crazy to go for a ride. I reckon I'll go out and get a haircut.”

“This late,” she said.

He said, “We'll be back just at suppertime.”

Through the cold smoke-colored afternoon he drove over streets where long-abandoned street car tracks were still imbedded, that once he had travelled on his way to meet Poppa, to work. He was able to park in front of the shop and when he went inside Tippy scrabbled to the car window to watch. He decided on a shave and longer than necessary the barber held a hot towel to his face, bringing a color good to see. When he said so, Son said he had been to Hot Springs since he was sick and the attendants there said they never had seen anybody the baths did so much good. They talked about horse racing at Hot Springs. He hadn't done any gambling in years, Son said, but use to like to throw his money in. The street lights came on; he looked out at cold, scurrying people, glad to be in the warm shop among the familiar masculine smells. Running a satisfied hand over smooth cheeks, he climbed from the chair as the barber shook out his white towel; he whisked a broom across Son's shoulders. “Much obliged,” he said, paying.

The barber, holding the coat that seemed too big, too heavy, said, “Come back to see us.” Son put two pennies into a peanut machine and with a handful of nuts got into the car, Tippy greeting him. Again, he followed abandoned tracks until they disappeared, alternated eating peanuts and feeding them to Tippy. The smell of the cake, like Cally's, had been with him when he left home and had made him think of some of the better times he had had as a boy. The peanuts reminded him of eating hot roasted ones at ball games on Sunday afternoons; that made him think back to all the steaks he had eaten and whisky he had drunk with all the old boys. It had been good seeing Buzz, that other dynamite fellow this afternoon; recently Holston and a couple of others had phoned to say they had been thinking of him. Things seemed to be getting a little better. He was proud as he could be of that walk down the driveway today, wondered if he could beat this thing yet. He looked forward to warmer weather, spring, thought of all the mornings he had started out into one to shoot ditches, could not help grinning as he turned into the driveway thinking of the ways he had invented to do it. He drove fast down the driveway to splay gravel, hear it hit the underside of the car, as he always did. Winter made him think of the times he had worked wet, of the bad case of flu he had had years ago; he always would believe those things had weakened his chest, made him get sick the way he had. He sat in the garage, a hand against his chest before, aware of the effort it took, he climbed from the car and entered the kitchen at ten minutes after six.

Kate had let Sarah go home; they were only having cake and soup for supper. She put two bowls, full, on the table and by the time it cooled and they had eaten it was six-thirty. There were some wrestling matches on he had hoped to see. She said go on, she'd bring the cake in the living room. Was she going to watch too?

She said she might as well. She put the soup bowls into the sink and had cut one piece of cake, was cutting the other when she thought she heard him call. She went to the living room. He was sitting in his chair, one hand flat against his chest. The television was on but there was neither picture nor sound. Turning his head as she entered, he said, “Kate, I never have felt like this before.”

As she started to reply, his head went back, his mouth opened and his eyes closed.

Over and over she would tell those who wanted to know, Laurel, Cecilia, Sarah, how it had been; she thought he had called her but she was not sure. She had gone to the living room at that instant, maybe just to continue the conversation it had taken them thirty years to start. Afterward, when the walls enclosed her and bars at the window, she would wake to hear again her own inadequate scream. She would tell the doctor how much time she had lost looking for an ambulance's number before she dropped the book and called the operator instead. Taking her hands, he would say, “No, Mrs. Wynn, the ambulance was there at six forty-five. You held the book only an instant before you called the operator and told her to call Dr. Phillips too.”

“Oh did I do everything right?” she said.

“Everything,” he said.

“They put him on a stretcher and I kept telling them Frank took oxygen and begged them over and over to give him some oxygen. Then we were in the ambulance and the intern looked up and said, ‘But mam, we are,' and he wouldn't tell me anything. I waited in the corridor by myself, then Dr. Phillips came out of the emergency room carrying Frank's wallet and a big ring of keys he carried even after he sold his business and his diamond ring. He opened my pocketbook and put them inside and I said, ‘Is Frank breathing?'

“And he said, ‘No, he isn't.'”

It rained the morning of the funeral and Laurel, waking in her old bed, thought, He never saw Roll-o again; don't let it rain too.

The baby slept in his crib and George beside her. For thirty-seven hours her suitcases had remained in the middle of the floor and she could neither unpack nor move them. They held all her clothes; it had been her intent, packing, never to see California again, as if everything had been that place's fault. She heard Kate pass, breathing and a rustle of taffeta robe, down the dark hall. In the kitchen tap water ran and a glass was replaced. Kate cleared her throat passing along the hall again, into her bedroom. Laurel spoke to herself so clearly it might have been aloud, glancing once at George as she left the room. Entering Son's, she woke Cecilia sleeping in a voluminous white gown, only her face visible against the white sheets. Afterward Laurel would think Cecilia had not even questioned, had merely gotten up in the dark hour to help, and would sense again what it meant to have left her family. She said, “Aunt Cecilia, I'm determined about one thing more than I've ever been in my life. She's coming to the funeral sober or not at all.”

“What should we do?” Cecilia said.

“We've got to throw it all away,” Laurel said. Finding the cabinet open, she thought how it must have been for Kate, in possession of the keys at last. They emptied the bottles into the bathroom sink. The last fifth, full, went slowly, the fumes in the room overpowering, and Laurel could not help smiling, heard him say clearly, Phew! if that's not the biggest waste of good whisky I've ever seen. She should have hidden the bottles or at least given them away. In raincoat and boots, she took them across the yard to the alley, tumbled them breaking into the trash and looked up to see Sarah watching. She came through the gate and closed it and around to Sarah's door, which stood open. Fire in the stove made the room hot. Sarah, holding her robe close, said, “Dr. Phillips come and get me that night and I stayed in the house with her. She kep' on getting up and opening that cabinet all night. I tried to tell her. I said the house going to be full of folks in the morning. She going to see the baby soon. She say, ‘He been looking forward all this time to that baby coming and now he going to be here and so what?' Seem like she don't care about nothing no more, Miss Laurel.”

Not about doing one final thing for him, with dignity and with love, Laurel thought. She said, “She's not coming to the funeral if she's been drinking.”

“No'm,” Sarah said.

The rain had dwindled to sea spray, a mist; against the window, a final moment, there were drops the size of tears. Kindling settled, making the fire spurt, fade, and shadows loomed on the ceiling, life-sized. It had been dark in the house that night too; he had said, I'm going to murder somebody around here! and she had been embarrassed after the fear, once he had turned like a rumpled mistaken animal back to its lair. Now she was embarrassed about that, having known compassion too late. Standing in Sarah's small room, she swore she would never make that mistake again. She turned a face that was wiser toward the other who said, “I guess he was about the most lonesomest person I've ever seen,” and she thought, I'll bear it because I have to: I can't run anymore. She would restrain Kate however she had to, publicly or by law. She had glanced once around the room and Sarah said, “You remember this?” From her rocking chair, she took a large stuffed dog.