The Fence My Father Built (12 page)

T
he rain let up by late afternoon, allowing all of us to rest. The drips now plunked slowly, as annoying as the leaky faucets in the house. Nova complained incessantly, when she wasn’t sleeping, and Tru had that “cabin fever” look that kids get on rainy days. Even my aunt and uncle appeared to be weary of so many bodies crammed into their home. I wished we had somewhere else to go to give them privacy. Truthfully, I would have given almost anything for a few hours by myself.

Next thing I knew, Lutie was wearing a flowered dress and had her Bible tucked under her arm. It was Sunday night, after all. “I’m ready,” she said. “Muri, you and the kids want to come along? We have a fiddler and a banjo and can they ever get the gospel rolling. Don’t we?” Tiny nodded. He held open the screen and Lutie got up to leave.

“What time is it, anyway?” Bleary-eyed Nova wanted to know. After she had slept on it for so long, her hair looked more electric than usual. It was all bunched up on one side, giving her head a lopsided look.

“Day's nearly over, honey,” Aunt Lutie said and stepped back inside the door. “Come join us at services, will you?”

“Services?” I said.

“Red Rock Tabernacle. We’d love to see your sweet faces in the pew.”

“Maybe if we had more warning, Aunt Lutie. I’m a mess, and Nova is still nursing her hangover.”

“I wouldn’t be caught dead in a church,” Nova said.

“A polite
no, thank you
will do,” I said. I glared at my daughter.

“I’ll go.” Tru volunteered, and my aunt and uncle accepted him as the delegate from the family. “Come on, dork,” he teased his sister. “In church they don’t care if you’re ugly.”

“Leave me alone,” Nova moaned and retreated back to bed. She didn’t understand how difficult a simple thing like being alone could be.

Lutie wasn’t offended, at least that's what she said. “You go on now,” she said, “get some rest, Nova. There's plenty of time to get acquainted at church.”

Tiny's truck roared outside, and Lutie hustled to join him. “Pastor likes to start at 6:30 P.M. on the dot,” she said over her shoulder. “On the dot.”

When they were gone my ears filled with silence. I grabbed a Barbara Kingsolver novel and dove in, and then I realized I’d chosen
Pigs In Heaven
. I laughed. In Murkee, truth was stranger than fiction.

T
he next morning, Tru busied himself floating sticks in the many puddles outside, and Tiny stretched out his huge frame on the sofa. Lutie and I finished cleaning up from the rain. We scrubbed pots and pans and washed soggy towels, while Lutie yakked about church. I admit I wasn’t paying attention to anything except the task at hand and the million thoughts streaming through my mind.

Tru came back inside and was the first to notice. “Hasn’t Uncle Tiny been sleeping a long time?” he whispered to me. I’d gotten lost in a daydream about buying books for the Murkee Lending Library.

“Uncle won’t wake up, Mom,” he said, tugging at my arm. “Something's wrong.” Lutie always harped at Tiny to watch his “sugar,” but most of the time he appeared to eat whatever he pleased.

Until I saw him unconscious on the sofa, I’d conveniently forgotten that he was diabetic. We took turns shaking Tiny, but he didn’t respond. I put my ear close to his face and felt
small shallow breaths and smelled a fermented odor. His skin, pale and clammy, was a dead giveaway. My uncle was in a diabetic coma.

“Has this ever happened before?” I asked, pulling on my sneakers. My uncle reminded me of a kid who’d keeled over one day in my library. We’d have to act fast.

“It's his sugar again,” Lutie whispered. When she said it, sugar had a capital S. “The doctors over in Bend think he needs insulin, but he's stubborn as an old mule. Says needles scare him.” Her voice wavered. “They say there's new pills, but he won’t listen.” She knelt beside her husband. Her hands shook as she stroked his forehead. “Wake up now, honey,” she said. “Please, dear Lord Jesus, let him wake up.”

The composure she had shown on the day Jim had been wounded wasn’t evident now. Instead, she wept and prayed loudly, unwrapping the cocooned portrait of Jesus as she wailed.

“Should I go get Dr. Rubin, Mom?” Tru was visibly upset, but he looked ready to run for help. I wasn’t sure why, but right then I pictured my father, taking charge, calmly giving orders.

“I don’t think we have that much time, son,” I said, and then turned to Lutie. “We’ve got to get him to the clinic fast. If we can just get him to the door, I can back the van right up.”

“Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord,” was all my aunt could say.

“We could roll him into that big wheelbarrow outside,” Tru said. The boy was a genius.

“Go get it.”

Even in the absence of my father's direction, I was surprised at how calm I was. My thoughts were crisp and sharp, and I wasn’t afraid. We’d get my uncle into the van (later we might laugh about how we’d toted him in the rusted-out
Sears Special with the flat front tire) and I’d send Nova over to Rubin's to call ahead to the Murkee Clinic. Tru would keep an eye on Tiny while I drove to town fast, but not so fast that we got stuck in some mud puddle. I’d make sure that Lutie wore her seat belt and keep her from wigging out altogether.

I’d never tried to lift a three-hundred-pound man before, but sometimes you do things you never thought possible. With Nova and Tru's help we managed to push and shove Tiny, still unconscious, into the van. I put my ear to his face and was relieved to feel his breath again. At least he was still with us.

Lutie and I both prayed, not caring who heard. Lutie was in a dazed state, and her prayers kept getting jumbled up with tears. After making sure Nova was headed to Rubin's, I set off. In my rearview mirror I could see Jim's snout pressed against the window.

All the way to town I shouted back at Tru. “Can you feel his pulse? Is he still breathing?” I mentally rehearsed the CPR I’d retaken last year and instructed Tru to keep his uncle covered.

“How much longer?” he kept shouting back, while Lutie gripped the dash and muttered “Lord, Lord, Lord.” I took a deep breath after I nearly hit another pothole still brimming with rain.

The clinic in Murkee turned out to be staffed by Dr. Perkins, who looked to be about five minutes away from retirement. He sat at a desk, working a crossword puzzle. When I explained the situation his boots clunked sharply against the floor, and he moved faster than I thought he could. He grabbed his bag and went outside to where Tiny still lay in the van. I wasn’t foolish enough to try to lift my uncle a second time. Besides, Lutie, according to Tru, was “totally sketched out” and sat shivering next to her husband.

“Now Lutie Pearl,” Dr. Perkins said softly, “Let me have a look. This young lady here tells me he's forgotten about that diet I put him on.” He examined Tiny and then addressed me. “We’ll need to call in the Medivac,” he said. “Right now.”

I nodded. “How much danger is he in?”

“Plenty.” He yelled back to his receptionist and instructed her to arrange for the helicopter to airlift my uncle to the hospital in Bend. He added, “Stat.”

It took forever for the chopper to arrive. While we waited, the doctor got an IV going and Tiny moved in and out of consciousness. My uncle complained of how thirsty he was and guzzled two sodas, although he said he’d have preferred iced tea. “I’m just itching all over too,” he said. His eyes were ringed with dark circles.

“You look like a raccoon,” Tru said, trying to keep Uncle Tiny occupied. Tiny laughed, but it was a weak shaky laugh, and he still looked ashen.

Dr. Perkins insisted on giving Lutie a tranquilizer. He also handed sodas to Tru and me and gave directions on the best route to the hospital. We would drive there, and Dr. Perkins would phone Rubin to pass the news along to Nova. I tried to ignore the tired soreness in my back and how much I wished someone else was there to be strong.

Someone like Rubin, I thought, although I was still upset with him about Nova. Maybe it was silly, but suddenly, I wanted someone to take care of me. I wanted to be held and told everything would be okay. Gripping the steering wheel, looking out into faraway clouds and late afternoon shadows, my eyes ached to cry, but I couldn’t. Lutie had fallen asleep next to me, but Tru was still awake and singing, “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” The way things were going, it made more sense to laugh.

T
he hospital only kept Tiny one night, and the rest of us slept in the waiting room on cracked green-vinyl furniture. Lutie snored, and I watched the clock, wondering why I hadn’t asked for knock-out pills too. Tru was too tired to stay awake. I thought he looked angelic where he lay crumpled on a small padded bench, a lamp backlighting his hair. At some point, I must have dozed off.

“Are you Mrs. Antonio Ramirez?” The clerk who had shaken me awake wore a shell pink sweater draped around her shoulders, and she smelled of lavender.

“No, I’m Mrs. Ramirez's niece,” I said. I sat up. I could imagine how I looked by now but reminded myself that hospital personnel must see disheveled people all the time. We’d dropped everything when the crisis occurred and wore the same clothes we were wearing when we’d mopped up from the rain. Lutie's was one of those polyester outfits with pants and a top that matched: three different shades of blue in a wild geometric pattern.

Aromas only found in these places—a sickening mixture of hurt and healing—made my nose water, the way extra spicy foods can. My stomach felt queasy.

“You can see him now.” The clerk's crepe-soled shoes squeaked as she walked away.

We all used the facilities. I dragged a brush through my hair, found some mints at the bottom of my purse, and popped them in my mouth. Lutie washed her face in the ladies’ room sink. Then she sat down on the small restroom chair and opened her Bible.

“Aren’t you anxious to see him?” I couldn’t believe she wanted to hold her devotions at a time like this.

She looked up. “We have an agreement, the Lord and me,” she said, smoothing the tissue-thin pages of her
Word
, as she called it. “I start my day with my spiritual food, and he takes care of the rest.”

“Breakfast of Champions?” I laughed and opened the restroom door to make sure Tru was all right.

“Gives me all the pep I need.” She closed the book. I might have heard her mutter, “Amen.”

I got a stab of longing for the faith I’d laid aside long ago, before Chaz and children and some bitterness of my own had shriveled it for lack of tending. One of the only Bible verses I knew echoed in my head:
The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face to shine upon you, and give you peace. And give you peace
. The singing, in a man's raspy voice, could’ve been someone I once knew.

Tiny was sitting up in bed, his skinny legs poking out of the hospital gown. In the other beds lay two older men who argued over the TV.

The patient in the next bed couldn’t seem to remember how the TV remote worked. Drainage tubes stuck out from beneath the man's sheets. I got the idea he was trying to raise or lower the foot or the head of the bed, but all he did was cut away from an infomercial to an old western. The man laid his
head back on the pillow and pulled up his legs so they tented the covers, which partially blocked the second man's view.

That guy, maybe a few years younger, might have been a stroke patient, the way his mouth hung in a permanent scowl on one side of his face. He had the personality to match his predicament, and he glared at his roommate each time the channel switched. Neither of them spoke as they channel surfed and then stared at each other in a silent war.

“Man, am I ever starved,” was the first thing Tiny said.

“Me too,” Tru said, his eyes still foggy with sleep. “Starved.”

“They put you on a special diet,” Lutie said. She sat on the bed next to him. She laid her head against Tiny's shoulder, as if to say,
Whew, how close was that
?

“Probably nothing I can eat except rabbit food,” Tiny grumbled. “I hate rabbit food.” He looked down at the top of his wife's head and kissed it lightly. “Sorry.”

An enormous metal cart appeared in the hallway, with trays stacked several layers high. A young man with a moustache and those clear plastic gloves food servers wear attended the cart. After checking the attached card, he brought in Tiny's breakfast tray.

Tiny lifted the stainless steel lid and said, “This it?” He looked like a kid opening up the prize from a cereal box, only to discover how small the toy is compared to the picture.

“You got it.” This guy probably heard a similar complaint about every five minutes. You could tell by the way he plopped the tray in front of Tiny.

“Wheat toast, poached egg, oatmeal, an orange. Smells good,” I volunteered. I felt twinges of hunger, too, along with a headache. I needed some coffee soon.

“When we visited Grandpa in Portland that time, they had a McDonald's right in the hospital,” Tru said. He was referring
to Benjamin's latest medical problem with angina. I hated it when he called Benjamin
Grandpa
, but there was no way around it. My stepfather bought the kids lavish presents and took them to fancy restaurants, but he didn’t have the foggiest notion of what his grandchildren liked. He didn’t care, either, in my opinion.

“I don’t think this place has Mickey D's,” I said. Tru looked crestfallen. “You’ll have to settle for whatever they have.”

“Well, I’m not eating anything gross like oatmeal,” he said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Amen, buddy. I could go for some bacon and hash browns,” Tiny said. He sighed loudly but then dug in. We watched him bolt his food. When the aide came back, Tiny asked for seconds, but the man shook his head no. Before leaving, the guy, who was a bit of a smart aleck, if you ask me, said my uncle was being discharged.

The patient with the drainage tubes sticking out from under the thin covers waved his arms at the aide. His body had slid so far down in the bed that his feet pressed against the foot rail. “Can you help me?” he croaked. But the door had already swung shut.