Hearts Left Behind (18 page)

After I vomited in the men’s room, Dad said goodbye to
his buddies and ushered me out.  I was expecting laughter and jokes at my
expense, but none came. 
Maybe because he was ashamed of
me.
  Maybe because he saw I was ashamed of myself.

He drove me back to his apartment and laid out sheets
on his couch for me to sleep on.  When he said good night and turned to go
to his bedroom, I grabbed him and wrapped my arms around him.  He tried to
wrestle out of my grasp, but I held him tight. 
Pulled
him in.
 
Held him strong until he gave up his
efforts to break away.
  I was bigger than him in every way and I’m
not sure he had actually realized it before that moment.  It must have
scared him to find himself so much smaller than me.  It must have made him
think that he was less than he once was, when the truth was that we were both
more than we had ever been.  I told him I loved him.  Like some
drunken fool in a beer commercial, but also like some longing son.

“Another one?” asked the barkeep, yanking me back to
now. 
“Vodka tonic, right?”

I nodded.

This is the problem with not moving far from home -
with not leaving parents, grandparents, and history behind.  You can’t rub
your hands on the mahogany bar at Joe’s without knowing that part of your
father is soaked in to the grains of the wood. 
Grandpa
Mueller
, too.
  This has been
a favorite hangout of his and I can see his face looking back at me from inside
the mirror on the wall behind the bar.  My world is haunted by all these
ghosts.  Some of them
gone,
all of them
living.  Memories of them all half buried beneath flimsy little tombstones
in my mind that mark that which once mattered or – just as often it seemed –
what never mattered at all.

I’ll tell you one thing I hope for.  I hope that
in some corner of heaven is a tavern where I will
someday reunite with all my family and friends. 
Where Grandma Gaines is young, Katie Cooper is grown, and Ethan is just whoever
Ethan is. 
Some heavenly Joe’s Place where I can sit at
the bar with Dad on one side and Grandpa Mueller on the other and we’re all
young and vibrant.
  Where we will discover that all of those things
that made us each less than what we wanted to be here on earth were not really
part of us at all, but just the imperfections that God needed us to carry
through mortality.  So that each of us could be that particular sinner we
were meant to be.  Each of our little lives a battle to hold down the evil
inside of us, and to hold off the evil around us. 
Because
evil lives and breathes and is as omnipresent as God himself.
 
You’ll find it in your safe places where it stays dormant for days and weeks,
months and years.  It lives and lurks there, greedily stealing in sin and
in silence.

In stillness.

It isn’t always so easy to spot, evil.  Usually
it’s buried inside of some sort of
want. 
The want of smaller things, bigger
things, softer things, harder things, younger things, better things,
things
we don’t have.  Evil is a dragon monster, but
not the fire-breathing kind that lives in fairy tales.  This dragon
monster is a slimy microscopic parasite that burrows, chews, and claws its way
as deep as it can get inside of
some
thing
,
some
place
,
some
one
and attaches itself there.  It sets up camp, makes a home, and then it
spreads.

You’ll
find it
near you and around you. And if you’re honest, you’ll find it in you.  You
can hide and you can be cautious and you can look over your shoulder, but it
will find you.  It will make its way inside. It will disguise itself as a
joy and trick you into opening your heart, welcoming it in, wrapping your arms
around it and loving it.  It is inside of each of us, inside of you right
now. 
Maybe just under your skin or maybe deeper than that.
 
Maybe it flows through your every vein or maybe it’s trapped forever inside
that capped tooth.  Maybe it swims inside some recessive gene, or maybe it
is evil itself that makes your heart beat.  Maybe it’s an all-consuming
obsession for women or for riches and fame or some other lust which cannot be
ignored or suppressed because lust is a weed that grows in the dark.  It
cannot be prayed away, because sin and temptation are necessary evils - as
important in the Christian world as faith and salvation. 
A reason to pray.
  Not for favor, but rather for
strength. 
Strength to slay the dragon monster.

“At age five Tucker is very concerned about
death.  He doesn’t want anybody to die.”

My mother wrote these words in my baby book
over twenty-five years ago and I have not wavered in
my position on the matter.  I still don’t want anybody to die.  This
probably makes me a weak Christian, but I’ll take that bird in the hand every
time.  This life has always been good enough for me.

I suppose that the antidote to this fear of death is a
strong faith, but my faith is just one of my ten thousand weaknesses.  But
in defense of the Weak in Faith everywhere, I have to say that it would be much
easier to believe in a God who took the time to speak to you once in a while. 
I don’t mean speak to you through feathers or back-scratched messages.  I
mean speak to you in a sitting down to dinner and talking about our day sort of
way.

“How was your day today, Tucker?”

“Good, God.  How was your day?  Dinner
smells wonderful.  Filet mignon again!”

Even better would be God the career counselor or God
the life coach.

“What should I do with my life, God?”

“Have you thought about missionary work,
Tucker? 
Or perhaps a career in advertising and sports
marketing?”

Why not just give us tangible proof of heaven?  I
mean
,
to get the
big payoff in the end we would still need to be good people and follow the Ten
Commandments and help old ladies cross the street and all that.  But why
make us wonder if we’re doing it all for naught?  I suppose it has
something to do with the importance of the mystery of faith, but I don’t want
my God to work in mysterious ways.  I want my God to work in pragmatic
ways, which I think would actually go over pretty well with people.

Within a matter of days and in a very non-committal
sort of way, death began to settle inside of Grandma.  Still I was not
really saddened.  Death just quietly crept into
the room on tippy-toes like some exaggerated cartoon monster and I sat back and
watched the transformation like a red light I was waiting to turn green. 
Grandma’s seven day stint in the rehabilitation center became eight. 
Eight days became nine, nine became never-to-leave.  Even though I loved
her as much as ever – maybe even more after these weeks with her and Grandpa -
the thought of her death did not sadden me.  I found an almost anxious
comfort in the fact that she was going to die. 
Like it
was a return to the natural order of things.
  She was seventy-seven
years
old,
it would be okay for her to die.

Or m
aybe Ethan’s
death had changed me, made me hard.  All I knew was that the fact that
life actually ends for each of us at some point was a concept I had struggled
with my entire life and yet somehow I was almost indifferent to the prospect of
losing her.  I loved Grandma very much.  I would miss her
dearly.  It was okay if she died.

I visited her
four
or five times a week for maybe an hour at a time.  She always looked very
tired but complained very little.  Every time that I was there Dad was either
there, too, or had just left or was going to be arriving shortly.  Most
times I brought Tory with me.  She would hold tight to my hand as we
walked those grim hallways that lead to Grandma’s room. 
Old eyes falling on her tenderly.
 
Old
hands reaching out for her.
  Old smells enveloping us, seeping
  inside
.  In us, they saw their past.  In
them, I saw my future.  The place frightened Tory, but she always wanted
to come. 
Always wanted to see Great Grandma.

One time as we were leaving, Tory said to me, “Dad,
how come Great
Grandpa isn’t in here,
too?”

“Well, Great Grandpa isn’t sick like Great Grandma is,
Sweetie,” I said.  But I knew what she was asking.

“But Grandpa Ron isn’t sick and he’s always here with
Great Grandma.”

“It’s just very hard for Great Grandpa.  He
visits a lot, but it’s hard for him to see Great Grandma feeling so sick.”

The truth was that I myself had wondered the same
thing.  I hadn’t asked him about it, though. 
Didn’t
have to, as he was always volunteering excuses.
  He felt a cold
coming on and thought it best for all if he stayed away for a couple
days.  Dugan Clark was coming over to give an estimate on re-roofing the
house.  The truck had stalled on him and he had spent all morning working
on the engine.  Grandpa visited his wife, but not like a husband.  He
came and went like a neighbor or a second-cousin or a volunteer from the
church.  Two or three times a week, maybe fifteen minutes at a time.

“It sure is nice of Grandpa to stay with Great Grandma
all the time, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Tory, it sure is.”

“It’s because that’s his mommy, right
Dad?”

“That’s right.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, Tory?”

“If you get sick like that someday, I’ll stay with
you, too. 
Every day.
  I promise I will.”

The little girl’s body fell limp across his arms as he
lifted her off the ground.  He took a quick look around, didn’t see
anyone. 
Didn’t see me.
  Her body cradled
against his, he hurried to the street.  A door to the backseat stood open
and the car was running.  As he scuttled toward the car, his hat blew off
his head. 
An L.A. Dodger baseball cap.

“Son!”
I yelled.

He stopped, turned around and faced me. 
“Tucker?”

Running toward him now, I said, “What the hell are you
doing, Son?  Put her down.”

“She’s not breathing, Tucker!  She’s not
breathing!”

As I came up on them, I could see that Swinging Girl’s
face was blue.  “Put her down,” I commanded.  “What did you to her,
Son?  What the hell did you do?”

“Do to her?  Tucker, she’s my daughter.”

Swinging Girl was Son Settles’ daughter?  It
seemed impossible.  Until this moment, I wasn’t even a hundred percent
convinced she was a real person.  And I had never even considered the
prospect of Son Settles being a father.

“She’s your daughter?”

“Yes!  I came to take her home and when I honked,
her hand slipped from the chains of the swing and she fell back on the
ground.  The fall must have knocked her out, but why is her face blue?”

Gum
, I
thought.

“Here, give her here.”

Sitting on the ground, I held her back against my
chest, slid my arms under her armpits, and locked my fingers in front of her
chest.  On the third attempt, a wad of gum came shooting out of her
mouth.  She coughed and sobbed and gasped for air the way I always did
after my choking dream.  It made me thirsty for air myself and I inhaled
deeply.

“Oh, thank God.  Thank God,” Son repeated, and he
was crying.  Son Settles was crying.  I stared at him, counting the
tear drops on his cheeks as if they were tiny
measures of his love.

Swinging Girl leaned back against my chest.  I
inhaled deeply, trying to breathe enough for the both of us.

Just keep breathing, little girl.  Keep breathing
forever.

Son said, “Come here, baby,” and Swinging Girl crawled
into her father’s arms.  Looking over her shoulder at me, Son said, “Thank
you, Tucker.  Thank you.”

I stood up and walked over to where Son’s baseball cap
was lying on the ground.  I picked it up, dusted it off, and handed it to
him.

“You’re welcome, Son.”

The next day was communion Sunday and when it came
time to go forward for the body and the blood, an uncertainty
was bubbling up inside of me. 
Uncomfortable
with the blessing.
  Concerned I’d take more than I deserved or less
than I needed.  Afraid I’d spill the blood.  I stood with my hands
folded in front of me at the end of the line, Tory and Tammy in front of
me.  Holding the two halves of the loaf of bread in either hand, Pastor
Judy repeated the same blessing to all as they stepped forward to pull-off a
piece of the body.

“The body and blood of Christ offered to you this day,
Earl.”

“The body and blood of Christ offered to you this day,
Virgie.”