Live Like You Were Dying (11 page)

Ham had wrapped my hands in tape and gripped the end of a rope, reminding me to keep my thumbs up. My heart beat faster with each swipe of tape that he put around my hand. But it was funny, when I signed the paper saying that he couldn't be sued if FuManChu stomped the living tar right out of me, my heart slowed to a pace meant for an afternoon nap.

My father ambled over with his hands tucked inside his pockets. He looked out into the tall, grassy field that ran out from Ham's house to the edge of the highway. “You sure you want to do this?” His mumble sounded more like a statement than a question.

“Let's do it.” Walking to the chute, the word echoed in my head.
“Let's.”
There was no
let's
to it. It was me and me alone. But watching the way my father circled the area just beyond the chute and how he kept casting his eyes off toward the field, I realized that I'd used the right word after all. A piece of my father was right up on that bull with me. FuManChu's muscled back quivered when I eased down on him. The gates of the chute rattled as he tried to twist around in the enclosed area. Pinned against his free will, he snorted and fought to raise his head in defiance to this latest man who was now on his back, trying to break his ego. “Ready?” Ham asked, holding the stopwatch.

Holding one hand up in the air and gripping the rope with the other, the door of the chute flew open before I could finish nodding. We both came flying out of the chute, kicking. The bull's hind legs flew up in the air, and he jerked his head with a torment that I've yet to see again. Twisting around, I gripped the rope tighter, feeling my neck contort with each strike against his flank. Digging my legs deeper into the side of the bull, I looked down and fought with every bit of spit and vinegar that I had left in me. And all of a sudden, it was not the jerking and twisting head of some bull that I saw: it was the face of Jay Beckett. As I squeezed my legs tighter, the bull snorted and kicked higher until he was almost standing on his front legs. Manure-stained sand was all that I saw when I landed against the dirt, the breath knocked out of me but the spirit stronger than ever.

“Yaaaaa! Yaaa!” Ham yelled from inside the arena, flagging his arms at the bull. At the edge of the fence, my father reached over to lift me, but it was his praise that got me over the fence. “Good job, son. Real good job.”

Gasping for air, I tumbled forward and slid over the fence. From the other side, FuManChu raked his horns across the fence and snorted. I looked at the meanest son of a gun I'd ever faced since Jay Beckett and managed to laugh. Laughter continued to ring out as the thing that I thought might kill me trotted away for good.

That night, at a honky-tonk named Road Kill, Ham sucked down Jack Daniels with a frenzy equal to that of his bull. Stumbling up to the tiny stage where a DJ played classic country music, the microphone squealed when Ham snatched it away from the young boy. “I want everybody to listen up,” he said, leaning against the DJ's sound system, “that skinny Georgia boy sitting over there . . . Stand up, boy,” Ham said, waving his hand and tipping his glass until the drink sloshed to the floor. “That boy just put a natural-born hurting on my prized bull. Fuchow . . . FuManChu.” The applause was weak, but my father winked at me just the same. “Come on,” Ham shouted. “Let's see how many of ya'll can stay on that bull for 2.7 seconds.” And with that somebody yelled, “Play ‘Call Somebody Who Cares.'”

A bouncer wearing a black wrestling T-shirt helped lift Ham from the stage, and he meandered through the crowd towards me, pulling something from his pocket. “While you were getting your insides ruptured, I took this picture . . . a souvenir . . . a medal.” He tossed a blurred instant photo of me leaning far back, feet in the air, while FuManChu kicked up dirt and twisted sideways.

The next morning, after we'd shaken Ham's hand and paid him what was promised, he reached over and handed me the birdhouse that hung on the deck rail. “Here. A trophy.”

Riding down the bumpy sand road, I held the white-steepled birdhouse in my lap and decided that it would go in Grand Vestal's backyard next to her clothesline. She wouldn't know how I came by it. For all she knew, I might have bought it at some roadside stand filled with velvet rugs and plastic flowers. Just as long as my father and I knew the story behind it was all that mattered. That birdhouse would be something that we'd both glance at long after the migrating birds had come and gone. The house would stand as a memorial to the day I broke the phrase “it can't be done.”

Taking a pen from the glove box, I wrote on the bottom white margin of the picture Ham had taken, “When life tries to buck you, don't look down and don't give in. Few things are as tough as they first appear.”

Addressing an envelope to Malley at Grand Vestal's house, I tucked the photo inside. Life's only worth living if you're willing to share it with the people who matter most.

“Are you getting bored yet?”

Heather asked the question twice before I answered. Holding the pay phone closer to the edge of my chin, my two-day-old beard scratched against the receiver. “No, I wouldn't say I was bored.” A group of children ran screaming around the chain-link fence that separated them from the booth of pay phones at a campground outside of Amarillo, Texas.

“Well, it sounds like somebody's having a good time,” Heather said.

“There're a bunch of kids out here swimming. Man, I wish you and Malley were here. I'm missing you bad.”

Looking out into the flat landscape scattered with small oaks and the pink-colored sky that comes with the close of day, I pictured Heather wrapping the phone cord around her wrist and leaning against the wall at Grand Vestal's house, trying to become invisible as she whispered.

“It won't be long,” she said. “How's your daddy?”

“Pretty good. He's loosened up a little. Not gripping the steering wheel as tight. Refuses to let me help drive though.”

Her laugh was as rich as the sun that was dipping lower across the plain. “Some things won't ever change,” she said. “Hey, speaking of change . . . Malley's become a country girl. She's got her fingers all over this farm. She's working that garden like a field hand. I bet we won't be able to drag her back to Atlanta.”

“Get out,” I said.

“No, I'm serious . . . here,” Heather said, handing off the phone to Malley.

While Malley talked of the sale she and Grand Vestal had made at the Farmer's Market and how the row of corn reminded her of green crayons with tips dipped in gold, a light feeling swept over me. I pictured my daughter running through the field of my past, leaves of green slapping against her ankles as she fought her way through the dirt to the other side. Hearing the rise of her voice as she got more excited about doing simple things that I'd taken for granted, I said a prayer right there in front of God, the setting sun, and the squealing children around the pool. With eyes wide open, I thanked the Lord for second chances.

After the call, I walked across the campground. I passed the log cabins and iron picnic tables and felt a change in the wind temperature. Warm, dry air seemed to be tangled inside a cooler current. A piece of crumpled wax paper swirled up into the sky and landed at the edge of the door of the campground laundromat. Inside, a woman with a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and wet, kinky hair looked at me, her eyes as wild as the wind outside. “It's going to storm,” she said, snapping a pair of boxer shorts. “The weather spins on a dime in the Texas Panhandle. It just spins on a dime.”

Within two hours that dime must have spun into orbit as the camper trailer shook from the winds and rain outside. Rain fell so hard against the aluminum camper that it sounded like somebody was working it over with an electric nail gun.

While my father pacified himself with the latest western he'd picked up at the super center where we'd bought supplies, I hunkered by the small window by the door. Pulling back the fruit-print curtains, I watched as balls of hail slammed down against the concrete slab around the grill. “Man, it's hailing now.”

Not looking up from the pages of the book, my father said, “It'll stop and start like this most of the night.”

“For a man whose new trailer is getting whacked up, you don't seem too worried.”

“There ain't a thing I can do about it. Besides, around here storms roll in, and just when you think you can't stand it, they roll out.” He put the book down on his chest and looked up at the tiny light that glowed above the sofa. “I remember this one time when me and your mama drove out to Fort Carson. We got near here and just did manage to pull into this motor court that an old man and lady ran. Then the rain went to pouring, and the ceiling in our room went to leaking.” He laughed and looked at me like I might have been there too. “I was holding up the trash can in one hand and an ashtray in the other. Your mama was running around with the ice bucket over the bed. As soon as one leak stopped, another started. I was fit to be tied . . . mad . . . son, I was mad.”

“Sounds to me like you needed your money back.”

“Where to go? This was back when motels weren't strung out all over the road like nowadays. Before I knew it, your mama had a kink in her arm from holding the bucket, so we just let the rain pour. We pulled the bed over to one corner, and she told me to close my eyes. Then she put in to telling me a story about Hawaii and waterfalls and such as that. Before she finished I could near about smell the flowers that she claimed she was wearing around her neck. Slept like a baby the rest of the night.” He stared into the light and held on to the book that rose and sank against his chest. “The other day ya'll got to talking about missing her. That's what I miss. Nothing fancy. I just miss having her lay next to me at the end of the day.”

“She was a good woman,” I said, trying not to look at him. Nodding, my father never looked away from the light, and I got the feeling that if he did, the words would be snatched away. “She was a good wife. Better wife than I was a husband.”

A thud rang out louder than the thunder, and we both swayed with the force of the hit. Outside, the sounds of clanging metal and sirens howled in the distance while rain fell sideways. I pushed the door open and saw that the side of the camper was dented. A blue trash barrel was rolling down the driveway. Fighting to close the door, I felt the rain cool the skin beneath my clothes. “The side of the trailer is hit. Looks like a barrel did it.”

Sighing, my father looked out from the window. “Always could be worse, I reckon. The ceiling could be leaking.”
—

Sunlight spread out across the camper floor the next morning, and the rays slowly crawled up into my bed. Opening my eyes, I ran over to the window. Wet cardboard and Styrofoam containers littered the campground.

Beyond the playground, I saw my father walking toward the camper. He entered and handed me a cup of coffee.

“Looks like she worked it over pretty good last night,” I said, running my hand through hair fit for a wirehaired terrier. “I tossed and turned the whole time.”

Flicking a packet of sugar against his thumb, he said. “Slept like a baby.” He locked the cabinets and got behind the wheel. When we got to the intersection just past the campground, he turned the truck in the direction of town. “Umm,” I said sipping the coffee. “The interstate is back the other way.”

“I know it.” He flicked a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. “This road is what they used to call Route 66. What they call the Mother Road. It ain't even on the map no more, but back when your mama and me were driving to Fort Carson, we used to make this track regular. Let's see how much of it I remember.”

I made a mental note to mark the date and time of this one down in stone. My father, the man who timed his meals by the second, not by the hunger, was finally breaking free of a schedule. We were taking the long way, through little towns that were no longer fueled by tourist dollars, and down the path that had first introduced my parents to life beyond Choctaw.

That winding two-lane road brought us face-to-face with long-faded billboards advertising everything from pet monkeys to maple syrup. With its curves and postcard-perfect views of valleys dotted with wildflowers, shiny roadside diners, and Main Street storefronts with double-paned windows, the road brought us back to a past I'd never known before. It brought us back to redemption.

Chapter Nine

Past the city limits of a town that was nothing more than a dot on the map, we pulled off onto a gravel parking lot. Red mountains speckled with bright-green pines stood guard over a flat-roofed building below. A tall neon sign flickered with the words Nickel and Dime Diner.

“This place used to be called something else . . . something Mexican,” my father said as he pulled the keys from the ignition. “Anyway, we stopped here one time when we were heading back home for Christmas. The Christmas before I took off for 'Nam.”

I knew that the subject of war was off-limits. The scar on his arm and the hunk of missing flesh that made my father's back seem unbalanced were the only signs that he'd ever even served in the war. “It's best just to leave some things alone,” my mama would say whenever I'd ask about the scars.

A moose head with wide antlers hung on a paneled wall at the diner's entrance. Inside, a woman with a freckled face welcomed us. “We're full at the moment. But feel free to have a place at the snack bar if you like.”

We sat on red-vinyl stools at the snack bar and ordered from a menu that was smeared with crayon marks and grease. A young boy with a pencil tucked behind his ear mumbled a greeting and put two glasses of water before us. If the waiter lacked hospitality, the man sitting next to me made up for it. Wearing a blue baseball cap with gray sideburns sticking out from underneath, the man started talking as soon as he sat down. “Go with the hot roast beef sandwich,” he said.