Live Like You Were Dying Page 5

  I felt a tug on my hand and turned to see Laci and Emmy, two of Malley’s friends, leading me out onto the dance floor. I grooved with the best of them. The words to “Jive Talking” rained down, and suddenly I felt as cocky as the boy in Choctaw who had once skated backwards to impress the group of girls who congregated by the concession stand. I danced and danced and never once thought of spots on X-rays or company organizational charts that no longer included my name.

  When she saw me, Malley shook her head and laughed. In the center of a circle of screaming twelve-year-olds, I closed my eyes and, with the beat of the music of my past, shook away the fear of the future. I didn’t care if I was embarrassed after the song ended and I faced the stares of the parents; I was living for the moment, and right then the moment felt good.

  Malley talked about that night for two days straight, and it took about that long for my legs to stop aching from the dancing. The next day, Malley asked me to take her to get a KC and The Sunshine Band CD, and I gladly complied.

  When we returned, I noticed that the car had been backed into the driveway, and the trunk was wide open. Heather came out carrying a suitcase and a pair of shoes. “What’s this?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” Malley said and then jumped from the truck. The trunk of the car was filled with our suitcases and the tote bag full of books usually meant for a beach trip.

  “Was this part of some covert operation?”

  “You’re not the only one with surprises,” Heather said. “Malley and I can still manage to pull one over on you.”

  “What’s up with all this?”

  “Remember that list?” Malley bit her lower lip. “The list with the chili dogs from that place and that pond and all that stuff?”

  “Now, hold on . . .” I struggled to find one commonsense reason why we shouldn’t return home for a visit to Choctaw.

  “Hold what?” Heather asked. “I’ve already called Grand Vestal. She’s got the place ready for us. She’s so excited. She’s fixing fried chicken tonight, special for you.”

  “From the looks of it, you’re planning on us staying there until the end of time.”

  “What does it matter? We have the whole summer,” Heather said as she readjusted the suitcases. “It’s time, Nathan . . . It’s time to run barefoot through that plowed field again.”

  Chapter Five

  Even though her name was Grand Vestal, there was nothing grand about my grandmother except for her heart. She had lived all of her life on a tract of land that my grandfather had managed to farm, if for no other reason, to keep the bill collectors away. Long since widowed, Grand Vestal still lived at the end of the red clay road that was lined with live oaks dating back as far as her people, a small Creek Indian tribe. When the first white man came to the area after the Trail of Tears, the ones who had hidden out in the swamp told them that they were Choctaw Indians, believing that only the Creek Indians were marked for persecution. From then on, the area that eventually grew into a tiny town hovering just above the Florida border was simply called Choctaw.

  Grand Vestal greeted us before we could make the bend around the road to her house. Two shirts flapped on a clothesline next to the tin-roofed house with blue shutters shaped like slivers of the moon. She stood on the lowest concrete porch step, its corner chipped away by time. Wiping her hands on a stained yellow rag, she raised it up as if I might have forgotten my way home.

  Deep wrinkles lined her eighty-three-year-old face, the skin tanned from hard work and her Indian heritage. She wore the usual polyester navy slacks that belled at the bottom and a sleeveless daisy-print top displaying muscles that women in Atlanta pay trainers to have. The earth was her workout center. She built her arms by continuing to plow her own garden and milk her own cow. Her hair was just as I remembered it. With each step, the gray braids swung from her shoulders with the excitement of a young girl.

  She was talking before we could open the car doors. “Eugenia, the woman down at the end of the highway, saw ya’ll pull onto my road. She called and said, ‘They’re turning right now.’”

  “How’d she know to look for us?” Malley asked while wrapped in Grand Vestal’s arms.

  She pulled Malley back and studied her the way she might’ve if Malley had the measles. “How’d she know . . . how’d she know? Well, you’re the brightest thing to land on this side of Georgia since that star fell from the sky and burnt a hole through my barn.”

  After Grand Vestal hugged Heather, she turned her attention to me. She brushed the hair from my forehead and looked at me so deeply that I had to turn away and point to the dogwood tree that still filled the corner of her yard. “I see that old thing is still around.”

  “Sugar Boy, that tree’s like me. It’ll be here till Gabriel blows his trumpet.”

  That evening we finished off the best fried chicken a man could eat, and I helped Grand Vestal clean the kitchen while Malley and Heather got ready for bed. “You’re adrift . . . I see it in the way you move your eyes,” she said, running her hands over my forearms. “Your bones are weary too.”

  Her diagnoses always made me uncomfortable, because nine times out of ten she was right. “I’m fine . . . really. I could plow a garden if you wanted me to.”

  She straightened the tablecloth and laughed. “You and your garden! You don’t know how many times I’m out there working in that pasture and get so tickled. It’s a wonder the neighbors don’t call the police on me. Sometimes I just howl thinking about . . . you know what I’m fixing to say?”

  “The foot thing.”

  She fanned her hands and giggled. “Yes, gracious, yes. Every time I’m out in that garden, I can just see you running through that dirt barefooted. Your little bird chest just a-heavin’ for air.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve still got that bird chest,” I said, patting my mending ribs. The very touch caused the spot to cross my mind. It was a distraction that both irritated and reminded me of chores left to be done.

  “Did you call and let your daddy know you were coming?” I was hoping she wouldn’t ask, but now there was no way out.

  “No, I ran out of time.”

  “Well, now, just so you know . . . he’s coming over for dinner tomorrow.” I wanted to protest, but there was no use. Facing him and the past would be a task I’d have to handle sooner or later.

  I watched her fill a glass of water, which was her nightly routine, and then reach for a plastic lid from a margarine container to keep out the night critters, as she called moths. I felt the pang that comes with being reunited. I could have dictated her moves as good as any Hollywood director. Her habits were stamped in the memories of my childhood and lodged too deep to be stolen.

  “Good night, Sugar Boy,” she said just before turning out the kitchen light.

  Standing in the darkness with the soft rays of moonlight streaming in from the kitchen window, I reached out for her arm and said the words that I should have said all of those times before. “You’re something special, Grand Vestal. I haven’t said it in a long time . . . but I love you.”

  Her gasp was quick, and her pat to my arm was even swifter. “You sure do know how to make an old lady proud. I love you too, Sugar Boy. You are a bright spot that lingers around this place.” She brushed her thick hand across my face and nodded. “Now, then, we best get to bed because Herman will be a-crowin’ soon enough.”

  “Herman?” I asked, trailing behind her, the hallway boards creaking beneath our weight. “What happened to that other rooster?”

  Grand Vestal opened the door to her bedroom. “Oh, you’re talking about Augustus. Shoot, he got to crowing too early, so I had to serve him up for Easter dinner.”

  At sunrise Herman went to work. The rooster was loud enough to wake anybody in the vicinity of forty acres. Malley snatched the bedroom door open, her hair tangled and hanging in front of her face. “Can somebody make that bird shut up?” she yelled down the hall.

  From the kitchen, Grand Vestal laughed that deep-gutted
laugh she had. “Only the good Lord, Miss Mary Sunshine. He’s just doing his job, that’s all.”

  It was a strange mix of feelings watching my past and my future meld together. Grand Vestal took Malley out to the barn, and Malley came back forty-five minutes later carrying a bucket of fresh milk and a smile warmer than the plate of biscuits that sat on the table along with grits and sausage. When we finished, Grand Vestal stood and started clearing the table.

  “All right, now, I’ve got a Sunday-morning announcement to make. Anybody who stays under my roof is expected to go to church with me.” Heather looked at me wild-eyed, while Malley licked a stream of melting butter from the edge of a biscuit. Church had not exactly been on our weekend schedule back in Atlanta, and the idea of sitting through one of Grand Vestal’s church services put a tinge of panic in me.

  The pastor I remembered at her church had a black patch over his eye and always brought his pet cockatoo to church. He’d close each service by holding the bird up on his arm and reminding us that if God can take care of the birds of the air, how much more will He do for us? Maybe my doctors back in Atlanta needed to come down here and hear his sermons to remind them that they were not the God who fed the birds or the One who numbered our days.

  “Uh . . . let me think if I have something to wear,” Heather said as she wiped crumbs from her mouth.

  “Shoot! We . . . uh . . . we forgot to bring anything to wear for church.” I frowned and shook my head.

  “Oh, toot on that. Don’t you know the good Lord don’t care what you show up in? Just as long as you show up.” Malley looked at my stunned expression and laughed right out loud. She held up her finger and touched the air, making a sizzling sound. “Busted,” she whispered.

  Opening the refrigerator that was covered in a sea of magnets of every size imaginable, Grand Vestal turned slightly, holding a plate of butter. Her braids flipped across her shoulders. “And don’t forget that, after church, your daddy’s coming over for dinner.”

  “So he’s coming to church too?” I asked, knowing good and well he was not. Church suited my father the same way a tuxedo did, confining and restrictive.

  “No, but he’s not sleeping under my roof, now, is he? Now, hurry up and finish so we can get there on time.”

  Before the church service began, the organ swelled with “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” as the Sunday school members filed in through the wooden door next to the altar. Grand Vestal led the way to the same pew she’d occupied since the day the doors opened. She wore a navy dress with a thin belt. The dress had come in and out of fashion through the years, but to my knowledge it had remained the only dress that she owned.

  Along the way she stopped by every pew to introduce us. Most of the members of the small red-brick church were people I’d known since I was a boy.

  “I think you were just getting married the last time I saw you,” Mrs. Harris said, looking Heather up and down. “How long has it been now?”

  “Nineteen years,” I said and pulled Heather closer to me. “And the honeymoon is still going strong.”

  Mrs. Harris squealed, and the jiggle of fat under her chin bounced in delight. Grand Vestal shot me a look before turning to the pew across from the aisle.

  Homecoming was what the trip to Choctaw Community Church became that day. As the congregation that I’d first known in my younger years stood to sing “When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder,” I mouthed the words and listened. Hearing the off-tune, aging voices sing the hymn I knew by heart was sweet medicine, and my soul lapped up every drop.

  But not everything had stayed the same in that little country church that sat next to the highway. The pastor was now a man younger than me. His baritone voice bounced from the plastered walls until not even a child murmured. With each point he wanted to emphasize, he’d run his fingers through his spiky hair and say, “You aren’t hearing me, now, are you?”

  After the service the pastor greeted us at the door and engulfed Grand Vestal in his arms. She seemed to savor his affection the same way I had savored the hymns about sweet reunions in the sky.

  Walking past the cars that lined the gravel parking lot, she lingered to visit with even more people. “Daddy, was Grand Vestal ever mayor of the town or something?” Malley whispered.

  “Only in her mind . . . but come to think of it, she’d make a fine one.”

  When I started to drive away, I asked Grand Vestal what had become of that pastor, the one with an eye patch who brought his cockatoo up to the pulpit.

  Fishing through her wicker pocketbook in the backseat of our car, Grand Vestal never looked up. “Oh, him . . . we had to get shut of him, the preacher and that bird both. I tell you, the final straw was Wednesday-night prayer meeting. Racine Taylor was making announcements about visitation, and out of the clear blue, that bird went to screeching and carrying on. You never did hear such a racket. It was just like the very sound of Racine’s voice was getting on that bird’s nerves. You know, she always did talk through her nose. Well, sir . . . the next thing you know, that bird flew out and plucked Racine’s wig right off the top of her head. I mean to tell you, the preacher had a time calming them down . . . Racine and that bird both. They tell me that to this day she still can’t walk underneath a tree without getting the nervous shakes.”

  We laughed and carried on the entire drive back to Grand Vestal’s house. I saw my father’s truck when we pulled up the long drive, and his outline was visible through the screen porch. His thin frame and slanted shoulders were topped off by the John Deere cap he had worn so long that the logo was only partially readable. “Judging from the looks of it, somebody had a good time,” he called out.

  “See what you missed, Ronnie Bishop. I declare, the day I get you to church will be the day I’m satisfied the Lord will call me home. My work will finally be done,” Grand Vestal said.

  “Now, see, that’s how come I don’t go. I’m working on keeping you around as long as I can help it.”

  Grand Vestal swatted him on the back with a folded church bulletin. Malley moved forward and once again became the prim and proper girl from Atlanta whose party manners were paid for in full. My father looked awkward as he first reached for Malley’s shoulder and then settled for tussling her hair.

  Men might have spoken softer, but I’d never met one who spoke fewer words than my father. The way he’d shift his weight on his feet and fold his arms always made me think that he was never really comfortable in anybody’s presence, except my mother’s. This homecoming would be no different.

  “You’re gettin’ so big,” he said. “Ain’t she, Grand Vestal?” My grandmother agreed. “And so pretty. Ain’t she pretty, Grand Vestal?” My grandmother agreed again, playing with Malley’s hair.

  Looking up at him through the screen door framed in cobwebs, his grainy image seemed out of focus. I stood on the concrete step as long as I could, watching him shift his weight as he listened to Malley answer one strained question after another.

  Now a man of sixty, he wore gold-rimmed glasses. His ruddy and thick-skinned nose seemed better suited for a man ten years older. A farmer and retired mechanic from the Office of Public Works, he continued to spend more time with his herd of cows than with his own family. He looked through the screen door at me.

  “How you making it, Nathan?”

  “Good . . . good,” I said. “How have you been getting along?”

  “Pretty good,” he mumbled. “Yep, doing pretty good.”

  Grand Vestal opened the front door and hung her pocketbook on a coat rack in the foyer. “He’s got a hernia on his left side.” She never looked back as she offered the report that made my father blush.

  “Naw . . . Dr. Lewis didn’t say that’s for sure.”

  Grand Vestal yelled over her shoulder, “Don’t tell me. Watch how he gives on that left side when he walks. A hernia just as sure as I’m standing here.”

  Rising up on the toe of his boots, for a second my father seemed taller than me as he tried to ex
amine the porch light. Anything to create a diversion from talking about himself. “Vestal, you heard that Louis Franklin died last night?”

  Grand Vestal turned around with her mouth wide open. “What?”

  “Garrison told me down at the feed store this morning. He said Louis was just ate up with cancer. Didn’t tell a living soul neither, not even his boys.”

  “Oh, toot,” Grand Vestal finally said. “They don’t know what that man had. He caroused every juke joint between here and Albany. I bet a plug nickel that it was his liver that got him.”

  Somewhere between Louis Franklin’s death and Viola Quinton’s hip replacement I slipped away from the porch and retreated down the concrete block steps and into the field, where alfalfa grass swayed with the warm spring breeze. The cow Malley and I had moved into the field a day earlier turned and looked at me with pieces of grass still stuck to her lips. Sitting against the fence rail, I heard the screen door squeak and hoped that if I held my breath the person would drift back inside, never spotting the invisible man that glowed with a spot in his chest. But Heather was never one to give up that easy. She opened the rusted fence gate and sat cross-legged next to me. Saying nothing, she simply picked a long blade of grass and twirled it around her finger.

  “What are you doing out here?” she said finally, slapping my arm with the blade of grass.

  Shrugging, I fought the urge to say nothing and to make her go back inside. But as foolish as I might have been, I knew that she was the one sure thing that I couldn’t afford to push away. So instead, I put my arm around her and buried my nose in her lilac-scented hair.

  “Don’t think you’re going to get me to change the subject by doing that.”

  “What?” I whispered.

  “You know what. Listen, why can’t you be this nice in front of your daddy?”

  “I’ve studied that one for years. The best I can come up with is that he’s the moon and I’m the sun. Go figure.”

  “All right.” Heather nodded in agreement. “But you know what they say about the moon: it has no reflection without the sun.”