Live Like You Were Dying Read online

  Her words poured into my being, and I was left staring at the cows that had moved closer to the edge of a dried pond, their steps making crackling sounds in the caked mud.

  “To be honest with you, he just rubs me the wrong way.” Heather’s touch was soft to my arm. “I want so badly for this visit to be harmonious. Can’t you look for the common good in your daddy instead of trying to change him? It’s there, you know. You just have to dig for it.” She kissed me on the cheek and walked back to the house, but her words stayed on my mind. I tried to think of the common good that Heather claimed stretched between my father and me. Even his features were not mine. I was my mother’s son and had her dark hair and green eyes to prove it. My father’s hair was redder, auburn in color like the hair that Malley was born with. The one thing that my mind kept going back to was the fact that my mother loved him for forty-two years. Time and again after my mother died, Grand Vestal would remind me that my father was a good man, as if saying it often enough would convince me.

  “What makes you say that . . . that you know he’s good?” I’d always ask.

  “Because my daughter loved him till the day she died.”

  I’m sure Grand Vestal was right. When I was a boy Mama would sit on my father’s lap and snuggle on his chest as we watched TV. I’d see her primp in the mirror before he was due home from work and then run to kiss him when he walked through the door. But what about his love for her? If there was so much love, then why did he leave her alone on the night she died?

  Venturing back to the house for the sake of keeping peace with my wife, if for no other reason, I found my father sitting on the porch step, still trying to make conversation. “Daddy, did you tell Grandpa Ron where we’re going?” Malley asked.

  “Where might that be?” my father asked.

  “Uh . . . I thought I’d take her down to Brouser’s Pond. Do a little bass fishing.”

  “He made this list of places he wanted to visit,” Malley said. “I’m gonna make sure we hit every one of them.”

  “What all’s on this list?” my father asked.

  “Some place that sells chili dogs,” Malley said.

  “Suit yourself, but I’d rather catch me a bass than wind up with a case of indigestion from Holster’s Drive-In,” my father said.

  Malley laughed and, on cue, my father laughed right along with her.

  “Hey,” I said. I paused, not sure if I really wanted to say what I was thinking. My father and Malley looked up at me and waited. “Um . . . why don’t you come out to Brouser’s with us? You still know the best places, don’t you?”

  “I reckon we can do that.” My father pushed up the brim of his cap and leaned forward. “’Bout what time you want me to come by in the morning?”

  After setting a time after breakfast, I opened the door to walk into the house but paused at the step and patted his shoulder. The roughness of the plaid shirt seemed appropriate for this man who had never to my knowledge spoken the word love.

  He looked up at me with that squinted look and smiled wide enough to reveal a missing tooth in the far corner of his mouth.

  If only for an afternoon, the weight of tension that had held my father and me down so tight that I thought at times I’d bust had been lifted. Just like I knew she would, Malley took our relationship up in a hot-air balloon called hope.

  Chapter Six

  Dew still covered the ground, and the sun had not yet completely risen over the treetops when my father’s red pickup appeared. Grand Vestal was stuffing Malley’s book bag with biscuits and a Mason jar filled with green tea. “This tea will give you strength to reel in a big one,” Grand Vestal said before sending her off with a kiss. “Now, Sugar Boy, you sip on that tea too. It’ll do you good.”

  Riding through downtown for the first time, I felt a sense of sadness drift over me as we passed vacant buildings that had thrived with business during my youth. Only the newspaper office and the Johnston family hardware store had remained intact. “Nothing stays the same,” I mumbled.

  Brouser’s Pond was appropriately located behind Gil Brouser’s house. Fifty years ago his father had bought the property that circled the pond. Even though it was private property, anybody in Choctaw was welcome to fish as long as they left a dollar in an old coffee can that dangled from a rusted nail on a pine tree. Gil’s dog chased the dust behind us just like we chased the low clouds that hung over the pond. Vines and tree limbs scratched at the truck, but my father never paid them any mind. He stared straight ahead, his eyes fixated on the body of water that awaited us. Water remained the one place where his eyes would widen and his words would broaden into short conversations.

  At the pond, we found a spot along the bank above a patch of lily pads covered in white flowers. “Let me fix your line for you,” I said to Malley, but when I turned, my father had already taken a pair of pliers to her spinning reel. He stood frozen, looking at me, and offered up the line for me to fix. Shaking my head, I said, “It looks like you’ve got it all worked out.”

  “Careful not to get too close to those weeds on the bank. You don’t want to surprise a moccasin.” My words never impacted headstrong Malley. She adjusted her sunglasses and pulled down the John Deere cap that she’d taken from the gun rack in my father’s truck. Grinning, I could only imagine what her big-city friends would say about this girl who’d gone country.

  A crow called out as it landed on a pine tree limb above us. My father never looked away from the pond as he reeled in his line. As a boy, I loved to watch his arm muscles flinch and jerk with the movement of the fishing pole.

  The reflection of the water against his sunglasses and the way he seemed hypnotized had caused me to imagine that he’d grown up in the pond. I created a story worthy of a comic superhero and even secretly named him Bassman.

  Now ripples of water floated across the pond and the humming of our spinning reels called out. “What’s all this business about your lung?” He cast his line but never looked at me.

  My neck tightened with the question. Heather or Malley had obviously told him. At first I pretended that I hadn’t heard his question. I wanted the high-pitched whine of the reels to block out the reality of the present.

  “Yeah, that . . . you know, I had this accident at work, and while I was in the hospital, the doctors found this thing . . . this spot. But nobody knows for sure. I mean, they said I could’ve been born with it.”

  My father jerked the line of his fishing rod and then mumbled. “You okay with everything?”

  His question struck me sideways, hooking me in to the truth.

  “Well, not much I can do about it. I have to be okay with it. I mean, I don’t want to get sicker taking treatment like . . . like some people.”

  Adjusting the anchors on his line, my father stopped and let the hook dangle. His eyes were not glassy like the pond; they were slate blue and focused only on me. “The way I figure it, everybody’s terminal. Some just at different stages than others.”

  Stepping closer, I wanted to hear his words again and to hang on to the reassurance of his voice, but Malley’s scream cut through me deeper than his wisdom. She was pulling with all of her might and fighting a rod that was bending lower to the water. “Don’t let go,” I yelled.

  She slid down lower into the grassy bank. Gripping her rod, I thought the pole was going to snap in two— along with my ribs. Just when I thought the pain in my chest was going to cause me to let my daughter down, the rough hands of my father were on top of mine. He was behind me, pulling and grunting all at the same time.

  “I’m going overboard,” Malley kept screaming as we slid lower to the water’s edge. Oil-colored water sloshed over her pink tennis shoes.

  “Just keep a-pulling,” my father yelled. And pull we did. We pulled until I felt every muscle in my back tighten. It felt good to finally fight for something worthwhile.

  “Give it a big yank on three,” my father said. “One, two, three . . . .” With that final jerk we all landed fl
at on our tails, and the biggest bass I’d ever laid eyes on flapped at the water’s edge. Jumping at him, I fell face-first into the water and threw that fish as far to the bank as I could. Malley and my father struggled to pull him up the rest of the way. I laughed out loud looking at Malley. The John Deere cap was knocked sideways, and her designer sunglasses dangled from her nose, making her look like an old lady. “Go, Malley! Go, Malley!” I yelled, churning the water with my hands. I jumped up and down on the muddy floor of that pond and hollered loud enough for all of Choctaw to hear me. It felt good to cheer for my baby girl.

  Back at Grand Vestal’s, Heather took a picture of the three of us with Malley pointing to the fifteen-pound bass hanging from the fence post. I hung the photo on the refrigerator door as a reminder to jump in with both feet and savor the victories.

  After supper Malley was still basking in her triumph when she emerged into the living room carrying an oak box decorated with carved doves.

  “Whatcha got there?” I asked, sipping the latest herb tea that Grand Vestal had placed before me.

  “I don’t know, but it was underneath my bed, covered in bubble paper.” Malley sat the box down in the middle of the floor and started to unlatch the gold lock.

  Heather leaned forward from the easy chair where she sat curled up, reading a book. “Hold it. This is Grand Vestal’s house. So, therefore, that makes it her box. Don’t you think you should ask permission before you start plundering around?”

  Grand Vestal walked from the kitchen carrying a dish towel. She looked down at the box and into the wide green eyes of Malley, who was kneeling next to it.

  “I found this under the bed. Can I look through it?”

  Grand Vestal sat on the edge of the sofa and ran the tip of her finger over the gold handle. “I expect you should. It’s gonna be yours someday.”

  Malley looked at me, and I only shrugged.

  “It was my daughter’s hope chest. Your grandmama’s. Her dreams are tucked away in there. One day I expect you’ll put your hopes in there too.”

  Getting on the floor next to Malley, I found myself running my hand over the carved grooves. “I never saw this.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Grand Vestal said and winked. “You might recognize a thing or two in it.” Grand Vestal opened up the box, and the smell of aged cedar flowed through the living room.

  My father came out of the kitchen and joined us in the living room as we pulled out the clippings from the paper about my mother, Barbara Rickers, playing in a piano recital. Grand Vestal sat on the sofa, touching each item as it was passed to her. Malley pulled out an old black-and-white photograph of my mother and father with their arms wrapped around each other and handed it to my father. “Now, who is this ugly, skinny boy standing next to that pretty gal?” he asked. Army barracks and snow were scattered in the background of the photo. Even though she had a coat on and her hands were tucked in the coat pockets, you could still tell that my mama was pregnant.

  Grand Vestal leaned over the sofa so she could see the photograph. “That was in Colorado when Ronnie was serving in the army.” She swatted his arm. “Umm, it liked to have tore me to pieces the day you took my girl so far away.” My father shifted his weight in the chair and reached over to examine a figurine of a dog on the table next to him.

  “That’s where I was born,” I said.

  Malley looked deeper into the picture as if she might be able to see through the coat and my mother’s womb and find me.

  While we all laughed at the styles from the past and listened to Grand Vestal tell stories about the pictures, I dug out a gold-colored photo album with drawings of trees etched across the cover. The album and the smell of its pages teased the farthest corners of my mind.

  When I opened the album and saw the yellowed newspaper clippings, it hit me. Suddenly, I was once again with my mother, sitting at our kitchen table in the green-vinyl chairs and talking about the distant places she would clip from the Sunday travel section of the Valdosta newspaper. Smelling the pages, I hoped that the strawberry scent of her perfume was still locked inside.

  “What are you smelling?” Malley asked.

  “The past,” I said, never taking my nose from the pages. I started to flip through the book of my mother’s dreams. Articles on the Empire State Building, Miami Beach, and the Oregon coastline stretched before me. “These are all the places that I want to see,” my mother would say as she clipped the newspaper pages. “When we going, Mama?” I’d ask. “One day,” she’d say, never taking her eyes from the exotic pictures that teased us. “Maybe one day.”

  But one day never arrived in time for my mama. A tumor on her pancreas had caused a detour, and by then the journey was too far off in the horizon. Flipping through the pages that were dedicated to the Grand Canyon, the weight of regret felt as heavy as the clay-colored mountains in the photograph. That was the trip that came the closest to becoming reality. Mama had already made the reservations at a campground that she promised would be just as exciting as the one the Brady Bunch had visited on TV. But a new tractor took precedent over an extravagant trip. “We got to use common sense around here,” my father had said the night he came home with the tractor. “Besides, that big old hole in the ground will still be there later on,” he added as he flicked a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. My mama only winked and forced a smile as I folded my arms and leaned back against the vinyl chair. “Maybe one day,” she whispered while reaching for my plate. “Maybe one day.”

  “What do you remember most about Grandmama?” Heather asked, smiling at Malley. Emotion hung in the back of my throat, and for a moment I feared that it might choke me. A sentimental journey with my father was not what I was wanting. Not as I was holding the book of my mother’s lost dreams.

  “Cornbread,” Malley said and laughed. She brushed the hair from her eyes and said, “It was sweet like cake or something.”

  “What about you, Grand Vestal? What do you miss?” Heather searched Grand Vestal and then looked at me. How could Grand Vestal offer up only one thing that she missed about her firstborn child?

  “Sweet smiles.” Grand Vestal said. “That little smile of hers warmed my heart the first time she let me see it. The day I was sitting over yonder, nursing her. Then that smile warmed my heart all over again the last time I saw her, the day she drifted away. The Lord’s been good to me.”

  The sounds of chirping birds rolled into the house, but no one else stirred. We just sat there staring at a scrapbook that they all saw as sweet reminders. I saw the book of clippings only as lost opportunities. Malley looked over at the scrapbook in my hands.

  “What’s that a picture of, Daddy?”

  I snapped the book closed.

  Rising, my father coughed before standing to his feet. The conversation was too much for him; he didn’t want to talk about my mother any more than I did.

  “It’s a picture of the Grand Canyon,” I said before he could make it past the hall table that held the phone and the figurines.

  My father stopped, and for the first time I saw the back of his neck. It was lined with wrinkles as deep as those of an old man. His jeans dropped lower, and part of his denim shirt hung free from the waist of his pants.

  “There was this trip we planned one time. Back when I was a little boy. Mama sat up late planning that trip to the

  Grand Canyon for days on end. She even had me to draw the colors that I thought we’d find spread out across that big open space.”

  “Were they the colors you thought they’d be?” Malley asked.

  Shrugging, I flicked the corner of my mouth with my tongue. It was a feat to hold my words back, but the trick failed. “I can’t tell you, because we never made that trip. Maybe one day. Right, Daddy? Maybe one day.”

  Never turning to face us, my father nodded and then made his way out of the house. The sound of his boots hitting the wooden floor echoed even after he’d made it through the doorway.

  I walked into the kitchen a
nd watched him get into his truck. The floodlight from the back porch spread out across the truck like he was an actor in a play.

  Grand Vestal snuck up beside me and snaked her arm around me. She leaned so close that I could make out the mushroom-shaped age spots that dotted her hairline.

  “You know something? As many years as I’ve known your daddy, I still don’t know him. But there’s one thing I’m satisfied of: Ronnie Bishop is a good man. His heart is good.”

  “I keep on wanting to believe that.”

  “Then keep on trying,” she said. “Throw off that anger that’s pinning you down. Let yourself be free.”

  She walked away and then stopped when she got to the shelf lined with family photos of our past and future. “You’re at a crossroads. And Sugar Boy, you’re the only one who can decide which way to go. Not me, not your wife, and not that daddy of yours. Listen to this old lady, because she knows what she’s talking about. Time’s a gift handed down to each one of us. Don’t waste that gift by wrestling things you can’t change.”

  After everyone went to bed, I sat at the kitchen table, flipping through the pages of the scrapbook my mother had put together. Something in the deepest part of me broke free that night, and with it came a flood of resentment that I’d long since locked away. The kitchen light cast a shadow over the clippings now yellowed and stained with age. Then, in the quiet of the night, with those I loved already tucked in bed, I pressed my head against the kitchen table and cried. The paper that had first been touched by my mother and held her dreams now carried the tears of my regrets, the tears of my past.

  Chapter Seven

  By the second week in Choctaw, Heather was spending her days making contact with old friends from high school. The Walker twins, who ran the only dress store and travel agency in town, were regular lunchtime partners. They’d congregate at the deli that had set up business next to their shop at the old train depot. Lana, the sister with the biggest teeth, usually came by the house in a convertible Volkswagen Bug to pick Heather up. Swaying back and forth as she hugged Heather, Lana looked over Heather’s shoulder and saw me standing on the porch step with my hands tucked in my pockets. “Nathan Bishop . . . I swear, how long has it been?” Lana squealed as she came prancing toward me like she might still be homecoming queen, a long, sheer jacket flowing behind her.